Arianna Huffington ofThrive Global spoke about the importance of connecting well-being with performance at theIndia Economic Conclave held in Mumbai in a FireSide Chat with Sadhguru, the founder of the Isha Foundation.- Implementing micro-changes like putting your phone in its own bed could go a long way in ‘designing a life that works for you’.
- While ‘putting your phone to bed’ may sound silly to some, human beings learn best through rituals.
- Reducing the friction in your life, goes a long way in decreasing the amount of maintenance that your body needs — otherwise fifty percent of your life goes towards downtime, she said.
During the session titled, ‘Ease of living - Ensuring productive, efficient society,’ the two shared tips and micro-changes that people can implement in order to ‘design a life that works for them’.
One of those micro-changes can potentially be just putting your phone in its own bed at night.
Why
“It has never been easier to run away from ourselves because we’re all increasingly linked with our phones that we carry everywhere — that is the repository of every project, of every problem, and that we sleep with it — which is totally absurd,” said Huffington.
Sleeping with your phone means that it’s much harder for you to connect with your own body’s user’s manual as per Sadhguru. And, that’s where the ‘phone-bed’ comes in.
The phone-bed by Thrive, in its essence, is just a charging a station. But more than the bed, it’s about a ritual, Huffington pointed out
It’s one of the reasons why the phone-bed comes with its own blanket — people can use it to actually ‘tuck in’ their phones, say good night, and put their phones soundly to bed, outside their own bedroom.
Her logic is that human beings learn through rituals and if everyone has one at night, they’re more likely to stick to it. She adds, “Everybody never comes to a point in the day where they say, ‘I’ve done everything that I could’ve possibly have done’ — if you can say that then you don’t have any interest in your job and I suggest you change jobs.”
So putting your phone to bed is your way of implementing an arbitrary end to the day — to able to connect with yourself.
Huffington iterated that, “Success is not determined by how many hours you spend on your desk, it depends on the quality of your decisions, on your ability to see around corners at what’s going to happen and on your ability to motivate others — to inspire teams. And all of these things deteriorate when we have not been connected with ourselves.”
According to her, this is because society is plagued with collective delusion, which actually stems from the first industrial revolution, that the goal for human beings is identical to that of machines — to always be on.
But, in fact, a little more downtime could go a long in way making sure that the time we do spend working, is actually more productive.
Disclaimer: Business Insider India was invited to the India Economic Conclave by Thrive India.