I saw a statistic that said most people will spend an average of 15 years of the life on their phone.
I typed this on my phone. I've got a tracker app and last week, I managed to. Curb a lot of time on there, but of course my devious brain tried to go on social media on the TV/Mac instead.
I know meditation helps, but it's been years since I've done it and I'm scared to see how hard it is now. I guess it's probably about time to rip off the plaster of patience and feel the boredom...
You've put it really well. I'm sure there are people for whom app blockers work, but for me, I'd just use other tech to get my hit, then decide the app blocker was pointless.
Sometimes when talking about meditation and phones I worry I'm advocating a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but honestly it's what helped me. The plaster of patience, by the way, is such a good way of putting it. I fear I may steal that.
Reading your comment, I hope I haven't overcooked the negatives. A few weeks after starting, I was so happy I remember telling everyone it was the third best thing I'd ever done, after marriage and kids. I perhaps should have put that in the piece amid the moaning!
How funny, I just wrote an article over the weekend about a very similar topic (it’s not quite finished). :) You described my experiences with meditation so accurately! (Except I never got anywhere, because I wasn’t doing it long enough.) :D But I believe it is one thing that could actually help…
Thank you! And good luck with your article, I’ll look out for it.
Honestly to this day I wonder how I managed to keep going! I was fortunate in having come at it through the lens of curiosity about phone addiction. That had taken me to psychology and neuroscience books that convinced me my brain was more complex than I’d previously imagined, and that meditation could help understand it. It was a far more promising way in than wanting relaxation in the short term.
Even so, I don’t think I’ve stuck with anything so long that felt quite so pointless!
If you ever do decide to give it another go, I think it was about five weeks before anything changed. And then for me the first effects were - puzzlingly - a decline in Sunday Blues. Which took a week or so for me to link back to the practice.
I saw a statistic that said most people will spend an average of 15 years of the life on their phone.
I typed this on my phone. I've got a tracker app and last week, I managed to. Curb a lot of time on there, but of course my devious brain tried to go on social media on the TV/Mac instead.
I know meditation helps, but it's been years since I've done it and I'm scared to see how hard it is now. I guess it's probably about time to rip off the plaster of patience and feel the boredom...
You've put it really well. I'm sure there are people for whom app blockers work, but for me, I'd just use other tech to get my hit, then decide the app blocker was pointless.
Sometimes when talking about meditation and phones I worry I'm advocating a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but honestly it's what helped me. The plaster of patience, by the way, is such a good way of putting it. I fear I may steal that.
Reading your comment, I hope I haven't overcooked the negatives. A few weeks after starting, I was so happy I remember telling everyone it was the third best thing I'd ever done, after marriage and kids. I perhaps should have put that in the piece amid the moaning!
Very good luck.
How funny, I just wrote an article over the weekend about a very similar topic (it’s not quite finished). :) You described my experiences with meditation so accurately! (Except I never got anywhere, because I wasn’t doing it long enough.) :D But I believe it is one thing that could actually help…
Thank you! And good luck with your article, I’ll look out for it.
Honestly to this day I wonder how I managed to keep going! I was fortunate in having come at it through the lens of curiosity about phone addiction. That had taken me to psychology and neuroscience books that convinced me my brain was more complex than I’d previously imagined, and that meditation could help understand it. It was a far more promising way in than wanting relaxation in the short term.
Even so, I don’t think I’ve stuck with anything so long that felt quite so pointless!
If you ever do decide to give it another go, I think it was about five weeks before anything changed. And then for me the first effects were - puzzlingly - a decline in Sunday Blues. Which took a week or so for me to link back to the practice.