Tic-Toc. Lub-Dub. Buzz.
What’s the sound of your metronome? What keeps your beat? Guides your rhythm on a daily basis?
For mothers it might be a child’s cry that guides them from one moment to the next. For a rural farmer in an isolated region, the rise and fall of the sun. For you? For me?
For many of us, the beat-setter for our daily rhythm has drastically changed over the last decade or so. It sounds more like an ill-timed ring chime and looks like a red flag bubbling out of an annoying logo.
Technology is increasingly a driver of our moment-to-moment awareness. Is this a problem?
Well, it very well might be. As human beings, we have a fundamental desire, and arguably need, to control things — i.e. our environment — to some reasonable degree. With differences in time zones, days off, and overall activity patterns among friends, family members and colleagues, there is no telling when we might expect a new phone call, text message, email, Facebook notification, LinkedIn reminder, Twitter update or Instagram message. The result seems quite clear — scatterbrain.
Maybe we’re all in need of a panacea — a “killer app” that aggregates all the notifications, curates them automatically for us based on artificial intelligence assessment of our personal needs and preferences, and then presents a daily digest to us at more reasonable time intervals.
Sure. I would buy.
But perhaps what is being demanded from us is something completely different. Strength? Discipline? Courage?
It is these traits that lead to focus and attention. And at the end of the day (or beginning) that is what we need to sync to the right beat.
In a universe full of infinite stimuli and a sensory network of mirroring capabilities, it is our heart and mind that need to guide us in choosing the right wavelength. The right beat. The right metronome. For us.
Lub-dub? Tic-toc? Buzz…
The choice is yours.
Royan Kamyar, M.D., MBA is founder and CEO of Owaves