The benefits of looking around instead of down.
Hello my name is Jason, and I have been off Instagram for three weeks, off social media for one week and have only been using my phone as a device for making and receiving calls — there I’ve said it.
My over-use of Instagram further highlighted to me the magnetic draw of social media (http://bit.ly/instantsunset). The amount of time squandered each day made me realise how much of that time has no obvious outcome or value — which in my case was a lot. This urged me, in the first place, to cut down my usage — I eventually stopped using social media altogether. I am now three weeks in and miraculously, I am not suffering from the fear of missing out. I believe Instagram still displays my last post which must have been around the first week of March 2019. I can’t actually remember what the image was — probably a picture of the sunrise or sunset which is as about revealing to my limited audience as my own small epiphanies are to the even smaller readership on LinkedIn. My social media temperance may not be the most earth-shattering statement of ongoing intent, but it has made me question how well I use my time; both the time I have and the time I have regained. It’s a relief that I am not suffering from the mythical construct of FOMO, but the most important thing to come out of it is my refocus on what it is I actually do during my working day above and beyond work — or more specifically what I am doing instead of gazing at my phone?
My state of self-imposed prohibition has since developed into a state of no-smartphone-usage between 8am and 4pm. As I write this, I am in day three, by the time anyone might be reading this (that’s a big ‘might’) I will be one week into autonomous-self-serving-smartphone-exile. The effects of ‘not looking’ have had an enormous effect on my efficiency in work; mostly because I have continuously stopped checking my emails and checking to see how many people have read my latest LinkedIn article (this is really not worth checking every few minutes if at all). The habit of not looking at my phone at every paused opportunity during the day has also seeped into my evenings — even after the 4pm watershed I seldom check my phone. I stopped using my phone as an alarm clock about a year ago, so I guess this is an extension of that. I never look at my phone other than to make or answer calls. My smartphone is now somewhat under-utilised. It is now just a phone, and I feel very much transported back to a simpler time when digital devices promised to help, and there was no threat of being hindered. I am by no means nostalgic, I am grateful to be able to realise I have the choice as to whether I look or not.
The amount of time I have retrieved — I am happy and equally embarrassed to say — is approximately two hours per day. Getting rid of my default digital distraction doesn’t mean that I will miraculously achieve great things during those rediscovered moments, but I do need to make sure I ‘do’ something in that time. It might be as simple as having a breather, standing up, looking around or momentarily day-dreaming. Whatever it is it must be better than gazing at a screen or checking something I only checked moments ago and will check again very soon.
Portioning set amounts of time for specific tasks, scheduled breaks and research; whether project-related or for side projects — have been in place for over a year now which has served me well. The size of these ‘portions’ is flexible, which allows daily adjustments, but now I have removed myself from the gravitational pull of the smartphone what might be the best use of those specific moments in time? By ‘best use’ I mean does it serve me as well as it might? As I mentioned, some well-placed breaks doing ‘nothing’ are good, as are the moments when doing ‘something’ are good — but it’s the ‘something’ that needs to be the best possible thing you could be doing at that moment. If it’s ‘right’, it’s the thing that helps you get closer towards being improved in whatever it is you are doing — and for me that improvement doesn’t lie inside my overuse of the smartphone. If those social media/smartphone moments were so frequent what if I consciously used those moments to achieve something in line with my own goals or needs. Who knows maybe I could become fluent in another language in the time I wasted looking at my device. Not likely but two hours a day over a year is a serious amount of time that could be put to use.
Reading books has always been something I greatly value (obviously not the Kindle kind). I’ve been reading a lot more anyway over the past year or so but now it’s time to super-charge it. I have left a paper trail of books around the house providing an immediate opportunity for reading as opposed to gazing at my phone. I have at least ten books on the go at any one time. Both fiction and non-fiction titles are scattered about the house and studio. Books I have recently finished, books I am re-reading, books I am reading for the first time and books I have yet to start. There is also space for books that have yet to be delivered. There is nothing more thrilling for me than starting and then finishing a new book. Whether it’s about ‘Hippos Boiling in Their Tanks’ or the culture and evolution of citrus fruit in Italy; books about being quiet, books about thinking more slowly, books about thinking more quickly, books about having a beautiful mind or indeed novels about infidelity and the frailty of the human condition.
I cannot yet quantify the benefits of reading a great deal more than I used to, but I am sure that day will come. The long and short of it is that if I can spend a total of two hours a day doing something that invigorates and enlightens me, then I should be doing that. I should not be checking my phone to see if it is miraculously delivering what I want, as opposed to what it wants.
