Phone sabbath. That’s a lovely idea. I’m sure that would a great thing to do and scientifically proven to help me, thanks HH but I’m far too busy today. I’ll do it later.
That’s how I started off, I knew best. A head full of things to do, problems to solve and not realising that I was already veering on the anxious when I woke up, was undoubtably not the best start to a calm and centred day. Also, in hindsight, a friend rang me and said she was feeling exceptionally crabby and so I’m blaming her, as it must have rubbed off on me. ;-)
So with crabby-gusto, I attacked my to-do list.
Work emails on my phone. Check.*
Returned the missed calls. Check.*
Made the listed appointments on the phone. Check.*
Went for lunch and texted friends. Check.*
Went to the meeting. Used phone to get there. Check.*
Used phone to call for follow up meetings. Check.*
Spent 30 minutes on phone contacting different suppliers on phone. Check.*
*Pepper in lightly “essential” social media usage along with emails, YouTube and some more “essential” social media usage every 20 mins. Ok, you got me, every 10 minutes.
By the time I got home, my brain was in meltdown, I was ultra crabby and felt drained. Even more drained than my phone battery, which was barely showing any signs of life except for the faint beep of a “charge me please”. With all this going on, my brain just wanted to continue, to keep using technology.
So I returned back to the HH and watched the film for today (nice red top Sally), listened to the meditations, read the latest blogs, felt inspired by today’s guest blogger Tim F and smiled at his photo of him lounging in the bath. I could feel my heart rate slow down and as I sit here now, it’s like the mental digital stress is tricking down my crabby ears and off my pincers. I’ve really learnt just how addicted I am to my phone.
So, I’m going to do the home work as requested and turn the phone off. I’m also going to do it tomorrow as well to give myself that extra bit of cold turkey and make way for some more clarity and downtime. I won’t be taking any pictures in the bath though, I’ll leave that for Tim F. ?
Great blog Paul! We do get obsessed with the phones and checking them every few minutes (oh what’s that noise – sorry just had to check the phone and was a message from Nectar). I think we also expect people to respond instantly too! And if not why not! Not like before the mobile when you had to organise in advance and stick to things…
Loving the blog Paul. You describe the situation perfectly for so many of us. It’s so tempting to be on our phones or on our computers all the time, but so often it’s just stressing us out – making us more and more crabby. I think it’s so important to have times where we deliberately turn the tech off. We don’t need it as much as we think we do. Right… time to log off and go and sit in the bath :)