My new innovation is, get this! Listening to the radio. I feel that listening to podcasts or youtube on the phone or computer are too fiddly - they constantly need changing, or skipping ads, or some sort of interaction. It feels hectic and demanding, all these little micro-decisions about what song or podcast to play next.
I got a Panasonic RF-2400D, from Ebay, for $20 US. The sound quality is great and my two-year-old and I are enjoying it. It is nice and simple, I like to listen to NPR news occasionally, plus there's All Classical, and a lovely small local oldies station.
Listening to the news feels like a nice way to stay informed. If anything bonkers happens, I'll know about it, and I can just listen while I'm making breakfast for my kid, and turn it off when I get distracted back to my real life.
I use my iPod from 2002, a Kindle from 2012, my Casio watch, paper planners and fountain pens, and now this Panasonic radio. I am even going to try a simple pedometer (marketed to seniors - ha!) to track my steps. It is more stuff, but none of it is expensive, especially used from Ebay, so that helps me justify it.
I know it may not be as efficient or minimalist as using a phone for everything, but I love using retro tech and analog, single use gadgets. It feels better to my brain.
I have been doing a couple of weeks now of my focus challenge. It's really just an improvement in my routine, rather than a hard challenge.
I have not held exactly to the rules of my experiment. I have looked at Reddit, but not logged in, and only for very specific reasons for short lengths of time, like finding information about fountain pen nib compatibility. I am honestly fine with this. Search results often don't tell me what I'm looking for, because I tend to look for very specific, niche information, where individual user experiences are more helpful than generalized, bland search results.
Crucially, I am not posting on any social media, except for my local moms group. I hate the feeling of posting something, and then having attention stuck on that post, so that I want to look back at how people responded. It's an attention-seeking mechanism that is a waste of my energy and it feels bad to me. If I want to say something, I should journal or write a blog post or tell a friend.
I bumped up the time I can use Facebook and Mastodon combined to 40 minutes per week. That seems okay. I don't browse, I just check my facebook moms group, and get off, and do a quick scan of Mastodon. I use the "search" tool on facebook and just see if there are any new posts on my recently searched people, which works well. Having the feed blocked on Facebook is mandatory, because they serve up such absolute toxic trash in the home feed, no one needs that.
Beyond that, I am finding small ways to slow down and be more present. I am paying attention to where my mind goes and how quickly it bounces from topic to topic. I try not to hop to the computer for every stray thought I want to learn about, and every thing that I might need to buy. I try to write those things in my to do list notebook.
Knitting helps! It is soothing and grounding. So that's always good. I'm working on a new blue blanket for my toddler.
I am trying to improve my habits around focus, distraction, and computer use. There is a lot of chaos in my daily life, with dogs, cats and small children, and I want to feel more present and able to keep my own focus and a calm mind.
I don't use my phone that much. I average 30-minutes to an hour per day on my phone, and I consider most of that use to be valid. I use texting, signal, phone and maps, primarily. I listen to podcasts, but usually use an old iPhone 5C as a dedicated podcast machine, so it doesn't come with the same potential for distraction that my phone does, and it's easier to fit in a pocket because it's tiny.
I use the Fossify Launcher or Ion Launcher on my phone (from F-Droid), which has a great feature that lets you hide icons from the app list. I have hidden a lot of icons for apps that I don't want to use habitually, but every once in a while has a valid use, like email and browsers. I don't see them, and if I need to use them, I have to go through an extra step to make them available. It helps.
My worst habits are on the computer. It's easy for me to get to clicking around on Reddit and news web sites, and to check web sites as a reflex when I feel bored.
I think the attraction of dumb phones, and deleting social media altogether, is that it isn't sitting there in the background, waiting for you all the time. Having a sense of needing to constantly resist, with effort, a bad habit feels hard. I don't want to "resist," web browsers and social media, I just want to not have it as an option that feels attractive at all. I felt that decades ago when I went vegetarian. I disliked the conflict of wanting to eat less meat, but feeling like I had to make the decision all the time. When I just said "I'm vegetarian," it was no longer a question for me and for people around me. Much simpler.
I deleted Instagram last year, and I haven't missed it. I appreciate that it isn't there in the background, giving me something to wonder about.
There is not a built in screen time app on Linux so I am using Activity Tracker to track my time. I have been gradually categorizing my activities to they can make a nice little color coded chart of my activity with my least favorite color (pink) representing the worst activity (social media) and the best colors (green and orange) representing the most noble activities (writing and study).
I listened to a Cal Newport interview with TK Coleman the other day, and they inspired me to take a more drastic approach to reducing distraction time. TK was talking about taking about 8 months off social media, as an experiment, and how positive it felt. So that's what I want to do too. I plan to run this experiment to the end of the year 2026.
Here are the rules of my digital focus experiment:
- No Reddit use, at all. I set my web browsers with Leechblock to block reddit, and added a setting to Duck Duck Go, so it won't list reddit as a search result. (You can do this by clicking the three dots next to any search result in duck duck go.)
- 20 minutes of Facebook per week. This is so that I can check in with a local moms group to see if there are any events I want to take part in.
I will report back every so often with updates.
My General Favorite Distraction Reduction Tips:
I am always trying to create boundaries and guardrails to keep myself feeling more present and less distracted. It may be different for each person, and that's great. These are things I am doing that I think help me to feel more focused.
- This is amazing. Calls and texts only come through from my "favorite" contacts. This is on an Android phone, but I believe you can do the same with iPhone. Everything else is silent. If I am expecting a call from someone not in my contacts, I just turn off this mode for a while. But knowing that most of the time, if the phone rings it's someone I actually want to talk to, is beautiful.
Data and Time Usage Trackers:
I added a widget to the home screen of my phone that shows the amount of time spent on the phone for the day. In my case it's the built in Android "Digital Wellbeing" settings app.
I also installed an app called Data Monitor and have a widget that shows the amount of mobile data I have used today. We have a minimal data plan, 1 GB shared between myself and my husband, and we don't have the wifi on all the time in our house, so it takes a concerted effort to minimize data usage. Those things are an inconvenience, but I actually like it, because it puts resistance on looking things up on the phone. It is remarkable how much data one little google search burns up. I think that just increasing the friction in usage can go a long way in improving habits. It's not that I want to google stuff all the time, but it's just so darn easy and available, which isn't always ideal.
Using a Separate iPod:
- This may sound silly, but I use a separate device for podcasts. It is an old iPhone 5C with no SIM card. It is tiny enough to fit in a pocket, it works great even though it's got out of date software. All I use it for is podcasts, so I don't feel the burden of any distractions from my phone, it won't ring, it won't do anything except for play podcasts downloaded via wifi. It is a small detail, but the quiet provided by being able to listen to a podcast while still feeling distraction-free, is a helpful thing. I am doing my best to not use my phone, except when really necessary. I don't want my kid to see me on the phone all the time, and that's not how I want to live my life.
Using a Digital Camera:
- Admittedly, I am not consistent about this, but I think it is a worthy goal. The mental calm that comes with a device that doesn't tempt you to check stuff is small, but cumulative, and I think it matters. I would prefer to use a digital camera than my phone, but am still building the habit of having it on hand for when I need to grab a picture when my kid is being cute. I should improve my storage, so it's handy to grab when I want it.
Streamlining Digital Habits:
Ruthlessly evaluate what each service provides and if it is a positive influence or something we can replace with a better option.
I deleted my Instagram account, so my only social media accounts are Facebook, Reddit and Mastodon. Facebook serves a purpose in my local buy nothing group. I would like to replace Reddit, but it is a handy source of suggestions and has a nice pregnancy and mom group. Honestly Mastodon is much more ethically decent than other social media, but it is questionable in its value to me at this point, so I may let it go one of these days.
Use a feed blocking extension for any social media. I like News Feed Eradicator. It replaces the main social media feed with a random quote, which is awesome, because the Facebook feed is a terrible hellscape of suggested posts and ads.
Obviously, I don't have social media apps on my phone. I turned off notifications to everything that isn't critical. Et cetera. All the standard advice.
It is an ongoing process, gradually recognizing what is not necessary and clearing it out.
More Inspiration:
Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. Plus I enjoy his podcast - he's got good advice and inspiration and I am amused by how dry and snarky he can be.
Stolen Focus by Johann Hari
Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier
The Social Dilemma documentary movie
I have never been a huge social media person, but my usage has dwindled over recent years. For a long time I stopped posting on other more evil socials but still used Mastodon because it seemed more positive than the alternatives.
But I even stopped posting on Mastodon, because I have been reevaluating the way I spend my time and attention. Trying to bring my mental focus back to my real life.
I had a silly misunderstanding with someone I don't know on Mastodon, that got me thinking, I was trying to be positive, they misunderstood me (surely I could have said my bit more clearly) and I had to sort it out, no big deal, but it got me thinking - what is the point of investing my time this way? I would rather be creating connections and doing projects in my real life, or writing something that has a longer shelf life, so to speak.
I'm not making a moral judgment about posting on social media, but it is worth evaluating what is the best use of my time in this world. So I may do the occasional post, especially as I spend more time with this little blog, but I will keep it minimal.