We live our lives online. It’s a lot more convenient than having to queue at the bank, or wait 28 days for delivery. Online meetings and working from home are a way of life for a lot of us now. It’s getting harder and harder to escape the lure of going online. I’ve noticed an increase in technology creep (using the internet for leisure rather than work or chores) everywhere.
Time spent bent over a screen or phone has a way of stretching on and on. You glance at the news headlines, and start Googling the people or places mentioned, or click on an advert. The next thing you know, half an hour has vanished down a barrel wave of surfing.
I wrote here about The Organised Writer by Antony Johnston. This book has helped me streamline my working day. I’m now much more productive. I began trying out his ideas on 4th January this year. One of his suggestions was to keep writing during your dedicated writing sessions, rather than breaking off to look things up online.
The ideal is to take notes as you go, then have one big research session when your writing time is over. This means I now do nothing but creative writing each morning. Each afternoon, I go through the notes I’ve made while working and only then check things online, make phone calls, or book appointments.
Keeping a firm boundary between writing time and non-writing activities has definitely helped. Only when I’ve finished writing do I move on to research. Once I’ve finished that, I can surf the net with a clear conscience.
This system has worked so well that over the past four weeks I’ve written several short stories and submitted them, added 5k to my work in progress, blogged every week —and my accounts are up to date!
This increase in my productivity reminded me of how I laughed when I first read Now is the Winter of our Disconnect by Susan Maushart. Who on earth would spend as much time on line as her kids do? I thought back in 2011.
To my horror, I discovered in 2022 that I have grown into that person.
Without realising it, more and more of the time I’d been spending online was being wasted in pointless surfing from research topics, to news headlines, via online stores, social media and back again. There’s a place in my life for all these great things, but the internet is like fire. It’s a terrific servant, but a terrible master.
Flitting from writing, to one search topic, and then another before (with luck!) going back to writing is no way to work.
I’m now trying to take Antony Johnston’s suggestion about staying offline while writing one step further. During a scheduled net-surfing session I came across the concept of Tech Shabbat (or Sabbath). This term was coined in 2011 by Tiffany Shlain and Ken Goldberg, and is inspired by the US’s National Day of Unplugging campaign.
On one day each week I now close down my computer at 5pm on the dot. It, and my ipad, stays shut away in my office until 5pm the following day. Instead of checking the smallest little thing online whenever the fancy takes me, I have to wait until 5pm the following day. That’s twenty-four hours of tech-free time I can use to write, read, think, look at the stars, and rediscover life beyond computers.
Well, that’s the theory!
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to wean myself away from technology entirely. I choose the day I’m going to switch off according to my schedule of work rather than sticking to one regular day of the week. That isn’t in the spirit of the original Tech Sabbath. Neither is taking my phone with me everywhere, although for the twenty-four hours away from my computers I use it as a radio only, and never phone, message, or surf. I’m devoted to Radio 4, 4 Extra, and Audible books, and like to listen to them while I’m cooking or gardening. I haven’t been able to sever that cord yet.
Being flexible about the day of the week and keeping my phone in my pocket is cheating. I should work on those two sticking points as a Lent challenge this year. Now that really WOULD be tough!
Have you ever tried to cut down on your screen time? What was the result?