HI Gang!
For those of you who are tech junkies, I’d like to tell of my journey on “the other side.”
The following negative experience had a very profoundly positive effect on my music and concentration.
On March 7, 2013 I was robbed while on tour. My backpack with my laptop and many other personal items was suddenly gone.
2 hours before a concert I had to freeze bank accounts, close credit cards and change passwords to 15 websites in a flash, because like an idiot I had no master password on the machine. The stress was terrible!
Yet…the strangest thing happened about 10 days after the theft.
I had a dream that I GAVE my laptop away to the thieves.
HUH?
Of course I did not intend to give away anything to the thieves, but I know where the dream came from…
A week after the theft I noticed that I unexpectedly started to feel human again. I actually enjoyed not being online all day, every day.
I enjoyed “uni-tasking” instead of multitasking.
I felt thankful to have my brain back.
A digital diet was doing me good.
- I stopped seeing life as life a string of Facebook posts.
- Life is the cup of coffee in my hand, it’s the person I am talking to, the quiet countryside outside the train window for 5 hours.
- The urge to constantly fidget with a computer vanished.
- No one died because email didn’t get looked at for a few days.
- No one cared if I wasn’t on Facebook.
- I did not miss reading others posts.
- I was happy to not know about people that I don’t even know.
- When I did check email on someone’s computer, I saw the utter B.S. that was coming into my email inbox with fresh eyes (and have since unsubscribed to most of it.)
- I played (and play) more guitar and wrote new tunes.
- I spent more time with loved ones.
- If I needed to communicate, I called people.
- I was able to plan important things because I was not eating up my precious mental energy with mindless chatter.
The Moral of The Story
I have a very strong conviction that digital addiction is ruining many people’s lives, mainly due to multitasking.
Anything good that I produce comes from a place of quiet. It concerns me that everyone is absorbed in their smartphones constantly!
I don’t have a smartphone, on purpose. Call me a dinosaur. I don’t want to be texting and multitasking as I stand on a street corner each time I have a few empty minutes.
I either want to see what’s around me, or enjoy my own imagination.
I’d rather direct my brain power at the subject of my choosing – than give it away. It’s precious stuff!
It’s Up to You
The delicious quiet, the intimacy with others, the creativity, and the valuable mental energy that we are losing with our constant fiddling and texting will be a story that’s told to future generations.
Could you go a day without your smartphone?
Would you even try?
My opinion? Try it….you’ll like it.
I have been giving this a lot of thought recently. Any suggestions on how to accomplish this short of being robbed of my digital portals? 🙂
Hit the off button on your device. Walk out of the house without it, and see what happens. 🙂
Folks still shake their head when they look at my old school flip phone, but I bought one for the same reason. I don’t want to be too connected. The only thing I miss is navigation, which I rarely need. Great post!
Yeah, I can’t stand paying car rentals for a navi!!!
Great blog post Adam! This resonates with me strongly. There are a couple of books ( you remember those things before the internet) that have come out recently on this very topic: “unitasking” vs “multitasking” and how we are sacrificing “depth of knowledge” for “breadth of knowledge” when we learn from the net.
Too much of this digital thing is like peeping in the shutter of your camera; your vision is limited.
Minimizing, veering opens your shutter to the real colors of life; a child’s laughter, the knock of your daughter coming home from work, the smell of sauteed onion and garlic, the bunny scurrying in the shed, the humid breeze in your skin as you put a good read in your backyard, the smile in your lips as you think of your loved one.
Your senses are attuned to your surroundings. You could even hear your heart beating and saying, “I love you’.
Great post Adam…I too have been giving this a lot of thought lately.
Reblogged this on ken cooke and commented:
I read this just now. Some great thoughts made here by Adam
Hehe. I can’t sleep and I was picking up the phone. The time is 02.28 I the morning. And know am here looking for som insporisoin. Maybe i put the smartphone dow now. Dream about what I have read. On your blog. Hehe
If you are struggling with ‘digital dieting’, start simple. Try turning off notifications on email, messenger, sms…so you aren’t distracted by that ‘ping’ whenever a message comes in, and allocate set times to attend to messages. We are conditioned by the ‘ping’; studies have shown that we get a little ‘rush’ when we hear the sound, & it becomes addictive!
Michael – yes, I turn off alerts. I must admit though, I’m still addicted to Youtube comments 🙂
AR