7 AM. The alarm sounds. It doesn’t miss its purpose: I am alarmed. Far more than I should be. Thoughts run through my head like a thunderstorm. To Dos. I feel restless, just minutes after waking up.
I cannot recall the time I lost control. I feel like life is a rollercoaster and I barely hold on to the last seat. Luckily, I am not alone in that feeling. Many of my friends and family members share that restlessness. I want to see if there is a specific reason (I am convinced!) and a solution (this one’s harder): How can we regain ownership of our thoughts, our time, and our lives?
Technology: Your daily overdose
The term ‘technostress’ means a constant state of alarmedness through being exposed to an overload of information by digital devices. This can lead to high levels of anxiety, cardiovascular, and neurological symptoms. The term was coined in 1984 by the American psychotherapist Craig Brod.
1984. That was 40 years ago. Read that again. 40 years! A time when push notifications did not exist. A time, when colored boxes and infinite scrolls were still Science Fiction. Already then, technology put significant stress on people. Imagine how bad the digital impact has to be today (or don’t imagine, and just keep reading).
How well-engineered hooks keep us in an information overflow
Every day, we see a thousand things at a time. This load is extremely hard to process or even to prioritize. Frankly, it is impossible. It is a task that only a computer, but no human brain could do. We still make our brains try every day. We overpace them every day.
Unfortunately, there are smart engineers behind every app. And their job is to catch our brains within their online content. The digital world is engineered to keep us consuming using extremely well-working psychological mechanisms.
Our screen time, our attention, is the currency they trade – for placing advertisements, selling their products, or building opinions. Our attention is on their relevance and money. As famously stated in the movie The Social Network:
If you are not paying for the product, you are the product.
This is why most pages and apps are designed to glue us on screen. And this works well: According to a study by the two largest German public television channels, the average German person between 14–29 years consumed medial internet content for nearly four hours per day in 2022. Four hours a day! The group between 30 and 49 years made it to 3 hours. To compare: In 2000, 90 minutes was the average over all age groups.
As mentioned, the reasons why we act so mindless with our times are well-engineered. Here are some examples of hooks that glue us to our screens (taken from Nir Eyal ’s book HOOKED that I can highly recommend):
- Activating our target-driven nature: Eyal calls mails the ‘grand-fathers of habit-forming technologies. How good does number 0 in your inbox feel? It gives you a feeling of control and having it done. Which makes you much more likely to work through the last, meaningless newsletters, just to have things sorted.
- Curiosity killed the content consumer: Something new tends to instill humans with a want to discover. New makes us curious. Why did my phone just vibrate? What is behind that push notification? Isn’t it ridiculous how hard it is to resist that human urge to uncover newness and open that push message?
- Gamification: The unknown reward keeps us playing at gambling machines. The same mechanisms are used within the digital sphere. How many platforms, such as Fiverr or even Uber come along with badges, stars, or other signs of status? Numerous digital rewards are inspired by game-like structures. And humans love to play.
- Social reward: We know those. The basis why Instagram and TikTok work so well. Likes likes likes. The customer story goes somehow like this: Make the user go on a meaningless hunt for social approval, make the user stick to the app, and maybe the user buys products that are shown to them based on their preferences.
How I feel technostress
Consuming content puts a lot of pressure on me. If I discover something interesting, it feels like an obligation to watch or read. Even if I know that this obligation is invented: I have 38 tabs of YouTube videos open that I want to watch, over 200 articles are in my medium ‘still to read’ list, and 300 semi-relevant work emails that I’d like to answer — well, maybe next life.
While the amount of content on the internet grows exponentially, so does my feeling of having to work myself through the finish line of the World Wide Web. Seeking the finish line of infinity. Haha.
This is as hopeless for a feed as it is for private to-dos. The constant feeling of urgency also spills over to my real-life understanding of how to get things done: Immediately. Summed up, it just feels like a Mount Everest of doings to climb in my life.
The good news: Private to-dos can be held at a manageable scale.
If only…
Escape the infinite information rush!
If only we could get rid of technology-driven behavioral patterns in life. The more, the better. To get rid of these urgency-driven, overwhelming habits, I am convinced we should first minimize technology usage. The digital time consumption and energy going along with that are directly subtracted from the time and energy available for private, real-life stuff.
In the end, we assembled an overwhelming amount of irrelevant information at the cost of also being overwhelmed by not having used that time and energy for our real-world stuff. Bad deal? Yes!
Yes, we are also surrounded by an environment that makes it extremely hard to focus, having a slow life and limiting digital consumption. However, if we cannot escape entirely, we have to at least change our approach to the environment we are exposed to.
I am convinced that it is a lot easier to strive for less technology usage than trying to be more mindful when using technology. I do both, however, less usage is a clear priority. There are just too many triggers placed in technology aiming at mindless usage. For me, it goes like this:
1. Reduce screen time
I feel a lot better if I do not check my phone for an hour after waking up and two hours before going to bed. More tools can help you to minimize your time spent online:
- Get apps to encourage mindful digital behavior: No coincidence that there are numerous apps to help you — we are all in the same boat… Here are some examples of useful apps that make you mind your screen time.
- Black-and-white screen: This makes it a lot more unattractive to chill within your phone.
- Review your screen time: Schedule a 10-minute appointment with yourself each Sunday to review your screen time. Maybe you will also draw up some time goals to make space for better and more healthy activities.
2. Set clear goals for each week
You do purposeless stuff only because you do not know what to do instead.
I wrote an article on how to make better plans you want to stick to. And mostly, your social media feed is just a self-place hurdle to your goals.
3. The fastest way to achieve your goals is slow
You do not need to keep the pace of the world!
The world news appears to outpace you because what you mostly see is the pace of 8 million peoples’ actions summed up and presented to you as one person’s standard pace. Your mail inbox seems to outpace you because 1.254 new emails is a high quantity which might also mean only two of these are important.
Your head appears too full to cope because you are sending it an unnatural lot of information just by strolling through social media.
All seems to shout at you that slow is bad.
To break free, realize that you do not have to go at the speed you perceive around you. I know it’s not easy, also not for me, who thinks she knows the theory. Take some time every day to detach from high-speed surroundings and everything that suggests you to be outpaced.
Find your speed.
Find your priorities.
And then focus on these. ✨
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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