I Spent 100 Hours Rawdogging - And Learnt What It's Missing
Also - didn't know I was doing that
It’s been a mixed week.
On the plus side, I passed the one hundred hours mark. One hundred hours of mental silence on the daily commute. No phones, no music, no nothing - since the start of the year.
But on the other hand… turns out I’m rawdogging. Ugh.
I’m not a big TikTok person. I’m someone who can get addicted to checking if connected apps are charging properly; if I’d ever got seriously into TikTok it’s likely I’d still be in that same room where I first downloaded it, having not slept in the intervening years.
But I’d vaguely heard of rawdogging. Look it up if you really want to, but it’s a term both for going on public transport without any sort of distraction, and also having sex without a condom. Great, thanks a lot, TikTok.
Really, is there anything worse than social media? Not content with being really annoying and destructive itself, it also gives a terrible name to the practice of taking a break from it.
Every now and then on the commute someone might mention the R word. Especially the young folk. Many of them on the tube are curious to see what this wise old man is doing wearing high vis. They approach him to hear what life lessons he can impart. When I describe the thoughtful contemplative experiment I have embarked upon they say “Oh, rawdogging!”
I thought it was just the young’uns. But then I bumped into an old friend on the train. He is a pillar of the Surbiton community, a Deputy Headteacher no less. We had a detailed discussion about the Meta/Google case and the Smartphone Free Childhood movement. It was very clever and thoughtful, and I imagined the people on the train listening in and thinking how clever I was.
He then turned to me and said “So you’re rawdogging then?”
I was taken aback. Him too?
Great. So just as I’m ready to celebrate the 100 hours mark of dignified mental silence, I learn I am the Rawdogger-In-Chief. Thrilled about that.
So it was in a grumpy mood that I read this piece about it on Substack. Seeing as the world has decided this is what it’s called, it made me think about how useful that name is, and also what it misses.
Rawdogging: the Rawdogger-In-Chief’s Verdict
First the good.
Most coverage of rawdogging treats it as an extreme challenge. This is useful. It’s deeply unhelpful to imagine putting aside the phone at first will be pleasant or in any way relaxing. Rewiring your brain is hard work.
But now, the bad. The rawdogging concept is too raw. It misses three important ideas.
Training for the long haul. There’s an enormous prize to be had if you do this daily for four weeks. Neuroplasticity says this is the minimum for meaningful change in the brain. For me it was terrible for three and half weeks, but in the fourth it became quite amazing. Having had that experience, I really can’t see the point of doing this sporadically. Suddenly attempting a long haul flight is like running a marathon with no training - at the end of it you won’t be fit, you’ll just be miserable.
Mindwatching. I’m a huge fan of letting the mind wander and not putting oneself under any pressure during this. But it’s worth being prepared: your mind will inevitably call you back to the phone. You should be ready to hear that voice - in fact it’s great training yourself to hear it clearly. And to practise saying no to it - no, I will not check that now. I’ve written here about how this can be quite an entertaining experience with the right priming.
Being aware of the present moment. I’d argue that choosing to concentrate on any aspect of the present moment is good training (read this about how I learnt this from my dog). On a commute, it’s easiest to pay attention to sounds. I found it really helpful to imagine this as rebuilding my phone-shattered focus. Or training my mind to be in the present moment, so it more readily defaults to it at home with loved ones. Noticing that you become gradually more able to do this each day is very motivating.
The one term no-one wants to hear
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the above strays dangerously close to meditation.
I think people would more happily use a term for a sex act than they would use the M word. It’s common in articles on rawdogging to say something like “Don’t worry, you don’t have to meditate”, as if any planned or sustained effort in these rawdog sessions might suddenly transform you into someone who talks about the cosmos all the time and buys healing crystals.
Despite the mountain of clinical studies attesting to its power, for a huge part of the population it’s inescapably wishy washy woo woo. Which is a shame, because really it’s mental training, and the one thing that the phone-addled among us need is steady and patient training to rebuild our focus. Without any sort of framework, you’re denied any sort of feeling of progress, which is a recipe for abandoning this on day three.
And of course, watching your mind, well that’s mindfulness: meditation’s even more boring cousin. It smells like a corporate retreat. Our society has garbled the translation of an extremely powerful concept so it now means pretty much everything. The other day I saw you can buy a mindful fizzy drink.
Whatever we call it, the need is real
We’ve created an enormous dilemma for ourselves by inventing the phone.
We know it’s making us ill. Each individual use might be harmless, but constantly checking, fixing and distracting 24/7 makes you anxious and stops your brain resting. (Read about checking and fixing here).
Unfortunately it doesn’t work to just “use the phone less”, phone use just spreads back in. And you need sustained periods of rest to let the Default Mode Network do its thing.
Many are coming to the conclusion that the only way to undo the phone’s brainfogging effects is by an intentional digital break. The incidental pauses in life that the phone destroyed need to be consciously rebuilt. (Read here about how the phone invades every little gap in family life).
There seems to be a real academic and cultural consensus emerging behind this.
But far less of a consensus as to what to call it.
A rawdog session by any other name…
Rawdogging is gross. Meditation is woo woo. Mindfulness is meaningless (in popular culture I mean). More and more experts are reaching for “you have to be bored” (TV producer talking here: great pitch, guys), or doing nothing, or mental rest, or being present.
There’s truth in all these terms, but none really give you the framework or motivation you need.
And the English language folds in on itself under the pressure of describing it - I’ve argued that mental rest involves activity. Hmm. As soon as you try silence, your brain becomes very loud. Okay.
We don’t have the words, and it’s irritating and distancing.
If we are averse to borrowing terms from cultures more adept in this, we have to invent a whole new language to dig ourselves out of this hole.
I’m still not sure myself. Going Phone Free I quite like, it captures the joyfulness of the end result, but it’s a negative and there is something active to be done here. Anti-phone training perhaps? I’d be genuinely curious to hear people’s thoughts on this.
Or maybe things are just what everyone calls them. If you can’t beat them, maybe I need to join them.
Until next week,
Raw Dog Will
This is part a series of articles following 1,000 hours of silence on the commute - here’s the embarrassing story of how it all began.
If you know someone who’s tired of their phone use (or if you know someone whose phone use you are tired of) please consider sharing with them.