Just back from a four-week vacation (out of the 5 weeks mandated by law in Sweden, btw. Sweden is great!) and as always this downtime has led to some reflection on my part. What I am about to write about, might just be me, but I found this useful and stress-relieving. maybe you do to.
We ended up in a cabin out in the archipelago that had spotty network access, only landline TV and our kids were at camps or with friends. Yes, we went directly into retirement. We set the clock to remind us about the TV-show that started 21.30.
[UPDATE] I totally forgot but a technical glitch happened that took away data traffic from my phone for about 4 days. That … reset … was very blissful and totally helped me make this transition and look at things differently.
What I noticed was how twitchy my fingers got, after just a few hours. I kept on picking up the phone, trying to check news or LinkedIn. When I went walking the dog, I kept trying to get some pod or music playing. Even at the beach reading a book, I also found myself trying to add some background music. When watching the show I desperately tried to also show something on YouTube or play a game etc.
It didn’t take me too long to just stop in my track and just go “What am I doing? Why all of these inputs?”.
There’s nothing wrong with pods and I’ve learned so much from YouTube that I really should send them part of my monthly salary - but it’s so distracting. And I don’t know where the need of adding more sources comes from.
In fact, I’ve come so far that I thinking “chilling in the tv-sofa” as having the TV going, while I’m playing a game on the phone, talking to Elin and reading the news at the same time. Come on!
What I started to do was nothing revolutionary, but I very consciously started to remove inputs, lowering the number of sources to a reasonable amount.
Because, at least for me, my brain never get time to think when I’m constantly feeding it things to keep its attention on. And when you think about it, in most activity there are more than one source by definition:
- commuting to work - I ride a bike and keep my attention there; seeing, hearing and pedaling. I don’t also need to know about US politics, sing along to a song or learn about why these particular laws in the Old Testaments was included. Just riding the bike it enough.
- walking (the dog) - just walking and keeping my attention on the dog is plenty. I don’t need to listen to an audio book too.
- watching movie - seeing a movie is plenty input already. I don’t need to look things up on IMDB too.
- coding or writing - doesn’t have to be accompanied by sound. The thoughts in my head on what to write and how to structure the text is enough.
- practicing my instrument - I don’t need to watch fun clips on YouTube while warming up. Or keep my phone handy on the stand, if the kids call. I will hear the signal.
- playing games on the phone - yes - I of course do that, but then I do not listen to pods or audio books too.
Because your internal thoughts is an input to, and for years now I’ve not giving it room but rather blocking it out with other input sources.
Here’s my new routine; for every activity I’m doing, just before I start, I think about the inputs that are flourishing around me and I try to remove one. Not more to start with.
It took me about a week to stop picking up another input source. But now I’m almost longing to get one out. As I’m writing this I’m in Noise Cancelling head phones, with no sound on - just to block out some background music at the office.