In July 2024, I am sharing my experience of engaging in a digital declutter in this discussion thread/diary. For more information on a digital declutter, you can watch a brief explainer here or the longer version here (Chapter 3).
It feels almost contradictory to post about my time away from optional technologies…within an optional technology.
But part of my commitment will be using this space in a minimal way. It will also help me be accountable about this process.
If you want to join me, or just care to have a conversation, feel free to post here!
I've unsubscribed to a number of newsletters and blogs during this digital declutter.
If I find myself often deleting the post from my inbox, even before I read it, is a sign that it may no longer serve my needs.
We tend to hold on to things far beyond the value that held in the past.
One newsletter/blog that I will stay subscribed to is marketer Seth Godin. His posts are timely, short, and relevant.
Recently, Seth shared an insightful post about competition and whether we are playing the game with which we want to participate.
The options are pretty clear:
1. focus on activities where you’re in the sweet spot of the curve, where more preparation, focus and effort lead to huge benefits. This means walking away from competitions against people who are committed to being unreasonable.
2. embrace the unreasonable and accept that your competitors will as well.
While the unreasonable is thrilling, it’s difficult to build a sustainable career around it.We all bring our personal meaning to what we read. For me, I saw social media as a game that a) isn't bringing huge benefits, and b) is filled with people who are committed to being unreasonable.
I noticed Seth only shared his blog posts on Twitter - zero interaction. And since 2023, he is no longer tweeting at all.
Then I felt the urge to go through what the had posted. I felt obligated to reciprocate the acknowledgment.
Pausing, I realized that social media had trained me how to interact with others online!
This is mindless technology use. It's when I allow the environment, the systems, and the tools to influence my behavior. As Newport notes in Digital Minimalism, these light interactions can replace deeper discussions with others.
"Digital communication tools, if used without intention, have a way of forcing a tradeoff between conversation and connection. If you don't first reform your relationship with tools like social media and text messaging, attempts to shoehorn more conversation into your life are likely to fail." (p. 146)
People deserve more than a like. Like me, they crave authentic relationships.
It's fun to come home to positive changes and growth. The peppers and tomatoes in the pots on the back deck produced two handfuls for the kitchen counter. A neighbor/friend was kind enough to keep them watered.
One thing I enjoy about gardening is how little I actually do to promote their growth. Gardening is most successful when we create the conditions for growth:
- quality soil
- plenty of sunlight and warmth
- appropriate amount of water
- protection from enemies (weeds, animals)
These conditions have been the same for as long as there have been gardeners. When I met and spoke with a "farmer" at Colonial Williamsburg, his advice on how best to grow food echoed similar principles.
This post could veer into creating the conditions for learning for our students. But I am thinking about my own learning. Our learning. Are we cultivating the conditions for own growth and continuous improvement?
Social media and similar online platforms have changed how we interact with each other. They reward extreme behavior and depress logic and reasoning. The conditions support binary type thinking: you are either right or wrong. I think this is part of the reason why SoR has taken off these past years. It is promoted an argument instead of a conversation.
This is why I have decided to use Twitter and LinkedIn only for sharing posts from my spaces and reporting colleagues work. No interactions. People can find me elsewhere, where dialogue is the expected norm.
It's the first day back and I am going through our photos from the trip.
To be more present, I only brought my flip phone with me when I didn't a smartphone. I wasn't able to take a lot of pictures with what my family members so affectionately to as my '"Jitterbug" ( ]it's not; it's an Iris, but anyway).
I did feel a sense of loss, of missing out on all the moments I didn't capture on our trip.
But did I miss them? I was there. I remember what resonated with me, emotionally and relationally.
Our desire to capture and share our experiences is warranted. Images and video organized and shared can bring joy when revisited after the experience occurred. But there is a cost. The process - of taking the picture, of sharing it with others, of going back online to see what type of engagement was created, of finding ourselves immersed in that space and forgetting how we ended up there in the first place - is not the experience.
I did find one image I appreciated. It was from a physical timeline as one walked along toward Historic Jamestown.
It's the last day of vacation. We had elected to drive a nice rental car from Wisconsin to Virginia and back.
Even though I am responsible for the driving, I am getting in a lot of reading. Using Libby and Libro.fm, I finished the memoir The Tender Bar and started the science fiction novel Dark Matter.
(Side note: I have tinnitus in my right ear, so I use one earbud to tune out the ringing with a good book read aloud. All safe on the road!)
I can say with confidence that I have been reading more during my digital declutter. And I read a lot in spite of these distractions.
With this additional time recaptured with social media and newsletter turned off, I've been trying to be more intentional about doing something in with what I read. I have a read later app, which captures favorite quotes plus my annotations.
Typically I feel rushed to get on with the next article or book instead of pondering on or processing what I read. That, in turn, can support my own articles, newsletters, etc. This declutter could improve my writing. It may be a positive outcome due to the subtraction of social media.
Today's Virginia adventure took us to Historic Jamestown. This was my #1 site to visit during vacation.
I have a passport guide. It is a collector's stamp book to organize cancellations (dated stamps) and stickers for each national park site you visit. My kids lovingly call it my "sticker book".
There is also an app to collect the stamps. But as you might guess, it's not the same. There's a tangible, real quality to the physical nature of collecting artifacts of my visits to parks.
As we roamed around the site looking at the restored buildings and grounds of the first American colony, I noticed the rebuilt church in Jamestown. It is the site of the first formal conversation about democracy.
The General Assembly within the colony met on a couple of benches on July 30, 1619.
This small body of representatives (all white men, of course) engaged in discussion about creating laws to how best govern their tiny government.
This type of intentional, deep discourse is not the outcome of our weak ties created through social media. That was never the intention.
We visited a beach on Chesapeake Bay. It was my daughter's request for our vacation. "I just want to go into the ocean."
I was not in charge of this adventure. My brothers led the group to this location. It was a nice beach, but didn't appear to have any public facilities. "Where do the kids go if they need to use the bathroom?" I asked one of them. He shrugged.
I had brought my smartphone with me, so I searched for businesses that might have public restrooms. There weren't many options.
As I walked around, letting the maps app lead the way, I arrived at a convenience store. "No public restrooms" said the sign on the front.
As I walked back to the beach, disappointed, I came upon two porta-potties. Where did these come from? I asked myself, until I realized that I had walked right passed them previously. I had missed them because I was immersed in the maps app, looking for something right in front of me.
How many times does something like this happen with digital connections in general? What opportunities do we miss when we are searching on line?
"This presence, this mystery, is the very source of being."
- Tara Brach
An app I have reinvested in is Mindfulness. It is similar to Calm and Headspace, if you are familiar with those tools. They all have prerecorded audio sessions and courses to guide one's meditation.
Meditation is a challenge for me without the scaffold that these supports provide. I would barely even refer to these apps as "digital"; the only thing that categorizes them as technology is I access the sessions on my smartphone.
One course by Tara Brach offers the following two questions to come back to when we feel overwhelmed with the pace and commitments of life:
1. What is happening?
2. Can I let this be?
This can be a helpful protocol when situated in environments that we cannot control or even influence to a large degree.
For example, my extended family and I are spending a lot of time together. We love each other, and I think we can also agree that putting fifteen family members in one space might lead to irritation or disagreement.
A common response to uncomfortableness in general is to hop on our phones. Check out our social media feeds and mentally take a break. Not having access to this, I reengaged with what I was doing, such as playing a board game or simply chatting.
Just being present...it shouldn't be this much work. Yet in these current conditions, where the access of connection subverts the opportunity for conversation with such ease, it is.
In the absence of social media, my brain wants to fill the void.
One app I downloaded is Obsidian. It's a note taking tool that helps you see relationships between ideas in separate notes. It's a more organic and nonlinear way of finding trends and patterns in what you study.
I've been interested in capturing my experiences as a principal, a stroke survivor, and what it all meant in the context of a pandemic. I have little idea what I might find if I investigate this line of inquiry. Obsidian might be a helpful tool in this project.
By either chance or fate, the Native American burial site we stopped at on our trip to Virginia noted that obsidian was a revered stone. They used it for tools, weapons, and jewelry. It's also believed by some to have healing properties.
What I noticed is the patterns of the stone itself: like pieces of a puzzle fitting together to form something stronger than if in isolation. Sort of like my notes and memories captured and organized: linked together, they may forge more profound and deeper understandings.
Social media does the opposite: they divide ideas into slivers of information. They strip away context and leave open only space for emotion and confusion. The dissemblance of meaning, of "why did I join this space in the first place?", is the result.
I emailed my parents that, by the time we all arrived in Virginia for vacation (coming from Wisconsin), that Biden could be out. I included an insightful column from The New York Times to support this prediction.
I heard about Biden dropping out from my two teenage kids in the backseat, both on their smartphones while I drove. For the next five minutes, I antagonized my family to check social media for additional details (we eventually learned that Biden endorsed Harris).
Once we arrived at a stopping point (Hopewell Earthworks in Chillicothe, Ohio; see image), I admit that I bent my digital declutter a bit by checking my "Reliable Media Sources" list on Twitter.
There were a few more nuanced insights, but nothing there that altered my understanding of events.
Once the dust settled, both on our long journey from Wisconsin to Virginia and on this unprecedented political event, I ventured out for groceries. Checking out, I purchased a paper copy of The New York Times.
Unhappy with their previous coverage around Biden's age, I had unsubscribed to their digital platform. But reading their insights on Monday, with a 24 hour news cycle done, I found the reporting less emotional, deeper, and more measured.
I have developed a reputation for selecting less-than-stellar hotels on behalf of my family.
I have a tendency to go off the beaten path: trying to find a" hidden gem" among the franchises, only to turn up fool's gold.
One hotel on our recent road trip to Williamsburg landed us in a dated hotel that offered an amenity I had not seen in sometime: a VCR. Did the hotel also have VHS tapes to borrow? We didn't have time to ask.
This brought me back to my childhood in the 80s and 90s. VHS and Beta, along with the actual theaters, were the only way to watch movies without commercials or abridgment. I loved going to one of our two local movie rental stores to see what new releases were out. These visits also surrounded me with other movie aficionados. The clerks and fellow customers offered camaraderie in our affinity for cinema.
In 2000, as a new teacher in a new city and not knowing many people at all, I got on a first name basis with similar staff, this time looking for newly released DVDs. Later on, when I brought my new girlfriend (and future wife) with me to rent a movie, she laughed when the clerks knew me by first name.
These weak ties developed in the aisles of movie rental stores were a source of strength growing up. Do people still develop these ties now, without these common spaces? Online, are the connections too weak? Too transactional? Possibly.
One of my weaknesses in this digital wilderness is S.O.S.: Shiny Object Syndrome.
I have a sweet tooth for the next "killer app". Part of my pleasure when using technology is trying out these tools. But my commitment to fully learning them is where I sometimes fall short.
Example: this morning I was chatting with another consultant about our work, the challenges and the benefits. As I discussed my purchase of an annual subscription to Teachable for a self-directed course and playbook, I started to lament what another platform (Mighty Networks) might bring that my current one does not.
After reflecting on the call, I remembered what Cal Newport said about our willingness to bring in new technology: we only tend to look at the value it brings. What are the costs? If the digital device or app is helpful in our lives, does it also hinder our efforts toward our goals? Even be harmful?
Mighty Networks is a powerful tool. It also requires significant energy, time, and strategy to cultivate a community as it promises. There's a tradeoff in selecting it over a tool like Teachable, where the focus is more on courses.
Just because we know how to use tech doesn't mean we should.
In the past, we met in person. Due to various constraints, we connected over Zoom.
Besides some challenges with time zones (I missed two of the four gatherings), it seemed to go well. We were able to still give each other feedback, and I was able to produce five articles.
That said, I was off task more that I typically might be. Sitting on the back deck, I found excuses to do yard work and get ready for my family's vacation. Attending the retreat in person provides the physical and visible presence of other writers to motivate myself to write. People call this "body doubling" or "mirroring". I've written twice as many articles in the past.
Had I allowed social media and frequent digital checks, I can only imagine how much less I may have written. Our attention spans as splintered into shards enough when we have all these open loops: apps sitting in the backgrounds of our phones, unorganized emails, etc.
"Presence" was my word for the retreat. Hopefully I lived it out as a primary value.
Each morning, and with the absence of social media, I will be committing to slowly going through each one, starting from the beginning (2019), and rereading what I documented. My intention is to locate events that resonated with me at the time.
The impetus: I suffered a small stroke in 2023. Apparently I have had previous ones according to my neurologist and an MRI (lesions in my brain). I have located notes in my bullet journal from December 2020 that indicate one may have happened at the time.
My question is what were the conditions that may have affected having these strokes? So far, I have noticed high levels of stress prior to both strokes (although I can't say for sure that I had one in Dec of 2020). Having this information, thanks in spades to keeping a bullet journal, convinced me to leave the principalship after 16 years and become a coach.
My goal is discover more stores of information that could lead to reflective essays and help me make sense of the past five years.
If I were to make a prediction regarding social media, I think the future lies in paid communities.
Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn...they get too big, and it becomes almost impossible to moderate. Combine this with the collective power of smaller groups to make real changes on specific areas of focus, and you can see the possibilities.
For example, I belong to an online community that supports bullet journaling for productivity and presence. They use Mighty Networks to facilitate this network of notebook enthusiasts. The community manager, Jessica, does a great job of hosting events, facilitating book studies, and posing questions for discussion.
I am also a member of a coaching community focused on supporting people to build better budgeting habits. They use Circle, a similar technology to Mighty Networks. I attended an office hours session today, discussing best tools for marketing and conversions of clients.
Both communities are successful. They charge a reasonable free for a truer sense of belonging than Twitter or LinkedIn provide. There's much less performative behaviors and more authentic sharing. And it's not the tools as much as it is the individuals who manage these spaces. They are gracious hosts who provide clear guidelines for engagement and discourse. They are also paid for their time. (Jessica is full time.)
I can attest a little bit to the work that goes into managing these online social spaces. My agency has a Mighty Network space that I help run. I don't do nearly the amount of work necessary to engage educators in productive ways (it's a goal I have for the coming school year). Time, intention, and a community-first mindset are necessary resources for success.
These huge social media companies aren't investing in building communities like the two I belong to, despite what their mission statement might proclaim. They want to make money. They get it from advertising. Advertising is dependent on eyes to see it and click on their links.
Unless this model changes at the macro level, I say the small financial investment in belonging to a niche social network is money well spent.
It didn't help that it started with rain and ended with muggy. Not Florida humid, but sweltering enough that the dog preferred the shade over chasing her ball.
I spent the early evening doing something I hadn't done in a while: watch a baseball game on television.
It was tempting to bring my laptop over and do some writing or work while the Brewers beat the Nationals. But then I wouldn't be with the game; I would be doing what most people do when watching anything: multitasking.
In fact, by "only" watching a game, I wasn't doing anything. I was being. As in, being present as the umpire called balls and strikes, and the Brewer's shortstop Willy Adames puts the final nail in the coffin with a homerun.
Only watching the game, would Newport refer to this as "productive solitude", in which one resists the "digital baubles and addictive content waiting to distract you, and providing you with a structured way to make sense of whatever important things are happening in your life at the moment"? (p. 126).
I guess it depends whether we deem something important or not. I did keep a small notebook by me as I watched the game in case any thought surfaced that I didn't want to forget.
It is in these situations of being - watching a game, taking a shower, going for a walk - where ideas are more likely to bubble up. Maybe we are better doers when we prioritize not doing.
It didn't have to be. I could have turned on the news or hopped on social media and "kept up" with the coverage. The digital declutter forced me to avoid the fast lane of life and appreciate the slower cycle of life.
It was especially quiet as all of my other family members were out of the house.
- My wife was with her parents for a family event.
- My son is at camp.
- My daughter was busy either at work or with friends.
If one is not used to it, solitude can be eerie.
Cal Newport devotes a whole chapter to solitude, "Spend Time Alone". He observes that people resist being alone, especially in this age of constant connectivity, due to the "rise of cell phone as vital appendage". Many of us have become used to always being surrounded by others, even if only through online avatars. When we remove their digital presence, anxiety and fear can creep in.
As Newport notes:
"Young people...worry that even temporary disconnection might lead them to miss out on something better they could be doing. Parents worry that their kids won't be able to reach them in an emergency. Travelers need directions and recommendations for places to eat. Workers fear the idea of being both needed and unreachable. An everyone secretly fears being bored" (p. 113, my emphasis).
So it's not just social media or email or newsletters: it's the delivery system that also cultivates "solitude deprivation".
One advantage I have had coming into this declutter experiment is a regular habit of keeping a diary/journal. I use Ryder Carroll's method for noting my daily activities, how I feel about situations, and reflecting on events.
In fact, I've missed few days of documenting at least something in my journal.
For example, three days after my small stroke last year, I noted that I followed up on a work project (really??) and how I was feeling about engaging in the work without the support of stimulants for my ADHD.
This day was not an easy day to be off social media.
As reporting of the assassination attempt on Former President Trump came in, I was tempted to hop on Twitter and see what was on my feed.
Instead, I watched the news. Knowing things were happening in real time, I did compromise my declutter and also read journalists' posts I have added to a "Reliable Media Sources" Twitter list. A few tweets offered some insights that weren't on mainstream media.
Today, I avoided the news almost altogether.
What I wanted was not more information as much as different perspectives on the situation. Less emotion and more reason.
So while checking my email, I found a few newsletters from respected scholars on the situation.
Timothy Snyder, a historian and author of On Tyranny, provided a helpful perspective on the source of political violence. Looking back over European history in the 1920s and 1930s, he points to several examples in which violence of this nature often occurs within a political party.
Likewise, George Lakoff, linguist and co-author of Metaphors We Live By, asks if this event will reign in Trump's rhetoric or enflame it even further. (My bet is on the latter, unfortunately.)
What these engagements with media have in common is they are slow. Snyder and Lakoff took their time in putting together their positions, based on a lifetime of study along with an understanding that the earliest take is too often wrong.
Lakoff even offers an operating procedure for dealing with breaking news in a more deliberate and present manner. (Source: onthemedia.org)
As the caption on the top notes, "cut out and tape near your computer or TV".
I would add: limit how much you watch and consume online.
Not that this always has to come back to literacy leadership, but I don't see these ways of thinking and being in the world taught enough in schools. This is critical literacy and media literacy to be intentional about what information we allow to enter our minds, how it is conveyed, and how quickly it comes at us.
In the midst of reducing technologies, I added a new one to the mix.
Okay, it' not exactly new. I have a Kindle Paperwhite. My wife has been using mine for a while as she has a subscription to Kindle Unlimited. Wanting to best utilize my subscription to Readwise (it takes my digital highlights and annotations and organizes them for later use), I purchased a Kindle Scribe.
The upgrade here is I can also write. It's a tablet with eInk screen technology. You can create a library of notebooks and folders on the Kindle.
I'm not sure if this was an impulse buy or something more.
In favor of the Kindle Scribe (and where my bias currently lies with the money I spent):
- It can replace my tendency to want to check social media or my email. I can read and take notes all in once space without access to the Internet.
- My handwriting can be converted to text, which could help if I am struggling to write on my computer.
- I can reduce the number of physical books I need to purchase, which is nice for my work in which I travel a decent amount.
- And, of course, my wife can have my Kindle White.
Against? The big negative I see is I now have one more device in my world. I still have my old smartphone, a Google Pixel, which I now use more as an iPod, mostly for the FitBit app (I have the Google watch to track exercise, steps, etc.). I have a flip phone for personal calls and an iPhone for work. Plus my laptop and desktop.
I think there is something to be said for the increased cognitive load we carry when we bring more devices into our lives. Each one holds at least one commitment or responsibility. I'd like to say we would get rid of them otherwise, yet we still have old Kindles stored away in shelves. They probable still work. (My favorite was the one with the push buttons. The digital keyboards of the newer Kindles aren't as good.)
I'm not going to return the Scribe, of course. Instead, I am going to invest in learning how it best works to support the intentional life I want. How can I utilize the notebooks to capture notes and ideas based on what I read? What software and hardware does it replace? Can I consolidate my arsenal of digital tools a bit, and free up some mental space for non-technological activities.
Speaking of which, I accomplished what I wanted to do on Day 2 of this declutter: I created an impromptu compost pile for all of the grass clippings and pulled weeds my city is no longer picking up.
I was tempted to Google for the best approach here, or to ask ChatGPT if laying down weed barrier and then weeds on top would keep down the growth between fences. But I resisted. It's an experiment, which is what makes leisure enjoyable for me.
My kids' technology education teacher joked with one of them last school year.
"Your dad might be a better writer than me, but I can build a better fence."
Our house is by our high school, and he likely drives by it daily. I laughed, with confidence that the latter was the case.
On Day 10, I was doing a bit of belly aching about the house projects that I didn't know how to do and need to ask for help.
However, I do have enough confidence to build a fence now that I have actually done it.
What made the difference was someone guiding me and working alongside me.
As a few fence panels were falling into my yard, my neighbor asked if I wanted in help in repairing. "Once you are ready and know what you are doing, I'll let you go on your own," he clarified.
Happy for any help, I agreed.
The first panel I did on my own is on the far left.
Compared to the subsequent panels, I see slight issue with the levelness of my initial attempt.
I've been tempted to fix that panel, straighten out. But for now, I have left it there, as a visual reminder of where competence and confidence starts.
Maybe related, I think one thing attracts us to digital tools is the cleanness of the platform. If we make a mistake, we can delete and edit the post.
Social media is very performative. Few people go online to look stupid or even vulnerable.
Continuing this thread of public mistake-making to school leadership, I think about organizational psychologist Robert Kegan said in An Everyone Culture:
"In an ordinary organization, most people are doing a second job no one is paying them for. In businesses large and small; in government agencies, schools, and hospitals; in for-profits and nonprofits, and in any country in the world, most people are spending time and energy covering up their weaknesses, managing other people’s impressions of them, showing themselves to their best advantage, playing politics, hiding their inadequacies, hiding their uncertainties, hiding their limitations. Hiding. We regard this as the single biggest loss of resources that organizations suffer every day."
Thinking about all of this, I can see why digital tools can supplant the more messy and complex work of the real world. We can't hide our deficiencies when we work in plain sight.
Engaging in leisure, however we define, might have benefits beyond a sense of joy and accomplishment. It might also be building our tolerance for uncertainty and risk-taking.
Staying away from social media - Twitter, LinkedIn - is going fine. It's helpful, I think, that I have taken tech sabbaticals before from these spaces.
On the other hand, email has been a tougher nut to crack. I still check it multiple times a day, albeit much less than I did prior to the declutter.
One of the issues is that I have accepted a limited use of email. The operating procedures/rules I shared on my initial post were:
1. Check only once per day.
2. Have a list of prepared tasks to complete within email.
3. Keep the session to one hour or less.
My guess is I am not on for more than an hour, but I am not coming to my account with a planned out list.
For example, in my "leisure" I am trying to replace a light fixture. I cannot determine why it no longer works. Using a voltage tester, there doesn't appear to be an power coming from the wires. Asking around for help, a friend of mine referred me to a handyman. I hopped on my email and sent off a request for him to stop by and assess the situation. (I also have a broken window sill; I am not sure "maintaining a 100 year old house" counts as leisure, unless one enjoys doing this kind of work.)
But I didn't need to send that email off pronto. It could have waited a few hours.
Here's what I think I will do now:
1. Keep a notebook on me to record tasks I need to accomplish through email.
2. When the note gets long or immediate enough, go to my account.
3. Set up a timer to give me a visual of how much time I will spend.
I also need to monitor my task management system more closely. Messages that require my sustained attention need to go somewhere, whether a to-do list or my calendar. That's something Newport doesn't really address in his book. How do you deal with the asks of your time without some type of system to keep track of everything?
His likely response: make it harder for people to reach you. Stop being so available. This feels selfish. It also seems like you might miss out on opportunities to connect and to contribute. But if one is clear on their values and what the right work is for them, limiting accessibility can better ensure the opportunities that do come one's way are the right ones.
Yesterday I talked about having to use technology that I had put a fence around as part of this digital declutter. I created an obstacle for accessing Linkedin and Twitter by removing the apps from the phone. I made it difficult to use the technology.
This goes both ways. We can create systems within our environments to invite more success, more effective actions in our lives. Technology can Play an important role.
Sometimes it is simply a matter of positioning. Working in the backyard, I moved a hose from one side of the deck to the other to make it closer to the pumpkin plants.
I am now more apt to water the plants. Is there a situation in which I could still use social media and still maintain a level of focus that I desire? Is there a better positioning of these digital tools to water my creative gardens?
Others have explored this question. For example, an app called Buffer allows you to write posts for social media and send them out. The title of the app is the function; you get space between your creativity and the sites where it is shared.
But what use is social media if I can't be social? Is it just a site for Commerce and status updates? If this, then what is its utility?
And that's the question. How does a tool serve me, progressing toward goals? These are more than a hammer, a saw. There are attachments in the relationships forged with connections, with networks.
Maybe there are new ways of seeing this challenge. For examples can I take the time to organize my closest contacts on Twitter in my contacts? whatever the approach, it's important that I operate with agency.
Today was my first official day back at work as a systems for an educational services agency.
We were asked to go on to LinkedIn to post a comment about what we were reading on a social media post.
I almost protested - I am off social media! - but realized this was not in the spirit of the declutter.
But are there times when we need hard and fast rules with these digital tools?
This questions reminds of a scene from The Odyssey. As technologist Cory Doctorow tells it in this article, Ulysses had his sailors tie him to the mast of his ship. He knew that if he heard the sirens' calls, he would dive into the water and drown. He wanted to hear the sirens' call; otherwise he would have plugged his ears with wax.
He made what's now called an "Ulysses pact". You are binding yourself to the future. If you don't want to do something, then remove access from that option. As Doctorow aptly puts it, If you don't want to eat the Oreos, then get the Oreos out of the house.
"Becoming an adult is a process of learning that your strength comes from seeing your weaknesses and protecting yourself and the people who trust you from them."
When I went back on to LinkedIn and shared that I am currently reading Saving Time by Jenny Odell, I also succumbed to the red numbered notifications and clicked on them.
None of them were related to an actual interaction with another person on Linkedin.
For example, I was asked to congratulate a person I am connected with for staying with their employer for the last ten years.
I also had a direct message from a university, asking if I was ready to start pursuing my Ph.D.
Both disappointed and pleased that I none of my notifications were worth my attention, I shut down the LinkedIn page and went to my office. On my whiteboard, I wrote out some of the big projects I needed to finish this summer.
Setting up my environment for focus and successful productivity is so important. I find that leaning on analog tools to be one of the best ways to cultivate this presence.
Not that I am against technology when it's needed. For example, I will likely add some of these projects to my calendar app, Motion, to find time to complete these projects, especially the ones where I partner with other coaches/consultants.
For me, binding ourselves to a mast is about what I need and what I am willing to tolerate to achieve a goal.
We spent the majority of the day in the car, taking our son to a two-week precollege camp at his #1 university choice.
Not a lot of time spent online at all, let alone social media or email.
Leaving things alone sometimes is the best ways to support growth.
Beyond leaving my son alone in a new city with strangers as an example, consider this survivor from last year's harvest.
I am presuming it is a pumpkin plant. It's not growing from the mound in the middle where I planted new seeds.
Last fall, I dumped all of the pumpkins we had either grown or purchased on our raised beds. The idea was, I would allow them to slowly compost over fall, winter, and spring. Then in summer (now), up would spring a few seedlings from last year's harvest.
My theory was in doubt when a friend of mine, a former vegetable farmer, explained that pumpkin variants did not naturally reproduce from a previous plant.
That I have a sole survivor hear shows that there are always exceptions to the rule.
Relating this metaphor to instructional leadership, cultivating growth is an intentional act. Principals, coaches, and other leaders can't simply accept the state and the conditions in which their schools are in.
There has to be some purpose, even some strong persuasion, in how an organization will improve from its current situation.
The sweet spot for this growth seems to be somewhere between assessing the situation and disrupting the entire ecosystem.
A new colleague and acquaintance shared some of her insights with me on this topic.
Part of her work was helping leaders and teachers create structured opportunities to observe each other's practice and learn from one another. She was advocating for "free PD".
She noted the following:
"One of our greatest challenges was getting the principals to go into classrooms themselves to do what we were doing or, at the very least, to monitor what the teachers were learning from our PD. They too often welcomed us as "fixers" who would help the teachers improve their practice while they took care of more urgent matters in the building, and we had to work hard to change that mentality."
This is the constraint of consultants and other outside support: as helpful as they are, they eventually leave. What structures, systems, and supports will remain to ensure improvement becomes part of the DNA of a school?
I think it starts with a close monitoring of the system, both as a whole and at an individual level. Not to evaluate or to supervise, but to simple notice what is happening and organize this information in order to engage in some sense-making.
Once patterns emerge, principals can be helpful in what they do more so than in what they say. They can take action in indirect ways that allow for teachers to participate in self-improvement on safe terms. For example, as a school leader I would facilitate schoolwide writing assessments. I would serve as the note taker and conversation guide when faculty would like at student writing across the elementary grades. When I captured the strengths and areas of growth based on what we noticed, I was more likely to ask questions than to draw conclusions. I wanted to promote thought instead of solutions.
In a somewhat similar fashion, the new colleague I mentioned before promoted peer observation as a tool for continuous improvement. She found an even more basic yet no less profound role for the principals.
"We always suggested that one or more administrators cover the classes for the observers. At first, we did that because the principal was often the only one in the building who had the flexibility to do it, but we also knew that teachers really liked it when the principal took over their classes. They felt the principal was "walking in their shoes" and getting a better idea of just what they faced every day. Usually, the principals just had to supervise a straightforward activity while the teacher was out of the room—the teachers made it easy on them!—but just the fact that a principal was willing to make a collegial observation possible by pitching in as a substitute teacher enhanced the principal's reputation."
Both of these examples remind me of Viviane Robinson's classic research on the influence of school leadership. She found that principals leading and participating in professional learning for teachers to have the highest impact on student learning, compared to other influential behaviors.
I am an engaged gardener. Not doing something can be the same or better than doing something. Supervision or evaluation is not always a welcomed intervention. All of these actions/nonactions are founded on a cultivation of one's presence, of one's capacity to pay attention to what's important while resisting the sirens' call of urgency.
During my time off, I've made it a morning habit to sit on my back deck and read a little bit. I've noticed a pair of cardinals. They greet me each morning, perched on my neighbor's apple tree, with their distinctive chirps.
Noticing this pattern of nature is less likely in a digital-centric world. I prefer to read print for several reasons - notably for the lack of Internet connection.
That said, it's a bit more work to capture, organize, and utilize any notes I might make in the margins. My solution has been to leverage an app called Readwise (readwise.io).
Here's how it works:
1. With my smartphone, I scan a quote in my print text with the app.
2. The app transcribes it into it's system.
3. I can add my annotations as notes and then save it to the book or article I am reading.
4. Readwise stores these quotes and notes, along with exporting them to my storage application of choice (Evernote) or organization and back up purposes.
When I want to do some writing and utilize a quote or a note from what I read, I can find it in Readwise or Evernote.
An additional benefit of Readwise is it will present five quotes I have saved previously as a morning email. I will read each one, maybe leave additional notes or correct a misspelling, and go to the next one. Readwise uses a streak feature, similar to Snapchat, in which I get credit for reviewing my randomly-presented quotes for so many days in a row. If you get a long enough streak, you can get your name on the Readwise leader board.
I bring this up as I don't to position some of the ways social media developers get us hooked on their platforms as an entirely bad thing. Under the right conditions, intermittent rewards and social influence can be a positive strategy.
- I am not spending hours on Readwise.
- I am persuaded to read.
- I don't feel envy about other people's longer Readwise streaks.
- It aligns with my values of curiosity and learning.
As I was scanning a note in on my back deck, my dog started barking. She realized I was outside. I opened the door to let her out, and the cardinal flew away. My wife with a cup of coffee in her hand plus one of the cats followed the dog out.
I put down my book and my phone and said good morning to everyone - a welcomed distraction.
In between improving my backyard, one task at a time, I am rereading Digital Minimalism.
I lingered on his definition of this concept for a bit.
"Digital Minimalism: A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else." (p. 28)
My emphasis here is a note, that in order to be a discerning and wise consumer of technology when embracing digital minimalism, I have to know what my values are.
In the margins, I wrote out some of my presently held values:
- Curiosity
- Mindfulness
- Justice
- Integrity
- Learning
Do the technologies I have push pause on make the cut?
Twitter/X is a conundrum.
Going for it is the learning I have experienced from the medium. Some smart educators have remained active in that space. I also have curated a list of journalists who offer their honest takes on the current events of our times. In addition, I have seen how social media has shined a light on inequities in our world and can broaden one's perspective about the world.
On the flip side, Twitter is the antithesis of mindfulness. As Newport notes, using social media is "a lopsided arms race", in which we find ourselves "increasingly dominated by their influence, allowing them to control more and more of how we spend out time, how we feel, and how we behave" (p. 24). He interviewed multiple experts in this field. They revealed how Silicon Valley has invested billions of dollars to create ways to keep people online through incentivizing highly emotional posts and intermittent rewards such as likes and retweets.
I think what's necessary about the digital declutter is the 30 day pause. I don't think I would fully appreciate the absence of social media in my life until I have embraced a world without it. Through more attention on leisure in real life, I am hopefully realigning my actions and thinking with my values.
For example, I have spotted jewelweed in parts of my yard.
I used to get so annoyed by this weed. It's easy to pull yet aggressive in its spread.
Through my curiosity, I learned that jewelweed is a companion plant. It grows next to nettles and poison ivy. Its leaves, when crushed, removes the oil and reduces rashes when people accidentally touch the latter.
Not that I am not continuing to remove it from my property. But I am more mindful and even a little grateful for its presence. Maybe something I would not have learned had my mind been in a less curious state.
The only thing I did today (besides stay off technology as promised) was move the potted tomatoes and peppers from the deck to under the porch roof.
We had a lot of rain lately, and the soil in the pots are still soaked. One of them, my basil, is still swimming.
At first, I found this a little frustrating. How am I going to dry it out? The only solution I saw, besides drilling holes in the bottom of the pot to drain it and getting my deck messing, was to repot the plant with new soil.
My tendency here is to go online and search for answers from others. Of late, I use AI to give me a response. Sometimes I get useful information, sometimes not.
One of my concerns with using the Internet and AI so much for answers is I might stop trusting my intuition. If my first move when I don't know something is to ask others instead of myself, whose wisdom do I value more? How does this shape my confidence and sense of competence?
Resisting the easy response, I looked around my yard and considered the possibilities.
My eyes fell on the new hole our retriever, Millie had dug in our backyard. She decided the best place for it was right next to her previous hole that had filled in with soil and seeded with grass.
While I realized it may be a lost cause, what if dumped the soaked soil, reseeded it, and repotted the basil? No waste, and solves another problem.
Technology - social media, AI, the Internet in general - doesn't understand or know our contexts. There's no blueprint out there for reforming our schools or our lives. Maybe some helpful ideas and suggestions from others who have walked the path we are currently on.
But to be present with our environment may be the best tool for solving our challenges.
Our first harvest of the summer were three Italian green peppers. "They are great for grilling, as sides with a protein," noted our local organic farmer at the Saturday market down the street.
I brought them in and asked my wife, Jodi if we could use them in a meal this week.
As part of a digital declutter, Newport recommends that we find replacement of our technology habits by cultivating "high-quality alternatives to the easy distractions they provide" (p. 71).
My choice in leisure is gardening and general caretaking of our yard/grounds. Part of that is enjoying the literal fruits of our labor.
What's notable here is, at least on the surface, it seems like I did very little to be rewarded with this harvest.
- I bought the Italian pepper plant at the local farmer's market.
- I cleaned out a plant container and filled it with potting soil.
- After planting it, I placed it into a warm sunny spot on our back deck.
But beneath the surface here, I am not appreciating what supports this easy act of leisure, including:
- income to purchase the plant, pot, and soil,
- the nice deck I have to restain every two years, and
- the time away from work that I can devote to leisurely and lifeworthy tasks like this one.
I could have been busy checking in on my Twitter feed or habitual visiting my email inbox.
This is the trade-off right now: a life of leisure for less time online.
Very rainy today, which made it tough to engage in my selected activity of leisure during my digital declutter - gardening.
However, with my absence from most online connections, my mind started to wonder why the city had not yet picked up the grass clippings, pulled weeds, and fallen sticks laying on the side of the street.
Going on the city's website, I discovered that the city decided they were no longer going to be offering this service. Now what do I do with this refuse? I grumbled.
But before I could get stuck in that emotion, I was thankful that I had the presence of mind to notice the issue, ask the question, and seek out an answer. Otherwise, I would have likely received a notice on my door of my noncompliance.
Because this is a space dedicated to literacy leadership, I can relate this experience to the busyness of the life of a principal. We don't see the importance of what's happening within classroom instruction when our minds are occupied with the urgent and less important. Even if we are where the teaching and learning is taking place, where are our minds? I know mine was too often thinking about that potential blinking light on my office phone, a parent or board member or superintendent wanting my attention on something other than instruction, as pressing is it might be.
How do we create more presence in our work? I think principals and other instructional leaders would benefit from some type of digital declutter. It could even be for the weekend. Practice ignoring what can so easily capture our attention. Turn on the vacation responder to let people know who email you that you check messages on weekdays. It's a public accountability as much as courtesy.
Giving myself more space to think, I have a plan for the excess grass clippings and refuse: I will use it as mulch over a space between mine and my neighbor's fence. Weeds of all kind grow in that neglected area. My theory is, if I clear it out, put down fabric, and spread the dead vegetation over it, it will at least help keep the growth down.
Interesting morning so far without social media, reading online, or randomly checking email. I feel this void that I want to fill with other stuff. For example, I started thinking about what going back to school would look like. I hit pause on that narrative and reminded myself why I am doing a digital declutter: to reconnect with what brings life into my life.
Today, I trimmed back some of those weeds I mentioned in last weeks post. Trimmer battery died before I could finish. Instead of getting frustrated that I couldn't finish the job, I remember that I have plenty of time tomorrow to finish the job.
During my email block, I also found myself a little frustrated with all the messages I receive daily. Because I am timing myself (no more than 45 minutes), the ads and non-personal messages felt a little bit like they were interfering with my limited time to process more important emails.
To close, a promising sign: my son brought me a science mold of the metamorphosis of a butterfly. He was given it by a local artist he had agreed to help move some equipment. My son thought I should have it.
Who will I be after this process? Or to lower expectations, will I at least have some greater sense of awareness of where I am in my current metamorphosis?
7.30.24 (Digital Declutter Day 30/30)
I've unsubscribed to a number of newsletters and blogs during this digital declutter.
If I find myself often deleting the post from my inbox, even before I read it, is a sign that it may no longer serve my needs.
We tend to hold on to things far beyond the value that held in the past.
One newsletter/blog that I will stay subscribed to is marketer Seth Godin. His posts are timely, short, and relevant.
Recently, Seth shared an insightful post about competition and whether we are playing the game with which we want to participate.
The options are pretty clear:
1. focus on activities where you’re in the sweet spot of the curve, where more preparation, focus and effort lead to huge benefits. This means walking away from competitions against people who are committed to being unreasonable.
2. embrace the unreasonable and accept that your competitors will as well.
While the unreasonable is thrilling, it’s difficult to build a sustainable career around it.We all bring our personal meaning to what we read. For me, I saw social media as a game that a) isn't bringing huge benefits, and b) is filled with people who are committed to being unreasonable.
I noticed Seth only shared his blog posts on Twitter - zero interaction. And since 2023, he is no longer tweeting at all.
(Link to image and post is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/2d64feab-d908-373f-e20a-78332bf1c684/CMWjlDbKUrnp80t7UCZAqsP6ELIV1Byg-OEXB1MozLH19TRJ2mw-MLWPsw)
Life's too short not to play the right games. The rules of social media don't favor us.
7.29.24 (Digital Declutter Day 29/30)
Work recently started back up for me.
On Zoom, colleagues and I will sometimes have side conversations in the chat.
For example, I posted a visual I sketched. Someone "liked" it with a heart.
(Link to image and post is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/c659d459-be8a-0103-bbda-ed3187f66e0a/V2EFDXt5Cqgz7P9DoTHVLZl2dnMqE3KD6suuWyiZd2v467NPRUpI8p_Lyg)
Then I felt the urge to go through what the had posted. I felt obligated to reciprocate the acknowledgment.
Pausing, I realized that social media had trained me how to interact with others online!
This is mindless technology use. It's when I allow the environment, the systems, and the tools to influence my behavior. As Newport notes in Digital Minimalism, these light interactions can replace deeper discussions with others.
"Digital communication tools, if used without intention, have a way of forcing a tradeoff between conversation and connection. If you don't first reform your relationship with tools like social media and text messaging, attempts to shoehorn more conversation into your life are likely to fail." (p. 146)
People deserve more than a like. Like me, they crave authentic relationships.
7.28.24 (Digital Declutter Day 28/30)
It's fun to come home to positive changes and growth. The peppers and tomatoes in the pots on the back deck produced two handfuls for the kitchen counter. A neighbor/friend was kind enough to keep them watered.
One thing I enjoy about gardening is how little I actually do to promote their growth. Gardening is most successful when we create the conditions for growth:
- quality soil
- plenty of sunlight and warmth
- appropriate amount of water
- protection from enemies (weeds, animals)
These conditions have been the same for as long as there have been gardeners. When I met and spoke with a "farmer" at Colonial Williamsburg, his advice on how best to grow food echoed similar principles.
This post could veer into creating the conditions for learning for our students. But I am thinking about my own learning. Our learning. Are we cultivating the conditions for own growth and continuous improvement?
Social media and similar online platforms have changed how we interact with each other. They reward extreme behavior and depress logic and reasoning. The conditions support binary type thinking: you are either right or wrong. I think this is part of the reason why SoR has taken off these past years. It is promoted an argument instead of a conversation.
This is why I have decided to use Twitter and LinkedIn only for sharing posts from my spaces and reporting colleagues work. No interactions. People can find me elsewhere, where dialogue is the expected norm.
(Link to image and post is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/0c591b5c-f114-b937-058a-3a6793fdcbca/TFKnjd6TvPCyExX_rXbnLeSKdtG-aPavbJoOLHZD5za8-OlPKihx6hcGug)
7.27.24 (Digital Declutter Day 27/30)
It's the first day back and I am going through our photos from the trip.
To be more present, I only brought my flip phone with me when I didn't a smartphone. I wasn't able to take a lot of pictures with what my family members so affectionately to as my '"Jitterbug" ( ]it's not; it's an Iris, but anyway).
I did feel a sense of loss, of missing out on all the moments I didn't capture on our trip.
But did I miss them? I was there. I remember what resonated with me, emotionally and relationally.
Our desire to capture and share our experiences is warranted. Images and video organized and shared can bring joy when revisited after the experience occurred. But there is a cost. The process - of taking the picture, of sharing it with others, of going back online to see what type of engagement was created, of finding ourselves immersed in that space and forgetting how we ended up there in the first place - is not the experience.
I did find one image I appreciated. It was from a physical timeline as one walked along toward Historic Jamestown.
(Link to image and post is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/25d536e5-710e-049e-5c6a-a3322266dd92/FFz2qVqb1XbOagOVpKpp_zqDCHaL5Yt_1SIoQeXkmX4nP2qyvcGTo4E81A)
What we put out there, what we extend into the world, has influences on ourselves and others.
7.26.24 (Digital Declutter Day 26/30)
It's the last day of vacation. We had elected to drive a nice rental car from Wisconsin to Virginia and back.
Even though I am responsible for the driving, I am getting in a lot of reading. Using Libby and Libro.fm, I finished the memoir The Tender Bar and started the science fiction novel Dark Matter.
(Side note: I have tinnitus in my right ear, so I use one earbud to tune out the ringing with a good book read aloud. All safe on the road!)
I can say with confidence that I have been reading more during my digital declutter. And I read a lot in spite of these distractions.
With this additional time recaptured with social media and newsletter turned off, I've been trying to be more intentional about doing something in with what I read. I have a read later app, which captures favorite quotes plus my annotations.
Typically I feel rushed to get on with the next article or book instead of pondering on or processing what I read. That, in turn, can support my own articles, newsletters, etc. This declutter could improve my writing. It may be a positive outcome due to the subtraction of social media.
(Link to post and image here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/440c300f-db46-3af0-66ef-cf76da22dcff/zLyC9rXA4oF5HA8ixRHRJJHVRkuSer9V_GHt38mKEBTomdw-ClcsLddlTg)
7.25.24 (Digital Declutter Day 25/30)
Today's Virginia adventure took us to Historic Jamestown. This was my #1 site to visit during vacation.
I have a passport guide. It is a collector's stamp book to organize cancellations (dated stamps) and stickers for each national park site you visit. My kids lovingly call it my "sticker book".
There is also an app to collect the stamps. But as you might guess, it's not the same. There's a tangible, real quality to the physical nature of collecting artifacts of my visits to parks.
As we roamed around the site looking at the restored buildings and grounds of the first American colony, I noticed the rebuilt church in Jamestown. It is the site of the first formal conversation about democracy.
The General Assembly within the colony met on a couple of benches on July 30, 1619.
This small body of representatives (all white men, of course) engaged in discussion about creating laws to how best govern their tiny government.
This type of intentional, deep discourse is not the outcome of our weak ties created through social media. That was never the intention.
So why do we spend so much time there?
(Link to images and post is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/07f5862c-ef77-a660-fa69-2f0c3b0d4bbc/vbEZwuo1BpUNTFe2P3bGrWvPuga1t_gnZIoMxetrEkZFojUlZaZz8i9LnA)
7.24.24 (Digital Declutter Day 24/30)
We visited a beach on Chesapeake Bay. It was my daughter's request for our vacation. "I just want to go into the ocean."
I was not in charge of this adventure. My brothers led the group to this location. It was a nice beach, but didn't appear to have any public facilities. "Where do the kids go if they need to use the bathroom?" I asked one of them. He shrugged.
I had brought my smartphone with me, so I searched for businesses that might have public restrooms. There weren't many options.
As I walked around, letting the maps app lead the way, I arrived at a convenience store. "No public restrooms" said the sign on the front.
As I walked back to the beach, disappointed, I came upon two porta-potties. Where did these come from? I asked myself, until I realized that I had walked right passed them previously. I had missed them because I was immersed in the maps app, looking for something right in front of me.
How many times does something like this happen with digital connections in general? What opportunities do we miss when we are searching on line?
(Link to image and post is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/5fb0e233-4cae-64bc-4db2-c08ddf871983/CgJw3CKrRtyRiEvHA2iwaN1PxQSK5SmTOmW4gei1nVwgpzlrAPTwzu9biQ)
7.23.24 (Digital Declutter Day 23/30)
"This presence, this mystery, is the very source of being."
- Tara Brach
An app I have reinvested in is Mindfulness. It is similar to Calm and Headspace, if you are familiar with those tools. They all have prerecorded audio sessions and courses to guide one's meditation.
Meditation is a challenge for me without the scaffold that these supports provide. I would barely even refer to these apps as "digital"; the only thing that categorizes them as technology is I access the sessions on my smartphone.
One course by Tara Brach offers the following two questions to come back to when we feel overwhelmed with the pace and commitments of life:
1. What is happening?
2. Can I let this be?
This can be a helpful protocol when situated in environments that we cannot control or even influence to a large degree.
For example, my extended family and I are spending a lot of time together. We love each other, and I think we can also agree that putting fifteen family members in one space might lead to irritation or disagreement.
A common response to uncomfortableness in general is to hop on our phones. Check out our social media feeds and mentally take a break. Not having access to this, I reengaged with what I was doing, such as playing a board game or simply chatting.
Just being present...it shouldn't be this much work. Yet in these current conditions, where the access of connection subverts the opportunity for conversation with such ease, it is.
(Link to post and images are here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/7aa58b8c-9b08-3f55-d857-469d0055d2f0/IaJTeXMSDaHalaID9dLMAdZ4jWV56V3sZaRjX_OGuwJ05DHKClwTcKtfRw)
7.22.24 (Digital Declutter Day 22/30)
In the absence of social media, my brain wants to fill the void.
One app I downloaded is Obsidian. It's a note taking tool that helps you see relationships between ideas in separate notes. It's a more organic and nonlinear way of finding trends and patterns in what you study.
I've been interested in capturing my experiences as a principal, a stroke survivor, and what it all meant in the context of a pandemic. I have little idea what I might find if I investigate this line of inquiry. Obsidian might be a helpful tool in this project.
By either chance or fate, the Native American burial site we stopped at on our trip to Virginia noted that obsidian was a revered stone. They used it for tools, weapons, and jewelry. It's also believed by some to have healing properties.
(Link to post and image is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/dcc0f944-51fc-e5e9-fe5c-5cfb098cfb5a/Y8eRQdqlxm9PKRLYkD9uLqI1341tTlHt2NbEjHaMWlmRMSlt2hDBEID5AA)
What I noticed is the patterns of the stone itself: like pieces of a puzzle fitting together to form something stronger than if in isolation. Sort of like my notes and memories captured and organized: linked together, they may forge more profound and deeper understandings.
Social media does the opposite: they divide ideas into slivers of information. They strip away context and leave open only space for emotion and confusion. The dissemblance of meaning, of "why did I join this space in the first place?", is the result.
7.21.24 (Digital Declutter Day 21/30)
I emailed my parents that, by the time we all arrived in Virginia for vacation (coming from Wisconsin), that Biden could be out. I included an insightful column from The New York Times to support this prediction.
I heard about Biden dropping out from my two teenage kids in the backseat, both on their smartphones while I drove. For the next five minutes, I antagonized my family to check social media for additional details (we eventually learned that Biden endorsed Harris).
Once we arrived at a stopping point (Hopewell Earthworks in Chillicothe, Ohio; see image), I admit that I bent my digital declutter a bit by checking my "Reliable Media Sources" list on Twitter.
(Link to post and image is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/7f3c4758-e3fd-b063-dc74-d8b141a16424/pTX2GalLRcDT93pa616VduS8KRXPsVUa5CAkPnBPYUDXGh3Fj26znm0heg)
There were a few more nuanced insights, but nothing there that altered my understanding of events.
Once the dust settled, both on our long journey from Wisconsin to Virginia and on this unprecedented political event, I ventured out for groceries. Checking out, I purchased a paper copy of The New York Times.
Unhappy with their previous coverage around Biden's age, I had unsubscribed to their digital platform. But reading their insights on Monday, with a 24 hour news cycle done, I found the reporting less emotional, deeper, and more measured.
In other words, I felt informed.
7.20.24 (Digital Declutter Day 20/30)
I have developed a reputation for selecting less-than-stellar hotels on behalf of my family.
I have a tendency to go off the beaten path: trying to find a" hidden gem" among the franchises, only to turn up fool's gold.
One hotel on our recent road trip to Williamsburg landed us in a dated hotel that offered an amenity I had not seen in sometime: a VCR. Did the hotel also have VHS tapes to borrow? We didn't have time to ask.
(Link to post and image is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/977b2b8d-6b10-0b9c-3b5f-592454e20727/XEUFJMnM9pOv1BVpgIDKlURjWoa_DIfFzokanyJfJEctI4tvXPCiEG69XQ)
This brought me back to my childhood in the 80s and 90s. VHS and Beta, along with the actual theaters, were the only way to watch movies without commercials or abridgment. I loved going to one of our two local movie rental stores to see what new releases were out. These visits also surrounded me with other movie aficionados. The clerks and fellow customers offered camaraderie in our affinity for cinema.
In 2000, as a new teacher in a new city and not knowing many people at all, I got on a first name basis with similar staff, this time looking for newly released DVDs. Later on, when I brought my new girlfriend (and future wife) with me to rent a movie, she laughed when the clerks knew me by first name.
These weak ties developed in the aisles of movie rental stores were a source of strength growing up. Do people still develop these ties now, without these common spaces? Online, are the connections too weak? Too transactional? Possibly.
7.19.24 (Digital Declutter Day 19/30)
One of my weaknesses in this digital wilderness is S.O.S.: Shiny Object Syndrome.
I have a sweet tooth for the next "killer app". Part of my pleasure when using technology is trying out these tools. But my commitment to fully learning them is where I sometimes fall short.
Example: this morning I was chatting with another consultant about our work, the challenges and the benefits. As I discussed my purchase of an annual subscription to Teachable for a self-directed course and playbook, I started to lament what another platform (Mighty Networks) might bring that my current one does not.
After reflecting on the call, I remembered what Cal Newport said about our willingness to bring in new technology: we only tend to look at the value it brings. What are the costs? If the digital device or app is helpful in our lives, does it also hinder our efforts toward our goals? Even be harmful?
Mighty Networks is a powerful tool. It also requires significant energy, time, and strategy to cultivate a community as it promises. There's a tradeoff in selecting it over a tool like Teachable, where the focus is more on courses.
Just because we know how to use tech doesn't mean we should.
(Link to post and image is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/2463d272-b35e-a194-dd66-5f38abf4a835/6V5AuOYAHz5DejHkT-9HS9EQp5Wez_OQknXZ6oNsw8RTw_6zhAGrc4H0hg)
7.18.24 (Digital Declutter Day 18/30)
I spent the last two days at a writing retreat.
In the past, we met in person. Due to various constraints, we connected over Zoom.
Besides some challenges with time zones (I missed two of the four gatherings), it seemed to go well. We were able to still give each other feedback, and I was able to produce five articles.
That said, I was off task more that I typically might be. Sitting on the back deck, I found excuses to do yard work and get ready for my family's vacation. Attending the retreat in person provides the physical and visible presence of other writers to motivate myself to write. People call this "body doubling" or "mirroring". I've written twice as many articles in the past.
Had I allowed social media and frequent digital checks, I can only imagine how much less I may have written. Our attention spans as splintered into shards enough when we have all these open loops: apps sitting in the backgrounds of our phones, unorganized emails, etc.
"Presence" was my word for the retreat. Hopefully I lived it out as a primary value.
(Link to post and image is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/033971a2-155b-2f90-cc1d-8dc2bc285f18/YV8OlnJCXgMBH_OQ6O16u9bKchEeHKYo5ZUH07NZ3L7Hjr9JjyLuxMF9Gw)
7.17.24 (Digital Declutter Day 17/30)
A question was posed in the journaling community I referenced on Day 16: What do you do with your old bullet journals?
(Link to post and image is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/cf01ed45-4a7e-1cf0-ef54-743cdb19fa11/9yYNclm7wE13rDv-8RRSpGU1z-FzMlYvZKeTp5vMS02YXSyUtjjPXAFzFw)
Each morning, and with the absence of social media, I will be committing to slowly going through each one, starting from the beginning (2019), and rereading what I documented. My intention is to locate events that resonated with me at the time.
The impetus: I suffered a small stroke in 2023. Apparently I have had previous ones according to my neurologist and an MRI (lesions in my brain). I have located notes in my bullet journal from December 2020 that indicate one may have happened at the time.
My question is what were the conditions that may have affected having these strokes? So far, I have noticed high levels of stress prior to both strokes (although I can't say for sure that I had one in Dec of 2020). Having this information, thanks in spades to keeping a bullet journal, convinced me to leave the principalship after 16 years and become a coach.
My goal is discover more stores of information that could lead to reflective essays and help me make sense of the past five years.
In other words, I am not throwing them away! 😂
7.16.24 (Digital Decluter Day 16/30)
If I were to make a prediction regarding social media, I think the future lies in paid communities.
Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn...they get too big, and it becomes almost impossible to moderate. Combine this with the collective power of smaller groups to make real changes on specific areas of focus, and you can see the possibilities.
For example, I belong to an online community that supports bullet journaling for productivity and presence. They use Mighty Networks to facilitate this network of notebook enthusiasts. The community manager, Jessica, does a great job of hosting events, facilitating book studies, and posing questions for discussion.
(Link to post and image here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/d3b4e278-0d80-99ef-b46b-d9fd58e8be23/0MqbXfGsbSHsZzfs0hNFd3A4OM4ze1fh88nAyCAnl8rNHX_weFe_FXPjDg)
I am also a member of a coaching community focused on supporting people to build better budgeting habits. They use Circle, a similar technology to Mighty Networks. I attended an office hours session today, discussing best tools for marketing and conversions of clients.
Both communities are successful. They charge a reasonable free for a truer sense of belonging than Twitter or LinkedIn provide. There's much less performative behaviors and more authentic sharing. And it's not the tools as much as it is the individuals who manage these spaces. They are gracious hosts who provide clear guidelines for engagement and discourse. They are also paid for their time. (Jessica is full time.)
I can attest a little bit to the work that goes into managing these online social spaces. My agency has a Mighty Network space that I help run. I don't do nearly the amount of work necessary to engage educators in productive ways (it's a goal I have for the coming school year). Time, intention, and a community-first mindset are necessary resources for success.
These huge social media companies aren't investing in building communities like the two I belong to, despite what their mission statement might proclaim. They want to make money. They get it from advertising. Advertising is dependent on eyes to see it and click on their links.
Unless this model changes at the macro level, I say the small financial investment in belonging to a niche social network is money well spent.
7.15.24 (Digital Declutter Day 15/30)
Like yesterday, a day set for solitude.
It didn't help that it started with rain and ended with muggy. Not Florida humid, but sweltering enough that the dog preferred the shade over chasing her ball.
I spent the early evening doing something I hadn't done in a while: watch a baseball game on television.
It was tempting to bring my laptop over and do some writing or work while the Brewers beat the Nationals. But then I wouldn't be with the game; I would be doing what most people do when watching anything: multitasking.
In fact, by "only" watching a game, I wasn't doing anything. I was being. As in, being present as the umpire called balls and strikes, and the Brewer's shortstop Willy Adames puts the final nail in the coffin with a homerun.
Only watching the game, would Newport refer to this as "productive solitude", in which one resists the "digital baubles and addictive content waiting to distract you, and providing you with a structured way to make sense of whatever important things are happening in your life at the moment"? (p. 126).
I guess it depends whether we deem something important or not. I did keep a small notebook by me as I watched the game in case any thought surfaced that I didn't want to forget.
It is in these situations of being - watching a game, taking a shower, going for a walk - where ideas are more likely to bubble up. Maybe we are better doers when we prioritize not doing.
(Link to post and image is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/4750586c-d3e5-e060-fa1b-ea8a75c39f35/NNkGK30zfhmm64l7g9b7nVwEzOh88jXjZX66SpHJhyeRVv211P1yw74Mvw
7.14.24 (Digital Declutter Day 14/30)
Today was quiet.
It didn't have to be. I could have turned on the news or hopped on social media and "kept up" with the coverage. The digital declutter forced me to avoid the fast lane of life and appreciate the slower cycle of life.
It was especially quiet as all of my other family members were out of the house.
- My wife was with her parents for a family event.
- My son is at camp.
- My daughter was busy either at work or with friends.
If one is not used to it, solitude can be eerie.
Cal Newport devotes a whole chapter to solitude, "Spend Time Alone". He observes that people resist being alone, especially in this age of constant connectivity, due to the "rise of cell phone as vital appendage". Many of us have become used to always being surrounded by others, even if only through online avatars. When we remove their digital presence, anxiety and fear can creep in.
As Newport notes:
"Young people...worry that even temporary disconnection might lead them to miss out on something better they could be doing. Parents worry that their kids won't be able to reach them in an emergency. Travelers need directions and recommendations for places to eat. Workers fear the idea of being both needed and unreachable. An everyone secretly fears being bored" (p. 113, my emphasis).
So it's not just social media or email or newsletters: it's the delivery system that also cultivates "solitude deprivation".
One advantage I have had coming into this declutter experiment is a regular habit of keeping a diary/journal. I use Ryder Carroll's method for noting my daily activities, how I feel about situations, and reflecting on events.
In fact, I've missed few days of documenting at least something in my journal.
For example, three days after my small stroke last year, I noted that I followed up on a work project (really??) and how I was feeling about engaging in the work without the support of stimulants for my ADHD.
(Link to post and image is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/4532b8e0-be6e-74bb-d8b9-5b8e5f9970b2/IT6qsvtZZm10pnvQgsaqcjuWwO13sE6q-dTa847pcZW3fmUcKVNfACKLjw)
Was this a necessary project to complete, or did I not know what to do with myself without the work to occupy my mind?
Writing in this space, I am taking the time to reflect on my past actions. This can inform future thinking and intentions.
Right now, I am affirmed with my decision to engage in a digital declutter, to cultivate a richer life beyond online spaces.
7.13.24 (Digital Declutter Day 13/30)
This day was not an easy day to be off social media.
As reporting of the assassination attempt on Former President Trump came in, I was tempted to hop on Twitter and see what was on my feed.
Instead, I watched the news. Knowing things were happening in real time, I did compromise my declutter and also read journalists' posts I have added to a "Reliable Media Sources" Twitter list. A few tweets offered some insights that weren't on mainstream media.
Today, I avoided the news almost altogether.
What I wanted was not more information as much as different perspectives on the situation. Less emotion and more reason.
So while checking my email, I found a few newsletters from respected scholars on the situation.
Timothy Snyder, a historian and author of On Tyranny, provided a helpful perspective on the source of political violence. Looking back over European history in the 1920s and 1930s, he points to several examples in which violence of this nature often occurs within a political party.
Likewise, George Lakoff, linguist and co-author of Metaphors We Live By, asks if this event will reign in Trump's rhetoric or enflame it even further. (My bet is on the latter, unfortunately.)
What these engagements with media have in common is they are slow. Snyder and Lakoff took their time in putting together their positions, based on a lifetime of study along with an understanding that the earliest take is too often wrong.
Lakoff even offers an operating procedure for dealing with breaking news in a more deliberate and present manner. (Source: onthemedia.org)
(Link to post and visual references is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/edb07f6b-ae58-a433-6969-2964fb2a421a/4HNgJT0kIm73ByIlwlchaaTjOBSZIVREol29MDJcOB4riwfhdAksfBsLTg)
As the caption on the top notes, "cut out and tape near your computer or TV".
I would add: limit how much you watch and consume online.
Not that this always has to come back to literacy leadership, but I don't see these ways of thinking and being in the world taught enough in schools. This is critical literacy and media literacy to be intentional about what information we allow to enter our minds, how it is conveyed, and how quickly it comes at us.
7.12.24 (Digital Declutter Day 12/30)
In the midst of reducing technologies, I added a new one to the mix.
Okay, it' not exactly new. I have a Kindle Paperwhite. My wife has been using mine for a while as she has a subscription to Kindle Unlimited. Wanting to best utilize my subscription to Readwise (it takes my digital highlights and annotations and organizes them for later use), I purchased a Kindle Scribe.
The upgrade here is I can also write. It's a tablet with eInk screen technology. You can create a library of notebooks and folders on the Kindle.
I'm not sure if this was an impulse buy or something more.
In favor of the Kindle Scribe (and where my bias currently lies with the money I spent):
- It can replace my tendency to want to check social media or my email. I can read and take notes all in once space without access to the Internet.
- My handwriting can be converted to text, which could help if I am struggling to write on my computer.
- I can reduce the number of physical books I need to purchase, which is nice for my work in which I travel a decent amount.
- And, of course, my wife can have my Kindle White.
Against? The big negative I see is I now have one more device in my world. I still have my old smartphone, a Google Pixel, which I now use more as an iPod, mostly for the FitBit app (I have the Google watch to track exercise, steps, etc.). I have a flip phone for personal calls and an iPhone for work. Plus my laptop and desktop.
I think there is something to be said for the increased cognitive load we carry when we bring more devices into our lives. Each one holds at least one commitment or responsibility. I'd like to say we would get rid of them otherwise, yet we still have old Kindles stored away in shelves. They probable still work. (My favorite was the one with the push buttons. The digital keyboards of the newer Kindles aren't as good.)
I'm not going to return the Scribe, of course. Instead, I am going to invest in learning how it best works to support the intentional life I want. How can I utilize the notebooks to capture notes and ideas based on what I read? What software and hardware does it replace? Can I consolidate my arsenal of digital tools a bit, and free up some mental space for non-technological activities.
Speaking of which, I accomplished what I wanted to do on Day 2 of this declutter: I created an impromptu compost pile for all of the grass clippings and pulled weeds my city is no longer picking up.
I was tempted to Google for the best approach here, or to ask ChatGPT if laying down weed barrier and then weeds on top would keep down the growth between fences. But I resisted. It's an experiment, which is what makes leisure enjoyable for me.
(Link to post and image is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/4d2f8265-b89c-f5b2-cef9-30d6175338f3/85PDf2wCFLX1CdjCpTFkcn4Ji5bnVbDIgr5DafVZGpqMJ07AzbBpT01-MQ)
7.11.24 (Digital Declutter Day 11/30)
My kids' technology education teacher joked with one of them last school year.
"Your dad might be a better writer than me, but I can build a better fence."
Our house is by our high school, and he likely drives by it daily. I laughed, with confidence that the latter was the case.
On Day 10, I was doing a bit of belly aching about the house projects that I didn't know how to do and need to ask for help.
However, I do have enough confidence to build a fence now that I have actually done it.
What made the difference was someone guiding me and working alongside me.
As a few fence panels were falling into my yard, my neighbor asked if I wanted in help in repairing. "Once you are ready and know what you are doing, I'll let you go on your own," he clarified.
Happy for any help, I agreed.
The first panel I did on my own is on the far left.
(Link to post and image is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/3fcce526-06e3-ba2a-e375-cfe1a2baddd9/rIiRHw4tlQBK2HEVgPM4pG0cEx-oRAMaCB8mXxuosKw0588i_CphPBd3RQ)
Compared to the subsequent panels, I see slight issue with the levelness of my initial attempt.
I've been tempted to fix that panel, straighten out. But for now, I have left it there, as a visual reminder of where competence and confidence starts.
Maybe related, I think one thing attracts us to digital tools is the cleanness of the platform. If we make a mistake, we can delete and edit the post.
Social media is very performative. Few people go online to look stupid or even vulnerable.
Continuing this thread of public mistake-making to school leadership, I think about organizational psychologist Robert Kegan said in An Everyone Culture:
"In an ordinary organization, most people are doing a second job no one is paying them for. In businesses large and small; in government agencies, schools, and hospitals; in for-profits and nonprofits, and in any country in the world, most people are spending time and energy covering up their weaknesses, managing other people’s impressions of them, showing themselves to their best advantage, playing politics, hiding their inadequacies, hiding their uncertainties, hiding their limitations. Hiding. We regard this as the single biggest loss of resources that organizations suffer every day."
Thinking about all of this, I can see why digital tools can supplant the more messy and complex work of the real world. We can't hide our deficiencies when we work in plain sight.
Engaging in leisure, however we define, might have benefits beyond a sense of joy and accomplishment. It might also be building our tolerance for uncertainty and risk-taking.
7.10.24 (Digital Declutter Day 10/30)
Staying away from social media - Twitter, LinkedIn - is going fine. It's helpful, I think, that I have taken tech sabbaticals before from these spaces.
On the other hand, email has been a tougher nut to crack. I still check it multiple times a day, albeit much less than I did prior to the declutter.
One of the issues is that I have accepted a limited use of email. The operating procedures/rules I shared on my initial post were:
1. Check only once per day.
2. Have a list of prepared tasks to complete within email.
3. Keep the session to one hour or less.
My guess is I am not on for more than an hour, but I am not coming to my account with a planned out list.
For example, in my "leisure" I am trying to replace a light fixture. I cannot determine why it no longer works. Using a voltage tester, there doesn't appear to be an power coming from the wires. Asking around for help, a friend of mine referred me to a handyman. I hopped on my email and sent off a request for him to stop by and assess the situation. (I also have a broken window sill; I am not sure "maintaining a 100 year old house" counts as leisure, unless one enjoys doing this kind of work.)
But I didn't need to send that email off pronto. It could have waited a few hours.
Here's what I think I will do now:
1. Keep a notebook on me to record tasks I need to accomplish through email.
2. When the note gets long or immediate enough, go to my account.
3. Set up a timer to give me a visual of how much time I will spend.
I also need to monitor my task management system more closely. Messages that require my sustained attention need to go somewhere, whether a to-do list or my calendar. That's something Newport doesn't really address in his book. How do you deal with the asks of your time without some type of system to keep track of everything?
His likely response: make it harder for people to reach you. Stop being so available. This feels selfish. It also seems like you might miss out on opportunities to connect and to contribute. But if one is clear on their values and what the right work is for them, limiting accessibility can better ensure the opportunities that do come one's way are the right ones.
(Link to the post and image are here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/f439a556-1b6f-44c6-7143-d88549a5ba94/oiqphVpWDaPGg2_QpfEBZOmmsI2hX-L96DpLT3yD-rGOenOOhA_OuuyJDA)
7.9.24 (Digital Declutter Day 9/30)
Yesterday I talked about having to use technology that I had put a fence around as part of this digital declutter. I created an obstacle for accessing Linkedin and Twitter by removing the apps from the phone. I made it difficult to use the technology.
This goes both ways. We can create systems within our environments to invite more success, more effective actions in our lives. Technology can Play an important role.
Sometimes it is simply a matter of positioning. Working in the backyard, I moved a hose from one side of the deck to the other to make it closer to the pumpkin plants.
I am now more apt to water the plants. Is there a situation in which I could still use social media and still maintain a level of focus that I desire? Is there a better positioning of these digital tools to water my creative gardens?
Others have explored this question. For example, an app called Buffer allows you to write posts for social media and send them out. The title of the app is the function; you get space between your creativity and the sites where it is shared.
But what use is social media if I can't be social? Is it just a site for Commerce and status updates? If this, then what is its utility?
And that's the question. How does a tool serve me, progressing toward goals? These are more than a hammer, a saw. There are attachments in the relationships forged with connections, with networks.
Maybe there are new ways of seeing this challenge. For examples can I take the time to organize my closest contacts on Twitter in my contacts? whatever the approach, it's important that I operate with agency.
(Link to post and image is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/34d2d2e3-f47d-a803-429d-3f1bdc04410d/XeI1jNqN3um64_2IgwmCsCAAp8hsoDkG-4yKhvyXMrvf-GjPYdNuOrPJTg)
7.8.24 (Digital Declutter, Day 8/30)
Today was my first official day back at work as a systems for an educational services agency.
We were asked to go on to LinkedIn to post a comment about what we were reading on a social media post.
I almost protested - I am off social media! - but realized this was not in the spirit of the declutter.
But are there times when we need hard and fast rules with these digital tools?
This questions reminds of a scene from The Odyssey. As technologist Cory Doctorow tells it in this article, Ulysses had his sailors tie him to the mast of his ship. He knew that if he heard the sirens' calls, he would dive into the water and drown. He wanted to hear the sirens' call; otherwise he would have plugged his ears with wax.
He made what's now called an "Ulysses pact". You are binding yourself to the future. If you don't want to do something, then remove access from that option. As Doctorow aptly puts it, If you don't want to eat the Oreos, then get the Oreos out of the house.
"Becoming an adult is a process of learning that your strength comes from seeing your weaknesses and protecting yourself and the people who trust you from them."
When I went back on to LinkedIn and shared that I am currently reading Saving Time by Jenny Odell, I also succumbed to the red numbered notifications and clicked on them.
None of them were related to an actual interaction with another person on Linkedin.
For example, I was asked to congratulate a person I am connected with for staying with their employer for the last ten years.
I also had a direct message from a university, asking if I was ready to start pursuing my Ph.D.
Both disappointed and pleased that I none of my notifications were worth my attention, I shut down the LinkedIn page and went to my office. On my whiteboard, I wrote out some of the big projects I needed to finish this summer.
Setting up my environment for focus and successful productivity is so important. I find that leaning on analog tools to be one of the best ways to cultivate this presence.
Not that I am against technology when it's needed. For example, I will likely add some of these projects to my calendar app, Motion, to find time to complete these projects, especially the ones where I partner with other coaches/consultants.
For me, binding ourselves to a mast is about what I need and what I am willing to tolerate to achieve a goal.
(Link to post and image is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/c3690225-febb-3af1-cdae-33fb93e852bd/P8CJSSAhvuClTqO7XVTqgPqkhi444k7aoWem4-xxKyIRffrFocNgn1bPXA)
7.7.24 (Digital Declutter Day 7/30)
We spent the majority of the day in the car, taking our son to a two-week precollege camp at his #1 university choice.
Not a lot of time spent online at all, let alone social media or email.
Leaving things alone sometimes is the best ways to support growth.
Beyond leaving my son alone in a new city with strangers as an example, consider this survivor from last year's harvest.
I am presuming it is a pumpkin plant. It's not growing from the mound in the middle where I planted new seeds.
Last fall, I dumped all of the pumpkins we had either grown or purchased on our raised beds. The idea was, I would allow them to slowly compost over fall, winter, and spring. Then in summer (now), up would spring a few seedlings from last year's harvest.
My theory was in doubt when a friend of mine, a former vegetable farmer, explained that pumpkin variants did not naturally reproduce from a previous plant.
That I have a sole survivor hear shows that there are always exceptions to the rule.
Relating this metaphor to instructional leadership, cultivating growth is an intentional act. Principals, coaches, and other leaders can't simply accept the state and the conditions in which their schools are in.
There has to be some purpose, even some strong persuasion, in how an organization will improve from its current situation.
The sweet spot for this growth seems to be somewhere between assessing the situation and disrupting the entire ecosystem.
A new colleague and acquaintance shared some of her insights with me on this topic.
Part of her work was helping leaders and teachers create structured opportunities to observe each other's practice and learn from one another. She was advocating for "free PD".
She noted the following:
"One of our greatest challenges was getting the principals to go into classrooms themselves to do what we were doing or, at the very least, to monitor what the teachers were learning from our PD. They too often welcomed us as "fixers" who would help the teachers improve their practice while they took care of more urgent matters in the building, and we had to work hard to change that mentality."
This is the constraint of consultants and other outside support: as helpful as they are, they eventually leave. What structures, systems, and supports will remain to ensure improvement becomes part of the DNA of a school?
I think it starts with a close monitoring of the system, both as a whole and at an individual level. Not to evaluate or to supervise, but to simple notice what is happening and organize this information in order to engage in some sense-making.
Once patterns emerge, principals can be helpful in what they do more so than in what they say. They can take action in indirect ways that allow for teachers to participate in self-improvement on safe terms. For example, as a school leader I would facilitate schoolwide writing assessments. I would serve as the note taker and conversation guide when faculty would like at student writing across the elementary grades. When I captured the strengths and areas of growth based on what we noticed, I was more likely to ask questions than to draw conclusions. I wanted to promote thought instead of solutions.
In a somewhat similar fashion, the new colleague I mentioned before promoted peer observation as a tool for continuous improvement. She found an even more basic yet no less profound role for the principals.
"We always suggested that one or more administrators cover the classes for the observers. At first, we did that because the principal was often the only one in the building who had the flexibility to do it, but we also knew that teachers really liked it when the principal took over their classes. They felt the principal was "walking in their shoes" and getting a better idea of just what they faced every day. Usually, the principals just had to supervise a straightforward activity while the teacher was out of the room—the teachers made it easy on them!—but just the fact that a principal was willing to make a collegial observation possible by pitching in as a substitute teacher enhanced the principal's reputation."
Both of these examples remind me of Viviane Robinson's classic research on the influence of school leadership. She found that principals leading and participating in professional learning for teachers to have the highest impact on student learning, compared to other influential behaviors.
I am an engaged gardener. Not doing something can be the same or better than doing something. Supervision or evaluation is not always a welcomed intervention. All of these actions/nonactions are founded on a cultivation of one's presence, of one's capacity to pay attention to what's important while resisting the sirens' call of urgency.
(Link to post and image is here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/a0d77a82-5b70-ff7a-59fe-cadf1f7aee85/lRRDlxagHwOHHLRTfECMFg0vk4x0vjjdpIgpt99KXcdXZE9TkNI60aPPzQ)
7.6.24 (Digital Declutter Day 6/30)
During my time off, I've made it a morning habit to sit on my back deck and read a little bit. I've noticed a pair of cardinals. They greet me each morning, perched on my neighbor's apple tree, with their distinctive chirps.
Noticing this pattern of nature is less likely in a digital-centric world. I prefer to read print for several reasons - notably for the lack of Internet connection.
That said, it's a bit more work to capture, organize, and utilize any notes I might make in the margins. My solution has been to leverage an app called Readwise (readwise.io).
Here's how it works:
1. With my smartphone, I scan a quote in my print text with the app.
2. The app transcribes it into it's system.
3. I can add my annotations as notes and then save it to the book or article I am reading.
4. Readwise stores these quotes and notes, along with exporting them to my storage application of choice (Evernote) or organization and back up purposes.
When I want to do some writing and utilize a quote or a note from what I read, I can find it in Readwise or Evernote.
An additional benefit of Readwise is it will present five quotes I have saved previously as a morning email. I will read each one, maybe leave additional notes or correct a misspelling, and go to the next one. Readwise uses a streak feature, similar to Snapchat, in which I get credit for reviewing my randomly-presented quotes for so many days in a row. If you get a long enough streak, you can get your name on the Readwise leader board.
I bring this up as I don't to position some of the ways social media developers get us hooked on their platforms as an entirely bad thing. Under the right conditions, intermittent rewards and social influence can be a positive strategy.
- I am not spending hours on Readwise.
- I am persuaded to read.
- I don't feel envy about other people's longer Readwise streaks.
- It aligns with my values of curiosity and learning.
As I was scanning a note in on my back deck, my dog started barking. She realized I was outside. I opened the door to let her out, and the cardinal flew away. My wife with a cup of coffee in her hand plus one of the cats followed the dog out.
I put down my book and my phone and said good morning to everyone - a welcomed distraction.
(Link to post and image here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/8560974e-283c-539e-a45d-5dac383a097d/e5kvehoxjNXFCuzEx_VTR9AvXKIBr5FDf7YgRi3hcIfNPs-krtttb8BpRQ)
7.5.24 (Digital Declutter Day 5/30)
In between improving my backyard, one task at a time, I am rereading Digital Minimalism.
I lingered on his definition of this concept for a bit.
"Digital Minimalism: A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else." (p. 28)
My emphasis here is a note, that in order to be a discerning and wise consumer of technology when embracing digital minimalism, I have to know what my values are.
In the margins, I wrote out some of my presently held values:
- Curiosity
- Mindfulness
- Justice
- Integrity
- Learning
Do the technologies I have push pause on make the cut?
Twitter/X is a conundrum.
Going for it is the learning I have experienced from the medium. Some smart educators have remained active in that space. I also have curated a list of journalists who offer their honest takes on the current events of our times. In addition, I have seen how social media has shined a light on inequities in our world and can broaden one's perspective about the world.
On the flip side, Twitter is the antithesis of mindfulness. As Newport notes, using social media is "a lopsided arms race", in which we find ourselves "increasingly dominated by their influence, allowing them to control more and more of how we spend out time, how we feel, and how we behave" (p. 24). He interviewed multiple experts in this field. They revealed how Silicon Valley has invested billions of dollars to create ways to keep people online through incentivizing highly emotional posts and intermittent rewards such as likes and retweets.
I think what's necessary about the digital declutter is the 30 day pause. I don't think I would fully appreciate the absence of social media in my life until I have embraced a world without it. Through more attention on leisure in real life, I am hopefully realigning my actions and thinking with my values.
For example, I have spotted jewelweed in parts of my yard.
I used to get so annoyed by this weed. It's easy to pull yet aggressive in its spread.
Through my curiosity, I learned that jewelweed is a companion plant. It grows next to nettles and poison ivy. Its leaves, when crushed, removes the oil and reduces rashes when people accidentally touch the latter.
Not that I am not continuing to remove it from my property. But I am more mindful and even a little grateful for its presence. Maybe something I would not have learned had my mind been in a less curious state.
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7.4.24 (Digital Declutter Day 4/30)
The only thing I did today (besides stay off technology as promised) was move the potted tomatoes and peppers from the deck to under the porch roof.
We had a lot of rain lately, and the soil in the pots are still soaked. One of them, my basil, is still swimming.
At first, I found this a little frustrating. How am I going to dry it out? The only solution I saw, besides drilling holes in the bottom of the pot to drain it and getting my deck messing, was to repot the plant with new soil.
My tendency here is to go online and search for answers from others. Of late, I use AI to give me a response. Sometimes I get useful information, sometimes not.
One of my concerns with using the Internet and AI so much for answers is I might stop trusting my intuition. If my first move when I don't know something is to ask others instead of myself, whose wisdom do I value more? How does this shape my confidence and sense of competence?
Resisting the easy response, I looked around my yard and considered the possibilities.
My eyes fell on the new hole our retriever, Millie had dug in our backyard. She decided the best place for it was right next to her previous hole that had filled in with soil and seeded with grass.
While I realized it may be a lost cause, what if dumped the soaked soil, reseeded it, and repotted the basil? No waste, and solves another problem.
Technology - social media, AI, the Internet in general - doesn't understand or know our contexts. There's no blueprint out there for reforming our schools or our lives. Maybe some helpful ideas and suggestions from others who have walked the path we are currently on.
But to be present with our environment may be the best tool for solving our challenges.
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7.3.24 (Digital Declutter Day 3/30)
Our first harvest of the summer were three Italian green peppers. "They are great for grilling, as sides with a protein," noted our local organic farmer at the Saturday market down the street.
I brought them in and asked my wife, Jodi if we could use them in a meal this week.
As part of a digital declutter, Newport recommends that we find replacement of our technology habits by cultivating "high-quality alternatives to the easy distractions they provide" (p. 71).
My choice in leisure is gardening and general caretaking of our yard/grounds. Part of that is enjoying the literal fruits of our labor.
What's notable here is, at least on the surface, it seems like I did very little to be rewarded with this harvest.
- I bought the Italian pepper plant at the local farmer's market.
- I cleaned out a plant container and filled it with potting soil.
- After planting it, I placed it into a warm sunny spot on our back deck.
But beneath the surface here, I am not appreciating what supports this easy act of leisure, including:
- income to purchase the plant, pot, and soil,
- the nice deck I have to restain every two years, and
- the time away from work that I can devote to leisurely and lifeworthy tasks like this one.
I could have been busy checking in on my Twitter feed or habitual visiting my email inbox.
This is the trade-off right now: a life of leisure for less time online.
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7.2.24 (Digital Declutter Day 2/30)
Very rainy today, which made it tough to engage in my selected activity of leisure during my digital declutter - gardening.
However, with my absence from most online connections, my mind started to wonder why the city had not yet picked up the grass clippings, pulled weeds, and fallen sticks laying on the side of the street.
Going on the city's website, I discovered that the city decided they were no longer going to be offering this service. Now what do I do with this refuse? I grumbled.
But before I could get stuck in that emotion, I was thankful that I had the presence of mind to notice the issue, ask the question, and seek out an answer. Otherwise, I would have likely received a notice on my door of my noncompliance.
Because this is a space dedicated to literacy leadership, I can relate this experience to the busyness of the life of a principal. We don't see the importance of what's happening within classroom instruction when our minds are occupied with the urgent and less important. Even if we are where the teaching and learning is taking place, where are our minds? I know mine was too often thinking about that potential blinking light on my office phone, a parent or board member or superintendent wanting my attention on something other than instruction, as pressing is it might be.
How do we create more presence in our work? I think principals and other instructional leaders would benefit from some type of digital declutter. It could even be for the weekend. Practice ignoring what can so easily capture our attention. Turn on the vacation responder to let people know who email you that you check messages on weekdays. It's a public accountability as much as courtesy.
Giving myself more space to think, I have a plan for the excess grass clippings and refuse: I will use it as mulch over a space between mine and my neighbor's fence. Weeds of all kind grow in that neglected area. My theory is, if I clear it out, put down fabric, and spread the dead vegetation over it, it will at least help keep the growth down.
(Link to post and image here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/aab835d2-c186-a33e-a8dc-42c5b10b0b04/zS3OfVYTyWvXKU-W3Mk9Ko86drwopBuwp6Qhg2JmxIzFa0hsM7N79MAZoQ)
7.1.24 (Digital Declutter Day 1/30)
Interesting morning so far without social media, reading online, or randomly checking email. I feel this void that I want to fill with other stuff. For example, I started thinking about what going back to school would look like. I hit pause on that narrative and reminded myself why I am doing a digital declutter: to reconnect with what brings life into my life.
Today, I trimmed back some of those weeds I mentioned in last weeks post. Trimmer battery died before I could finish. Instead of getting frustrated that I couldn't finish the job, I remember that I have plenty of time tomorrow to finish the job.
During my email block, I also found myself a little frustrated with all the messages I receive daily. Because I am timing myself (no more than 45 minutes), the ads and non-personal messages felt a little bit like they were interfering with my limited time to process more important emails.
To close, a promising sign: my son brought me a science mold of the metamorphosis of a butterfly. He was given it by a local artist he had agreed to help move some equipment. My son thought I should have it.
Who will I be after this process? Or to lower expectations, will I at least have some greater sense of awareness of where I am in my current metamorphosis?
(Link to post and image here: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s55/sh/8132a111-9ae7-e98f-050c-8b0e4b4b9073/UbJhaiFEeeMnNeXqh0SiNnswzi9xzlImLeXb3lghMx30TRid33cvaG_20A
I enjoyed reading your journey and thinking.
Thanks Mandy for sharing.