Pete's Log: Avoiding Relentless Inputs?
Entry #2747, (Life in General)(posted when I was 46 years old.)
Welcome to June. Jamie and I set our phones on a table this morning and basically left them there all day. Among other things, I managed to do a bunch of yardwork, read two thirds of a book, play Minecraft with JB, do some shopping, purge my wardrobe of clothes that no longer fit or I no longer wear or have too many holes, build a marble run with JB, do a bunch of laundry and get my t-shirt drawer organized again.
(We learned this method from Marie Kondo and I love how it allows you to see all your shirts at a glance. Yet it's been a year or two since the drawer last looked like this)
My cumulative screen time by the time JB went to bed? 9 minutes. (Not counting Minecraft, of course)
Jamie is formulating her own take on this challenge and made a good point about dumb digital devices vs smart digital devices. She even pulled out an old iPod Shuffle for playing music. She also made a good point about the parameters being different on weekends vs weekdays. During the week I need my phone closer at hand since I regularly need it for multifactor authentication for work and to not miss any calls from JB's school (not that I think we've ever gotten one). It's easy to set the phone aside when JB's home and I'm not working.
Jamie also put it another way. Maybe we're not avoiding digital input, we're avoiding attention stealers. During the morning I often found myself wanting to reach for my phone to look things up (the only concrete example I remember is what year did the iPod Shuffle come out—the fact I can't remember any others is also telling). And once the screen is on, it's easy to get stuck.
Anyway, I'm tired. But I think a better tired than usual.