Once upon a time I would start doomscrolling when I woke up. I realised it was causing mental fatigue way too early in the day, so I switched to writing morning pages instead. I’ve been on an unbroken streak for morning pages since october 2021. Recently I’ve begun to wonder if my morning pages habit had caused me to be somewhat inflexible. That time of the day is usually when my mind feels the freshest. I could use it for writing or some form of creative work. Sometimes just the mere act of writing morning pages can be mentally fatiguing. I could write evening pages instead I guess, but I am so used to my routine that it seems difficult to break.
It is just so easy to slip into auto-pilot mode in life. Since every day can be just a repeat of yesterday, we can simply go on an unquestioned loop. Ageing makes it harder to break out of these loops, because we gain less and less exposure to new experiences, or we lose interest in gaining them. At some point in life we just have much less energy, so we just want to stick to something comfortable.
I have a keyboard I bought eons ago because I wanted to learn how to play. As usual I hyperfocused on it at the beginning and burnt out. The story of my life. So I stopped learning, because the burn out made the idea of playing it feel fatiguing. These days I thought I should give it a try again because I think I am better at pacing and chunking now – am I – but somehow it seems so difficult to just start?
I think the problem with the mobile phone (at least for me) is not addiction per se, but it is just so easy to default to it when there is some space in time. It seems way harder to uncover the keyboard, see if the electricity plug exists, plug it in, find a suitable app for lessons, and actually go through the initial difficulty of learning.
Picking up the phone and finding something to browse seems way easier. And before I know it, it has been three hours just randomly scrolling rubbish.
It is the same with anything else that is actually worth doing. It requires a deliberate quietening down of the mind to gain enough focus so that we can start the task. The phone does not demand the same of us. It can be endlessly scrolled even if we are mentally exhausted. It is exhausting us further silently but we do not care, because it is right here and right now and all we need is our eyes to move and our fingers to flick.
The weird thing is I know exactly what is the issue but still the inertia overwhelms me. I am starting to truly believe when they say the smart phone is bad for us. It is not that the technology is bad per se, but it is ease it brings into our lives. Since it is so easy, why do anything else?
The smartphone has enlarged my life in many ways, but it has made me smaller too. It is worse because tech is my first love. I actually really like it, so it is difficult to create a distance from it. People are numb to the wonderful things that tech can do, but I still marvel about it on a daily basis. I still think it is incredible that I can type these words and you can read it the moment I click a button.
I am starting to realise how difficult it is to live an intentional life. That we intend to do something, and actually really do it. It is just so easy to be in auto-pilot mode, and the phone is always there to ease any potential boredom that may be a creative seed in disguise. Here I think about Craig Mod writing about boredom being the great engine of creativity. I can’t help but be curious about what I’m missing out on because I am so used to a certain way of living.
I think everything in life is a practice. To learn to say no to the smartphone and attempt to do something else, or even sit in boredom is a practice. At least I can comfort myself with the knowing that I got the first step right, to believe that I can change my way of life as long as I am willing to practice it. Maybe it feels difficult right now because the idea that I can practice something is still foreign to me, after relying on my unstable adhd hyperfocus for so much of my life.