Category: Essays

How often are we checking our mobile device (smart phone)? Four maybe five times a day? …… Lets be honest, we check at least once every 30 minutes, don’t we? Exactly what are we checking for? Social Media updates (posts, likes, comments, tweets, pics)?

Of course we do. We want those real time updates on friends, news, weather, pivotal issues, or maybe we just want some quick time filling entertainment on our feed/wall.

…….. But how much of this is adding any value to our lives? Are we using this information we are getting in any constructive way? Or is it just filler, clutter, garbage?

These are all the questions we should be asking ourselves when it comes to all the social media (or any media for that matter) that we expose ourselves to. If we come to the conclusion that our compulsion to check our devices is mostly for things that add no real value to our lives (quick pleasures, reflex, fear of missing out), then what we have is an addiction; plain and simple.

 

This digital age of convenience has opened up a new avenue for addiction.

 

I have recently realized that I am not immune to this. I also have got caught up in the excitement, the addictive quick pleasures of having my device inform me every time there is a new post/comment/like/message on my media feed.

So Step 1 is done for me (awareness of the problem). For me and anyone else who suffers from this addiction, here are some next steps to kicking the addiction, and getting actual value out of our digital media channels.

In no set order:

• Do some “house cleaning” on our real time feeds. Remove the pages, people, and groups on our feed that add no value. Remove the fluff. Avoid celeb news gossip feeds, ridiculous memes, attention hounds, and bias news.
• Change the real time notification settings to be OFF. We do not need a real time notification flag on how many likes we got on our post, or what our friends meal looks like. Is there anything that we truly need to know in real time?
• If our addiction has us going into our media app even without the flags so we can get the latest and greatest gossip and info, DELETE the app altogether. We can find out all that info later at a pre-determined time when we are at the computer. The time spent on social media is more intentional this way, and therefore more constructive. Shorter total time too.

Let’s free up our time and mental energy to focus on the here and now. Focus on the people and space around us. Once we do that, we will find a life more fulfilling.

Often times when it comes to setting goals, then commencing the journey toward that goal, we are discouraged by the tremendous process of getting to that goal. We have a tendency to step away from the specific details we should be focusing on right now, and look at the total process. It is at this point we are overwhelmed (leading to stress) and we have a hard time focusing on the single task we should be focusing on at this moment.

While having a scope of the total process is often valuable in planning our goals, it should not be part of our day to day thoughts and processes. Yes, the total scope should be revisited for the purposes of timeline maintenance, and making sure we are still on the right path, but ONLY for those reasons. And not that often. When we start thinking about the details of the future steps, and how many of them there are, THAT is when we get overwhelmed and so discouraged.

Instead …..focus only on one task at a time; all the way to completion of that task. Only move on to the next task once the previous is complete. The process of achieving our goals should be linear in design; with many baby steps toward getting there. By doing this we permit each baby step toward our goal to be it’s own “mini accomplishment” or “mini goal”. A goal worthy of its OWN mini-merits. When we do this, we will find that the process is smoother, more rewarding, and definitely more enjoyable.

I recall once speaking with a member of my bicycle club who did his own bike tour across the United States. This was over the course of three months; Atlantic to Pacific. I asked him “How is it that you kept motivated knowing you had SO MUCH LONGER TO GO?!” He said “I didn’t think of it as a LONG tour across the US. I just thought of it as many mini tours back to back. Each day I only thought of how far I’d be planning to go that day. I didn’t even keep track of how much progress I was making. I let GPS do that.”

When life gets complicated, when decisions become too much, never underestimate the value of a good walk outside. Benefits include:

• Fresh air and sunshine have a way of putting us in a meditative state to clear our minds of clutter and allow us to approach life and problems with a clear head.
• Being outside with nature can make us aware of the bigger picture. This has a way of just reminding how minuscule our problems really are. This in turn, has a way of simplifying them. The answer becomes clear.
• The obvious benefit is that it get us out, gets us moving. We are human beings, our health necessitates that we should be outside and in a constant state of motion.

 

If it helps, listen to soothing music during the walk. But I also highly recommend no music distraction at all. It is just as therapeutic to listen to the world around us; the sound of the breeze, rustling of leaves, even the hum of highway traffic. Listen to the sounds of our community.