media – The Foggy Author

Today started off by being woken by a flip phone alarm, and me not knowing how to switch it off, an interesting start to the day.

My wife and I had breakfast together as usual, but instead of checking social media, I had a brainwave, and fixed an issue I have had for ages, I fixed my life!

How did I fix my life?
I love bullet journalling, but the problem I struggle with is a decent way to add events to my diary that are months / years in the future. Today, I solved this problem. Removing the diary section from my Filofax, I took out all the days without entries, and ordered some month tabbed dividers from the internet.
My plan is to use the main chunk of my Filofax as a bullet journal, and to be able to use the tabbed monthly dividers to simulate a diary, so that only items in those months can go into the future section of my Filofax bujo. This has been an issue I have struggled with for years, since starting with the Bullet Journal, and now I am happy with the result.

Online Banking – an interesting dilemma.
Whenever I want to pay bills / check my balance, etc I whip out my smartphone and open the banking app. Today however, was my first day of logging on online instead. I pulled out my laptop, and opened my banking website, and within moments, I was typing in details to get to my bank balance instead. So no problem there.

Tidied up the Study / Writing room.
A few weeks ago, I posted on my blog about how I started using static whiteboard roll to organise my Author business. Today, I rearranged one of the sheets, and used some washi tape to create some lines, then created 4 sections

Now
Short Term
Long Term
Done

This sheet is not going to be used with the whiteboard pens as my other two sheets are, instead I am writing on sticky notes, and this way I can rearrange stuff on the board faster, and keep my productivity going.
Having a look at my desk I realised how cluttered it was, and decided to remove some of the stuff to storage. This will help my brain feel less cluttered, and help me to concentrate on what I need to do.. writing my books.

Comfortable and more productive layout.
I also raised the height of my computer monitor, and rolled a towel to put on my chair between the small of my back. This towel has helped my posture, straightened my back, and should help my neck due to the eye level monitor height. I noticed a massive difference immediately.

Water
Since downloading the water app yesterday on my flip phone, I have noticed a massive increase on my water intake, and I am wondering if this has anything to do with the change in my thinking, or perhaps that’s the change created by not spending time on social media.

After Lunch I had to change the wifi configuration inside the house, so that my wife can get better reception inside the office. This took little to no time at all, and I found myself checking Facebook on my computer for a brief minute (literally) then switched on the self-control app, and all balance returned to the universe.
This had the side effect of blocking Youtube, so I pulled out my little ‘Alexa input’, plugged in my headphones and carried on writing. Problem solved.

Time spent on my phone today… not actually that much.. I didn’t flip it as much as yesterday, I only sent one text, and most of the time it was telling me to drink water, which was great, but I noticed the lines on my water bottle, and am drinking water from one line to another, dependant on what the time is (I still think I need the reminder though, so I will keep it on for now. Battery life after all of this activity… 92% compared to yesterday’s 45% left.

I just reset my Google home hub, and my Alexa input device, it almost seems as if this might end up being a technology detox, rather than just a Social Media detox… let’s see what happens. Number of internet connected devices now put away for this experiment… iPhone, iPad, Chromebook, Alexa input, Google Nest home hub, Sony Vaio pocket laptop = 6 so far.

After some writing, and a meeting on zoom, my wife and I are off to go and do another ‘wellness walk’ without our phones, and no talk about work.

Watch this space for more updates tomorrow.

Day 1 of my social media Detox – Tue 2 Mar

Yesterday, I received a Nokia 2720 flip phone. I watched videos of how people felt after 30 days, and thought… I want that too. Don’t worry, I am not going off Social Media altogether, just on my phone, and using my laptop to post work related stuff instead. Today was weird, I spent the morning actually doing stuff instead of swiping on my screen.

I started off using my iPhone, solely for the purpose of moving some money and paying some bills – (note to self: must investigate internet banking on my laptop), and then I slung my phone and iPad into the wardrobe with about 4% battery on my iPhone, and flat battery on my iPad.

Due to the fact that I removed the phone and iPad, I also packed away the lead and charger, then realised how much space I had between my bed and bedside table (which is where my iPad usually lives). The fold up table which my iPad usually goes on was also packed away, creating more space.

My wife and I had breakfast, and I found myself using my diary, and pen instead of my phone, or social media. (Apologies to anyone who has a birthday today, and I didn’t celebrate with you on Facebook or Twitter).

Among some of the things that happened today, I wrote an email out for work, that I otherwise would have forgotten, or put on a todo list, and then watched an informative video, making notes to help with my author business.

I did feel fidgety, and time went slowly at times, but I also had a chance to relax and just “be” for a moment. I must have flipped open and closed the phone well over a thousand times, and although I played with it, flipping, and going through the menus almost most of the day, I still managed to only chew up 65% battery, and squeeze in more stuff, and not feel so wiped out at the end of the day.

My wife and I also started something new, we have never seen before, which we have called a ‘wellness walk’. Basically, we went for a walk, for an hour, leaving our phones at home, and made sure we didn’t talk about work, but about other things instead, and just soaked up the beauty of the world around us.

In a world where going out for a walk is a luxury in a covid world, we were pleased to get out of the four walls, and meant that we could disconnect with technology, and reconnect with each other for a bit.

It’s now nearly 10pm at night, and I have had a chance to do more than I usually do, and even feel more relaxed than usual. The fact that this has made a difference this early in the experiment has quite intrigued me, and I look forward to tomorrow, where I will be logging what else I get up to 🙂

I am now going on Twitter to post this, on my laptop, and it will be the first time I have used social media all day.