My EPSY 1259 goals this semester evolved around two things: my phone addiction and my now, year strong block on creativity and motivation. Over the past year and a half, my motivational drive to do well in school and focus on class dropped exponentially. I now believe that my brain was too saturated in electronic screens, from phone screens to TVs, IPadS to zoom classes, it was all just too much, and school just lost its lustre. I stopped doing things I used to love like painting (Image A), drawing, reading, and writing, in my free time.
Instead, I would just turn on a new Netflix show and binge watch it or play games on my phone or X-box. I’d even do these things while in class; you try watching the Great British Bake Off and still being able to focus on Soil Science Lecture. Which one do you think stuck in my brain? Paul Hollywood giving my favourite contestant a handshake for his tart or my professor explaining why organic matter was the first layer of the soil profile and important for x,y, and z reasons? Coming back to school after attending Zoom University was hard. Most of my classes were still online or a mix of 50-50 in-person and zoom lectures. I had become used to being able to re-watch lectures later or play Clash of Clans while in lecture because my camera was off and who cared anyway?
This semester was the first time being true, holy in person, yet my brain still associated class time = Netflix/game time. My bad habit was ingrained, and although I couldn’t watch Bake Off in Hitchcock Hall during lecture, I sure could open Snapchat or watch Tik-Toks.
My attention span wasn’t the only thing affected by my increasing dependence on my phone, my creativity was also blocked off. I was used to instant gratification, quick-changing visual and auditory inputs from my phone or other screens around me. I lost the patience it takes to sit down and think out a piece worth painting, or I would get a blip of inspiration to make something but then would lose interest as quick as swiping to the next Tik-Tok video.
In order to break my habits and reach my goals I chose to read Bored and Brilliant by Manoush Zomorodi because after reading the first chapter, I saw myself reflected in the people she had survived about their phone usage. “It’s messing with my productivity, I feel addicted, It might actually be affecting my health,” these are just some of the things people were saying, and I felt the same. This book helped me both face my addiction (because that’s what it was) and find ways to combat it through the Bored and Brilliant 7-Step Program.
The steps are as follows:
- Observe Yourself
- Keep devices out of reach while in Motion
- Photo-Free Day
- Delete that App
- Take a Fakecation
- Observe Something Else
- The Bored and Brilliant Challenge
I highly suggest reading the book and the respective chapters that give more insight and tips on all 7 of these steps, but for my journey and goals, I focused on “Delete that App” and “Keep Out of Reach in Motion” because those chapters seemed to be the best “solutions” for my problems.
So, “Delete that App” was perfect for my first goal: paying attention in class and not using my phone during lectures, and eventually not even thinking to do so. Now, I’m still working on that last part, I still want to reach for the phone but that’s okay, this is a journey I plan on continuing past this class. The app I chose was Tik-Tok. Why? Because I spent an alarming amount of time on it, and it sucked up a lot of my battery. So for two weeks, I decided to be conscious of screen time and phone usage and put time limits on my most used appts: Tik-Tok, Snapchat, Instagram and Youtube. After I reached the limit for those apps, I would delete them for the day to ensure I stuck to the limit and these are the results from the second week.
In comparison here is last week, when I was NOT focusing on these goals because it was Thanksgiving Break.
Notice anything? Screen time is wayyy up, and there’s TikTok, right at the top of my usage. I’m definitely still not perfect, I use my phone still when I shouldn’t be, but at least I acknowledge it now, and can follow some limitations. I’ll continue to keep those limits set for the rest of my time in school.
Next goal: Increase creativity. For this goal, I used the “Keep devices out of reach while in Motion”. Manoush wrote, “studies suggest that to think original thoughts we must put a stop to constant stimulation.” She went on to talk about how, if we are constantly putting in new data for our brain to work through and analyze, then we aren’t leaving room for boredom, and thusly, no room for our mind to wander. Day-dreaming is the catalyst through which most of our original thought comes, and without it, we as creators can often feel stymied, unmotivated, and uninterested in things we used to do.
I decided I would turn the phone off during walks to and from class or from work to class, to see where my mind would take me. During my walk to class, I was thinking about this quote “In the evenings when I come home, I want to write, I want to think, and I just can’t and get sucked into my phone”, which I wholeheartedly related with and started brainstorming ideas on how to change things. During those times I decided to start a book list on Amazon and read more, hoping to jumpstart my creativity, and it worked. I have read four books since starting this project, all-around 300-500 pages in length for an estimated 1,200-2,000 pages total read! That’s more than I read all last summer. I like taking time to think during my walks, and will continue to do so in the future.
All in all, this book was extremely helpful and I plan on using these techniques in the future and investing more time in trying out the other steps of the Bored and Brilliant process!
The next books on my list!