Disclaimer: this post won’t be much about the technical aspect on how to do the digital detox – not necessarily none, but it will mostly contain (unimportant) non-technical aspect such as personal motivation and reflection which mostly opinions as well as hypothesis.

What is your reflex after waking up from sleep? I am wondering how much people that will answer other than grab the phone, let’s say taking wudhu or wushu :p, because I will indeed give an applause. Personally, I would admit that I am on the group that will grab my phone right after waking up. I will either open WhatsApp or Instagram or Twitter right after my eyes open. The questions, would it be valid if I call it an addictive behaviour? When is my first realization on this behaviour? How to cope with it? So, here is my journey (which not ends yet).

Earlier of April 2020, I read a book, “Digital Minimalism”, written by Carl Newport. I am basically practicing the minimalist lifestyle for quite some time *counting *, around 5 years. Yet so far, I never really touch the area of digital minimalism other than not buying an expensive gadget. Well would say this is more due to my frugality (red:ini sih karena faktor kismin aja sih *grin*). To be clearer, the digital that is defined in this book is basically the communication technology that we now regularly use – yet I think most people nowadays will agree that it’s a mobile phone, the smart one.

Figure 1 Sorry I cannot relate, folks

 

In the book, Newport philosophically and practically emphasizes on how to use digital platform in an optimum level, so we can grab more benefits aside from the-not-so-wanted effect. To me personally, I get the benefit of feeling updated and connected to things beyond myself. For example, I feel like updated with the last trend that happened by scrolling Twitter timeline. Pressing love button on my high school friend’s post gives me sense that I interact with them, or in other occasion, I get the thrill of having my post to be liked and commented by people – feeling appreciated and validated.

However, the versatile effects are also as immense as the digital platform itself. Here I am just going to echoing at least three points Newport mentioned in the book (well, only what I remember though). First, it brings us to an addictive behaviour. Second, as the platform feels like an ocean of information, there is a big probability for us to drown into it and taking all of our attention which then in the end makes us feel overwhelmed. It doesn’t stop there, it is drowned us to a solitude deprivation, which unfortunately have more difficulty to connect with our own self. Last, we would be finally finding the connection we build through the digital platform is a superficial one, we connect but we don’t really connect. You know what I mean, hashtag not-an-articulate-one-yet.

Figure 2https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/cell-phone-addiction#symptoms

Long story short, I didn’t happen to try the practical guide that’s written in the Digital Minimalism. I planned to do it right after reading the book, around April. All sudden, I felt like it didn’t disturb me that bad, so I didn’t have any urgency to do it. Moreover, that was first months of COVID-19 quarantine which makes my brain convince me to withdraw the plan as I need to see what happened beyond my 5x5 room through my ‘brainy’ phone.

Oh, but I made to implement one of the suggestions: to install “Moment”, an app to track the usage of applications on the phone. It is quite helpful as it has a reminder feature that will knock us if we have excessive amount of social media usage.  Until one day, I finally realized I have no more cared about “Moment”. I just keep scrolling and scrolling, seeing all stories in Instagram, spending more than 6 hours holding my smartphone.

At that one-month period of addiction, I have less appetite to read books, do exercise, learn something new, or work. My to-do-list was never optimally ticked. I was literally eating with the left-hand holding phone and watching YouTube. I was having Teams (meant to say similar like Zoom) meeting inattentively with my hand scrolling Twitter and Instagram timeline.  Gladfully, the moment of realization came quick. At this moment, I’ve finally got the urgency of having digital detox as I need to get away from this unhealthy behaviour and not to linger to this tiny-rectangle-thing-that-have-shiny-and-captivating-screen.

So here comes the technical-how story. Basically, my reference on how to do it is mainly from the steps that already explained by Newport in his “Digital Minimalism” book, and custom it to my needs and condition. The steps here is written subsequently as the execution.

1. Enlist and self-diagnose the dopamine level from each of activity we mostly do in a week, includes the digital activities as much as possible.

I got the inspiration to do this from YouTube video which discuss about the dopamine detox (link: https://youtu.be/9QiE-M1LrZk ). I personally think this step is helpful in mapping the causes that make us stick to our smartphone then abandon some of the other activities such as reading book – in the perspective of the inside-body reaction.

Based on my list, most of the activities that has got 5 stars for the dopamine level, are digital activities such as opening Instagram, watching YouTube, scrolling Twitter, and watching Netflix. I scored them 5, based on the feeling of “happy” when I use the apps and as a comparation to the other activities.

And the other analog activities that I need to do such as: reading book, writing blog have below 3 stars. I use this step to plan my detox activities, what I should stop to use during the digital detox and the substitution of the activities during the time.

2. Set the schedule for the digital detox and don’t forget to make the rule of the game as well

I did the digital detox for a month, and other people might find that a month is too long. Therefore, the length of time really depends on you. I preferred to do 1 month to ensure that it becomes a new habit, longer better.

And setting rule of the game is also essential to ensure we have clear path and we don’t easily give up the detox. My own rule of the game is I still allowed myself to use Instagram for working purpose, I can use YouTube for finding reference (understanding something), I uninstalled Twitter for a month, No Netflix at all. And I tried as best as I can to follow the rule of the game I made and accomplish the 1-month challenge.

3. Evaluate your digital detox weekly and spare time to do reflection

Every week, I evaluate the effectiveness of the digital detox. Such as checking on the tracking apps, “Moment”, to check whether my digital consumption on my smartphone is declining or not. The first week of the digital detox is honestly super hard. It feels like being prisoned as I couldn’t open my daily one-click-away apps. But after doing it for some time, we will survive and make the time as your reflection about what’s most important to you.

I do admit that in this era, we live in a dualism: as human-being in real life and in digital. But with the digital detox time, I have time to sort my digital existence preferences and balance it with my real existence (hope you understand what I mean lol!)

 

4.      In the end, somehow, we will get back to our previous digital habit, then just repeat this digital detox to reset our system.