Digital Junk Food
Those of you who know me are already aware of my fascination with social media and smartphones. Since my year-long sabbatical last year, I’ve been trying to get the word out about the damage that too much “device time” can do.
Smartphones distract us whether they are on, off, in our pockets, or on a table, and they command our attention even when they are not our own. The best solution for preventing smartphone distraction is to remove it from the picture altogether — Steve Magness
Although this article from Srinivas Rao is over a year old it is fascinating. Basically, Rao makes the case that we shouldn’t touch our devices the first three hours of the day. Just think about that for a second. How many people do you know can do that?
Rao contests that spending time on the Internet or your smartphone is like eating donuts and candy for breakfast … productivity the rest of the day is either challenging or impossible.
The author suggests a couple of ideas:
- Don’t use your devices on the morning
- Read books, not the internet
- Do one hour of deep work (totally uninterrupted time)
I’ve tried all three of these. They are all challenging, but I can tell the difference in my energy and my creativity when I even follow one of these ideas.
Something that wasn’t too difficult was removing Facebook from my phone entirely. It’s been three weeks now and I haven’t missed it at all. Everything I post on Facebook (about once a week) is on the desktop (btw, the desktop version is truly horrible these days. Facebook obviously puts all their energy on the mobile version).
The following was an excerpt from Joe’s newsletter. Only subscribers receive the full version.