The second of my new years thoughts and posts, this one about my resolution, albeit in a slightly detailed and roundabout way. The previous post had the conclusion of “we should make the most of our life”, and this post deals with a particular way I do that.
It’s that time of year when people ask each other the question, “Do you have a new year’s resolution?”. Here’s the extended version of my answer, beginning with the background.
The Resolution
My new years resolution is to waste less time using the internet, specifically facebook.
Currently on my year abroad in Bonn, the workload isn’t huge and all the lectures are in the morning, so I have almost every afternoon free. I often used to come home (though it’s a bit odd calling a single room home) and spend a couple of spare hours in the afternoon looking through facebook, reading links, watching videos, etc.
Nothing wrong with that as such: I saw some good videos and read some interesting things from people who share positively. But the problem was the attitude that came with it, such as waking up and turning the computer on before getting a glass of water or wasting time by constantly checking facebook and scrolling through things I had already seen.
In terms of internet “addiction”, we can get into habits which are as much addiction as any physical substance. Whether it’s scientifically addiction to the same degree as a chemical addiction (like nicotine) is a pedantic point that doesn’t matter too much. What does matter is that the effects are similar with how it works in our brain. One type of addiction may be worse than another, but that doesn’t mean facebook addiction can’t be addiction.
It was at its worst sometime last year, when while working in the library I would check facebook up to every five minutes. Every time I got to a new section in a book (sometimes one page, though admittedly pages can be quite long) I would check it. If I went to the toilet, I would check it both before and after. If I didn’t check it often enough, I would have an annoying buzz somewhere in my brain, saying “psst, check facebook, it’s been a few minutes and something might’ve happened” – which it of course rarely had.
Unsurprisingly, this was annoying and distracting, meant it took me longer to do things and probably meant I couldn’t concentrate as well during the working time either.
Thankfully, I’ve improved from that, though not as much as I would’ve liked. Before Christmas, I would still check facebook before and between lectures, and sometimes during lectures. I’m better than some people who spend a good proportion of their lectures on facebook, but life isn’t about beating other people, it’s about beating yourself.
Facebook simply doesn’t need checking that often. Occasionally something’s organised short notice, but for the most part, there’s nothing that can’t be picked up daily. The marginal benefit (benefit each use brings) of checking facebook drops off pretty sharply after a certain number, the number of times that it’s worth checking facebook each day depends on how much you use facebook overall (assuming it’s used in a good way instead of just mindless chat about nothing), but for me it’s probably only actually worth checking facebook two or three times a day.
(to be clear, I’m talking about mindless facebook use. Hopefully you know what I mean by that – sometimes we’re sorting things out, having meaningful social interaction with people, and seeing good links, and that isn’t what I’m referring to)
So my new years resolution is along the lines of checking facebook less and wasting less unproductive time on the internet and my laptop – the time when I’m out to kill time instead of doing anything with a purpose.
My specific rules are:
- no checking facebook before lectures
- no checking facebook during lectures
- I’m allowed to scroll through the newsfeed, but if I come to things I’ve seen before, I have to stop
- I’m not allowed to have the facebook tab open if I’m not using it (as it draws attention and distracts)
So far, two weeks into term, I think I’ve done pretty well fighting facebook. I don’t check it before or during my lectures and sometimes wait until I get home again (sometimes it’s unchecked for more than 5 hours!). Sometimes, I get to a time when I’m “allowed” to check facebook (like after my lecture), but just to show the nagging facebook part of the brain who is (or should be) boss, I make myself wait another couple of hours.
And I’ve noticed a definite benefit. I use my time better when I’m just in my room, reading a book or stretching or something instead of wasting it on facebook, plus I am less distracted by the annoying “check facebook” urge while going about my daily life. I didn’t have a problem with facebook distracting me from real-life interactions previously, so that isn’t an improvement I’ve had.
In line with the previous post, the reason is to improve my quality of life and make the most of it. I want to spend the time I reclaim from facebook/the internet reading, studying, exercising and socialising – basically doing good things.
Over Christmas I spoke to a friend of mine who moved into a new room this term, and the room didn’t have internet access. He said that for the first two weeks, he didn’t know what to do with himself, but after that it became normal again.
With the time he had because of not having internet, he read more books, which is one of the things I’d like too. Reading is great. As Tyrion says in Game of Thrones, “a mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone.“. I used to read loads when I was younger – there’s a picture of me aged six or seven lying in bed, and there are so many books you can barely see the sheet, and as a teenager would read for at least an hour after going to bed until I fell asleep. But at university I couldn’t find (and didn’t make) the time. The books I’ve read recently have been really interesting and definitely a much better use of time than mindless facebook use.
The benefit of learning from reading can scarcely be understated and is oft forgotten. In our society, the point of our education seems to be to get a job (and isn’t “cool”), not because learning is a good thing in itself. It’s a shame that’s how we think.
My actions have been specifically targeted at facebook as that’s what sucks my time the most, but I’ve also got into a mindset about watching youtube videos: I try to only watch them while stretching or eating, so either when I’m looking to waste some time it encourages me to stretch or I fit them into an empty time slot. I still have a habit to always have my computer turned on, but I’ve stopped it being something I do in the morning before I even get myself a drink.
Aside about Smartphone Culture
I think that smartphone culture has degraded our quality of life. Sure, there are definite benefits to them if we use them well, but also huge disadvantages, which I won’t go into here, and I think most people use smartphones in an overall negative way. When you either can’t or choose not to have a conversation with the person you’re with in real life and instead favour your smartphone, something’s gone wrong. I saw two parents out with their child recently. The child was skipping along, singing and shouting… but both parents had their phones out. Poor kid.
Here’s a video that tries to highlight it, though it’s a video made to demonstrate bad smartphone use. And here’s a blog post about an apple advert (so actually trying to show smartphone use in a positive light) pointing out how bad the advert is.
On Resolutions
I’m against the concept of New Years’ Resolutions.
By which I mean, I don’t think they work for me personally.
I only have one this year by coincidence. Over the festive period I was back at home and having a break from German term-time, and I was reflecting on my three months up until that point. I had decided on this particular ‘resolution’ a week before New Year’s itself, but there wasn’t any need to enact it before I was back in Germany anyway.
When I say I’m against New Years’ Resolutions, what I really mean is that I think they’re great, but the idea of only doing the reflection/resolving on self-improvement once a year is a silly one. The benefit isn’t just confined to New Year’s (though there may be a psychological benefit to associating the year change with the resolution, from how most of them seem to go I wouldn’t be convinced, and at any rate that would only show a mental restriction we have given ourselves).
As I’ve said previously, we should constantly strive for a better quality of life. Just as each year is the new year, a chapter of a book to be closed, so is each day a new day, the previous day a page turned never to be relived. I try to reflect often, and as often as I can find something to improve, I resolve to improve it, subject to the caveat that as Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor can I change myself overnight, so I won’t try to work on too much at once. Constant gradual change is much better than burning brightly for a short time, then fizzling out.
Last August I resolved to not pick my fingernails, even (slightly controversially) staking a hundred pounds on it for that month, which was to be donated to the BNP if I failed. I didn’t fail, at least until it came to September and the wager expired. It wasn’t the money that made me stick to it: it was the motivation I had not to do it, which was the same motivation which caused me to make the wager (with myself). I also made a similar resolution yesterday, my fingernail-ripping habit not have changed once that month was up.
I think it’s fair to say that I’m generally regarded as quite healthy, and I’ve heard others remark that they think it’s great but don’t have enough self-control themselves.
How did I get my self-control? Through gradual change and improvement. And it’s obvious, to me at least, that my self-control is domain dependent to the things I’ve practised self-control over, like eating certain foods. I can quite easily refuse to eat chocolate, biscuits, cake, etc… but as soon as the first one makes it in, the whole packet goes. I’m healthy most the time, but if I decide to have a night off, it’s a huge night. Five pieces of cake, thirty biscuits, or the whole chocolate bar (dark chocolate, is of course, permitted).
It’s like a great scene in Evan Almighty. Evan’s wife is sat in a fast food restaurant, having been driving crazy by her husband’s mission to build an Ark. God, represented by Morgan Freeman, has a chat with her in which he refers to a prayer she had made for God to give her patience and for her family to be closer. Morgan-God says, “If somebody prays for patience, do you think God gives them patience, or he gives them opportunities to be patient?”. We learn by doing, and if we decide not to eat sweets for a month, we don’t just benefit by not having sweets for a month, we also learn from the task of trying to not eat sweets for a month.
And in this way, my apparent self-control is quite domain dependent. I’ve excluded certain foods by habit, so I have more self control within the boundaries I have practised, but not as much outside that. Which just shows that the practice is important!
Conclusion
This post wasn’t just to tell you what I had resolved, but hopefully to inspire a small amount of positive change, whether it’s in combating facebook addiction or just general self-improvement.
I got to where I am now through gradual improvements, caused by various small positive nudges. A facebook status here, a video there, all then reflected on to turn into action. It’s not about a calendar change and suddenly being a new person, it’s about always seeking to chip away at the block a little bit more. Like this blog post by James Adams. And knowing that that’s how things change, we should always be looking for the little improvements to make on our own journeys of life.
(I just remembered that in this post here I talk about the same thing in a parkour context: that looking back, both the group in Oxford and my own parkour ability have grown, but I didn’t notice the change happening as I was just focussing on the step-by-step improvement.)
If you check your phone before you get out of bed or are unable to concentrate in lectures or social situations because you want to scroll mindlessly through facebook, twitter, instagram, etc, then maybe you should consider doing something about it. Or any other improvement you think you might make.
PS There’s quite a few links spread throughout this, all of which worth checking out, for those who realise that further reading might be good.