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Consciously Digital coaches are offering 2 pro-bono individual coaching sessions per person for all those in need because of #coronavirus.
Typical questions people would come to us to be coached on: - Feeling anxious/stressed when reading online news and social media - Spending more time than ever in front of the screen and feeling physical and emotional consequences - Unable to concentrate when working from home - Creating digital boundaries for kids when they are at home So basically anything that has to do with your digital habits and coping with the current flow of (mis)information and negativity and staying safe. Leave your contact details here. PS Please, note this is not an opportunity for corporates to get something that costs money free of charge, but rather an offer for people in real need who are affected by situation and wouldn't be able to afford it otherwise, so kindly respect it! (if you are a corporate and are worried about wellbeing of your employess under current challenging conditions, ping us and we'll be happy to share what we can do to help your workforce lower stress and stay focused at very reasonable prices)
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This is an extract from a webinar by Dr Anastasia Dedyukhina about social media, fake news and loneliness in the pandemic times. The whole webinar is available here.  What if this whole mess we’re living through these days is a blessing? How different would your behavior be?
Before you start throwing tomatoes at me, please read on. Yes, economy is shaky and our incomes are shrinking (my live speaking gigs have been postponed until September at least), we are endlessly worried about close ones, sitting at home is not much fun, especially if you are a parent… and yet, what if you tried to make lemonade out of these lemons? We have a unique, perhaps once in a lifetime opportunity to:
What are we doing instead?
Sounds familiar? I have a solution (you won’t like it, but it works). Ask yourself this simple question: how could you use the current situation to thrive, not just survive? It’s the times when things can change very fast, for good and for bad. How can you use this opportunity to take care of yourself more? To make your business more resilient and innovative? You have only a few weeks to do that. The nature is already cleaning itself after a few days of reduced human intervention. The air above the cities has never been better in decades. Open your windows, and let’s also use this opportunity to clean ourselves. Wishing everyone to stay healthy, physically and mentally. If you want tips on managing your digital habits, check out our upcoming events. PS my additional practical tips to maintain sanity: establish a strict daily routine, stand up from your computer and stretch every hour, batch checking your emails and whatsapp notifications (do NOT keep your phone in the same room), do at least 30 minutes of physical exercise daily, keep your windows open as much as possible, do more things with your hands as this keeps you grounded, reduce alcohol and worrying as both impact your immune system There is a physical #coronavirus, but there is an even more powerful virus of misinformation and panic being spread via social media. And the latter is far more dangerous, since stress actually undermines your immune system.
So please, make sure that you are protecting yourself and your close ones from both these days. A few simple tips of how to do it: 1. Choose 1-2 credible sources of information, stop reading everything on social media (I'd say, stop reading social media altogether, but that's unlikely to happen) 2. Make sure you first check whatever you are sharing, as there is lot of information out there. Will take you 5 extra seconds to google it. 3. Focus on things you can control, and how you can help real people. Maybe ordering something for elder relatives online, or scheduling support calls, whatever it is. Everyone, stay mentally healthy, it's as important as your physical health. We'll be adding more tips and explaining how 'social media viruses' get spread in the next few days here. This is an unusual 'coronavirus' update with tips of how to stay sane when the world is going crazy from us at Consciously Digital.
1. Time to limit your social media consumption to only essential Honestly, you aren't staying more informed by reading yet another 1000 tweets about the disease or plummeting stock market. Emotions are as contagious as viruses, so don't fall victim of the panic. Have one quality source of info that you read daily, the rest of the time focus on what you can do here and now. 2. If asked to work remotely, do it in a human way We've put together recommendations on how to work from home in a human way. In short, prioritize your focus and actually take advantage of the situation. Also heads up that Consciously Digital offers guided online Focus Sessions for everyone who needs to work remotely and finds it tricky - perhaps something interesting for your team/company? 3. Focus on doing things with your hands, breathing and physical exercise All of the above helps you ground your body and feel more control over your life. Also, talk about your concerns with close people and ideally touch them and get them touch you - human touch helps release oxytocine, the hormone of trust and bonding that relieves stress (works even through a glove) :). Hopefully you are staying healthy, your fridge is fully stocked, and your sense of humour is abundant - because this is the best human weapon that we have:)) Anastasia PS We've put together a virtual talk and conference about loneliness, social media and connections in the digital world. We're trying out a new format, a blend of a talk and online networking, because we want a more human way to use tech. So please join us on the 27th March (Friday). Our physical events around the world are still going ahead. Germany (Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich) are happening in April, full schedule here. See you around!  Remote working is on the rise, and corona virus crisis is fueling it. We’ve put together 5 tips on how to make your remote working more human.
Physically, tell your household members if any that you aren’t available to reply to any queries during work, as if you weren’t around. Ideally work behind closed doors, and go out when you need to take the break. Same principle valid for doing things at home – you will always find something to do, so make an effort to keep your focus. 2. Take full advantage of remote coworking Humans can’t be productive 24/7, unlike computers. The good thing about being outside of the office is that you can do something about it. When you feel you are losing productivity, schedule some different activity to refresh yourself, ideally physical. For example, I like to split my day in two, working from 10am to 1pm, and then taking a couple of hours to cook and go for a walk or do sports. This way, in the afternoon I am far more productive. Just make sure that you tell your coworkers when you are available next. If you are a manager, allow your employees to take full advantage of remote working and don’t chain them to sitting in front of the screens all the time. Being online is not the sign of productivity. 3. Document well everything you do As information inflow increases, make sure that you and your team has an efficient system in place to capture all actions required and share info. Email is not a tool suitable for this, because when you need to go through 1000 emails to find what you needed to do, it becomes unsustainable pretty quickly. Have a system in place that is easy to access and gets updated without everyone having to send yet another email. 4. Be fully present at the online meetings Everyone is busy, but when you are doing something else behind the camera, it makes the meeting much longer and less efficient. Make meetings shorter, and be there 100%. It also send a good signal to the person who is speaking: your work is important, and I care, even though we are far away. 5. Have a separate communication channel for irrelevant stuff A major issue in the digital world is separating important things from noise. The beauty of being human means joking and having irrelevant conversations sometimes. But if you are trying to work, and receiving an email with a funny gif, where 50 people are cc-d, you are pretty much guaranteed to lose your focus for the next 15 minutes, when everyone starts to reply to email. So agree with your co-workers about one channel (slack) or hashtag/email line that can be filtered the way that you will only look at it when you want it, and it doesn’t compete with things that truly require your attention. Happy remote working in a human way! PS Consciously Digital organizes guided online Focus Sessions for remote workers. It's a mixture of webinar and coworking, where our trained coach gives you a bit of theory about attention and motivation, and helps you set goals, and afterwards you continue working seeing your colleagues on the screen. If you are working remotely, and think this can be interesting for your company, please get in touch!  Ahead of St Valentine’s Consciously Digital has conducted a survey of 187 users of dating apps and websites in different countries. Our findings show that while online dating is becoming accepted in the society (77.5% of respondents say they won’t have any problems admitting they use these services publicly), it largely doesn’t serve its declared purpose, and users are oblivious to how their data is being used.
At the same time, most users ended up having very few conversations or meetings with people they interacted online with. 22.5% say they have probably got replies or exchanged messages with 1/10 of people they got matched to or wrote to. 77.5% users spoke or exchanged messages less than half of the times they wrote to someone or got matched with them. Almost a quarter said they managed to get on 1-2 dates throughout using the app/website, while another quarter said they were on more than 10 dates. In other words, most users are spending considerable time using these services without actually having any real conversations or meetings with real people. As one of the users explained their experience, “A lot of time spent with very little outcome”. Another said, “Nothing happening. Many just collect matches or love to chat but no more than that.” Even those more optimistic admit it takes a lot of effort: “Meeting interesting people, although need to spend a lot of time to find them”.
On average users rated the ability of the app or website to satisfy their goals as 4.5 out of 10. This is despite of 1/3 of respondents saying they used paid features. When asked if they’d recommend their younger self to use the app again, 1/3 say they won’t. 3. Users don’t care about online privacy or how their data can be shared This is probably one of the most shocking discoveries, as almost 48% admitted they didn’t think about their data being leaked or shared with a third party, and 27.5% only a little bit concerned. 4. Self-esteem is not such a big issue as popularly believed Contrary to the popular concerns, online dating does not affect self-esteem of many users. Almost 2/3 of respondents say their self-esteem has not been changed as a result of using the apps (and approximately the same number consider themselves averagely attractive). 5. Conclusion Rather than being concerned by self-esteem issues, which don’t affect that many people, one should be much more concerned by the fact that online dating has become a hobby of its own, where people are spending a lot of time without result, not filling fulfilled, but still keep using the services and sharing their data. Given a number of investigations about the abuse of data privacy that emerged recently from Norwegian Consumer Council and a number of other organizations, we believe it’s incredibly important to educate the users about what happens with their data, and put pressure on online dating apps to be more transparent around how data is being used, and giving more control over it to the user. Methodology: The survey was conducted online among 187 people from 19 countries in January-February 2020 (incl. 34% from UK, 31% Spain, 8% Netherlands, 8% USA). 72% of the surveyed identify their gender as female, 27% male ones, and 1% 'other'. 75% respondents are white, 8% Asian, 6% mixed, 6% latino, 3% Afro-American. 20% of participants are aged 25-29, 25% between 30 and 34, 18% between 35 and 39%. For media comments, please use our contact page and we'll get back to you asap. Are you concerned about how your generation uses devices? Do you want to work on a good cause? Consciously Digital is looking for a paid intern for 20-25 hours per week for a minimum of 6 months starting from February/March 2020 to work on our events.
Requirements: - fluent written and spoken English - highly organised - interested in marketing and events organizing - proactive and independently thinking - stress-resistant - shares Consciously Digital mission and interested in making an impact - must be available to start February/March 2020 and stay for at least 6 months. What you will do: - search for venues and partners - research and reach out to influencers and journalists - spread the word on social media and emails without overwhelming people - support our existing meetups - whatever needs to be done to make the event successful. The internship is largely remote, but we may need you to come to some of the events (in this case we'll pay you travel/accommodation costs). Your monthly payment also is based on the percentage of the ticket sales. What you will learn: - how to create successful events (we've done over 200 in the past 4 years) - how to work with huge amount of information - negotiation and people skills - ethical digital marketing How to apply: please, submit your application here. We are on the mission to help people be more mindful about how they use or design technology. We regularly organize events, talks, workshops talking about how to use and design technology more consciously and are building a strong community around the world. We are looking for someone who will help raise awareness globally.
Position: Marketing and Events sales partner (aka right hand to CEO) Scope of the role: It's a mixture of executive PA to company and marketing/sales role. You will help organize and market events and workshops, and support CEO/founder with various marketing/PR enquiries. Initially, the role will be responsible for organizing and selling our public events/talks (4-5 every month). Most of this work is done via computer, and involves lots of calls and emails. If you are comfortable with negotiating and convincing people to be partners and getting them excited about our much-needed message of balance between using technology and being offline, you will love this role. Your day-to-day activity can include reaching out to 50 potential venues, researching for influencers in a particular city and contacting them, inviting to the events and asking to help spread the word, liaising with journalists, sending speakers' briefs to conferences etc., managing freelancers if needed, checking your weekly KPIs and reviewing your strategy/tactics based on how sales are going. We're a startup, so you would need to get your hands dirty. Location: Barcelona, Spain (no relocation package provided), part of it can be done from home Time commitment: full time (we believe in flexible working, and normally don't control your hours, and are far more interested in the results). If you can do all the work for 1 hour a week, and have results, that's cool. If you don't get results... well, we try harder until we get them! Salary: base salary + commission + bonus subject to KPIs fulfillment, depends on your experience. Who we are looking for (must-haves):
Highly desirable
How to apply How to apply: please use this application form only. It has a few questions that simulate real tasks you may need to deal with, so don't just send us your CV please; we are much more interested in knowing how you work rather than what's written there. Don't worry, we read all entries (but unfortunately won't be able to give individual feedback to everyone). Good luck! We spent December 2019 researching digital habits and atittudes towards technology of 247 knowledge workers in various countries, and will now start sharing our findings. Unsurprisingly, more than half of those surveyed (57%) felt their relationship with technology could and should be more balanced. In pursuit of this goal, almost two thirds of us (61%) are yearning to cut down on the time we spend online, having sometimes or often thought about limiting tech time. Four in 10 (40%) reported finding it difficult to stop online activity once they had started. 52% of us find ourselves drawn to our devices and distracted by digital tools when trying to focus on an offline task. Social media was named as the most popular area people were looking to cut back in the new year, with over half of respondents (56%) aspiring to trim their social media usage. Unhelpfully, more than 8 out of 10 (83%) of today’s workers sleep in the same room as their phones, and nearly half of us (43%) now often eat in front of a screen, the research reported. Unhelpfully, more than 8 out of 10 (83%) of today’s workers sleep in the same room as their phones, and nearly half of us (43%) now often eat in front of a screen, the research reported. A shocking 80% of respondents confessed to using phones, computers and tablets right before going to sleep, with 45% of us having trouble getting a good night sleep. In contrast, only 4% of us take time to get out in the natural world each day, and just 9% of respondents take time to squeeze in a physical activity each day. Dr Anastasia Dedyukhina, founder of Consciously Digital, commented: “Our research shows our working generation is becoming increasingly distracted by digital devices, with a worrying number of us suffering sleep problems or finding it hard to focus on the task at hand. While the rising tide of technology in our homes and in our workplaces definitely brings value, it also brings the need for balance – and this research unveils a nation crying out for better online-offline balance.” The survey revealed an overflow effect of our technological tactics on friends and family. A stomping 67% of us have felt the bite of irritation at loved ones and acquaintances spending too much time with tech. In more extreme cases, one in six (15%) of us are facing regular reminders from friends and family to ditch the digital devices and engage in more face to face time. If you are a press member and would like more information about the study, incl methodology, numbers etc please contact us via contact form.  |
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April 2020
AuthorDr Anastasia Dedyukhina is a keynote speaker, author of Homo Distractus, professional coach and a pioneer of the Consciously Digital™ concept. Categories
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