Replacing my phone addiction with another?
Over the past year or so I have tried to buy into the being present and anti-phone movement. Much has been written about how addicted we have become to our devices and how it has changed social norms so I’m not going to really delve into the topic but I do want to share one episode I witnessed recently. Last month, the company I’m interning at this summer had an all-hands presentation featuring a round table discussion of executive team that was broadcast to all the various offices in Europe and the US in which 2000+ employees were present. In the middle of conversation, while someone else was talking, our CEO pulled his phone out of his pocket to check his notifications. Now I’m not saying he’s a bad or rude guy it just seemed like a natural impulse more than anything and he quickly put it away. But social norms have changed so much that it’s quite often in a meeting or a dinner or job interview that someone (especially those in a position of power) looks at their phone. I too am guilty in many respects but have tried to make a commitment to changing those behaviors.
So I attempted to make some major changes. Silencing notifications, no screen time before bed, resisting the urge to look at the phone while commuting or waiting in line, limiting social media, only checking emails via laptop, etc. But lately, I’ve noticed that I’ve used my phone to become obsessed with measuring my life, or in particular, my health.
Physically I’m healthier but mentally I can not say for sure. Perhaps my condition has gotten worse.
The first thing I do when I wake up is look at how much I slept and what my sleep quality was via my Garmin Connect App. I used to journal in the morning as part of my failed morning routine by going to 750words.com and forcing myself to write a certain amount of words (I’ll let you guess how many) and then pouring over the ‘statistics/insights’ which tell me how I’m feeling. But wasn’t that the point of writing in the fist place: to let myself know how I’m feeling? Once my trial ended on the site, I tried regular journaling on another site, but it had no statistics and thus the habit I was trying to form quickly died.
Another part of my morning routine is meditation. In fact, it was my New Year’s resolution to do this 10 minutes daily. How do I this? Not by a pen & paper, but an app of course. The most famous one out there, Headspace, which I did fork over about $100 for. My favorite part: to measure my progress by the amount of minutes I have done so far this year and then calculating how many longer sessions I have to do to catch up for the days that I missed previously.
Is that the purpose of Meditation? Although, I’m new practice I’m pretty sure I’m pretty sure the Buddhist monks would say I’m going about it the wrong way.
Then I get home and I look at my Garmin watch* to see how I’m doing in terms of my workouts. Have I reached my 10,000 steps? How am I doing in my weekly goal of hitting over 180 ‘Intensity Minutes’ aka working out an elevated heart rate.
If I wanted to take it a step further, I could have seen how many calories I burned so far and log what I ate in MyFitnessPal to determine whether I am poised to gain or lose weight due to my diet that particular day. But thank god I don’t care that much about my weight. I’m not that crazy. Yet.
But that’s not to say I don’t care at all. I have the ‘Six Pack in 30 Days’ app, which I’ve used for 60+ days, and well, I don’t have a six pack yet. But happily in denial, I log in daily, and update my progress as it’s some sort of worthy accomplishment
*In fact, I have two Garmin watches. I left one at a friends apartment in Barcelona and decided I could not wait or workout without one for 90 days while we completed our internships abroad.
Also, when I said I look at my watch when I wake up and then when I get home, I was lying. I look at it way more often than that. I’ve probably looked at it 5x in the last 30 minutes. I look at it whenever I’m bored, just like people do with their phones — like in a meeting, or when I have a fleeting moment, like in an elevator and I want to avoid a potentially awkward (or perhaps nice?! ) interaction with a stranger. But it’s less rude than looking at your phone, right?
And to think that most of the reasons I track things/use gamification was as a result of trying to ‘disconnect’ more. However to say I’ve disconnected would be a lie. I can’t even run without the watch now; if I can not measure my progress during the run I end up going at a slower rate and feel tired quicker. I’ve heard similar feedback from my friends when they go to the gym to lift weights without music. Physically I’m healthier but mentally I can not say for sure. Perhaps my condition has gotten worse.
But after measuring everything I do throughout the day I can definitely fall asleep without any problems at night. But only if I make sure to have no screen time for at leat 30 minutes before going to bed!
