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Rewiring Your Brain

Ironically enough, today after I got up, I sat down to get my first doses of digital distraction. This is usally checking Facebook, Reddit while perhaps playing some youtube videos in the background. The first video I watched today was this:

This guy is a medical doctor who talks about how our individual and collective cognitive capacity has been eroded because of what he called digital novelty. Doom scrolling, as goes the common parlance. I decided to take some notes from the video.

Some passive suggestions he gave can be summed up as:

• no scroll mornings
• no scrolling before deep work
• no phone, no feed, no digital novelty, no short form content

He had some active suggestions as well:

• use friction causing devices like the brick app which prevents you from going to problematic apps.
• 10-30 minute deep work reps. Use Pomodoro - 25 minutes of deep work, followed by a 10 minute break.
• at least one or two 30-60 minute blocks per day.
• go for a walk, read a book, call a friend and have a joyful conversation, not drama

Obviously, I’d already messed this up for today, but now I have this small summary that I can refer to. I did take the moment and did not continue to more videos. I had another hour before I had to leave for work. I came up an idea that rather than use a timer, i decided to use a 25 minute non-vocal piece of work, the first side of Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells” album. While playing this, I: - got dressed - made two salads for today’s and tomorrow’s lunch - did the dishes - loaded my backpack with the items I needed

Because Tubular Bells is a piece that I am well familiar with, I could tell where I was in the 25 minute sprint, so I could measure where I was. I’ve tried the Pomodoro method before. It involves setting a 25 minute timer and concentrating on a task for that time, and when the timer goes off, setting a 10 minute timer to do the other things - take a rest, whatever. Then you’re supposed to set another 25 minute timer. I’ve almost never succeeded in this because when the 10 minute timer goes off, I’m engaged in the scroll. I wonder, now, if setting up a known-length song or video might help with this. Something to experiment with.

It’s become a commonly disccussed strategy to put your phone somewhere that isn’t your nightstand.

How to avoid the scrolling trap

7 day challenge

• every morning no scrolling for the first hour
• 10-20 minute deep work session
• 10-15 minutes of dual & back (need to relisten to the video to get what he was talking about)

ETA: last night I left my phone outside the bedroom, and didn’t look at it until just a few minutes before I went to work. Got a few things done. It was a little weird noticing as I was laying there in the hammock, wanting to reach for it. and it wasn’t there. And when I woke up, it also wasn’t there.