Dr. Anastasia Dedyukhina

Digital Wellbeing: how to find the balance and set up healthy boundaries in the digital world

As our lives get increasingly digitized, most people struggle to disconnect from our devices. Problems ranging from Zoom fatigue, inability to stay focused on a single task to physical discomfort associated with increased screen time and the perceived need to be “always on” all contribute to an unbalanced use of technology. Long-term this may lead to fatigue, digital presenteeism or absenteeism, loss of motivation, increased churn or even burnouts.

Just as with food, we need to find a balance between online and offline lives. Digital wellbeing can help us with this. Dr Anastasia Dedyukhina will share the outcomes of her proprietary research on the top 6 factors that determine a person’s digital wellbeing score and which groups are at risk. She will discuss neuroscience-based actionable tips on what employees and leaders can do to improve digital wellbeing in the company.

There is an option to customize the talk by measuring the digital wellbeing score of your organization. Main findings will be included in the presentation, and in addition, you will get a report that with total digital wellbeing score for the company and/or department benchmarked against similar companies or departments within the company, six top factors that define employees’ digital wellbeing, as well as 3 groups of employees with high, medium and low level of digital wellbeing to risk stratify them.

Audience outcomes

• Understand the effect of tech overuse on different aspects of mental and physical health, wellbeing, focus and productivity
• Get neuroscience-based tips of how to introduce a more balanced use of technology in your own live
• Learn how to set up psychological, time and space boundaries in hybrid/remote work
• Be able to risk stratify employees with high, medium and low level of digital wellbeing for more efficient interventions

Are women more at risk online?

The Internet has greatly democratized our lives, but does it bring real gender equality, or deepens the existing inequalities? Online environment still represents psychological and professional challenges for women.

The research conducted by Dr Anastasia Dedyukhina on digital wellbeing at work shows that women have a lower digital wellbeing score than men. When working remotely, women often are those who take fewer breaks, experience more digital stress and have to manage more distractions. They get less chance to contribute in online meetings. While remote work allows them flexibility, it also often means that they are less promoted compared to male counterparts. Young girls are more likely to be concerned about their body images as a result of social media usage. Women of all ages are more likely to be targets of online abuse.

In this talk Dr Anastasia Dedyukhina discusses, why the existing social inequalities get amplified in the online space. She suggests, how to make online environment and remote work more friendly and safe for women, and how women can best take care of their digital wellbeing. The talk mainly focuses on the work life of women, but also discusses psychological safety.

Audience outcomes

• Understand main drivers and differences of online behaviour between genders, and why it might be impacted by unconscious gender biases
• Find ways to feel more competent professionally, get promoted and increase your wellbeing if you are a woman working remotely
• Learn, how to support professional women around you in the online environment

Sustainability of digital habits

Our digital behavior has a direct hug impact on the global digital carbon footprint. Whether we regularly stream Netflix, store large photos in our mailboxes or ask AI for an answer, we consume increasingly more energy. An average person will change more than 40 phones in their lifetime, but only 20% of them get recycled. Not to mention new digital currencies that require increasingly more energy (bitcoin already consumes more than the whole country of Argentina).

Are our digital habits really sustainable and will moving human activities to the virtual reality and Metaverse help, or harm the planet even more? In this highly practical session, Dr Anastasia Dedyukhina will help you understand and visualize the magnitude of this ‘new’ carbon footprint and key factors contributing to it. She will discuss, how by changing our digital habits and behaviors, both individually and at work, we can create a more sustainable future.

Audience outcomes

• Learn about key digital behaviour factors that put a burden on the environment
• Understand, what you can do as an individual or organization to minimize your digital footprint every day
• Consider ways, how digital behaviour can be integrated into your ESG policy

Creative and Innovative thinking in the digital age

It is believed that in the next 10 years, nearly half of the jobs in developed countries will be automated. However, the more creative or out-of-the-box thinking element a job has, the less likely it is to be automated. Creative thinking is supposed to be one of the competitive advantages in the digital age. How can we develop it and do we do it?

In this insightful and entertaining talk Dr Anastasia Dedyukhina explores, what a creative brain looks like from the neuroscience perspective, discusses the benefits of “slow” vs “fast” creativity, relationship between boredom and creativity. She will share the methodology of creative process that Disney used that any company or person can use. She will also debate, whether robots can be creative, and the impact of digitization on creativity.

Audience takeaways

• Learn neuroscience-based strategies to develop creative thinking and innovation
• Understand, how technology can enhance or intervene with creative thinking and what to do about it

Learning and memory in the digital age: Humans vs AI

The human memory and learning abilities are undergoing a massive transformation as a result of digitization. We outsource our memory to our devices (the so-called “digital amnesia”) and are less and less able to concentrate on something for a long time, which is a key to learning.

Should we be worried about losing these abilities, or embrace the new reality, where technology has the leading role? And should the whole learning process be transformed, now that information is freely available out there?

In this entertaining and interactive Dr Anastasia Dedyukhina explores how the internet is changing our brain, memory, and learning. She will explain, how the memory works and why it’s embodied in human body and the environment, and therefore different from computer memory. She will talk about the four stages of learning from the neuroscience perspective, and how technology may support or interfere with learning. She will also discuss qualities that today’s students will need to develop in order to learn effectively.

Audience outcomes

• Learn best strategies to stay focused and learn in the digital age and manage digital distractions.
• Understand, which qualities we need to encourage in students and how to use technology like ChatGPT or VR to do that

Digital Transformation, Misunderstood. Why we need to enhance human rather than digital skills to stay competitive in the future of work.

As our lives get increasingly digitized, we give away more and more human qualities – memory, focus, compassion, creativity, and internal body awareness, and behave more like robots. At the same time, we are creating more human-like machines that can already feel the pain and be truly creative. If we want to stay relevant in the coming years, we urgently need to to stop confusing digital skills and skills we’ll need to thrive in the digital age. We need to start prioritizing human, and not digital skills — in education, workplace and our daily lives.

In this interactive and fun session Anastasia will discuss the choice that we will have to make in the nearest future between integrating with the machines or staying humans and suggest how to prepare ourselves for the future, when machines have more and more power.

She explains, how most digital transformation efforts fail, when leadership puts technology ahead of humans, and how to optimize for human performance and support focus, creativity, and emotional and physical wellbeing of employees first and foremost, instead of imposing tech tools or using them for surveillance.

Audience outcomes

• Learn about typical mistakes that company make in relation to their staff when going through digital transformation
• Understand, how humans are different from machines and how to use this knowledge in people management and digital transformation
• Understand key qualities that will be needed in the future of work