NOT TOO LONG ago, most peo-ple lived a very different life filled with many different realities. We had our work reality, our home re-ality, our recreational reality, our church or religious affiliation real-ity, our vacation reality, and many others.

All of these realities represented different aspects of our life that were separate from each other. After all, many times your spouse and children didn’t know who you interfaced with at work or even what you did all day. And the peo-ple at work didn’t know what you did on vacation or much about your home life or social activities.Having all these different realities was good because it gave us a chance to recharge and re-ener-gize. We’d go from work to home to a community activity, from one reality to another, which allowed us to shift gears and put our focus on different things. By escaping work and focusing on the home reality, for example, we could come back to work the next day fresh, rejuve-nated, and more creative because

we had a chance to shift our brain into another zone.

Today things are much different. We have one big interconnected reality, and technology seems to be the problem. Our smart phones and tablets allow us to take our email, our work, our games, our photos, our music — basically our entire life — with us wherever we go. As a result, all our individual realities have blurred into one.

Now when we’re on vacation, we’re really not on vacation. We’re simply at work in another location with more free time. We’re check-ing our email and waiting for that important message to come in when reading a book or sitting by the pool. Our work problems are not far away, they are all only a quick text, email, or call away. We can even see each other on our phones now, making it easy to have a quick videoconference with others from just about any-where. As a result, customers and colleagues who depend on us can, and often expect to get a quick

response from us whenever they need to.

While being connected is good, too much of a good thing can backfire. Being constantly connected has made us not as effective at prob-lem solving, not as good at inno-vation and creativity, and not so great with friends and family.Is this technology’s fault? No! Don’t blame the technology; blame how we use it.

So what’s the solution? It’s sim-ple really: You need to set specif-ic guidelines around when to plug in and when to unplug. In other words, when you’re on vacation, instead of being plugged in all the time, develop the discipline to un-plug on purpose. If you must stay connected to work, set a specific time to plug in, for example thirty minutes before breakfast, lunch and/or dinner, and then remember to unplug.

Dates in the future may not hap-pen in coffee shops — instead, you might just sit in your living room with a virtual reality headset, according to a report from Imperial College London and eHarmony.

The report predicts how relation-ships will change over the next 25 years (and discusses how they’ve already changed in recent years) using eHarmony’s user data; his-torical accounts; and interviews with anthropology, technology, and biomedicine experts. “People want to be matched — and ultimately form relationships with — like-minded people in the most efficient way possible,” eHar-mony’s UK director Romain Be-trand tells Tech Insider. “What’s different is how people will go about it, redefined by advances in science and everyday consumer technology.”

Here’s how dating and relation-ships could look by 2040.

Forget swiping right on Tinder — dates in Virtual reality could make things a whole lot easier.

In 2015, people have already popped the question in virtual re-ality. By 2040, you may be able to hold someone’s hand before you actually “meet” them in real life.

With new Virtual reality technolo-gy, we might not only be able to see and hear other people, but touch and smell them too.“Nobody would be really too far away to have a relationship with,” he says. “It would be like your part-ner is in the room with you when you want them around.”

In the future, we may be able to physically see a person’s emo-tions.

New Deal Design, the designers behind Fitbit’s trackers, are work-ing to create a “tattoo” embed-ded under the skin that visualizes health and emotions.

When someone touches or feels something, the tattoo, called Un-derSkin, will glow a personalized pattern. For example, when a per-son holds their partner’s hand, the tattoo may glow in the shape of a pentagon to express love.

The designers believe they could build UnderSkin by 2021.When we’re feeling introverted, we could one day turn to robots instead of humans.

Interacting with a robot, rather than a partner, could create less emo-tional pressure, says managing director of Silicon Valley Robotics Andrea Keay. By 2029, the report

predicts we could have two soul mates: one human and one robot.

Imagine a future where you could prevent awkward silences in every interaction or first date.

Based on past advances, re-searchers believe data processing will become even more efficient in the future. The reports speculate that computers could eventually potentially feed conversation start-ers and live dating advice into our brains.

This real-time artificial intelligence would analyse video data at high speed, providing users with instant feedback about how their date is going.

EHarmony, OkCupid, and Match.com all have their own algorithms based on personality traits and lo-cation.

In the future, the best way to find a match may be by DNA. In the past decade, the cost of DNA sequenc-ing has fallen dramatically, allow-ing for more research on the role DNA plays in attraction. One 2014 study found that people may be more likely to choose mates with similar DNA profiles.