Digital Detox Or How To Fight For Your Own Attention

There is a popular saying that states where focus goes, energy flows, and thus our lives are controlled by what we focus on. So, we should be careful where our attention goes, because that’s also where our energy goes.

Where focus goes, energy flows. And where energy flows, whatever you're focusing on grows. In other words, your life is controlled by what you focus on. That's why you need to focus on where you want to go, not on what you fear.
Tony Robbins

In today’s world, there are more things than ever fighting for our attention. We wake up and immediately check our phones. When the phone display lights up, many things ask us to deal with them. Unread messages. News. To-dos. Reminders. Events. Notifications.

As a result of checking our phones, our minds are immediately filled with stuff selected by somebody else (another person or an algorithm). Our own thoughts and plans for the day? Gone in seconds.

From checking our phones to working with computers connected to the internet, we are constantly being bombarded with millions of things fighting for our attention. And no matter how smart we think we are, how organized or disciplined, we lose this fight sooner or later.

Regaining Control Of My Attention

I started to fight back a couple of years ago. I decided to remove some apps from my phone. No more Instagram, no more Reddit, no more news apps. I also switched from using two monitors at work to only one. One screen at a time, one maximized window at a time, and one single task at a time.

Still, the temptations were there. I could read the news by browsing a website. I could use Reddit’s website instead of the app. I could do all that and a lot more, on my phone, on my tablet, and on my computer. And I did it.

What’s more, when I was working, I was usually listening to something. Sometimes music, sometimes a podcast. Only during a few hours of the day was I not spending at least part of my attention, my focus on consuming digital media of some sort.

This is a fight we are all fighting constantly, every day. And I wanted to learn how to fight better.

In some weak moments, I dreamt about fighting back: blocking all those websites, getting rid of my smartphone and using a dumb phone instead, and no more screens in my free time. But radical changes like these are usually not lasting. I work on a computer. I like working on a computer and I do like to spend some time looking at a screen. Watching a movie. Playing a video game. But these things should be conscious choices and I want to focus on doing them when I decide to do them.

I knew I could not get rid of my smartphone. I need it for work, too. But there is room for improvement.

As of today, I have no screens in my bedroom. I stop looking at a screen at least one hour before going to sleep. My phone is outside my bedroom. The latest change I made was to switch my phone to greyscale mode. No more colors, unless I need them for a work-related task. I was skeptical at first when I read about this idea, but it works. It’s a lot less fun looking at your phone when everything is black and white.

A Digital Detox

I spent three days last week without any screens at all. I survived. In fact, it felt pretty good. Of course, that is fairly easy to say when it was some kind of holiday experiment. A few days off, a lonely cabin somewhere in the countryside. No computer, no TV, no nothing. Just a notebook, a pen, and a few books to read.

This experiment taught me two things:

1. I do not need digital media to live and nothing bad happens when I don’t consume it. There is no „missing out“ on anything.
2. I don’t get bored or go crazy. I find other things to spend time on. I go for a walk. I write. I read. I just sit around and think about something. Or I just sit around thinking about nothing in particular.

In fact, it seemed pretty easy to do. I could control my attention because getting to a screen was more or less impossible. So I did not even think about it. My notebook was there, so I wrote. The countryside was there, so I took a walk.

This experiment proved once again I could control my attention by designing my environment. Make it easy to do the things you want to do. Make it harder to do the things you want to stop doing.

Be selective where your attention goes, because that’s where your energy goes, too.