What the Note To Self: Infomagical Challenge Taught Me About Myself

All of us at one time or another I am sure has picked up our personal technology just to answer a text or read an email that just popped up as a notification. Then, before you really know it, you’ve lost 4 hours of your day. Worse yet as you think through this, it cost you being present with those around you too. If that’s you, and you’re frustrated with that habit as much as I was with mine, than this challenge will open your eyes and it will help you. It’s not about either/or in its approach to solve the problem of overuse. The challenge isn’t going to tell you to stop using your technology. Instead, what’s fresh about this approach is it focuses you to create habits of better awareness on how you use your technology to serve you versus letting it become your master.

It was introduced to me by a close friend Aaron. The Note To Self: Infomagical social challenge can be found at on WNYC’s website.

The daily challenges are each different and build up through out the week. Word of caution before you start, you have to be disciplined about it and stick to the direction it is asking of you for the day. Or, you can cheat and forfeit the chance to get the most out of it.

As I accepted and signed up on their website I opted in for the email reminders for the week long challenge because I have enough notifications and texts that bombard me daily. I signed up for the week long challenge that focused me at getting in tune with myself. It made sense with my current focus for myself and it complemented my Now Page focuses rather than being one more new thing to work on. Below is each day and how it unfolded for me each day into the next.

Word of warning and caution here, this could be a spoiler for you if you keep reading. Especially if you’ve signed up for the same challenge. Stop here, go to Note To Self, take the quiz, and make sure it’s not the same challenge I took: Getting In Tune With Yourself. If it’s not, read on!

Day One Challenge — Magical Day: The challenge was to work on one task at a time and not to multi-task. Give each task your full attention, only doing one at a time. Seemed easy enough. I was wrong. There are so many interruptions to the day be it emails, calls, texts, notifications, Facebook, and Twitter. I can handle it though, because I am a great multi-tasking master. However, I learned multi-tasking is a myth and more neuroscience scientific studies are creating compelling proof that it’s actually taxing on your brain, potentially even damaging. One fact I learned, when you multi-task or shift your mind you deplete your glucose reserves incredibly fast. Ever wonder why you get that candy craving during a tough day of work? Or, after crushing a few hours wandering aimlessly on the net you need a Coke? Your brain is so in need of glucose you’ve depleted from all this shifting back and forth from one thing to another, it’s telling you to get some sugar stat so it can replenish the loss. The problem with that is, not only is it turning to instant fat from all that candy intake, but you’re still playing catch up to what your mind needs for glucose so you never consume enough to balance yourself back out. We shift our brains between tasks offline every 3 minutes on average and online every 45 seconds! You’re probably shifting right now. Doing one task at a time I found I did them incredibly great, I got actually more done, and I was hyper aware of people around me. My stress level about what I needed to get done didn’t exist.

Day 2 Challenge — Magical Phone: Day 2 challenge is really about taking the Marie Kundo approach to tidying up our smart phones. Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing pushes us to really examine our ownership relationship with things in our lives. If it doesn’t bring joy when you hold it close to you, then it’s got to go and serves no purpose but cluttering up your life or getting in the way by distracting you. Applying this concept to my iPhone was going to be interesting. It’s a little different when it’s digital versus physical when applying this principle. You really cannot hold an app close to you like something physical and ask, “Does this give me joy?” Anyone that has an iPhone can do this and it should be very similar with other smart phones. I put my finger onto any one app I wanted to start the purge with. Next, as I was considering deleting it off my iPhone, I asked the question, “Does this app bring me joy?” If it was yes it does, then I moved on. If it was a no, I very slowly tapped the “x” to delete it off my iPhone. When I started I had 186 apps and 5 full pages of apps on my iPhone. I got that number down to almost an average of 80 apps and brought my pages of apps down to two. As I went through the day with a tidier iPhone I was surprised by a nice byproduct of letting go of all those apps. I got less notifications from all those extra apps I just deleted, which meant fewer distractions or interruptions to my day. My Apple Watch and iPhone saw about a 10–20% battery improvement because there wasn’t as many notifications going off on either device draining them. I enjoyed my Apple Watch more because it made it even more personalized with less clutter on it. The struggle you will find is the internal argument you will have with yourself deleting and letting go of apps you somehow think or are convinced you need. It was liberating. This may have been my favorite day for the challenges.

Day 3 Challenge — Magical Brain: The idea on today’s challenged caught me off guard because it really didn’t feel like much of a challenge. Today I had to ignore and avoid clicking on something “everyone is talking about” unless it contributes to my day or is necessary for work. This might be a trending topic or a “must read” or whichever article/video is trending hot on YouTube or .GIF/meme everyone is sharing. For me this meant staying off Twitter, Flipboard, staying away from “Today’s News” or “Top Tens” from just about every website, and any emails that did the same. So, not as easy as I originally thought once all that was in perspective. Email, notifications, texts, and even my beloved use of Pocket in my car that read to me the top articles I saved for later where my enemies during my challenge today. I deleted emails that were sent to me that had any top news for the day, closed down notifications that pinged my Apple Watch or iPhone with top news, and even put off listening to podcasts for the day. By the end of the day I found that it was one of the most free feeling days and had become one of the most creative days I have ever taken for myself. It was amazing and gave me such great reflection time, writing time, and I even got to catch up on some reading time I’ve been wanting to get to. I have decided this was so beneficial to me that I am going to iCal one day a week that I will give to myself in this same manner.

Day 4 Challenge — Magical Life: So this challenge really pushed me to not use texting, emailing, or social channels to connect with someone. Rather, be in the moment by making it a phone call or connect in person on any subject matter for at least 7 minutes in length. The idea, once you get beyond the awkward 7 minute mark in any conversation it gets much deeper and real. Also, before that 7 minute mark you are showing each other your most unprotected and unmade up self, the real you. This challenge was a little simpler for me then the first three challenges because I do this so often at work and play. Sherry Turkle was a guest on this day’s challenge. Sherry is a master at the social sciences and she now focuses her research on psychoanalysis and human-technology interaction. Sherry Turkle’s theory is that when someone communicates mostly through email, text, or social media they have the time to make it a perfect interaction. You get the time to craft it before you reply. Essentially making it as perfect a reply back as possible before you send it. She’s found by us solely using our technology to communicate with one another we never really get the true essence of who someone really is. Essentially you only get to know their perfect self. I did find during this challenge that by making “real talk” with my peers through a real phone call or in person versus a text or email was much more authentic and rewarding.

Day 5 Challenge — Magical Life: This was the wrap up to the week. This was really a self reflection day on the last four challenges. I was challenged to put that learning into a single sentence that will become my mantra to use technology more responsibly as I move forward. I loved really two things that were discussed by the hosts on the podcast. Technology is a great servant, but a terrible master and should be treated as such. Secondly, make a very conscious behavioral choice to eliminate as much as possible being compulsive in your choices on when/how to use your technology. These last few days have given me such a clearer view of what I thought was regular use but instead was overuse of technology. I’ve learned to be more in tune with myself and in so doing, be more present in my daily work as well as life. My mantra? Well, I came up with this:

I will make healthy reading choices, tune my mind and body daily by using my technology proactively not reactively, and single task often.

I will take my accountability to this statement one step further by making it a daily repeating reminder that kicks off my 6:00 AM morning routine. I think I will call it, Magical Reminder and it will be the first notification I see when I wake up to start my day.

• Shawn