But that’s not what most people experience. In reality, Burkeman said, whatever you’re working on triggers an unpleasant emotion in you — perhaps boredom, or fear of not being able to complete the task at hand, or concern about not having enough time. You take refuge in your phone in order to escape those uncomfortable feelings.
Once there, it’s designed to keep your attention and suck up your day. But the thing to keep in mind, he said, is “the idea of distraction as starting inside us, and not simply being a case of evil Silicon Valley companies stealing away our focus.” That way, we’re in charge. When the uncomfortable emotions arise, we can recognize them, and we’re better equipped to resist.
Change your address.
The thing I miss the most about my week without tech is the feeling I had that real life is all there was. There wasn’t a parallel universe online where I had duties and chores and a persona to maintain. I only had to exist in one realm. Burkeman suggests, instead of attempting to eradicate social media, that we work on “switching our default setting” to real life. “Remind yourself that your real life is here in your physical surroundings and talking to people and doing things,” he said, adding, “Make social media somewhere you go instead of the place you live.”
To reinforce the concept, put distance between yourself and the dings and pings: Keep your phone at least 10 feet from your workstation during the day, off your night stand at night, and turn off alerts and push notifications all the time, advised Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, an internal medicine physician at Harvard Medical School and the author of “The 5 Resets,” a new book on stress and resilience.
Go analog.
Celeste Headlee, a journalist and the author of the book “Do Nothing,” recently invested in a cuckoo clock. “Apps have been designed to steal our attention by encouraging us to lose track of the minutes that pass,” she said. The hourly cuckoo-ing of her clock causes her to look up and become cognizant of how long she’s been lost in her devices. Similarly, when she needs to focus, she turns over a 30- or 60-minute hourglass. When she’s tempted to reach for her phone, the glass serves as a reminder that just a few minutes have passed since she began a task.
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