What is Our Attention Worth? Reflecting on My Digital Declutter, Part 2

Article

My son and I were waiting to order lunch at Subway when I saw this sign.

I did not need to press the button; the server was already available, taking someone else’s order. My son and I waited and chatted about what type of sandwich to get. At the time, I was experimenting with two technologies: No Twitter at all and to use my smartphone only at work.  So instead of checking my feed or notifications, we were discussing which toppings to add to our subs.

When we are connected to the world with these new technologies, it can feel like anyone has access to us by pressing a button. “Click here to get our attention” is now represented by a notification, a text, a ping.

This article could come off as better-than-thou. To be clear, I am not above digital distractions. It’s why I was engaged in a digital declutter, an idea from Cal Newport’s latest book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. I selected Twitter and my smartphone as objects of my experiment because they were problematic for me.

Now it is January. Post-digital declutter, questions need answers. What did I learn? How have I changed, if at all? What role will social media and smartphones have in my life moving forward? The rest of this article walks through my process. This reflection hopefully offers some ideas we can all consider in a very connected world.

Social Media and Smartphones: Blame the Messenger

Prior to my experiment, I was on my phone around three hours a day. Twitter was a primary culprit for how I spent my time on this device. For sure, there are positive aspects of these mobile connections. I’ve formed many professional relationships initiated from Twitter. Regarding my smartphone, I can check the weather anytime, have GPS available whenever, and search for an answer to any basic question that pops up. If my son and I wanted to go somewhere after lunch, I could have brought up the location and hours of operation of that business within a matter of seconds.

The question then becomes: what value do these connections bring to my life, and do they outweigh the associated costs? Specifically, what is my attention worth?

Digital Minimalism attempts to help the reader find answers. Newport, who admits he has never had a social media account, worries about how well-designed new technologies are for holding our eyes and minds with notifications and likes. The features of Twitter and the iPhone can lead to negative habits.

Tech companies encourage behavioral addiction (through) intermittent positive reinforcement and the drive for social approval. Our brains are highly susceptible to these forces. This matters because many of the apps and sites that keep people compulsively checking their smartphones and opening browser tabs often leverage these hooks to make themselves nearly impossible to resist. (17)

In some ways, we can blame the messenger and start to view these technologies for what they are: incredibly effective attention gatherers with purposes not aligned with our needs and deeper interests.

It’s also not effective, Newport asserts, to only make a conscious effort to minimize our use of whatever technologies are problematic in our lives. Creating a distance between the constant connectivity wrought with mobile technology in order to find solitude involves a deeper and more sustained effort.

Smartphones are the primary enabler of solitude deprivation (in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from the input from other minds). To avoid this condition, therefore, it makes sense to try to spend regular time away from these devices – re-creating the frequent exposure to solitude that until recently was an unavoidable part of daily life (115).

My Digital Declutter

The author suggests we engage in study about the values of the new technologies we use: the digital declutter process. He recommends three steps for analyzing their worth during this experience (60):

1.      Put aside a thirty-day period during which you will take a break from optional technologies in your life.

2.      During this thirty-day break, explore and rediscover activities and behaviors that you find satisfying and meaningful.

3.      At the end of the break, reintroduce optional technologies into your life, starting from a blank slate. For each technology you reintroduce, determine what value it serves in your life and how specifically you will use it so as to maximize this value.

Next is a brief summary/reflection of my digital declutter from last month (December 2019).

#1 – A 30-day Break from Optional Technologies

As already shared, I chose a complete break from Twitter and to keep my smartphone, an iPhone X, at school. It’s a work-sponsored device which makes it optional. The only technology I carried with me was our Tracphone that my son will sometimes use when he goes on a trip or to a friend’s house. (Side note: friends call him “Retroman” because he is one of the few kids with a flip phone and not a smartphone.)

The first couple of days, I caught myself reaching for my iPhone that was no longer in my back pocket. This usually happened when I was bored, such as waiting for one of my kids to be released from a practice. My mind also wondered what was going on on Twitter. I have a “Reliable Media Sources” list that I checked regularly for “breaking news”, which seems to happen constantly now.

These feelings subsided as I slowly replaced the time I spent on social media and my smartphone with past hobbies and new interests into my life.

#2 – Explore and Rediscover Meaningful Activities

With the joy I find in reading and writing, my first interest was renewing my interest in crosswords. I purchased a one-year online subscription to the New York Times Crossword Puzzle app. Since I last had access to it, the developers added autocheck and progress monitoring tools, which I needed as the puzzles get harder throughout the week.

I also took on a traditional puzzle over the holiday break.

Our cat was a nice companion but of little help.

Newport encourages readers to engage in a rigorous leisure life. This includes fixing what’s broken around the house, making something with our hands, socializing more, and engaging in challenging physically activities. One example: I used to downhill ski, so I bought my kids a pack of 12 lift tickets for the closest hill. The bonus was I could teach my son and daughter something new while I renewed a former interest.

#3 – Reintroduce Optional Technologies

What did I learn and how will I apply the knowledge? This is the stage where I reintroduced technologies with intention. Newport suggests three questions for this process (75-76):

• Does the technology directly support something that I deeply value?

• Is the technology the best way to support that value?

• How am I going to use this technology going forward to maximize its value and minimize its harms?

Regarding Twitter, it does support the sharing of ideas and interacting with others. Yet it is not always the best way to facilitate online conversations. For example, using it as an information feed is great, yet I have found Twitter chats too fast and confusing to have any type of real discussion. Moving forward, I have started using this newsletter tool to facilitate online discussions around one question (vs. many) without all the other distractions inherent with a Twitter chat. I’ve also scheduled when I engage with Twitter to a limited amount per day within a specific window of time.

Regarding the smartphone, it took 30 days away to realize how insidious it really is. My smartphone would sometimes follow me home because I forgot it was in my pocket. It almost becomes this additional arm, where we feel weird without it, because of all the services it can provide such as a camera and GPS. Yet thinking about all the time I have gained by not allowing my smartphone to be by my side at all times makes me wonder if there might be more value in purchasing an actual camera and a GPS-only system (or, aghast, an actual map). I won’t advocate for un-inventing the smartphone, but I do recommend to everyone that they re-evaluate how we use it and how it might be using us.

The Original Intent

Cal Newport notes that the iPhone was originally conceived by Steve Jobs and Apple to combine the music-playing capability of the iPod with the ability to…make calls.

Mr. Jobs seemed to understand the iPhone as something that would help us with a small number of activities — listening to music, placing calls, generating directions. He didn’t seek to radically change the rhythm of users’ daily lives. He simply wanted to take experiences we already found important and make them better.

The question we then ask ourselves: are new technologies making our lives better? To find out, we have a process, explained here. What we do with that information reflects the value we place on these tools in relation to the other important aspects of our lives.