Digital Exhaustion: Simple Rules for Reclaiming Your Life

A revelatory examination of why you’re feeling so worn out--and practical daily strategies to change your relationship with your devices.

Unplugging is not a long-term solution for the stress caused by technology. If you want to keep your job, participate in society, and maintain meaningful relationships, you can’t escape your many apps and devices.

Paul Leonardi maps out an achievable path to reducing your digital exhaustion, drawing on extensive research to show how real people can use technology in healthy ways. These are realistic approaches that won’t fragment your attention and deplete your cognitive and emotional reserves. Many of the changes are simple yet surprisingly effective, like waiting longer to respond, making sure you’re using the right tool for your task, and being more conscious of the time and energy we allocate to our devices. He also explains the emotional traps that lead us into dysfunctional relationships with our technology, and how to escape them.

With Leonardi as your guide, you can build stronger connections, be more creative and productive, and create the mental space to reclaim your energy and your life.

Paul Leonardi, PhD, is the award-winning Duca Family Professor of Technology Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a frequent consultant and speaker to a wide range of tech and non-tech companies like Google, Microsoft, YouTube, GM, McKinsey, and Fidelity, helping them to take advantage of new technologies while defeating digital exhaustion. He is a contributor to the Harvard Business Review and coauthor of The Digital Mindset.