51–60 of 393 posts
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When I need a break from social networks, I just log out of the app/sites on my phone. Since most of my passwords are unmemorizable (and stored in a password manager), it's quite a bit of work to get logged in again. It's enough work that I'll put it off for a week at least. *typo
social networks ? like playing sports with friends, visiting family, job events ?
I lost mine about six months ago and I haven't replaced it. First couple months I noticed I got VERY irritable when I got a momentary flash of boredom, especially waiting in line in stores, etc. Figured that might've been a budding mental issue, and decided to work on my patience and expectation-setting as a result. This has been part of a larger life exercise in practicing general moment-to-moment mindfullness, and…
I didn't miss the calls, or anything. Only the possibility to take pictures on the spot.
I know that I'm guilty of this - just voluntarily putting my phone in the other room causes withdrawal-like anxiety, followed by a greater sense of awareness. Maybe future generations will see our management of information devices as backwards and unhealthy once we learn more about the human brain, the same way we treat smoking, child-rearing, and daily routines of yesterday as horrifyingly detrimental.
Bards pre-literate-times in Greece purportedly could recite Homer's Odyssey themselves after one hearing. Writing destroyed that all. (Maybe I don't have a citation right off, but I've read that on the web or heard it in some college class years ago ... in any case, ability to retain heard information has likely declined since then). But ... few people complain about how books corrupt our memory. So we're the first g…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the near future we're going to see even more "information diets", "digital cleanses", meditative go-to-nature sort of breaks integrated into lifestyle routines.
My wife and I recently spent a few nights at an Airbnb in the mountains where we couldn't get cell reception and the wifi had a crappy satellite Internet connection we'd been asked to avoid using as much as possible. Also none of our digital crap was there, just a few physical books we brought and some card games the hosts provided. It felt great . It's had me thinking more and more or the digital things and the hype…
Why maybe ? it is a known fact and quite obvious.
But yea, simply having a smartphone around makes you want to fiddle with it. I would guess there is some addictive component there, as it impacts nearly everyone.
I haven't gone quite so far as to ditch my smartphone yet, but I now leave it on silent, no vibrations or LED notifications or anything. Whenever I check my phone maybe once an hour at work I see anything that requires my attention, otherwise I put it away. It's made me more sane, but I've often thought about ditching it entirely. It's sad that I feel like I might not be able to function entirely without it.
I want to learn Japanese. 3 months ago I changed my phone's language to Japanese. Everything is Japanese - maps, services, apps that read from the default phone language. Oddly enough, instead of learning Japanese, I just use my phone less.
Similarly, I stopped listening to any music on my iPhone once I got an iPhone 7. Unexpected side effect of having no headphone jack, but I always forget the dongle somewhere. So, no more music from the iPhone. I listen to old am/fm talk radio again instead.
I lost mine about six months ago and I haven't replaced it. First couple months I noticed I got VERY irritable when I got a momentary flash of boredom, especially waiting in line in stores, etc. Figured that might've been a budding mental issue, and decided to work on my patience and expectation-setting as a result. This has been part of a larger life exercise in practicing general moment-to-moment mindfullness, and…
Try keeping a sketch pad for quick illustrations or perhaps a notebook for poems. The world is filled with inspiration! Not only will you be more present, but you'll be turning your seemingly humdrum life into a work of art!
I already have three pocket-sized notebooks filled up already with tons of art and ideas from my fountain pen!
(Love that pen. Now I write in a crude Spencerian script for extra fun points.)
So true. And in-car GPS keeps your sense of direction from developing. I've seen people stymied as to how they could possibly make a phone call without their phones. Payphone. Borrow someone else's. Not that hard. I used to think this would only ever happen to geeks like me. Boy, was I wrong.
But you won't know the number. You'd need to go to as library first, log into whatever service you keep your contacts on (I run my own radicalie carddav, but most people use Google or Apple's services) and find their number. I use to have most of my friend's phone numbers memorized by the shape they made on the keypad. Today we stay in contact with a lot more people, or at least I do, and it helps to no need to memor…
actually it does not. if you had to memorize numbers you would have better memory and would have little to no issue remembering them.