BNET recently sent an email, the subject line read “Which Is Worse for Your Brain: Texting or Pot?” That is quite a question.
The post referred to a University of London study done for Hewlett-Packard that found that “infomania” — a term connected with addiction to email and texting — can lower your IQ by twice as much as smoking marijuana. Moreover, email can raise the levels of noradrenaline and dopamine in your brain by constantly introducing new stimuli into your day. When those levels get too high, complex thinking becomes more difficult, making it harder to make decisions and solve problems.
Read all your email and text messages, and your mind becomes so drained that it’s a challenge to get anything else done. Sure, some of it’s important — and that’s precisely the problem. “The brain hates uncertainty,” says David Rock, the CEO of Results Coaching Systems and author of “Your Brain at Work.” “It’s literally painful to not download your email the moment you arrive at your desk in the morning. But once you’ve processed 30 or 40 emails, you’ve ruined your brain chemistry for higher level tasks that are going to create value.”
In short, the brain’s capacity for decision-making was created for a time when people had less to think about. So now you have an excuse for not keeping up.
These are interesting facts to keep in mind as you plan communication with your customers and prospects. Maybe this is one more reason to think about direct mail?