How do we begin to disconnect from our smartphones and devices?
This month, Google released its new flagship smartphone, the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL. Many of the most hyped features are designed to help its users use their smartphones less. Features like Do Not Disturb, Flip to Shhh, and Wind Down are groundbreaking components of the newest smartphone technology. Even those making the technology that we have come to love so much have realized that the love affair is beginning to take a toll on who we are, what we do, how productive we are.
…I had to be available for even the slightest, most mundane need or want…
Tristan Assist is a service that aims to work in a similar space. As a top producing real estate agent, my life became consumed with connectedness. At all hours of the day, I felt that I not only needed to do the job that I had set out for myself, but that I had to be available for even the slightest, most mundane need or want expressed by my leads or clients, and the biggest culprit was my email. It’s funny: I could turn down answering phone calls and text messages immediately because I knew that my clients knew that those were personal and direct lines to me and for the most part, I had clients who respected me personally. But email was different. For whatever reason, an email seems to have a level of professional gravitas that a text message simply doesn’t have. As an email sender, we express a need or a want to our intended recipient and then we start an internal clock wondering when we’ll get an answer to what we’ve put out there.
Thus the need to always jump to the bing of our smartphone
While ghosting on a personal text message conversation is seen as incredibly confusing or disrespectful to the ghostee, not responding to an email within whatever arbitrarily set countdown or timeclock a sender has internally set is seen as a similar affront in the professional world. Thus the need to always jump to the bing of our smartphone, whether it’s during meal time, or during an appointment with a client, or while walking down the street. I know a lot of agents who will say that they are okay with this kind of lifestyle of immediately jumping to our clients’ needs, but the fact is that it is not sustainable. Your mental health and your interpersonal relationships will suffer. The smartphone companies recognize this and rather than let their consumers continue to feel the increasing negative effects of too much connection to their smartphones until there is a backlash, they have become proactive in helping their consumers use their products in a way that limits susceptibility to these negative effects.
As a successful real estate agent, you likely feel like you can’t just put your phone down, and with good reason. Your clients and leads need to be handled and made to feel important, even when it is time for you to disconnect just for a little while. When it’s time for your phone to flip into Do Not Disturb mode, or when you’ve set it to Wind Down, Tristan Assist is there to make sure that no client feels uncared for by you or your team and no lead goes unanswered within six minutes or less.
So take some downtime, we’ve got you covered.
And when you’re walking, be careful of the fountains…
