Technostress is not a new genre of music, but if it were, I’m sure it would sound like fingernails down a blackboard. The word technostress was created to describe the pressure and anxiety people feel when dealing with technology. It is a significant problem in today’s society as we all seem to be glued to our smartphones and computers – and not always to our benefit. If you suffer from technostress, it can negatively affect your productivity. We explore the causes and results of technostress and offer tips to help you cope with its effects.

Causes of Technostress

Technology changes at a rapid rate. Understanding the changes in the latest software updates can be time-consuming and challenging. This, coupled with the lack of standardization between applications can be extremely frustrating. In addition, in the back of our minds, we have a nagging fear that the “blue screen of death” will appear and all of our work will be lost.

While we are trying to cope with all of this, we feel increased pressure to get our work completed, on time, every time. What’s more, our friends and colleagues on social media seem to be demanding our attention all the time. It’s too much! No wonder we feel so nerve-wracked.

Results of Technostress

Like all other types of stress, chronic technostress can take its toll on our minds and bodies. Because technology demands so much of our intermittent attention, we feel exhausted at the end of the workday. But, the fatigue is not from work. It’s actually caused by the constant mental shifting from one notification to the next.

This habitual mental multitasking can lead to insomnia and depression. We become irritable and lose our tempers more frequently. At work, we become disengaged, experience less job satisfaction, and our productivity drops. Some studies suggest that technostress is similar to addictive behaviour because some people experience symptoms of craving and withdrawal.

Coping with Technostress

To cope with technostress, we can use the same approaches as coping with “regular” stress. We’ve discussed some of the stress-coping mechanisms in our post about mental health and the workplace including eating well, exercising, and getting out in nature more often. Taking time away from the office can boost your productivity so make sure you plan to take a vacation.

However, technostress is a rather specific form of stress so there are other systems we can put into place that can alleviate the pressure and improve productivity.

Change Slowly

It is tempting to update all your software at once. But, it might be easier to improve one system at a time to make sure you are comfortable with the changes – especially if you are moving to a completely new application.

Enlist Help

If you work for a large company, chances are you have IT staff who keep your computer(s) running at peak efficiency. If you are at a smaller company or you are in business for yourself, you likely experience technostress because you have to do all your computer maintenance yourself. Consider finding someone to help you out. Most computer repair shops have technicians who can diagnose both hardware and software problems, perform regular updates, and virus scans, etc. Look on Yelp and other review sites, and ask friends and colleagues for recommendations. Consider taking your computer(s) to the shop or asking for in-house service to perform updates on a regular basis. Even keeping an IT consultant on retainer might give you peace of mind that routine work is done on a schedule and you have someone ‘on-call’ to alleviate the stress that IT issues might give you.

Learn More

When you learn to take advantage of the features available (including all the tricks and shortcuts) in your software applications, you can maximize your productivity. Sometimes reading a few online articles or watching instructional videos is all you need. In other situations, the best option is to take an in-person, hands-on course. High schools, community centres, and local colleges will often offer courses outside of normal business hours. If we learn more, we find the technology more useful. The more useful it is, the less stress we experience from it.

Establish Policies

Develop workplace policies to separate work life from home life. Consider banning work-related emails and texts outside of normal business hours. Define what constitutes a work-related emergency so you can deal with those issues but leave the rest until the next business day. Email policies should include how your team uses the cc field, the reply-to-all, and out-of-office features. Outline expected response times to emails as well. Written procedures for software applications ensure that all team members are performing the same tasks in the same way.

Communicate In Person

More, but better-structured meetings can improve productivity as well as get people talking face-to-face. Limit smartphone usage in meetings and social media access during working hours because phones can kill productivity.

Implement Do Not Disturb periods

Encourage employees to turn off notifications to allow for periods of uninterrupted work. Ban meetings on certain days of the week or during certain periods of the day so team members can work on long-term projects.

Technology has been encouraging us to work harder and faster since the industrial revolution. We can’t all deal with it as humorously as Lucy and Ethel, but by putting stress-reducing measures into practice we can improve our productivity and reduce our technostress.

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