You wake up and reach for your mobile phone or smartphone to check if you’ve missed any SMS messages or phone calls while you were asleep. Then you spend the first 15 to 20 minutes of your day replying to texts or emails that you deem important. Only then will you get up to take a quick shower and, if you have time, you gulp down your breakfast while checking out some industry news via your laptop, smartphone, or tablet. Assuming that you’re already appropriately dressed at this point, you grab your stuff and leave for work.

While commuting (or, god forbid, driving), you keep part of your attention on your smartphone or celphone in case someone you’ve replied to when you woke up replies to your morning message. In fact, chances are very good that if the phone rings, you’ll either put it on speaker mode or hands-free mode so you can keep up with the latest developments in your job or in your personal relationships.

Barring a serious or fatal accident, you get to work on time, get on your computer, and start work; you probably stop every time your phone rings or you get a new email. Then you go out to meet a client for a meeting, during which you obsessively check your smartphone.

Once your workday ends, you go home to have dinner with family and friends – you keep checking for messages during dinner too. Then you prepare to get some rest for the next day…but get in bed with your smartphone to do some last-minute information-gathering and communication before you go to sleep.

Feeling guilty yet?

Don’t Worry, You’re Far from Alone

We’re not going to say that this new age of connection isn’t addictive, because it clearly is. Of course, it all started from the Internet and then it spiraled into the development of mobile devices that can go online. From there, the popularity of cloud-based technology that allows you to have integrated virtual contact details that you can apply to practically any hardware of your choice can only skyrocket.

And how can anyone say that this isn’t cool anyway? As was discussed in a blog article by cloud-based system provider RingCentral business telephone, there are benefits to using just one device for both work and personal communication.

But here’s the thing (and that blog article also points it out): the technology ALSO GIVES US BETTER CONTROL OVER OUR TIME.

It’s More About Better Time Management

Sure, most of what the technology does is to make sure that we can keep up with the latest information – of which there are LOTS – which we deem important. But the point of having most data at our fingertips is to make us more efficient. And we’re hardly efficient when, instead of using this advantage to make our lives easier, we let every piece of information distract us the moment they come in.

What’s the point of having voicemail or infinite storage inboxes, then? At the end of the day, the best way to employ our technology is to let it help us become better people.