Oh man, bad habits. I have a ton of them. I have a terrible habit of chewing my fingernails, I hit the snooze button too often in the morning, I eat too much junk food, and I spend too much money on things that don’t matter.
Even though these are bad, there’s one that sticks out in my mind that takes the top spot. I spend way too much time attached to technology – namely my phone. If I’m having a conversation with someone and I get a notification, I check it without hesitation most of the time. It’s especially bad at home where I’ve gotten comfortable with the ones I spend the most time with and have become almost desensitized to the cues that such actions have a negative impact on said people. Fear of missing out, or FOMO, is real and has me in its unrelenting grip. A new GroupMe notification? That’s more important than the conversation I’m having right now. I have an email? Better check it, it’s probably something I need to respond to. A calendar reminder? Crap, I gotta go to that soon, I better wrap this up.
I am an avid supporter of technology and I love the rapid pace that tech has evolved over the past decade or two. That pace has shown no sign of slowing down; it’s quite the opposite, in fact. The rate at which new technology comes out and existing technology improves (especially in the world of development) has increased exponentially in the past years. However, that has done no favors to society that has addictive tendencies. People are addicted to the recognition they can get on social media. They are addicted to the constant stream of information they can receive on any medium they can gain access to in the little 6 inch black box they have in their pockets at any given time. They’re addicted to the fun animations and simple competitive time wasters that game developers come up with every other week.
I am not an exception to this pattern of behavior.
The sad truth is that as much as I may believe this, I am not an exception to this pattern of behavior. I get too mad at stupid games on my phone. If I’m bored sitting on the couch, I will open up Facebook or Twitter and just start scrolling, likely forgetting anything that I see ten minutes after the fact.
There are times when it’s acceptable to sit and let my mind wander aimlessly through the depths of social media or the countless chat groups I am a part of, but there are also times that it isn’t acceptable: times like when I am sitting on the couch with my fiancée watching the latest Netflix trend, or when I’m out to dinner with friends. Pulling my phone out of my pocket for something meaningless implies that whatever is on that screen is more important than what’s going on right then and there, even if I don’t mean for it to. I realize it is a problem, and I realize it is something that needs to be fixed.
Pulling my phone out of my pocket for something meaningless implies that whatever is on that screen is more important than what’s going on right then and there
Now for the second part of the prompt: how am I going to keep myself accountable? I have already starting making an effort towards eliminating this behavior by having conversations about it, but I can do more. Here’s a few things that come to mind right now:
I know this is a problem. I know it is hindering my success both short term and long term because of the amount of time it takes up in my life, and I want to eliminate this bad habit. These are only the things that have come to mind to me this morning. If anyone has any ideas to help me keep myself accountable, I would love to hear them. You can contact me via email, if you have any specific comments.
Unrelated: I’ve decided that most weekends I will not create journal entries, as I have no need to be super productive like I do at work. I use this for a lot of things – one of them being to put me in a productive mindset. I like to relax and work on other things on the weekends, so this will continue through weekdays unless I’m feeling super productive. I may change this later on, but that’s the plan for now.