Just 1 Hour per Day: Cutting Down my Digital Activities
Hello everyone! I’m Federico and for the Innovation Studio course of the Politecnico di Milano (School of Design) I will try to reduce my digital activities for fourteen days in order to face an embodied experience of the future. I will keep a sort of diary here on Medium, with all my tricks and solutions, uploading photos and measuring my progress… Let’s see how I do!
DAY 1 (4th October)
I had to choose an experience among the ones the professors of the course have presented us. There were so many interesting experiences to face, but I think that the one in which I can do my best is “reducing your digital activities”. It’s only for 14 days. I think I can do it.
Once I come back home, I set my goal. I will try to reduce my digital activities on my laptop and on my smartphone to 1 hour per day for these two weeks.
The experience has started great. I haven’t used neither Facebook nor Instagram for the whole evening, but I must say, it was very difficult. I’ve used WhatsApp and YouTube though, but I’ll try to do my best also to reduce their use.
DAY 2 (5th October)
I’ve used this day to analyse my digital activities on a typical day off. It’s saturday, so I don’t have to go to university and that’s perfect to analyse all the activities well. After the analysis (I’ve counted, more or less, the amount of time I use my devices), I realized that I spend on average 2 hours and 25 minutes on my smartphone and on my laptop, but mostly on the first one, so I will focus my attention on this digital device.
I’ll try to reduce this time to at least 1 hour and a half tomorrow, especially for what concerns the use of social media and YouTube.
DAY 3 (6th October)
I’ve tried to reduce the use of social media and it works, but the feeling to try to open them is really pushing me to the limit. I’ve just opened Facebook for about fifteen minutes in the evening. I still haven’t counted the whole amount of time I spend on my devices, but I’ll do it soon.
DAY 4 (7th October)
It’s monday, so I had to take the train to go to university. My first trick: bring a book with you during the travel, instead of looking at your smartphone.
Reading a book is a good way to reduce digital activities, especially when you are on a public mean of transport, so I’ll do it also tomorrow and in the next two weeks too.
After today though, I have come to the conclusion that there are some activites that can’t be reduced, like using WhatsApp for important messages or looking at the e-mails, but in general I felt my level of attention during the lesson has increased without touching my smartphone so many times.
DAY 5 (8th October)
Today I decided to change the home screen of my smartphone hiding some apps that, in my opinion, could be the cause of intense digital activities on this device. I’m not going to delete them, but I won’t see these apps when I unlock the smartphone. Tomorrow I’ll see if it works.
DAY 6 (9th October)
Today I experimented the method I was thinking yesterday (of hiding certain apps from the home screen of my smartphone), taking notes of how much time I was spending on each app and on digital activities in general, and writing that time on a document on my smartphone to then see the whole performance. Applying this method, I spent about (taking off the time I spent on my laptop doing stuff for the university) 63 minutes, so just a bit more than one hour. A great result I think! I will try this method also tomorrow to see if it really works and allows me to stay within one hour of usage.
DAY 7 (10th October)
Let’s see if this method of hiding apps worked also today… I spent about 42 minutes doing digital activities, so I stayed within the amount of time of one hour. That’s a success! This day I also totally avoid the use of social media, using my devices only for WhatsApp, YouTube, emails and research on the internet. Therefore I can definitely say that this method works and I can now give you my second trick: hiding apps (not necessarily delete them) that could increase your digital activities (especially the useless ones) can be a good solution to save time when you use your devices.
In the next two days, like I did with this method, I will try another one I was thinking about today. I will use my smartphone only in certain times of the day (except for controlling WhatsApp and the emails, but just quick looks): 20 minutes in the morning, 20 minutes in the afternoon and 20 minutes in the evening, every time setting the timer on my smartphone. We’ll see if it works better than the other method or not.
DAY 8 (11th October)
Today I applied the method I was thinking yesterday: I used my devices only in certain moments of the day, with a timer counting every time the 20 minutes in which I had to stay within. Also this method worked, but I think that tomorrow I will reduce the time to 15 minutes, because, I’ll be honest, emails and WhatsApp use took me too long and more than 1 hour (quick looks after quick looks, I used them 10, 15 minutes more than my goal). I’ll try to fix that tomorrow.
DAY 9 (12th October)
I’ve still applied this method but instead of three periods of 20 minutes, I used my devices for three periods of 15 minutes and I’m pretty sure I stayed within 1 hour of time also with quick looks at the emails or WhatsApp (not more than 10 minutes). So now, I can tell you my third trick: having specific periods of the day and specific amounts of time (unfortunately, you must use a timer or something like that before starting) to use your digital devices can help reducing the overall digital activities.
To reach a conclusion, both methods can work, but require some effort to be completed. The first method needs some attention: every time you have to write down the time you have spent doing digital activities (on a paper, or better on a document on your device); you are not anxious while doing them (like in the second method), but it’s more difficult to know if you are staying within 1 hour of time or not (every time, you have to count the minutes you wrote on the document to be sure you have not passed the limit of 1 hour). The second method is more anxious than the first one: you have to set the timer every time before doing digital activities, so it is a little stressful and makes you do your digital activities quickly; with this method, though, you are sure that you are staying in the right limit of time (the timer can’t go wrong).
For the next days, I will download and try some apps that could help me reducing my digital activities in different ways. Stay tuned!
DAY 10 (13th October)
Day Off.
DAY 11 (14th October)
After a brief day off, I’ve installed an app called “Screen Time” that helped me to keep track of how much time I was spending doing (useless) digital activities. Using this app I set the time limit of 1 hour for WhatsApp, searches on Google, Facebook, YouTube, Email, Instagram and LinkedIn, trying especially to avoid the use of social media on my smartphone (I completely avoid their use on my laptop, but generally I don’t use it for these kind of things) and using WhatsApp, Email and searches on Google only for university’s purposes.
“Screen Time” counted that I did 1 hour and 11 minutes with my screen unlock. So I passed more than 1 hour on my digital devices, but I haven’t passed that time with the apps I wrote before: 49 minutes is the amount of time spent on these apps, and I think I reached the goal to have not passed 1 hour on them (the would have notified me of passing the limit). Tomorrow, again using this app, I will try the almost impossible challenge to stay within 1 hour with my smartphone‘s screen unlock, independently of the apps used. For all the important things I’ll need to do, I’ll use my laptop. Social media and YouTube, of course, will be totally avoided on it: I’ll use them only on my smatphone, within the hour established.
DAY 12 (15th October)
The embodied experience of the future is proceeding well using “Screen Time” app. See the real amount of time you are spending on your smartphone whenever you unlock the screen is very useful and allow you not to lose too much time in writing it on a separate document. Today I reached my goal: 57 minutes spent on my smartphone and totally avoided the use of social media on my laptop (actually I used it more than 1 hour, but it was necessary for university tasks as usual).
Tomorrow I’ll try to use another app and see how it goes!
DAY 13 (16th October)
Today I downloaded “Forest”, which is a mobile app that helps people stay away from their smartphone and stay focused on work, diminishing their procrastination habit. I didn’t have count the amount of time I spent doing my digital activities, but for sure “Forest” has proved to be a very useful app to stay productive and be far from my phone for longer periods of time (even quick looks could be avoided using this app).
The whole process is very simple: just set the time you want to be disconnected from your digitl activities and the app will plant a virtual plant, that will be killed if you leave the app, but will grow creating a fantastic virtual forest (also real if you pay some money) if you are able to stay focus on your work, without being distracted by digital activities.
DAY 14 (17th October)
I used “Forest” app like yesterday. It was very useful and allowed me to keep focusing my attention only on university goals and things that I really needed to do. The method that this app used is different from “Screen Time”: it doesn’t count the amount of time that you spend doing digital activities, but helps to avoid distractions caused by your smartphone, making more simple, with a little visual stimulation, staying away from your digital device to focus on what really matters and increasing your productivity.
14 days have passed, so it’s time to draw conclusions about this embodied experience of the future. It was a tough one. Nowadays, digital devices are essential not only to work or to study, but also to do other activities. Emails, WhatsApp (or other messaging apps), searches on the internet and so on, are all things that must be done if you don’t want to be out of the world. Their use can be decreased, but not avoided, and I’m not sure if 1 hour per day will be enough. Of course there are certain activities that can be diminished, like using social media or watching video on YouTube: these should be replaced for example by reading a book or going to the cinema with some friends, or doing other similar stuff. There are also apps (like the ones I’ve used) that can help people reducing their digital activities and I think that downloaded them is surely not a waste of time.
I don’t know if there will ever be a near future in which all of us will be forced to reduce our digital activities, but I hope I’ll be well prepared to face it.
