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.