I couldn’t help myself. Make Your Creative Dreams Real was eyeing me from the passenger seat. Freshly freed from the bookshelf at the thrift store, it was pleading for my attention. The colourful drawings with its promise of teaching me how to finally make my creative dreams come true were irresistible. The author had plans for “procrastinators, perfectionists, busy people, and people who would really rather sleep all day.” I should have known better. Besides action— doing— everything else is mastrubatory: I learned that from the last psychiatrist, but I never learn. So. Slightly bored and stuck in traffic, I gave in.
(more…)Category: Attention
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Autoplay: Are you still watching?
We are watching The Office at friends’ house. Once the episode ends, there is a prompt on the screen asking if we want to watch the next episode. If you have been on Netflix or any other streaming platforms, you know these prompts usually pop up after you’ve been watching for a few hours or more. It’s mostly to help save Netflix’s bandwidth. So, why is Netflix already asking if we want to watch another episode? They have autoplay turned off: a simple, yet effective way to resist the attention economy. All media streaming platforms are designed for binge-consumption. The default option is to keep watching, listening, consuming more and more content. Autoplay is one of Silicon Valley’s dirty tricks to keep us hooked on content by default.
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How long is four minutes really?
French press is the superior coffee brewing method: Boil water, add ground coffee to French press, pour water, and a few minutes later you will have delicious liquid caffeine to jolt you into sweet-sweet reality. I let my coffee brew for four minutes. I used to fill that time with scrolling. What can you really do in four minutes anyway? Scroll. Kill time. It’s only four minutes anyway. But you can’t scroll when your phone is a dumb smartphone. Out of desperation, I arrive at a valuable lesson. The best lessons are arrived at. I look at the dishwasher that needs to be emptied. I don’t think there is enough time to empty a full dishwasher while my coffee brews. It only takes four minutes. Not enough time to put the dishes away. Not enough time to reload the dishwasher. Not enough time to put recyclables outside. Not. Enough. Time.
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Willpower is for losers
A prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
I know better, but I can’t help myself. I sleep better when I put my phone to bed before I put myself to bed. I sleep even better when I read a book before bed. Yet, every night, I somehow find my phone in hand as I get in bed, and glance at the book I have been meaning to read. I tell myself, tomorrow, I will surely have the willpower to choose the book instead. Tomorrow never comes. Bad habits win over good intentions. Bluebeard’s Egg remains unread, and it’s due at the library in three days. I lose. Willpower is for losers.
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Kill your phone
The smartphone is one of the greatest inventions of our time.
It provides 24/7/365 access to the internet, allowing you to connect with people from all across the globe, get directions to any place, and access vast entertainment options, all the while fitting in the palm of your hand. Unfortunately, the smartphone can also be a bottomless, endless, inexhaustible distraction tool. Technology, the fuel that keeps the attention economy going, is addictive by design. In such economy, our attention is the highest form of currency. And what better way to harvest our attention than to keep us addicted to our screens? In-app advertising alone cash in about $200 billion. If you can get people to check their phone 58 times daily, well, that’s mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money. Good news: It is still possible to fight against the attention economy.
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I will grow up next time
Three weeks ago, I wanted to grow up. A while back, I turned my iPhone into a dumb phon: I had no access to internet browsing or to download apps. I have been using this method over the years to wean myself off of smartphone addiction. It works: Out of sight, out of mind. It feels better too. But a few weeks ago, I thought it was time to grow up and get my smart iPhone back. Everyone else is doing just fine with a fully functioning smartphone, so why not me? Just put the phone down, right? Wrong.
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The news will find you
“How are things in America?” my mother who lives in Canada asks me just like she does every time we talk over the phone. By things she means COVID numbers. I tell her, like I always do, I don’t know, I don’t watch the news. She laughs and tells me my aunt, who lives in Ethiopia, has been telling her about the millions of COVID cases being reported in America. “The news finds you even from Ethiopia,” she laughs again. I quit the news back in 2016; the news still finds me.
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Irresistible technologies
After years of effort to spend less time online, and an intense loathing for the digital world, I still remain entranced by its trappings of entertainment, novelty, and escape. The internet hasn’t been enjoyable since 2016. It is as if somebody programmed it with a set of scripts, on repeat on an endless loop, and forgot the code to make changes. It has been the same ol’ mind-numbingly boring storyline for years now, and yet I can’t look away. I can’t resist the internet. I take the blame, but only partially. Yes, there is so much more to the internet than the same boring bits regurgitated on Reddit.
But there’s a reason we spend three hours a day on social media and not learning a new language on the Duolingo app: One is irresistible, the other, well, it requires effort. When it’s blocked off, put away— out of sight, out of mind— I don’t desire it. I don’t look for it. But once it’s accessible, available, present, all bets are off. I can’t resist a good hour or two spent mindlessly scrolling through information I won’t remember merely a moment later. What was the joke I just read that was funny? Who knows, who cares; there’s more where that came from— scroll, scroll, scroll. What makes something that has lost its appeal half a decade ago and brings less joy than a stick of celery still irresistible?
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An experience for one
An experience for one: experiencing something, a moment, a thing, an event, without the need to capture, share, or post about it online. The idea occurred to me while at the cottage enjoying the beautiful view of the lake. I should take a picture, I think; to maybe share on my blog or on instagram, or you know for memory sake. The last part is a lie: I got over 10,700 pictures in my camera roll that I rarely, if ever, look at. I decide against it. This is an experience just for me, I think, and enjoy the view, the moment, the feeling. It’s all good.
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What I miss most about not being on social media
When I quit social media, the most wonderful thing happened: I stopped thinking about posting any and every mildly interesting thing that I was doing on social media: a meal, a song, a scenic area. The internal dialogue of how to capture a moment and what to caption it, or how to word a complex thought into a perfect tweet, that occupied much of my thought process went away; and with it, the thought of how it will be received by my followers vanished too. I quit Instagram long before Twitter, so I rarely took pictures anymore, and if I did take photos it was often one or two for memory sake but being on Twitter, I was constantly thinking about sharing my thoughts, and some pictures too. My inner dialogue often went like this: Oooh, girl, this would be a bomb picture to post on Twitter, or lyric speaks exactly to how I really feel, or must share all the oh-so-funny-and-interesting-and-tweet-worthy thoughts I have: And boy, did I have some thoughts to share. Then I deleted my Twitter account and with it social media altogether.
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time spent offline 