Annmarie O’Connor
Taking a retreat from the internet can play a big role in reaching a happy medium in life, writes Annmarie O’Connor
Mindless entertainment is a guilty pleasure – but when it creates a mental muffin top, then it’s time to cut back on the cognitive calories. A low-tech fast may appear gimmicky until you take a look at your browser history. Do I hear a whistle blowing? That’s the irony about gadgets: they know all of our juicy search secrets, but they also facilitate our fetishes.
It’s no wonder we can’t think straight. Our hyper-connectivity is what has us permanently poised in a runner’s lunge, ready to dash at the first incoming notification. Still think you’re immune to the temptation? Let’s play a little game.
- Have you ever suffered from ‘ringxiety’ – the overwhelming urge to check your smartphone regardless of where you are and whether it is even ringing?
- Have you ever felt a buzzing sensation in your pocket only to discover it was a fauxcellarm?
- Have you ever experienced phantom limb – that strange sensation when you forget your phone and feel like something is missing?
- Have you ever walked into a lamppost/bollard/another person/oncoming traffic (delete as appropriate) while texting, browsing or snapping?
- Have you ever tried to swipe or scroll through menus, magazines or books?
If you answered yes to even one of these questions, then you, my friend, might be suffering from nomophobia (the fear of being out of mobile phone contact). My advice? Consider giving this digital detox a try.
The aim of this process is to kickstart your mental metabolism. By releasing the pesky toxins (brain fog, forgetfulness, distraction) that build up over time from repeated gadget use, you’ll not only increase your attention span but improve its quality and direction too. What’s more, you’ll begin to regain that crucial online-offline balance – the Holy Grail we’d all follow, if we weren’t already following it on Instagram.
Here’s the drill. There are two options: the master cleanse and the mini cleanse. In an ideal world, you’d supersize it with a two-week master and top up on a regular basis with the mini cleanse to reap the sustained benefits of a tech time-out.
Regime
A few things to bear in mind: as with any withdrawal regime, the initial elimination phase can be a humdinger. Expect what’s commonly referred to as a ‘healing crisis’.
In other words, prepare to feel cranky, fidgety and or/fit to be tied. These feelings, although anti-social, are key to understanding how you’ve been allocating your attention. The stronger the sense of unease, the more you’ll benefit from easing offline, so put on your big-girl pants and tough it out.
A small caveat: don’t embark on this detox if you are currently dieting, planning a wedding, playing host to long-lost relatives or doing anything that requires a full-frontal display of your mental and emotional faculties. The second you hit a speed wobble, your willpower levels will clap out and you’ll be trolling celebrity gossip sites in a moment of weakness.
Likewise, if you work in an industry that requires regular online usage, travel a lot or are expected to be on call, be realistic and opt for a mini cleanse – a mere 48 hours of your time. Unless, of course, you’ve planned a week’s getaway, which would be the perfect opportunity to disconnect.
Finally, let me clarify one more thing. As drastic as a blanket ban may seem, there’s a method to my madness. Habits are formed and stored in a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which dates back to our cave-people days, This prehistoric PA keeps the cognitive cogs in motion by making habits ‘automatic’ once they’ve been mastered. She then files them away under ‘unconscious’, allowing the conscious mind to get on with being the big boss.
So effective is the basal ganglia at office admin, she keeps track of everything – for life. In other words, habits never disappear. Ever. Which means those sneaky hours updating your Pinterest boards are on your permanent record.
The good news? The brain can’t distinguish between a good and a bad habit, which means it holds your peerless PowerPoint skills in equal esteem. Score! Over time and with repetition, habits happen without our permission and often with little persuasion.
The bad news? These habits become so unconscious that it only takes the smallest trigger to access them from our memory, the smallest distraction to catch us on the hop and – BAM!
Remember when your mother would take away a toy so you could “think about what you’ve done”? Well, the principle of the digital detox is more or less the same. Mothers are smart like that. By disrupting the reward cycle that is holding your attention captive to the internet, your conscious mind is given more space to consider the ramifications of its less salubrious habits.
This detox really does rely on you to do the graft, which is why you have to want to do it and why you have to have a juicy award at the end of the process to make this worthwhile. It’s a tough one, but if you’re serious about creating balance and finding that middle ground for yourself, it all starts here.
The Master Cleanse: Abstinence
Objective: To put the kibosh on multitasking and create more conscious internet usage patterns; to eliminate distractions and increase attention spans.
Best for: Heavy or habitual users.
Timeframe: One week.
You’ll need:
- A notebook and a pen to record the experience.
- To remove every app from every device (including email – unless it’s essential to your word). This means putting headphones on ice too.
- To install a site-blocking extension on your laptop/desktop browser for a seven-day period.
- A task team to keep you accountable. In other words, tell everyone you know. There’s nothing people like more than to play bad cop, given half a chance and a bag of peanut M&Ms.
- A ‘competing response’ (psychology-speak for an alternative behaviour with personal resonance) to keep you occupied along the way. For example, reading a book, regular walks or embarking on a pet project you’ve put on pause.
- A reward for successfully completing the process. This will motivate you to focus on the bigger picture. Aim for something super sensory like an aromatherapy massage, killer seats at a sold-out concert or a slap-up meal at your favourite restaurant.
Process: Keep a daily record of the experience in your notebook. Notice how it makes you feel (nervous, irritable, empty, relieved) and how these emotions evolve throughout the week.
- Pay attention to any behaviours pursuant to not achieving your desired reward: minimising, bargaining, gnashing and grinding of teeth.
- Keep tabs on any rewards you thought you would miss:
– Did you survive without checking Facebook every six minutes?
– How does the new sense of mental space feel: liberating, calming, excruciating?
– Did it make you more or less anxious not to hear notifications on your phone?
- Jot down the new things you notice, paying attention to the five senses: sight, sound, smell, touch and taste. For example, the smell of coffee, the sounds of the city.
- At the end of the week, replace the removed apps and disable any site-blocking extensions. Honourably discharge your family and friends.
- Keep your notebook for another week, but skip journaling for the first five days. Allow your conscious mind to regain its usual focus and routine before checking in on day six. When you do, pay attention to the following:
– How do you feel now? Are you calmer? Is decision-making easier or more difficult? Were you forced to satisfice more or rely on your intuition without having a search engine at hand?
– Has your usage changed? Did you decide to evict any pointless apps that were occupying your digital real estate? Have you determined which ones give your life ease and flow? For me it’s online banking, Uber or Hailo taxi booking services, Google Maps (I have zero sense of direction) and Mindbody (a wellness app that allows me to book into local yoga or gym classes around the country). Everything else is negotiable.
– Are you more conscious of when, where and why you reach for your phone or tablet, multitask or mindlessly browse?
– Did you find an opportunity for doing and noticing other things or was it just a drag?
– Did you rely more on your competing response to help you? How did it feel to realise the potential in something you’d neglected?
– Did you quit the cleanse? If so, why? Was the habit too ingrained or was the social anxiety just too much?
Allowing for time offline lets us upgrade our attention with intention – applied mindfulness in action. It also creates space for reconnecting with those pursuits that add layers to our day-to-day existence.
By becoming more conscious of what you expect from your time, you’re better positioned to make more deliberately satisfying choices and approach your happy medium.
Edited extract from The Happy Medium: Swap the Weight of having it all for Having More with Less by Annmarie O’Connor, published by Gill.