Take No Prisoners is a free weekly memo from Scott Wintrip that explores how Radical Accountability prospers companies and changes lives. Instead of taking people hostage with outdated, heavy-handed, and ineffective methods of management, measurement, and motivation, Radical Accountability focuses on creating an unwavering responsibility for getting what matters most done.

On any given day, each of us is bombarded by dozens, if not hundreds, of emails, tweets, texts, and calls. Technology, while a blessing overall, often hampers our ability to focus and always be doing what is truly most important at any given moment.

Radical Accountability doesn’t enable technological co-dependency or automation anorexia. People who practice Radical Accountability use technology just enough, but never so much that it consumes them to the point of distraction, becoming almost like an addiction—Cyberholism.

Here is a quick test to see how you are doing when it comes to your dependence on the tech in your life. Do you:

1. Check your work e-mail, LinkedIn account, or business Facebook page right before going to bed?
2. Within minutes of waking?
3. Do you panic if you accidentally leave your mobile device, that can access the Internet, on your desk or at home?
4. Is eating your lunch often combined with texting or surfing the web?
5. Do you find that you must check your email the moment you hear the arrival chime?
6. Are you spending more time on your computer than you spend in conversations with customers, prospects, and referral sources?

If you answered yes to any one of these questions, you’re in danger of becoming a Cyberholic. Two or more, you’re well on your way to Cyberholism. Three or more, and you’re already a cyber addict. Four or more and it may be time for treatment!

Technology is wonderful, especially in how it gives us access to information at a moment’s notice while allowing us to log, store, and search information much more effectively. In addition, as a tool for quickly sending someone a note or a document, it almost never can be beat. However, more and more people are allowing themselves, and their time, to be thoroughly consumed by the click and clack of a keyboard and the hypnotic trance of gazing at output screens both large and small.

What’s suffering? Our connectedness with one another. A true meaningful connection with another human being is not through a portal. It’s in conversation, a meeting, a handshake, and a smile.

Pick one day this week to turn off the device and turn up the volume of conversations you have with the people that really count. It’s time for some Radical Accountability, an unwavering responsibility for getting done what matters most. And what really matters at work is not that next text or email, it’s that personal touch of taking time to be completely present in the presence of customers, prospects, colleagues, and employees.

Cyberholism is curable, one day at a time.

This Week’s Radical Accountability Activating Action: Right now, calendar one day where you’ll put down the tech and, instead, spend quality time with the people that matter most at work and at home.

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