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Be kind, unwind, says new media 'queen bee'
Arianna Huffington – doyenne of digital media -- is also conscious that there's a darker side to the very medium that catapulted her to fame. She has a timely tip or two for information workers who don't want to get sucked into the abyss of tech-generated stress. INCLUDES VIDEO.2/8/2010 5:00:00 AM By: Joaquim P. Menezes
In February 1995, a story in Newsweek magazine described Arianna Huffington as a "queen bee wanna-be" -- who "specializes in grand gestures."
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That was a decade before Huffington (who grew up Arianna Stassinopoulos outside Athens) launched The Huffington Post. It was also a period when many in the media underestimated her.
No one makes that mistake now.
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The Huffington Post – the online only blog news site she founded in 2005 – today averages eight million unique visitors a month. It has nearly 4,000 contributors and covers everything from breaking news and politics to media, business and life style.
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As for Arianna Huffington, a year after the launch, she made it into Time Magazine's list of the world's 100 most influential people, and was recently named one of the most influential women in media by Forbes.
Unplug and recharge
It's within the digital universe that Huffington fashioned her own image, shot to fame, and dramatically expanded the popularity and reach of her publication.
Yet, for all that she is also well acquainted with the darker side of digital.
And it was a theme she spoke passionately about during her presentation at Advertising Week recently held in Toronto.
"We need to use technology, not to be used by it," said The Huffington Post's founder and editor-in-chief.
She rued that information workers are allowing tech tools and devices to infiltrate every aspect of their life, every moment of the day – and in the process steadily eroding their health, well-being and balance. "Many of us have unwittingly become so addicted to our devices that we can't sleep without our BlackBerries and iPhones by our bed."
Technology, she said, is making us obsessive. "Surrounded by devices, we haven't really learned how to disconnect when we need to."
Other top names in the publishing world today are making the same point.
Huffington recalled her recent conversation with Heather Reisman, CEO of Indigo Books. "She said something profoundly true: that technology, right now, is moving ahead of social adaptation."
At a practical level this phenomenon is taking a tragic toll on our health and well-being.
Sleep deprivation among information workers, Huffington warned, is becoming an epidemic. "And the more sleep deprived we are, the less healthy, happy, and productive we are."
She cited a University of Michigan study that found getting just a little extra sleep each night has a far more beneficial impact on a person's state of mind than a huge increase in income.
One of the study authors, psychology professor Norbert Schwarz remarked that "making $60,000 more in annual income has less of an effect on your daily happiness than getting one extra hour of sleep a night."
Such findings, she said, should make us seriously rethink our priorities.
If happiness is the goal, you'll probably reach it faster by getting to bed a little earlier than putting in hours of overtime in the hope that management will reward you with a raise, she said. "And the odds are, a happier you will also mean a more creative and productive you -- so you'll likely end up getting that raise as well."
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3) "Trust is the new black." - Page 3
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