'You’ll take walks, talk to friends in person, engage your community, read books, and stare at the clouds!'

Just over a few days ago, this last Tuesday to be precise, a few of us, bibliophiles, met up over a cuppa, nay three cuppas each, ;-) at the famed Writer’s Café! We started off on a discussion over the concept of mindfulness, and that took us all to the books that we’ve been reading of late! Me, for my own little part, shared something on my latest read from Cal Newport that waxes eloquent on doing a digital declutter! In fact, the book talks about being mindful around our technology and doing a digital detox or a digital downsizing at that! 

And quite interestingly, it so happened that, just this morn, I had misplaced my mobile phone while in college, and was quite blissfully unaware of it for more than an hour late into the morning, when alas! finally it so dawned on me, with such a vigorous and an impulsive jolt, on the ‘harmful effects’ that come along with losing out on one’s mobile phone! On this jolty dawning on my mind, I should admit that I was a real tad jittery on the very prospects of having to lose my mobile phone! Added, I couldn’t really fathom a wee bit on where exactly I had misplaced it too!

With a heave-ho, thence on, I busily amble up and down the stairs! Tread this way and that! Stride a hither and a thither, hoping to stumble across it by some stroke of a fortuitous chance, somewhere along my way! All to no avail! Then I contemplated quick on first calming my kinda anxious soul a wee bit, and then to recollect with some cool, on the places I’d been to, since this blessed morn while in campus, and quite soon happened my sweet 'eureka' moment! Yesss! I recollected being there at our department staff room just the previous hour! And when this sweet moment of realization happened, me, with some added grin to the likes of the Cheshire cat, strode my way albeit with a twinkle of a beam, radiant and happy, quick to my desk, and arriving there, and finding it safely ensconced on my desk, with a few good souls (colleagues) keeping a watchful eye on it, I quite heave-hoed now a happy-happy sigh of relief! Added reason to amble my way quietly over, for a relaxing cuppa!

Well, this incident set my mind wondering - or rather pondering - over a few hypothetical assumptions!

What, if it hadn’t been the mobile phone that I’d misplaced?

What if it had been for some book that I’d misplaced?

Or what if it had been my wallet that I had misplaced?

Would I have really bothered to go places looking around here and there, for this 'lost sheep,' with the same vigorous, panicky intensity and agitated anxiety? Or would I have bothered to search for it at all, in the first place? ;-)

Speaks volumes and volumes to the myriad ways in which we have been held for ransom, in this 'techno-trap' on our own sweet volition at that! Alley? 

Without a doubt, the hegemonic hold of technology on its unsuspecting victims, has led to a whole lot of ruminations, deliberations and discussions on how best to keep this addictive device away at bay!

I steal a quick guess that, it is perhaps on cogitating upon this hegemonic hold of technology over its unsuspecting addicts, that Nassim Nicholas Taleb quips his intense quip, thus: “The difference between technology and slavery is that slaves are fully aware that they are not free!”

How trueyyy is Taleb!

(On an aside: For an added dose on Taleb, you might want to read this blogger’s past year’s post on yet another Talebian take on a different tangent altogether, HERE)

In fact, it’s not an exaggeration to say that, today, we live in an era of wired-sadhus, gadgeted-gurus, techno-sanyasis and new-age-ascetics for whom renunciation is, ‘The world behind me, but iPhone before me!’

Rephrasing Donne’s mighty lines of yore would mean much to this post! And this is from his celebrated poem, “Canonization” – Here it goes -

Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove. Into the glasses of your eyes!

Rephrasing the last word alone -

Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove. Into the glasses of your mobiles!

Such is the sway of technology over our lives! Such is its charm! Such its allure! Ain’t it?

This lure sure gives us all, added reasons to do a technological detox, or a digital declutter, every once in a while, in this our mundane, slavish lives, to be away from being silent slaves, addicted full throttle to these maddening technological demigods!

That’s one reason why, Adam Alter rightfully calls this age as ‘the age of behavioural addiction’ wherein half of the population is addicted to at least one behavior or the other, hyper-obsessed over the quantum of likes we get, the videos we watch, and the emails we receive!

To Adam Alter then, ‘Half of us would rather suffer a broken bone than a broken phone!’ and sadly enough, today’s thumb generation or the millennial kids spend so much time in front of screens that they struggle much to interact with real, live humans!

On an aside, this shocking state of affairs quite reminds me of a little poem that I had attempted, well over thirteen years ago, on the thumb generation. You may want to read it here on poemhunter!

Adam Alter among a host of other techno-detox gurus have come up with numerous strategies and techniques to wean away the soul from this addiction! In fact, Alter has also laid bare the candid truth that, technology is good and advantageous only for the capitalists, the business tycoons and the corporations who tweak and tune social media to their advantage, and fashion it in such alluring ways as delicious as a dainty dish, dressed up in such delightful ways, meant for mass consumption! And the pavapetta consumer swainggg falls prey to their bait with such finesse and elegance!

How trueeyyy!

That gives us even more reasons to do a digital detox on the go!

One such detox guru I so loved reading this past week, and brought up for discussion in large quota with my bibliomaniac friends at the Writer’s Café this last week, is Cal Newport, who’s given us such an able and wonderful read that recommends a digital detox in such convincing ways!

It’s titled, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World!

The book, in a nutshell, teaches us to be mindful of the way we use technology!

Minimalism doesn’t necessarily mean being minimal in having clothes, or things or people around us!

Minimalism in essence, would mean, being mindful of what I do! A mindset that would make me choose what I do, what I own, and how they impact me and my way of life!

Minimalism, in other words would possibly mean that,

if I want to add meaning to my life,

I need to subtract the clutter!

I should think of what I want to remove!

And that’s exactly what Digital Minimalism is all about!

In other words, how could I possibly remove the clutter from my life, and do a digital declutter or a digital detox in order to double up on my vibrancy in my kutty-little dwelling-time on this planet!

To Cal Newport, digital minimalism is motivated by the belief that intentionally and aggressively clearing away digital noise, and optimizing your use of the tools that really matter, can significantly improve your life!

In this regard, Cal puts forward the proposition that, nothing short of an aggressive action is needed to fundamentally transform your relationship with technology. The digital declutter or digital detox provides this aggressive action!

With such conviction, he gives us his readers, a call to action! A conviction based on an experiment that he himself conducted in 2018 amongst 1600 enthusiastic participants who agreed to perform a digital declutter under his guidance and report back to him about their experience.

I can’t give away much, as it’s all there for grabs on this 229-page delight for us all! Please do read it as soon as possible to challenge yourself full swing, swainggg at that, for a quiet digital detox! ;-)

To Cal Newport,

This process of the digital declutter requires you to step away from optional online activities for thirty days. During this period, you’ll wean yourself from the cycles of addiction that many digital tools can instill, and begin to rediscover the analog activities that provide you deeper satisfaction. You’ll take walks, talk to friends in person, engage your community, read books, and stare at the clouds. Most importantly, the declutter gives you the space to refine your understanding of the things you value most. At the end of the thirty days, you will then add back a small number of carefully chosen online activities that you believe will provide massive benefit to these things you value. Going forward, you’ll do your best to make these intentional activities the core of your online life—leaving behind most of the other distracting behaviors that used to fragment your time and snare your attention. The declutter acts as a jarring reset: you come into the process a frazzled maximalist and leave an intentional minimalist.

Just giving y’all some delightful, mindful quotes from this lovely read!

The tycoons of social media have to stop pretending that they’re friendly nerd gods building a better world and admit they’re just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children. Because, let’s face it, checking your “likes” is the new smoking.

You can enjoy solitude in a crowded coffee shop, on a subway car, or, as President Lincoln discovered at his cottage, while sharing your lawn with two companies of Union soldiers, so long as your mind is left to grapple only with its own thoughts. On the other hand, solitude can be banished in even the quietest setting if you allow input from other minds to intrude. Solitude requires you to move past reacting to information created by other people and focus instead on your own thoughts and experiences—wherever you happen to be.

These are just vignettes from a whole list of gems gleaned from this treasured read of sorts! I bet this book has the tremendous potential to help us all do the detox, and in right earnest at that!

Happy reading folks!

image: kansaspublicradiodotorg & mediumdotcom