Netiquette IQ Blog of The Day - Science Says Give Your Mind a Needed Rest From Email and Social Feeds

I have stated numerous times in this blog on the need to have a process to deal with email and social media. This is to maximize the time given to and to maximize either or both of these. The article below emphasizes this.
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Over at The New York Times, researcher Daniel Levitin shares why you should give your brain a much-needed reset by only checking email or social feeds during designated times:

If you want to be more productive and creative, and to have more energy, the science dictates that you should partition your day into project periods. Your social networking should be done during a designated time, not as constant interruptions to your day.
Email, too, should be done at designated times. An email that you know is sitting there, unread, may sap attentional resources as your brain keeps thinking about it, distracting you from what you’re doing. What might be in it? Who’s it from? Is it good news or bad news? It’s better to leave your email program off than to hear that constant ping and know that you’re ignoring messages.

The science Levitin refers to here is that which he conducted with his collaborator from Stanford, professor of neuroscience Vinod Menon. The researchers discovered that part of the brain called the insula is responsible for switching our thoughts from high-focus to unfocused, depending on the task at hand.
When the insula is balanced evenly, we can be extremely focused for productivity or letting ourselves get caught in wild daydreams to boost creativity. The problem, Levitin explains, is when our insula is imbalanced, either by overwhelming distractors (like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, email, or co-workers) or by a lack of energy caused by a poor night’s sleep, for example.
Dedicating portions and set times of your day for checking email, social networks, meetings, or other common attention-sucking tasks can give your brain the much-needed structure it needs.

by Tanner Christensen on Aug 21, 2014 - 7:00am

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 In addition to this blog, I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, "Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

 www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

 If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ Rider University and  PSG of Mercer County New Jersey.
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