Technology--Stress reduction or stress creation?

When I first got my PDA, I loved it. I didn't have to worry about what emails came in while I was away from the office. I had it right in front of me. Stress relief.

But that was before I knew what PDA stood for. I thought it meant personal digital assistant. I was wrong.

PDA stands for Pavlov's Dog Assistant. When we hear that beep, instead of salivating, we jump to the PDA and look at what just happened. If we don't hear the beep, we press a button to check if anything came in that we missed. We don't go to an event with our kids, we don't go to church, we don't go for a walk and we don't even meditate without it. We allow this technology to interrupt conversations, thoughts and relaxation...

Maybe it's time to stop waiting for the bell or the beep and turn off the chimes. Let's leave the PDA behind when we're doing non-business things or when we are giving someone our full attention and see if the world is still there when we check our PDA later. I bet it will be.