Reason #2: filtering out information takes effort.
Contrary to common sense, ignoring things is not a passive mental process.
Researchers have found that it takes energy to ignore irrelevant stimuli.
In other words, ignoring something still takes a toll on your mental stamina. Think of it this way, we wake up in the morning and our mental stamina bar is at 100% full. If you have to go through the day trying to ignore irrelevant stimuli, your mental stamina bar will probably be down to 50% by lunchtime. By the time you go home, it may be down to 10%. Then you end up just getting fast food because you can't think of anything else better to eat. And you crash down on your sofa to binge-watch Netflix, because your brain is too tired to do something else.
When I say notebooks, I don't mean those lightweight laptops that the tech industry calls notebook. I mean real paper notebooks. These paper notebooks are distraction free.
If you've been following this online journal, you probably already know that I keep a Bullet Journal. I mean I only ever mention it every other post or so. I also have a Work Journal. I also have a number of Field Notes notebooks lying around. I use these Field Notes notebooks in a variety of ways. One is a Food Journal. Another is Baby Caleb's milk, temperature, wet/dirty diaper, health tracker. Another is a backup satellite Bullet Journal. Another is a catch-all notebook for whatever needs to be written down.
Cal in his post, shares a wonderful essay about a professional sport climber who ditched social media and improved her career. Both posts, from Cal and Madison are really good reads. Be sure to check out the comments too, especially on Cal's post.
It was then that Madison’s athletic career moved to the next level. “There’s nobody I’m here to perform for,” she writes. “I just train and silently work on achieving my own definition of success.”
That quote above made me reconsider keeping my blog “public”. By that I mean having my posts show up on the read.write.as feed. I sometimes feel that I'm performing for someone when my posts show up on the read.write.as feed. Like I'm in a competition, trying to keep up with everyone else.
I have been playing around with are.na for the past week or so, trying to figure out how to make use of it. I've seen it mentioned in one of CJ Eller's posts, From Blog to Blocks. I'm still slowly finding a use for it, but while I'm not ready to share how I am using it just yet, I did find a “channel” that seems to be a great “digital minimalism” resource. This channel contains links to a number of articles related to reducing smart phone use, eliminating distractions, better ways to use social media, etc...
The piece that separates this strategy from the increasingly popular digital-detox concept is that it’s not just about what you avoid but also about figuring out what you should do with your time instead. Stepping away from distracting technology while making no effort to replace it with something better invites backsliding. Seeking meaningful alternatives is so crucial that in Digital Minimalism I suggest that people map out detailed leisure plans to break down their goals, such as achieving a new personal record or finishing a craft project, into weekly milestones and daily habits.
Agreed. Can you imagine doing even just a weekend (2 days) of digital detox without any plans on how to entertain yourself during that time frame? It won't work. You'll be bored to death. Before embarking on any digital detox or digital minimalism attempt, you need to decide on what to do with your free time.
When I was trying to “declutter” my smartphone, one of the hardest battles was with the browser on my iPhone. An iPhone comes with the default Safari mobile browser which you cannot uninstall. You can also easily install third party browsers via the App Store if you like. This post is about restricting the use of mobile browsers on an iPhone. Why? Because I don't want it to suck up all of my time. The browser on my phone allows me to stay connected to the internet pretty much the whole time. To me, that is something that is very hard to resist. I touched upon this on an earlier post about Smartphone Addiction.
The Screen Time settings on an iPhone control a number of things, but the most important one as far as this post is concerned, is the ability to “disable” the Safari mobile browser on an iPhone.
There are a few fronts on which our attention is being assaulted. First off, there’s just a massive surplus of stuff to pay attention to. And the more crap there is to pay attention to, the more difficult it is to choose what to focus on—not to mention stay focused on it!
So, the first and most important goal of an attention diet should be to consciously limit the number of distractions we’re exposed to. Just as the first step of a nutritional diet is to consume less food, the first step of an attention diet is to consume less information.
– Mark Manson
Digital Minimalism is making it's way around the web and I like Mark Manson's take on it. I think calling it The Attention Diet is also a clever idea. If you have not read Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism book, this post can serve as some kind of head start to cutting out digital distractions and taking back your attention.
For a week or two before I started my digital de-clutter phase, I was trying to figure out which pocket notebooks to get. The idea being that they will take the place of my smartphone if I needed to take notes. The idea on top of that was to reduce my smartphone usage even more; by not using it to take notes. And by not using my smartphone to take notes, I won't even need to pull it out of my pocket or drawer or wherever it is at, thereby lessening the chance it will distract me during the day. When I finally tried it out in the real world, the results surprised me.
There is a saying that goes, “out of sight, out of mind”. That is the basis for the first productivity tip that I'm sharing on this journal. As you can tell by the title though, I added “Out of Reach” in between. The reason for that is explained towards the end of this post.
My usual routine when I got to work was to take out my phone and place it on my desk, right in front of me, between the keyboard and my monitors. The idea being that I would easily spot any notification and can act on them.
To the old me, this setup was perfectly fine. Years ago, I was so into apps and staying up to date on my notifications, that I didn't mind having a phone right in front of me. This was partly the reason I switched from a Windows Phone to an iPhone; the notifications system on Windows Phones were subpar and it just didn't have any of the cool apps available on iPhones.
I bought the Digital Minimalism book to try and find more ways to curb my smartphone addiction. It is an attempt to regain control of my attention and time.
Okay so here are my notes, findings, revelations, thoughts, etc... on how it went:
I had so much extra time to read books during this phase; I finished reading 3 books and I wasn't even trying to finish books. Finishing 3 books in a 30 day period is amazing to me, I never thought I could do that. Here are the list of books I finished reading during the digital declutter phase:
