Ahoy! You’re sailing these confounded waters too? By waters, I mean the figurative back and forth slosh between addicting distractions vying for our time as writers. Do I even need to ask what they are for you? Actually yes, please comment what blocks you from hours of creative ocean-crossing.
What’s mine? I’ll give you one today, and I would bet money it’s your primary distraction too. It’s called a smartphone, and I often hate it more than I love it.
Smart Phones
When people say smart, I think they could be more specific. My smart phone is a manipulative phone. It bombards me with AI generated notifications that hit me with things I might be interested in. Usually these things come from social media. Maybe a family member posted something interesting, or there’s a new meme out from my favorite page. Either way, I’m a slave to the monster. If just the right cards line up and I’m just in a time-killing mood, the webs of social muck will probably get me.
In part to vent my frustration, I wrote this short story and put it on my Medium page. It’s called Webmakers. Enjoy.
So, in the story, a spider, representing online social networking, is silently taking over humanity. Once the spider has you, it keeps your mind occupied, your personality docile, and it makes you crave connection with other infected people. It hints that these connections are part of the spiders’ breeding process. It’s dark stuff, but writing it helped me process the ick feeling I get when I’m connecting too much online and not living my real life, not actualizing my creativity.
The spider effects us all differently. It might be too many tabs on a desktop, or endless forum searches. Either way, it’s online material hacking our brains to keep scrolling, keep clicking, so that our time and attention can be sold like a product. If we’re not looking at our phones, someone is losing money by opportunity cost, so they’re going to try and make things as addicting as possible to keep us viewing whatever they’re selling us for. Nasty thought, isn’t it? It’s utopia, but also a nightmare from 1984.
The clock strikes 13… just kidding.
Screentime Applications
I’m not going to make any specific recommendations except for what I already use, which is the screentime app that comes with iPhone. I’ve started to set time limits on certain apps and get my overall screentime down. It’s embarrassing, but I was looking at my phone ofttimes over 5 hours a day. Granted, sometimes I was listening to audiobooks and things like that, but an embarrassing amount was going to social media. Shorts are my real weakness. I never got into Tik Tok, but every entertainment app is adopting the shortform videos these days. They do it because they can hijack our brief attention spans and pack in a lot of advertisements. We want to scream when we see them, but we do see them, and someone gets paid.
So, here’s what I’m doing:
- Setting time limits for social media. I’m not to the point of going cold turkey…yet, but I really don’t want to steal time from my writing anymore. When that time limit warning pops up, I shut the app down. I gave myself a half hour for that kind of phone use. It’s enough to see what I want to see on youtube.
- Overall internet limit. I gave myself a little over an hour for this one. I tend to research a lot on safari during my downtime at work or at home, but you can bet that limit is not 5 stinking hours!
- Putting phone out of reach. I bought a smart watch. That way, if work or someone needs to get ahold of me, they can without me having connection to as many distractions.
- Giving myself the right congnative reminders.
What to remind yourself
The human brain has a way of hijacking itself into the wrong ways of coping. It doesn’t do so out of it’s own fault. Our brains evolved for hunting and gathering in predatory landscapes of scarecity. If there was a high calorie meal to be had, of course the brain should direct the primitive human to eat it. If there was a way to relax and recouperate without having to concentrate and run around, that was a good opportunity, too.
However, we all get to deal with days of plenty and brains that did not evolve to use smartphones, navigate websites, sit on chairs all day, etc. So, we need to tell ourselves how to properly unwind when it’s time, and wind when it’s time.
Here’s what I’m doing:
- When it’s time to take a brake, I make sure I’m looking away from a screen. Even just twenty seconds of looking away can help my eyes and mind relax.
- I exercise at least twenty minutes a day. The higher I get my heart rate, the better my energy is when I sit down to write again.
- I stand at least one minute every hour
- I take time to interact with others. Sometimes it’s just my dog. Since I’m a night shift man, he might be the only being up to listen to me.
- I understand that even if my mind craves brain sugar like scrolling videos, I know that the caveman inside me needs movement and true rest.
Just Remember What’s Important
You can give yourself all the phone blockers and reminders in the world and still not be perfect. I looked at my phone like ten times while writing this article. It’s 3 am (night shift, remember?) and I’m just surviving here, but that’s the real issue. Writers need to find ways to thrive in their craft and not just survive. I’ll keep working on this, and I hope my thoughts have helped you. Here’s a professional article on the effects of phones on productivity.
Happy Writing!!
