Inaccurate Brainstorming

setting boundaries- notes on technology usage

The default position for new technology is to use any piece of technology where there is an apparent benefit. While intuitive, this seems to ignore the basic fact that there's at least psychic and sometimes financial costs. Tacitly knowing how to use 700 apps and having 13 windows open at all times has, for me, caused major mental strain, especially given how much of my work is answering "how do I use " questions.

I truly appreciate some of the benefits of the smartphones, PCs, and smart TVs, but I find it useful to set personal boundaries with my use of technology, only for my own sanity. Here are three ways I am personally pushing back against the machine.

1. No Scrolling

Endless feed scrolling is a way to choose to stop thinking and be advertised to for free, and an exchange of mindless entertainment is not an exchange I am willing to make.

To this date, I avoid use of any application with an endless feed, and do what I can to prevent YouTube, my preferred source of video content, from feeding me shorts (hint: you can set a shorts time limit to 0 minutes). As a replacement to scrolling, I keep a physical book, an audiobook, and a whole cache of e-books on iBooks so my phone and iPad always have something healthier to jump to when I get the urge to use my phone.

2. Quit Social Media

Some things are fundamentally Out to Get You.
They seek resources at your expense. Fees are hidden. Extra options are foisted upon you. Things are made intentionally worse, forcing you to pay to make it less worse. Least bad deals require careful search. Experiences are not as advertised. What you want is buried underneath stuff you don’t want. Everything is data to sell you something, rather than an opportunity to help you.
-Zvi Mowshowitz, Out to Get You

Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and Snapchat are out to get you. TANSTAAFL, and where a company is willing to give you a product for "free", it is worth considering whether we are consumers or the product. In addition to providing the aforementioned endless scroll of mental junk food, we replace the real socialization of physical community with a curated view of our life that we post for our friends, while we view theirs between digital billboard after digital billboard.

As far as replacements go, I'll provide seven options that I default to.

  1. Ask a friend for dinner.
  2. Go on a date.
  3. Call your parents, they probably miss you.
  4. Perform an actual act of self care (work out, take supplements, cook healthy food, go to therapy). Note that drinking half a bottle of wine or whiskey while ordering Doordash is not a reasonable replacement.
  5. Sort through the pile of Magic cards you've been putting off.
  6. Donate and throw out shit you don't need.
  7. Sit with your mortality, knowing that the peace of sitting with your time before you figure out what to do with the next 15 minutes is preferable to giving your attention over to advertisers while pretending to socialize.

3. The Secular Sabbath

One more useful attribute of the Jewish Sabbath is the extent to which its rigid rules generate friction in emergency situations. If your community center is not within walking distance, if there is not enough slack in your schedule to prep things a day in advance, or you are too poor to go a day without work, or too locally isolated to last a day without broadcast entertainment, then things are not okay. /n-Benjamin Hoffman, Sabbath Hard and Go Home

As an atheist sympathetic to Orthodox Christianity (either the Eastern or Catholic variety), I was well acquainted to the benefits of rules as a way to sanction healthy living. Even so, when I first read Zvi and Benjamin's pieces on the Jewish Sabbath, I was initially skeptical of taking a whole day of disconnecting. That said, my wife is prone to telling me that I am bad at relaxing (she's right), and requiring myself to sit and reflect without connection to the external world has proved extremely useful. This is the most recent habit I have implemented, but current results are promising.

Here's a brief of the rules I try to keep, both with respect to technology and in facilitating broader rest.

Rules

  1. From 18:00 Friday to 18:00 Saturday, (mostly) no screens. My phone, iPad, and laptop all go in a specific box near my fireplace. Desktop PC is shut off. I allow use of my Nook as all it can really do is read books, and isn't connected to the internet. I'm also allowed to use the screen on my microwave to warm up food.
  2. No exercise. I schedule my lifting outside the window as I use screens to facilitate my lifting and find the exertion of exercising to be against the spirit of rest.
  3. No projects. While I allow myself to slowly and quietly do menial chores like dishes, laundry, etc, I refrain from creating things. This includes project planning for post-sabbath.
  4. No unplanned commerce. Insofar as I'm going to spend money, I have to use cash rather than credit cards, and have a plan ahead of sabbath of how that money is going to be spent.
  5. No cooking after the Friday meal. All food is prepped in advance with the exception of protein shakes as they're not really "prepared" so much as simply combined. I often fast on the sabbath, but find it good to have some lean protein or vegetables if I need some sustenance.

Practices

At 18:00 on Friday, I put away all aforementioned technology and light my tobacco pipe to signify the sabbath beginning. After smoking, I will begin cooking my Friday meal, either lean protein for myself or a free meal for my wife and I (often Italian, since she misses when we ate pasta with homemade sauce all the time before we started our cuts). I frequently go to the lounge Friday to celebrate the day of rest, typically socializing or reading. Throughout Saturday, I'll tackle some menial chores, read more, smoke my pipe or cigars, or play board games with my wife.

I do not know that a healthy relationship with technology requires a sabbath, but a healthy departure from technology to remind ourselves what the real world is like may be a useful tool.

In the End, We Must all Log Off

Without getting too morbid, I do not think we have an infinite number of hours to experience the joys the world has to offer. As such, I think it worth considering how we best spend them. I'm too young to be sure of any specifics, but I have a feeling refraining from overconnectedness and overconsumption is likely a good starting point.