There’s this pure panic that washes over me the moment I open my laptop after hours and realize that I’ve forgotten to set my status as “Away.” That tiny green dot — the digital interface of an open border — has now divulged my existence to the entire professional world. The messages come pouring in: “Hi, I have a quick question…”, “Since you’re online…”, “Do you have a minute?”
At this point, no I don’t have a minute. I’m officially off the clock. My inopportune checking whether the report went through has now placed me in figurative hourglass where sand is constantly flowing in. I am now in a hostage situation of my own devising.
Of all forms of social control in our digital world, the status indicator serves as the most ruthlessly efficient. The innocent circle – a green one when available, yellow for idle, red for busy, and grave for offline is dangerous for any modern workplace – has a workplace devoid of physical presence radically altered our bounds on human liveliness. In the digital based workplace, no longer does leaving the office mean you are out of reach until the next day. That is true unless you’ve printed a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign behind the ‘Away’ status. That green dot will trail you home and even to dinner, your child’s recital and even to the restroom. Such is the digital advancement of your employer shadowing you 24 hours a day, checking every now and then if you are alert or awake.
I should know. Back at [REDACTED TECH COMPANY], I participated in the design refinement for these status indicators and ensured that they were more “responsive” to user activity. There was a lot of testing to figure what the ideal delay was for the movement from “Active” to “Away” status. If the time was too short, users will appear as unreliable manner as they would flicker between statuses, and too long, users look as if they were suspiciously available 24/7. We landed on 15 minutes: “Just enough” to linger in the room about whether you would want to return to the computer for the toggle-situation.
We celebrated “enhancing connections” “improving the communication flow of the workplace.” What was, in fact, done was adding a leash to the knowledge workers.
At long last, I share a home with the very monster of my creation, which further complicates my life due to having developed an entire strategic plan to manage frozen statuses. I am not the only one suffering from this. A poll conducted within my circle of acquaintances showed some pretty captivating forms of technology-based false identity reporting. One of my colleagues set an automatic mouse mover that slightly trembles the mouse in use, which also means that his status would never indicate “Away”. Another rubbed her optical mouse on top of a wrist-watch whose second hand revolves, which means that the mouse movements would also mean that she is “Active” in the system. My personal best came from a senior developer who crafted a self-sufficient script that responds impersonally as “In a meeting, will get back to you” for any message meant for him while his status is “Busy” and on true reality, he is napping.
Most people may claim that these are not actions or tendencies of mentally balanced and healthy people. However, according to me, this is nothing but the drastic changes in usual human behaviors that have turned due to the constant demands of an always-on culture.
My daughter’s ice singing animation movie is what broke me. This is why I say my The Man Called Otto moment was last year on summer vacation. An offline family holiday in the mountains seemed to be ideal for recharging my batteries and disconnecting. I set my expectations alongside my team, booked a lakeside cabin, then deleted slack just to be slacked via work applications. My phone was on do not disturb, team settings restricted me to auto responses, and my emails were binned straight to the bin.
Everything went south when I unlocked my laptop in order to buy frozen on google which seemed like a good idea buy my phone did not want to cooperate. Had my expired work application set a background app, I wouldn’t have so head slammed in the metaphorical steel door. I need not even mention my status moving to active on a work calendar that reset itself instead of the time clicking down.
In the thousand word essay of what met me when the lid of my laptop was clicked shut, I found account messages emails and requests spanning bordering to about a hundred screaming rush flags and summoning calendars.
With my boss’s comment, “I don’t know how you’ve been so responsive during vacation.” What followed was the familiar vacation work spiral- checking messages “just once” turned into hourly check-ins, which evolved into replying “just to clear things up,” which inevitably led joining a call “just for the first few minutes” which somehow became working remotely from what was supposed to be a place of rest and family connection.
What was the saddest part? Oh dear –, I felt pride when indeed it should have been the time in pain. I actually felt good about failing to disconnect – a Stockholm syndrome response if ever there was one.
With the introduction of the status indicator, a peculiar social contract has emerged which expected us to justify absence, but not presence. No one asks questions about why you’re online at 11 PM on a Tuesday, but if you appear offline at 2 PM on a Wednesday, all of a sudden you’re faced with a digital “Where were you? I was worried sick!” scenario.
It seems as if we have created an entire unspoken code based on status indicators. The person who has set themselves to “Busy” at all times, no matter their actual availability? Now, that is a flex. The colleague who never indicates “Away” even during the night? A hardcore worker, or a savvy mouse jiggler? The person who oscillates rapidly between “Active” and “Away”? This account clearly has too many tasks on its plate and is failing at all of them. We construct these narratives unconsciously, yet robust narratives about people’s work ethic and dependability based on a dot of color.
The psychological impact is more profound than simple inconvenience. The expectation of availability results in heightened workplace stress and burnout. There is something fundamentally difficult about not being fully ‘off’—of knowing that a notification could come in at any second, dragging you back into work mode—no matter what you may be doing.
People now deal with this anxiety from the workplace contaminating the personal sphere. My daughter told me recently that she feels socially obligated to respond to friends’ messages as soon as they are sent because of the read receipt feature. “If I miss responding immediately, they think I’m ignoring them deliberately,” she said. But she has found ways to get around it—like disabling the option that registers a notification as being read, or putting her phone on airplane mode before opening group chats and batch reading messages.
This is happening at the alarming speed of fifteen years old. Her actively honing the art of managing others’ expectations of her time and responsiveness shows how rapidly we are falling behind. One can not help but ask what this life unsupervised connectivity is conditioning her about boundaries and privacy, and the ability to be unavailable without justification.
The twist, of course, is this all sociable accessibility does not suffice towards heightening productivity. Numerous studies suggest that focus time without distraction is critical for high productivity knowledge work. All those notifications and the constant need to answer fragments attention in a manner that can turn focused work into shallow tasks.
What can be done? Some organizations are taking extreme measures, e.g. introducing ‘no-meeting’ days, asynchronous work policies, or even powering off the servers after hours to enforce cooling off periods. Most of us, however, do not have the ability to enact these kinds of changes to the organizational structure.
Thus, we are forced to our tiny deeds of digital defiance. “Deep in qtr analysis – emergencies only” being a common phrase. Important enough that no one wants to be deemed as a monotonous. Simplistic asl does positive blame cover at least no genuinely impotent questions arise.
“Opening definitely ignores all notifications.”
So I celebrate portrayal of clear expectations. Whining less with logging off for the day stating expectation clearly “logging off for the day until tomorrow morning, and by email I mean only for real emergencies.” More often than not, it does a good job of invoking semi expected behavior.
However, my primary approach has been selectively violating the unspoken guidelines concerning digital etiquette. For example, I now ignore some messages until I want to engage with them. Additionally, I mark myself as “Away”, even if I am busy working and need to concentrate. I also allow some colleagues to notify me when I am not going to be perpetually responsive at work desks during office hours: “FYI—I’ll be working on the Miller proposal from 1-3. Will be slow to respond.”
These minor acts of defiance have not had a major impact on my career or social life. In fact, I have refreshed both by adjusting how I divide my attention which enables me to better focus whether I am immersed in a work project or engaged in family board game sessions.
The Curse of the Green Dot
The status marker shows no signs of disappearing. As work becomes more digitized, our being available to work will only continue to be measured, monitored, and assessed. But we can change how we relate to the persistent green dot. We should learn to regard that sign as “a convenience which turned into a social necessity” and allow ourselves the freedom to be not reachable.
It isn’t because I am deliberately ignoring our connection. Rather, it is because I am learning the hard way that the answering in real time is not automatically a virtue. Occasionally, the optimal update is to not provide one.
But for the moment, let me put on my status and Oh! I almost forgot, “Away” so that everyone is still under the impression that I’m in that dull budget meeting as opposed to in Reality am penning this.
