Plug into the Positive – step back to a healthy tech balance

Like most things in life, technology has it’s pros and cons and, for all I’ve often whinged about it, I’m not a the tech hater I used to be. Yep, for all my moans and groans about the amount of harm it has inflicted on us it really does have its benefits. For one, the time saving potential it has to free us up for the fun and happy stuff in life is boundless and, with a little self-discipline, we can really make it work to our advantage.

One study has shown that we check our phones, on average, 85 times a day and almost half of smartphone users worldwide are spending over 5 hours a day on screen time – and that is just smartphones. Factor in tablets, laptops, desktops, computer games and good old fashioned television and that screen time figure is likely much, much higher.

So how are we spending our time?

Chances are a lot of our screen time is spent scrolling through post after post on Facebook with little attention to the details. Checking out the latest ‘availables’ and ‘pretending to be availables’ on Tinder and glazing over at endless Instagram posts. Hours spent reading the latest celebrity gossip, gawping at a heap of stuff we can’t afford and maybe even wishing we were ‘that other person’ .

Television, a much more distant invention, has been distracting us for years – sat in our homes offering over 700 channels in some cases. The majority of these pump advertising into our homes at regular intervals enticing us to part with our hard earned cash, often on something we neither need nor can afford. Not great for the self esteem and a dead cert waste of the time we constantly say we don’t have.

All these gadgets provide an escapism from frustrations we have in our lives. Coupled with our reluctance to make the effort to find out what we can do to change the things that are making us unhappy, it becomes a sure fire way for the creators to lure us in. Using gadgets, sites and Apps to ensure we spend as much of our precious time as possible glued to it all, increasing screen time and therefore their astronomical advertising revenues. And the irony is that WE pay for all of this. We buy the phone, the tv, the app, the tablet, the computer. We spend money so we can be convinced to spend more money.

So how do we salvage our sanity and plug into the positives that all this time saving technology has brought?

Take time….

The first step is to understand that, in the main, we have a lot more time than we think we do. Many of us are just spending a lot of this time staring at a screen waiting for something exciting to happen or just filling gaps because we’re bored. But, in honesty, are we any less bored when we finally put that screen down, or turn it off, than we were when we first picked it up? Most likely not.

3 Steps Back to a Healthy Tech Balance

Step 1

Wanna get that mind healthy and organised? Then give those apps a good old workout! It’s more than just a little bit scary that a recent report stated that:

‘In most markets analyzed, the average smartphone user has more than 80 apps on their phone and uses close to 40 of them each month.’

How many apps do we really need? In fairness, probably none of them! However, I know that’s just being over-optimistic and tantamount to suggesting we all bin our phones and go back to hollering into two cups on a bit of string!

So, in the interest of baby steps perhaps just a little analysis of what apps are on our phones is in order:

Those that save us time. Those that steal our time with no benefit whatsoever. Then there are those wonderful little apps that benefit our minds and our health. And finally, those little lovelies that complement the positive lifestyle choices we have made or we want to make.

There’s a quick way to see what apps are on your phone and to see how long you’re spending on each one:

IOS phones:

1. Open Settings
2. Swipe down and tap Battery
3. Tap on  Last 24 Hours or Last 10 Days
4. Additionally, you can set timers to limit your use of particular apps.

Android:

• Android provides a built-in tool called Digital Wellbeing that allows you to track your app usage.
  1. Open Settings.
  2. Look for “Digital Wellbeing & parental controls”.
  3. Tap on it to view an overview of your app usage stats.
  4. You can explore detailed information about specific apps, including when you used them most during the day.
  5. Additionally, you can set timers to limit your use of particular apps.

Here you’ll see listed every app, average daily screen time and what % of that time you have spent on each app. This was quite an eye opener for me. I discovered that I had been spending nearly 50 minutes a day slotting bits of wood together.

I had an urge to score points for no apparent reason in the name of ‘Woody’, some random little app that popped up in an advert whilst I was innocently being a goody two shoes and using a learn Italian app. I’d discovered that learning a language is a brilliant way to keep my mind alert and ward off potential debilitating illnesses of the mind such as mild or severe memory loss and Alzheimers. Woody snuck in unannounced, mid Italian verb conjugation! Duolingo survived the trip, Woody did not. Woody now rests in my app cemetery, never to be resurrected!

With this potential eye opener in front of you be totally honest (and brutal) with yourself and get rid of the apps that are of no benefit to you whatsoever. Lose the ones you only ever spend time on ‘cos you’re otherwise bored. If you can’t part with any of them ‘forever’ then try setting yourself a limit for each app, or a ‘downtime’. My phone is set to 7pm in the evening and the majority of what I have on my phone ‘goes dark’ with an override facility if I really feel the need to use any of it. 

Step 2

Turn off social media notifications and maybe allocate a set time each day where you check in if you feel you want to read notifications/posts and add comments. I like to check into Facebook once day, mainly to look at my previous memories for that day over the years. More often than not I’ve written some positive bumpf the previous year/years and it lifts me up for the day. Or it just makes me chuckle what drivel I may have written back then! I then have a quick scroll through WhatsApp to check for any important messages and occasionally add an Instagram post for this here blog! 

I still occasionally get tugged down the ‘rabbit hole’ but I’m much more conscious of it when it happens and turn off much quicker than I used to. Find what works for you. The key isn’t necessarily to banish all social media (unless you want to of course!) but to make it beneficial as opposed to the parasitic time guzzler if often is. It’s about taking back control of our time. You can apply this method to pretty much anything on your phone – calls, texts, game apps etc. Tailor make it to you depending on YOUR choices and essential needs.

Step 3

Have a technology detox diet! Declutter your mind and free up space for things that excite you, thrill you or generally just ‘float your unique boat’. It could be curling up under a duvet with a good book. Making a list of all the things you want to do with your new found free time. Hiking up a mountain somewhere (yes, people actually do that for fun!). Not my bag but, as I mentioned, we all have different boats to float! If you happen to have climbed up a mountain then go you! Let me know what it was like and I’ll live off that for now!

So, how to have a technology diet:

1. Pick a realistic timeframe – a day, a week, a month. Start small or start big but start!
2. Decide what it is you’re ‘not going to do’ for the duration of your choice. Scroll through TikTok? Get dragged into the spaghetti junction that is YouTube? Not watch anything on television/Netflix/Amazon Prime whilst posting crisps into your face etc? Or even all of these and then some?
3. Once you have your list work out roughly how long you reckon you spend on them. Then relish in the thought of having all that free time to do what you want to do.
4. Work out what you want to do! This is likely the most difficult part for most of us. The months of being glued to our phones, laptops or Netflix etc will have us wondering what exactly we can do to fill that time without them. If you’ve ever said to yourself “I just wish I had time to do ‘that’ ” then do whatever ‘that’ was. Chances are you’re already squeezing something in that you enjoy doing but allow yourself to get distracted from. Do more of that. Think back to when you were a kid – what excited you then; what hobbies did you have? Use that imagination and fill your time with things that make you feel good. It can literally be anything, as long as it feels good to you.
5. Enjoy the freedom from constant distractions! It will likely feel a bit alien at first but, like anything, repeated enough times it becomes a habit – a damned good habit that will help bring back the essence of you and what makes you happy!

Give it go! There is literally nothing to lose and so much to gain including more time, better sleep and the ability to concentrate better on the things that matter, to you!