From Digital Addiction to Analog Resistance: Find Something Beautiful

This week, I’ve thrown down a challenge: Cut your screen time down, see how you feel. But what good is the practice if you don’t backfill it with something meaningful? Today, spend some of the time you’d normally scroll on your cell phone pondering the good, beautiful, or true. Take a photograph. Write a poem. Read a book. Have a cup of joe with a friend. Resist the digital. Do something analog.

That’s all for this week. Come back next week and let’s keep living the examined life.

Grab a Copy and Wake Up

THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.

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They're Changing Your Brain: The Unintended Consequences of Our Machines

Read my continuing a series on our increasing attachment to smartphones.

I’m working on a longer piece, a piece on the unintended consequences of our relationship with technology. (Look for it in my Newsletter on March 1.) To be clear, I’m not some Skyfall Chicken Little, but research is beginning to catch up with the neurological effects of modernity’s endless tryst with innovation. Particularly, smartphone innovation and the resulting addiction. In an article published by the Daily Mail yesterday, it was reported:

German researchers examined 48 participants using the MRI images — 22 with smartphone addiction and 26 non-addicts. 

Writing in the study, published in the journal Addictive Behaviors, the researchers write: “Compared to controls, individuals with smartphone addiction showed lower gray matter volume in left anterior insula, inferior temporal and parahippocampal cortex.”

Decreased grey matter in one of these regions, the insula, has previously been linked to substance addiction. 

What does the region of the brain known as the insulae do? In a piece for the New York Times, Sandra Blakeslee writes:

“[Neurologists] say it is the wellspring of social emotions, things like lust and disgust, pride and humiliation, guilt and atonement. It helps give rise to moral intuition, empathy and the capacity to respond emotionally to music.

If this is the case, perhaps our collective decrease in insula gray matter explains society’s current lack of empathy, our incessant online bickering, our inability to point to the beauty in the world around us. And yes, this sounds like a conclusory statement, but spend ten minutes on Twitter. Is it too far-fetched a conclusion?

Life Examined: Do a Little Research

1. Today, make your way to Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. (Yes, I know what I’m asking you to do.)

2. How long does it take to find a post that fires you up, makes you angry, or causes you to feel depressed or lonely? Less than three minutes?

3. Ask yourself whether the resulting emotions are worth the time you spend on the platform.

Grab a Copy and Wake Up

THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.

Sign up to receive daily reflections and my monthly newsletter in your email.

Social Media Brings The Fix, But What Else Does it Bring?

Since noticing my screen time crossed the 4 hour-per-day threshold, I’ve been more mindful. Trying to reduce it by no less than an hour-per-day, I’ve set new parameters. How am I doing? Yesterday , I spent 2:16 minutes on my phone, most of which was on account of scheduling meetings via text. I’d say that’s progress.

Yesterday, I popped on to social media for a quick spit, thought I’d see what folks were cursing on any given Tuesday. Before I knew it, I’d thrown 8 minutes of my screen time into the dumpster fire of Twitter and watched it burn. I felt the fire rising as I read their tweets—the Southern Baptist professor whose detractors lambaste her because she’s a woman; the Midwestern man who’s lost his sense of God; the political pundits who cannot fathom following another day of this presidency. Every base emotion was triggered in the span of those six minutes, but when I escaped that vortex I felt a dark sadness seeping in.

In The Book of Waking Up, I wrote this:

What is social media but technological heroin? It’s a distracting hook, an attention manipulator, a time suck. It’s equal parts feast, famine, fear, ego, and political dumpster fire, and the content… is created by the people for the people. It’s our method of mass communication, our way to be heard, our method of connecting with people when we’re alone. This centering of our own message, opinion, need, whatever—doesn’t it etch a groove?

No matter how much I swear it off, I always end up back on the social-media sauce. Why? When I’m alone, my brain plays the groove in the record: Media brings the fix. (#89. Groove 5: Social Consumption)

There are very simple scientific reasons we believe this message, reasons I wrestle onto the page in The Book of Waking Up. But instead of retreading those reasons here, I’ll simply ask: Do you feel the uncontrollable pull to social media, to Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook? If so, ask yourself Why? More importantly, ask yourself, After a good social media binge, how do I feel? Are you angry, sad, full of despair or regret? If so, why do you keep going back to that poisoned well?*

*This is not to say that all social media is bad. I use it and will continue to, just with eyes opened much wider.

Life Examined: Social Media Parameters

1. Today, take a look at your screen time statistics. How much time do you spend each day on social media?

2. What does social media do for you? How does it make you feel? Answer these questions honestly.

3. Write down some parameters for your social media use (examples: no social media during work hours; less than thirty minutes of social media a day; unfollow accounts that drive your blood pressure to Katie-call-the-ambulance levels.)

4. Visit my thread on smartphone addiction and throw down your two cents.

Grab a Copy and Wake Up

THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.

Sign up to receive daily reflections and my monthly newsletter in your email.

Curbing Smartphone Addiction Like a Monk

Last week, I—the guy who wrote an entire book on attachment to the stuff of earth—spent more than 4 hours per day on my cell phone. My cellphone use was on an upward trend, and I decided it had to stop. How would curb I my well-fixed attachment? Through simple, incremental change.

Yesterday, I placed my phone on the far side of the room, next to the wilting plant and a minimalist interior design book I keep in my office for inspiration. It’s a corner of the room I frequent less than I should.

Switching the ringer on (in case Amber or a client called), I fell into a sort of forced “monk mode,” a state business writer Greg McKeown describes as “shutting out the world for a time.” I worked a focused flow for one hour, then a second, taking a break only once to refill my coffee mug (and see a man about a horse, if you know what I mean). And with my phone out of sight and out of mind, the barrage of silent notifications from Instagram, Messenger, Voxer, The Weather Channel, and the like passed unnoticed.

This is what monks do; they ignore the superfluous to tend to what’s important.

I worked a similar flow in the second half of the workday, and though my will-power is lowest in these hours, having my phone across the room seemed to help. At four o’clock, I answered a scheduled call and after I hung up, I looked at my screen time report. It was five minutes till the end of the workday, and I’d only logged 55 minutes.

By the end of the night, I’d only used my phone a total of 1 hour and 20 minutes. How did I feel at the end of the day?

Focused. Energized. Accomplished.

What did I miss?

Nothing as far as I can tell, except the tyranny of my smartphone notifications, and that seems to be a thing worth missing.*

*Yesterday, I opened a new thread on smartphone addiction on Substack, in which I ask you for suggestions. Check it out.

Life Examined: An Incremental Plan.

1. Today, set aside at least one hour and enter “monk mode.” During that monk mode hour (or hours), hide your phone, disconnect from social media, and focus on what matters most.

2. After your time is up, spend fifteen minutes examining how you feel. Ask yourself whether you ought to make this part of your daily routine. Examine what this might do to break your smartphone attachment, even if it’s only an incremental step.

Join Me

What to hear more about how you can help bring a book on silence to life? Don’t forget to head to my latest Substack post for more.

THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.

Sign up to receive daily reflections and my monthly newsletter in your email.

Put The Phone Down and Read This (Unless You're Reading on Your Phone, In Which CasePut it Down After You Read.)

It’s all explainable.

This is what I tell myself as I stare at the screen time report from the last week. 4 hours and… how many minutes per day? I blink and blink, considering the nearly thirty hours I’ve spent swiping a screen in the last week. All things are justifiable, though, so I consider work, hadn’t I texted clients on an almost constant basis last week? I traveled last week, too, which meant my phone was my primary way of checking and responding to email.

I’ve more justifications than John has Calvin, but how can I make sense of the countless minutes spent on WordTower+ or hours streaming YouTube? (Listen: Fujifilm released the X100v, Bishop Barron dropped an incredible video on the three essential elements of the church, WheezyWaiter tried meal planning, and Hopper is alive. Don’t judge me.) How could I justify my need to check the news feed multiple times per hour?

I’m not attached.

I can quit whenever I want.

At least I can scale back if I want.

At least, I think I can. Right?

I consider that report just before my weekly jaunt to the house of God, the place where no one should hide from the truth. And if I’m to say any prayers honestly, I suppose I have to admit a basic truth: I may not be addicted, but I’m at least inordinately attached to my smartphone. (For more on what constitutes “inordinate attachment,” grab my book, The Book of Waking Up: Experiencing the Divine Life That Reorders a Life.)

The Cold Hard Smartphone Facts

Smartphone attachment: It’s ubiquitous these days. Rescue Time, a productivity app that limits distraction by blocking email, text messaging, social media websites, and other distracting apps, reviewed their user data on smartphone use. According to their research, the average cellphone user accrues 3 hours and fifteen minutes of screen time a day. The top 20% of users are on their cellphones more than 4.5 hours. What’s more, the average cellphone user checked their phone 58 times a day, with 30 of those check-ins happening during working hours.

Every buzz, ding, or flash of the screen demands attention. In boredom, reaching for our phones is our primary reflex.

What do these statistics show us? Perhaps they indicate the extent to which so many of us have developed disordered attachments with our cellphones. (What is a disordered attachment? Read my latest book for more.) Philosophically, they might indicate a sort of human evolution of homo sapiens to homo cellphonus. On a more practical note, the statistics show how often we “context switch” or move from one task to another. And according to all the research, constant context switching is neurologically exhausting, saps us of our willpower, and interferes with our ability to get the most important things done.

And dammit all if I’m not the king of context switching.

This is the week I intend to right the ship. I’ll try to get my screen time average below 3 hours, the push even further. How? Incrementally. Follow along this week and discover whether intentional, incremental action makes a difference.

Life Examined: Do You Know Your screen time Stats?

1.      Do you know how much screen time you spend on your phone on any given day? Look at your screen time reports for the last few days (most cellphones keep thee in an easy to locate place, such as your “Settings” app. Is it more than 3 hours?

2.      What apps do you use most? Are they productivity tools or time wasters like social media?

3.      Make a plan for cutting your screen time down this week, particularly during the workday. Turn of notifications on your most distracting apps. Consider turning your phone off for a few hours in the morning, or placing it on the other side of the room (keep the ringer on in case your wife, child, or mother calls).

***A Special Invitation***

What to hear more about how you can help bring a book on silence to life? Don’t forget to head to my latest Substack post for more.

THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launched TUESDAY so order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish (my favorite indie bookseller). Then, forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.

Sign up to receive daily reflections and my monthly newsletter in your email.

Freeing Up Willpower: A Dry January Invitation

As I wrote yesterday, we’ve entered into Dry January, a month used by many to reset drinking habits. Maybe you’re not prone to overdrinking. Maybe you’re using it like I am, to reset an attachment to some other vice (like shopping, eating sugar, porn use, or whatever). But whether you are are aren’t participating in Dry January, have you considered the power of abstinence—even for a season? Have you thought about the benefits abstinence brings? 

If you buy one book this Dry January, buy my newest release, The Book of Waking Up. (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookish). If you buy two books, buy The Book of Waking Up and Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin’s work on making and breaking habits. In her offering, Rubin uses expert storytelling, research, and strategic insights to give the reader a habit-making and habit-breaking playbook. It’s a book that is both packed with insight and immanently readable. In discussing abstinence from any vice (LaMar’s Donuts being her example), she writes: 

“Because habit formation often requires us to relinquish something we want, a constant challenge is: Ho can I deprive myself of something without feeling deprived? … I realized that one way to deprive myself without creating a feeling of deprivation is to deprive myself totally. Weirdly, when I deprive myself altogether, I feel as though I haven’t deprived myself at all. When we Abstainers deprive ourselves totally, we conserve energy and willpower, because there are no decisions to make and no self-control to muster.” 

Consider Rubin’s advice. By taking something off the menu, even if only for a month, doesn’t it free up mental energy. Doesn’t it total deprivation remove the willpower required for moderation. (After all, if you remove all potato chips from the menu, you don’t have to stop yourself short of eating the entire bag once you tear into it.) This reserved mental energy and willpower—couldn’t it be better spent in other areas of your life?

***TODAY’S TASK: ORDER AND FORWARD***

THE BOOK OF WAKING UP —a book on addiction, attachment, and the Divine Love—launches in just a few short weeks and IT’S TIME TO ORDER YOUR COPY. Today:

1. Order a copy or ten at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever good books are sold; and,

2. Forward this post to a friend and ask them to read along.

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