Screen Responsibly

Use without being used

I discussed what I meant by Attention Seeking in this blog's first post. Here it is again.

Goal: Neutralize our screen's ability to capture us while preserving their functionality.

Challenge and Opportunity

This blog wouldn't exist if achieving this balance were straightforward. Our tech, our minds, our society's values all encourage us to over consume screen time. We face daunting odds but the lack of solutions is also an opportunity. Most everyone in your life has likely asked themselves some form of the question "how can I use technology without succumbing to it?" If we can demonstrate success and develop a meaningful vocabulary to communicate it then each of these people is a potential ally.

Strategies

At this point you might be saying, "Sure balance sounds good but what I really want to know is how to keep up with Love Island without ruining my sleep every night." And if you did say that I'd point you to the three strategies below as tools you could employ to enjoy Love Island responsibly. If you read and applied these strategies you'd probably create barriers that remove the possibility of watching in your bedroom, boost an alternative by putting a copy of Fourth Wing by your bedside, and weaken Netflix's ability to recapture your attention by toggling off AutoPlay. The strategies are general, the solutions are your own. Together these strategies capture my current approach to balancing technology but I fully expect I'll rethink them as this blog progresses.

Downshift Tech

Our minds have been trained to crave stimuli. Unwinding this training involves shifting from strong to weak technology. I use strong and weak to refer to how strongly technology captures, holds, and recaptures our attention. Content, media, and devices can all be strong or weak. For instance, nature documentaries generally give our attention more opportunity to wander than sitcoms, which is to say that nature documentaries are a weaker form of content. But if you're watching either on Netflix, autoplay ensures your attention is recaptured regardless of the content. In other words, Netflix is a stronger form of media than a DVD.

Books are a weak form of media compared to audiobooks because they allow you to pause and reflect between lines but audiobooks are weaker than TV because without the visual component they have a weaker hold on you. This is why I'd recommend them over TV if you find yourself washing the dishes and in search of more fulfillment than the washing alone can offer. Finally, the fact that an iPhone cannot be scheduled to turn off and turns back on when you charge it is strong behavior. The iPhone is doing its best to be ready at all times to capture your attention.

Downshifting is about choosing weaker content, medium and devices when we can and neutralizing strong behaviors when we can't. It could be as simple as turning off social media push notifications. It could be as involved as reviewing all your tech use to find more solitude throughout the day.

Design your Environment

Our tech is designed to latch on to our attention and hold on tight. Relying on will power, research calls it executive function, is rarely a sufficient antidote. Each time we rebuff tech we drain our limited executive function and eventually end up unable to direct ourselves. This is a case where it's best to fight fire with fire. Designing our environment reduces the number of decisions we have to make and preserves our executive function. The design can be a barrier that blocks strong tech or a boost that encourages an alternative.

Barriers

The strength of a barrier is the likelihood and cost of reversing it. If you want to focus on your coffee date with a friend you could leave your phone face down on the table. This may be sufficient, but would prove easier to reverse than if you left it in your bag or your car. The likelihood of reversal is greater because you can hear it ring, the cost is lower because it's an arm's length away. Ask yourself, how available to your phone do you need to be at the moment? Bag available? Maybe car available? It's worth questioning availability, what do you get out of it? What do others get out of it?

Each time we reverse a barrier we reduce its strength. For this reason it's helpful to ritualize barriers and involve other people in their enforcement. It's not just that you don't charge your phone by your bed but that you built a popsicle stick bed for all the phones in your house in the entryway and together with your housemates sing your phones a lullaby each night. Weird? Yes. Effective? I have no idea, I'm just illustrating a point here.

It's also important to rethink a barrier that you've reversed too often. Maybe you always circumvent Screen Time restrictions because you know the password. New habits are delicate things and reversing a barrier destroys the illusion of its power. Join Apple Family Sharing with your partner or friend and let them set the password; suddenly an awkward text stands between you and distraction. Finally, experiment and build consensus for your barriers. Maybe your partner is worried about your unreachability, maybe your boss noticed you've stopped answering her Slacks at lunch. Explain your goals and ask if they'll support you experimenting for a week. If their concerns remain, can a variation address them?

Boosts

The flipside of barriers are boosts, ways we change our environment to encourage screen displacing activities. A boost could be as simple as leaving your running shoes by the door to remind you to go on a run. Boosts are closely related to the idea of Filling Your Cup I'll discuss below. The distinction is that Filling Your Cup is about the necessity of positive motivations while Boosts are a means to help implement them.

Say you've taken the positive step of removing technology from your bedroom. Sitting in bed and not yet asleep you look for something to do. You decide it's not such a bad idea to order a few things you need from Amazon. You grab your computer, sit back in bed, and regain consciousness an hour later and thirty minutes past when you meant to be sleep. I avoid relapsing like this by filling my room with my favorite books and new books I'm excited to read. When I settle in for the night, there's always something for me to read. It's easy to lose interest in one book and find yourself back on your computer. Having a miniature library within arm's reach, makes losing interest very unlikely.

Fill your Cup

My first step away from technology was motivated by a desire to feel less exhausted and empty. It didn't take long for me to start seeing beyond these negative motivations. Music, especially lyrics, had always had a powerful effect on me, but I didn't really understand the musicians I liked. With no smartphone to stream music I got a CD player and some albums. Suddenly I wasn't just avoiding exhaustion I was enjoying and learning music.

Though we design our environment and downshift tech to reduce our dependence on will power, success still hinges on sticking to our convictions when it matters. Those convictions are doubled when we have both negative and positive motivators. Of course, filling your cup is not just a means, it is its own end and a powerful one at that. We all have desires we haven't made time for and life starts to take on more meaning when we pursue them.

Conclusion

Digital minimalism does not have a road map. I've made countless wrong turns, underestimated technology's grasp on me, and failed to plan for its benefits. What's more, the constraints that bind me to technology are frequently evolving. I want to better understand and experiment with digital minimalist ideas and I'm hoping this blog creates some structure to do so. I fully expect to continue to miss the mark and I hope you'll point out when I do. Thanks for reading! Talk soon.