Once upon a time, a high school student tells a group of peers and adults that she has deleted all her social media accounts for an unspecified period of time. The reason is she’s spending too much time on social media and comparing herself to her peers online. Everyone nods in agreement relating to the reasons she listed for her decision. “What do you do instead?!” one peer asks ludicrously. We all laugh. Another time, I’m hanging out with my niece and nephew. I’m also doing laundry. They ask me persistently, “are we going back to the laundry room? are we going back to the laundry room?” The whole time, they don’t take their eyes off the game they’re playing on their devices. Uninterrupted, they spend hours playing games online, especially if the alternative sucks: Doing nothing is torture. Why do nothing if they can easily pick up their iPads and find unlimited entertainment? Yet, when the opportunity presents itself, they abandon their games for the adventure of taking the elevator two floors up to the laundry room for all but two minutes. Such mundane activity is entertaining enough that they would momentarily pause their game for it— It helps that I’m their favourite aunty.
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Going analog in a digital world
There is a prevailing idea in the digital wellness realm that seems the most convincing to curb our internet addiction: Quit the digital world all together. Quit social media. Quit the Internet. Quit your smartphone. And my most recent favourite, Donald Knuth, a famous computer scientist who have been a happy man ever since January 1, 1990, when [he] no longer had an email address. What a luxury! Yet, such drastic measures for life-tech balance isn’t always realistic or desirable for everyone, nor does it need to be so extreme. For the past few weeks, I have been implementing two simple adjustments to my days that have resulted in less time spent online: cooking intuitively and paper journaling. Best part? I don’t have to sacrifice the convenience, ease, and connection the digital world provides me by completely forgoing the internet.
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Read a book instead
Every year, millions of people make New Year’s resolutions hoping to spark positive changes in their lives. Reading is one of the most popular resolutions for many people, including myself, and for very good reasons: Reading puts our brain to work. It involves several brain functions, including visual and auditory processes, phonemic awareness, fluency and comprehension. Reading increases our attention spans, focus and concentration, and it stimulates our mental processes that help preserve our memory skills as we age.
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On taking a digital break
What better time than the end of the year, and 2020 at that, to take a much need break from the digital world? It all started with a conversation. Last Thursday, Mine from @unapologetically.mine and I got on Instagram Live to chat about protecting our inner peace while using social media and being online in general. Our conversation inspired me to take a digital break. Like, from Instagram. The night before our conversation, I was up all night on Instagram’s explore page scrolling through memes and videos. I read and watched seriously hilarious posts. I chuckled. I laughed out loud. I sent a bunch of memes to friends. It was past 2:00am when I finally decided to put my phone down. Then, I felt… wasted. Instagram, like most social media platforms, is the junk-food of the digital world: Delicious, enjoyable, and satisfying, but the more you consume its contents, the less satisfied you feel. It’s low-hanging joy. It’s easy. It’s full of crap. It’s instant gratification on crack. I needed a break. Like, now.
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Radical digital declutter
Taking my own advice, I paid attention to what part of my digital life was causing me the most stress and discovered email to be the number one offender. On a recent vacation, I experimented with a week without email and the experience was simply amazing, glorious, freeing, delightful, exceptional… *Sigh.* Since I can’t completely opt-out of emails, I wanted to figure out a way to make email less stressful. The solution? A radical declutter of my inbox to minimize digital overwhelm.
Without further ado…
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Is digital declutter for you?
Digital declutter is a personal journey. For some, it’s their email that is cluttered and stressful. For others, it’s their desktop overflowing with files and documents. Here are three ideas to determine if digital declutter is for you.
1. Pay Attention
Ask: What, if any, area of your digital space is overflowing and stressful? Is it the unread emails? Is it the to-read, to-watch, to-listen bookmarked pages? Is it your social media feed? What about your cluttered desktop?
Make a list.
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A radical digital declutter journey
It has finally dawned on me I’m one person with one brain, and there is only so much information I can realistically consume before I die of information-exhaustion. Hey, stress kills! With that, it is time for another digital declutter.
The realization hit me during my recent unplugged vacation. I was sitting beach side, no device in sight, sippin’ on Malibu Bay Breeze (thank me later), and reading Marie Kondo’s new book Joy at Work, when it dawned on me how entirely overwhelmed and crushed I feel by all the digital clutter in my life. The emails. The to-watch lists. The to-read lists. The subscriptions. The e-courses: You name it! Oh, no. Maybe, I’m just someone that’s easily overwhelmed and stressed in general: Sue me. Or maybe, it was the utter freedom and stillness I felt disconnected from the digital noise that made me realized it might just be the sheer volume of digital clutter and noise we are exposed to daily that can be overwhelming and stressful to most, and I committed right then and there to embark on a radical digital declutter journey upon my return home.
And here I am, a little over a week after my unplugged vacation, planning a major digital declutter that will free up so much mental space and time in my life that I might, just might, finally rule. the. world. Okay, finally get actual, important work done? Either way, I’m dedicating December to radically downsizing my digital clutter and digital commitments to reclaim my time and attention. A new month, especially the end of the year, is a great time to commit to change.
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Stay informed while avoiding media hysteria
What’s hoarding toilet papers got to do a fatal flu virus outbreak? Good ol’ media.
Imagine this. The year is 2020. A flu virus, the deadliest in history, by the name of coronavirus has infected and wiped out 99.9 percent of the world’s population. At the same time, aliens have decided to pay our planet a visit. At arrival, they find the streets strangely quiet— shops, restaurants, cafes, and stores are shut down. As the aliens make their way from one house to the next, they discover bodies after bodies. What’s more strange is the piles of item, labeled toilet paper, they discover in every house. The aliens are puzzled, and search online the definition of ‘toilet paper’ to figure out what it is— “paper in sheets or on a roll for wiping oneself clean after urination or defecation.” They are puzzled, once again.
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Extreme world views often only exist online
Do you ever see something extremely outrages online— be it a Facebook post, a YouTube video, or a comment— and feel greatly irritated and annoyed? There have been many times where I have come across such content that elicit strong negative emotions in me, where I have felt personally attacked and insulted. After some internal debate and careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that extreme opinions are often over-exaggerated and logically flawed and inconsistent, and only exist because of the safety and anonymity online platforms provide. Experience has shown me that extreme world views and opinions are often the loudest online, and they aren’t worth my attention, nor a prolonged reaction out of me.
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5 tips for reducing inbox clutter
Raise your hand if you have ever been personally victimized by an overflowing, cluttered, anxiety-inducing inbox! It’s not you. And, it’s not me. It’s the attention economy.
Email, an abbreviation of “electronic mail,” was invented in the early 1970s by Ray Tomlinson as a personal side project. Since the first email sent by Tomlinson in 1971, email has ushered in an incredible new era of communication we now enjoy; with billions of people all over the world sending and receiving emails every day. What Tomlinson surely did not anticipate back then was how ubiquitous, addictive and compulsive email would eventually become for its users. Tomlinson later said he had no notion whatsoever of what the ultimate impact email would have. How did an invention meant to serve as a speedy way for programmers and researchers to keep in touch, particularly for those who can’t be relied on to answer their phones, become a nuance to our daily lives?
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time spent offline 