Reclaiming attention #

2022-02-13 #

I am back from a big trip and want to invest some time in trying to reclaim my attention from my phone. Here are my rules for the coming weeks:

• no news except on weekends (and mornings?)
• notice when flickering between things and purposefully bring attention back (meditation)
• make emacs my “home screen”

2021-06-02 #

I’m thinking a lot lately about much I use my phone. How much of a habit it has become to fill any idle time with a quick check of the phone; that swift and muscle-memory-ingrained motion that whips the device from the pocket, unlocks it and brings up some content. Even though I quit Facebook and other social media some time ago, I still check the news, Twitter (which for some reason, I guess because I don’t follow people I actually know, never registered as social media in my head), Hackernews and a bunch of other sites constantly. I’m becoming convinced it’s entirely a compulsive habit that I need to break. The phone should be for essential communication, navigation, taking photos and reading in moderation and with purpose. My attention is a valuable resource, it can be used for anything I choose, and I’m fed up with wasting hours of it a day (and in the most asinine way, in little two-minute chunks that could add up to something interesting but instead add up to nothing).