The Non-Definitive Guide to Staying Sane in an Age of Overwhelm: Part Three
Saying No for a Bigger Yes, Building Habits of Focus, News Sabbaticals and Healthy Boundaries.
We are on the cusp of April, a month that always feels like openings and new beginnings, in bud and in bloom. And as there are openings, there are also endings. It is to this slide of the scale I am attending to today.
Like so many of us these days, I have been grappling with my own relationship to digital devices, social media and their relationship to my wellbeing. This week, I deleted instagram on my phone, put it back on, then deleted it again. I have permanently deleted the Facebook app, deleted my old twitter account, taken the substack app off my phone. Everything has been put on mute. It’s feels like living in a tech limbo paradox of wanting connection, and wanting quiet; wanting to be able to work online but then to disengage from it again; wanting to be informed, yet not wanting to be overwhelmed with the flood of news, messages and demands on my time, attention and energy.
Learning to stay sane, I think, is also a practice of trying to stay sane in a world that is so off-kilter that definitions of sanity seem maladjusted too. I do not want to adjust to the absurdities of what I see around me, nor be blind to the challenges, but I need to be able to maintain energy, stamina and hope to be able to sustain engagement and commitment over the long arc of time. Managing what goes into my brain, is in part, my attempt to influence what comes out of it too. It’s about enabling writing that can only happen through deep focus. It’s about giving time and space to the thoughts which require depth and breadth to be able to find their roots. Saying no, I realise, is ultimately about saying yes to the things that matter most. But why, I wonder, has that got so hard?
It brings me to a short creative prompt for you all today
What can you say no to today in order to focus on a bigger ‘yes’.?
Today’s main post is a continuation of my ‘Non-Definitive Guide to Staying Sane in an Age of Overwhelm’ , in which I continue my grapple with these challenges.
Part One, laid out the terrain of the challenge of overwhelm and offered a way to discern how we might best direct our energy and attention based on our core values.
Part Two focused on guiding principles for intentional engagement, particularly online, and offered key design questions to consider in how we might shape that engagement.
In Part Three, I get really practical, sharing some tips and tricks I have been using to re-claim my own attention span in order to deepen my creative process. Many of these also come in handy when running my own freelance business, tips about chunking time and tasks, communicating with clients around expectations, and boundaries both online and within the home to create intentional and focused work spaces, irrespective of the size of the space available. I also talk about the role of news sabbaticals and the rise of offline clubs around the world.
Again, I want to re-iterative the ‘non-definitive’ aspect of this guide. It’s not claiming to have all the answers or be a one size fits all. What works for me, may not work for you. We are all trying to find our way to our own answers. It’s a lot of trial, and a lot of error. But I do think something can shift in the mix.
Since I drafted this guide a few weeks ago, the Netflix drama, Adolescence has been broadcast, stirring a huge debate in the UK and here in Ireland around the use of smartphones, our relationship to social media, online safety and how we learn. It has sparked conversations in parliaments, press and around dinner tables, and I think is a welcome provocation to get us all to access our own relationship with our digital devices and their impact on our wellbeing and relationships, as well as those of the children in our lives. If you haven’t watched it, I recommend. But I also recommend not watching it all in one binge- it’s a lot to take in. There has been criticism of the show too for taking an over patrilineal view of the issues, and the absence of the female and victim experience from the narrative. In watching the show, I also encourage you to seek out some of the broad debate and perspectives it has stirred. Whatever the outcomes of those debates, that we are having them in the context of wellbeing, I think is a very valuable thing.
The Non-Definitive Guide to Staying Sane in an Age of Overwhelm: Part Three.
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Focus on Attention
Our attention is one of our greatest assets. What and whom we give our attention to, whether it be in long chunks of focus, or short blasts, matters. Our brains are hungry for dopamine, a chemical that gives us a little rush. It’s the pleasure neurotransmitter. Each ping on a phone, each like on a post, each interruption is giving us a hit, while simultaneously eroding our capacity to focus.
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