Managing Your Life With a Smartphone

Malcolm Lithgow, managing director and chief dreamer at DreamSpring, looks at the way changing work practices are creating the need for "life management" application on smartphones.

I predict that in twenty years life management will be one of the top five priorities of every adult and teenager in Australia. I also predict that almost every one of those people will carry a smartphone with them everywhere.

At DreamSpring, we define life management as the process of managing your personal relationships and activities; maintaining the balance between the various areas of your life according to your values and as is best for your physical, mental, and spiritual health.

The closest popular idea is that of "work-life balance". This seems to imply that work isn't actually part of your life, which would ring true for some of us, but fortunately false for many. When the terminology is that clumsy, you know we've got a way to go in solving the problem.

Just how you manage this balance is hotly debated. Carl Honore has written a book called, "In Praise of Slow", where he describes a "Slow movement" in which "people around the world [are] finding ways to put on the brakes." Part of this is disengaging from the press of ubiquitous electronic communications such as email and the mobile phone.

At the other extreme, we have organisations like Research In Motion, makers of the Blackberry mobile email solution, who claimed in court that the Blackberry was part of the USA's "critical infrastructure" and is essential to the USA's "economic security". The main feature of the Blackberry is it's "push email" capability, which allows you to receive emails immediately, wherever you are.

Somewhere in the middle are normal people, trying to run their lives in an increasingly demanding world.

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