Do you have a smartphone? That’s really a silly question. What decade am I living in? Being a sci-fi writer, I’m not so sure.
The dystopia within the utopia we live in is rooted in our pockets, I’m pretty sure, unless you have one of those giant phones that won’t fit in your pockets. Then it’s probably always in your hand. I’ve had a few friends like that.
What’s the big deal about phones?
Back in 2012, I had kind of missed the smart phone revolution. I’d been living in South America for a while in some pretty poor places and had been using the cheapest of the old bricks. Before that, I’d had a flip phone, and that’s what pretty much everyone had. Blackberry’s were like, super fancy.
So you can imagine my awe and surprise when I saw everyone with smartphones, using them to navigate places, track their exercise, order stuff, and more than anything: Surf the big fat web.
I wanted one, so I got one.
What has followed since those sweet sweet days of 2013 has been an endless fight for my attention span. I don’t think I was prepared for the time my fantastic little screens over the years would suck out of my eyeballs, or how mentally fatiguing a long scroll sesh could be. I remember telling my parents when I went back to a flip phone for a while that I felt like my smartphone was “death to creativity.”
That was a little dramatic of me, but how far off was I? We’re all used to smartphones now. The buzz of the negative they might bring is gone. No one talks about road atlases or mapquest. It’s getting harder and harder to get lost, and smartphones have even made getting in strangers’ cars cool.
So yeah, it’s the way we’ve come as society, what’s the big deal?
I feel the deal sometimes. I feel it when I sit down to write for an hour and I get distracted by “research” that really wasn’t that. It’s infuriating sometimes. Can you relate?
The big deal is that we as creative human beings have to invite boredom, have to avoid getting brain high jacked long enough to have our own ideas.
Hang on, I’m back. Just checked my phone.
What tools do I have for this battle?
I’m glad you asked.
Too many to put in a short blog article. If you want some entertainment, see just how big of a branch in the tech industry has grown out of trying to help people limit their use of the tech industry.
But as a personal writer’s blog, I do want to highlight one that I’ve started using, and it’s built right into my phone: The Screentime i0S app. Basically the function is simple, and it suits my needs. If you feel like you want to use something that you pay for, drop what you like in the comments because I bet another reader would like the suggestions.
Screentime has a variety of functions. First, you can set limits to the time you spend on certain apps. You just click on the app you want to limit, and then set the time you want the app to run. These limits will then apply to whatever device you use under the same apple ID.
Next, you can also set restrictions on the type of content you view, helpful for many, I’m sure.
What are the benefits of limiting screentime for creativity?
I’m sure there are studies to quote here and data for teens and adults, but ultimately I think it comes down to outcomes you want to have. For me, I’m operating these days under the hope that I can continually make my life an increase of creative output. In other words, I want to create more than I want to consume.
That isn’t to say I don’t consume. I read and listen to a few books a month. I watch tons of movies and tv shows. And I play a lot of video games. These are all hobbies that I believe support my ability to create a narrative, and to widen my imaginative horizons where my experience can’t render a scene.
But I think I know intuitively why these activities feel better than a phone scroll, and I’m convinced its in the span of the activity. Reading, watching, playing, are long form content. They each take up hours if not days of my attention span and make me think and imagine.
On a phone, I’m most likely consuming short content, quick laughs or otherwise, and its so creatively fatiguing. Do you feel the same? If I’ve been buzzing around my phone during a slow hour, I am not ready to write. I have to reset. But if I’ve been reading, I’m ready to go.
That’s where we circle back
I believe that phone screentime is a writer’s worst enemy. I think my 2014 instincts were right, and that unchecked my phone consumption hampers my ability to crank out the 2 or 3 thousand words I’d love to have written by the end of the day.
Should I get a flip phone again? Probably not, ’cause I’ll get lost, but that’s the fight now. Focus on creating, focus on being in the moment, focus on letting the mind wander its own paths.
TTFN,
Dan
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