There is an expression, maybe from the I Ching, "when the student is ready the teacher will appear." My last post on "Digital Addiction" was hardly stalled in my iPhone, when it seemed that everywhere I turned, I was encountering something about the deleterious effects of digital addiction. I hadn't even realized that there even was such a thing as digital addiction until about six weeks ago. Now I am bumping into it everywhere.
First, though, I owe a report about how well I did, or more precisely didn't do, during my effort to walk away from my devices for one day. I found that every few minutes I would start to do something that involved one or another device. I would catch myself at least half the time, but that suggests that half of the time I mindlessly turned to the radio, iPhone, notebook, or television. Most of the time, I noticed within seconds, but at 5 p.m., I abandoned the experiment and decided that I would wait until my staycation. My little experiment has been a good lesson in not being present.
I am now six days into my annual vacation at home, and I realized two things going into my leave. First, I really needed to be off devices more. Second, going cold turkey was not going to work for me since I did want to arrange lunches, coffee, or drinks and other outings with friends, and doing so would require one or more of my devices. So, rather than shutting down all devices for 10 days, I took an approach we might call mini-withdrawals.
With my mini-withdrawals, I have brought more conscious to my use of electronics. That allowed me to actually choose when I wanted/needed to use by devices and be aware of how much of the time I was turning to them out of pure habit...and addiction. It has also allowed me to choose more consciously what I will watch or listen to. I quickly discovered that I often had something mindless on in the background just to fill space rather than because I really wanted to watch or listen.
How has this actually worked? When I was cooking for a dinner party Friday night and Saturday, I normally have had NPR, a podcast, Spanish lesson, or audiobook in the background. I made the decision to cook in silence. My cooking became a meditation. I was able to really be present. My guests arrived and I was relaxed and present to them.
This evening I walked about 20 minutes to the hardware store to pick up some things, and again normally, I would have been listening to something. I made the conscious decision to just leave the iPhone in the charger. I ended up having a leisurely shopping trip during which I was able to just enjoy looking...and a little buying.
I took a book to read on my commute to a lunchtime concert at the Library of Congress rather than my usual practice of catching up with email and reading The Washington Post on my phone, while listening to podcasts or TuneIn Radio. I was enjoying the book so much that I just left my phone in my purse until I got home, and when I was present, I decided to have a lingering lunch rather than putting myself on autopilot and jumping on the Metro to return home.
When sitting by the pool yesterday, I didn't check anything on my iPhone, but I do confess to loving the "Ocean Waves" soundtrack in the background while I read. I was able to actually get into the book I was reading and with which I had been struggling for two weeks while reading a couple paragraphs before checking some device.
While I do find the level of my descension into this addiction distressing, given the number of places I've been bumping into media coverage of the problem, I am not alone. Last night on the shuttle from the Metro to the Kennedy Center, where we can safely assume everyone is going to enjoy a live performance, a woman was totally freaking out that she'd forgotten her iPhone. I was glad that I'd decided to turn mine off until I was headed home. It ended up that I was so relaxed from not looking all evening, that I didn't even look at the phone until I was home.
In the last two weeks, I've discovered a Digital Detox Boot Camp in the jungles of Costa Rica, where they take people's devices and lock them up for a week, while providing lots of physical activity to distract participants during withdrawal. In the coverage about the event, I learned that the average American looks as his/her smartphone every 4 minutes! Given that I do often go hours without looking at mine, I felt some righteous relief with that data point.
During a conference that I attended last week, I learned that there is actually a name for what happens to people who spend too much time on their devices: Cognitive Capacity Overload. The symptoms are the same as ADHD--Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, including inability to focus and really be present to what one is doing.
Just this evening on a Freakonomics Podcast--yes, I am still listening, but I have been much more judicious and have deleted about 3/4 of the podcasts to which I would normally have listened. Anyway, the podcast was exploring the health concerns related to lack of sleep, and you guessed, it all of our screens contribute to difficulty falling asleep and the quality of sleep once we do.
I love my iPhone, and it does provide me with efficiencies and effectiveness that I otherwise couldn't enjoy. (Thank you, Google Maps.) I am sure even those who will sojourn to Costa Rica for serious cold turkey withdrawal will pick their devices up again when they return. However, I have learned enough from my little experiment into mini-withdrawals to know that I will do them more frequently. The quality of my relaxation and the relaxation in my work is dramatically improved. And, I am able to embrace that most difficult of spiritual lessons: being present...in the present.
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