Phones and Addiction

My initial concept of addiction was drugs – opium, Marijuana etc. My parents would warn me of staying away from suspicious people.

As I grew older I realized that chemists / pharmacy guys were not giving cough syrup to unknown people without a prescription. These are typically over the counter medications so I was surprised about why this kind of behavior. Being curious, I asked one of them the reason. That’s when I was told that people become addicted to these syrups and need them because of that.

While these addictions cause harm to the body, one of the biggest addictions that we face today is because of our mobile phones. I have written multiple posts about how I am trying to de-clutter my life by removing all the Apps in my phone. The mobile phones and the Apps on them are so addictive that they drive you away from your dreams and aspirations.

However what I realized today, while reading a post, that this is a problem which is being faced by so many people globally. When something reaches a scale like this, its as bad an addiction for the overall generation.

I guess people will realize this situation and start taking steps, like me, to stop these perpetual distractions and live a more productive life.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Alerts are the new Apsaras

Distractions, dreams, Focus, Goals

In Hindu mythology, the king of the Gods, is a God named Indra. In his court he had some very beautiful ladies with magical powers. Generally the Apsaras were involved in entertaining Lord Indra.

Lord Indra is not part of the Supreme trio of Hinduism- Brahma, Vishnu and Shiv.

Lord Indra is depicted to be a God who is very insecure. So he is always worried if the demons will dethrone him. He also gets very insecure if any Rishi goes deep into meditation / trance and is able to get more powers than him.

So whenever he used to find any Rishi on the verge of becoming more powerful than him, he would send one of his Apsaras to perform their magic and somehow break the trance / focus of the Rishis. Once the focus is broken they will have to restart the process of acquiring the knowledge for which they had gone to meditate.

On the other hand the Apsara was given the target to some how seduce the Rishi and keep him from going to seek the knowledge which would make him more powerful compared to Indra.

When I was listening to one of the stories of the Apsaras yesterday, I realized that in today’s world, the alerts on our cellphone do exactly the same job. They seduce us and divert our attention and break my focus. Once my focus is broken, it takes me another 40 odd minutes to get back to focus and that too if there’s no other distractions.

Further these Apps try to keep me engaged as long as possible with some or the other offer or information. The longer I am involved with the App, the longer I am kept away from doing my work which can help me achieve my goals and become more powerful.

So since time immemorial distractions have been created to keep people from achieving the enormous potential they have. Today its technology that’s doing it.

Till next time then….let’s go for dreams.

Carpe Diem!!!

Alerts….how I am trying to break free

Affirmative action, Distractions, Focus

On 7th Nov I had written a post on how alerts on various devices were disturbing me. I had not realized the amount of time they were taking away from me.

The alerts are short, but once you read the alerts and if there’s even something remotely interesting then my mind starts going in different direction….into the past…or into the future. The thoughts which your brain can generate are amazing. The worse thing is that because of the thoughts, feelings also change and I would sometimes also end up, feeling agitated. Once you you lose focus, getting it back takes an enormous amount of time.

So it was not the alert per se that was the issue, it were the actions afterwards which were problematic. Initially, after switching off the alerts , I actually had the feeling of a void and I was also anxious that I would miss out….the typical FOMO syndrome.

Soon however I got used to it. Now I just go and check my messages 3 times a day. If I need to get any update, I physically use the specific “app” to check, and then switch off the “app”.

By not letting the “apps” control my emotions, I am more alert to the things that I am working on.

Have I reached a stage of nirvana. No way. There are other distractions which keep occurring from time to time. Since I have such a strong tendency to get distracted I am always on the look out for ways to improve my concentration.

Let me know in the comments below if you have some ideas that you have used and got great results.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Boredom in marketing …. cause for distraction – Part 3

Distractions, ideal customer, Marketing, messaging, segmentation, single target market

People have such a low attention span these days, that, anything that even remotely screams marketing, gets thrown into the delete mode even without a second thought. With electronic messaging this is even more convenient.

So while electronic messaging via email or via social media can get you very targeted audience, sometimes almost free, they also have the highest “ignore” rates.

While one of the reasons for the “ignore” is the massive number of unnecessary emails or messages people get, the other is because the messages don’t speak to the prospect in what’s important to him. So while they are trying to scan your subject line / headline , and if your message is boring, an alert pops up on their cell phone and they get drawn into it and you have lost that small window of opportunity.

Understanding what is going on in the mind of the prospect is critical – what conversations she could be having, are critical to ensuring that you are not boring. You can do this kind of specific messaging only if you have segmented the market so well, that the conversations start to become evident.

In any given market segment there will always be the early adopters, the laggards, the fence sitters etc. What is the use case that you are targeting will decide within the segment what is your Single Target Market to start your messaging with. If you are targeting the replacement market then you go with a different kind of messaging, while if you are targeting the early adopters you need to be looking at how your message can play to their vanity of being early adopters.

Creating messaging is a very time consuming job and requires a lot of subtle changes in the language. Whenever I have tried to get something out in a hurry, because the team was in a hurry, those campaigns have bombed for us. And the time which I saved at the beginning has actually resulted in a much larger waste. Boring messages, motherhood statements, just get people to select delete because of the plethora of other distractions which exist.

Till next time then. Don’t let your marketing get boring.

Carpe Diem!!!