Just after waking up and making a cup of coffee, my morning routine is to dive into reading or study. I can keenly feel the difference in my ability to concentrate depending on whether or not I took only a few moments to glance at my phone beforehand.
Phones are built to relay maximal information in minimal time, and it forces the mind to make associations that drag your thoughts in every direction.
Coincidentally, I’ve been listening to the audiobook version of “How to Focus: A Monastic Guide for an Age of Distraction.” It’s a selection of dialogues from John Cassian’s “The Conferences,” and it’s an interesting peek into a medieval monk’s wisdom on eliminating distraction and focusing the mind (while, of course, being heavily encoded in Christian terminology).
You’ve hit the proverbial nail on the head. I like the phrase “the devil in your pocket.” I refer to it as “the devil’s portal.” It’s the first thing we see in the morning and the last thing we see before going to sleep. When we wake up in the morning, we’re surprised to see we’ve received texts while we slept. We react not to the fact that we’ve awoken for another day to glorify God. No, we have to read the text. Having listened to many a confession, I know it is the path to the demonic.
There's a reason why designer dumb phones like the Light Phone, Punkt MP2 and Mudita Pure have garnered such a cult following: they give us back our time and our focus. The inconvenience of not having a smart phone is far outweighed by the benefits of avoiding its addictive grasp.
I've been in the process of slowly turning my smart phone into a 'dumb phone'. Removing apps that tend to draw me in, making myself have to open up my computer if I desire to do such activities.
Indeed, cell phones are little demons in our pockets!
Johann Hari wrote a book, "Stolen Focus," in which he suggests our lives and our focus have been so deeply scattered by these devices that even if you want to focus, the odds are deeply against you. These devices, in particular are designed to take our focus with biological feedbacks that have been purposely manipulated. He claims it's no coincidence that the designers purposely will not allow their own children to have these devices before a certain cognitive age. Like the food industry with the use of corn (a product that the body does not metabolize and has been manipulated to drive hunger in products such as corn starch, corn syrup, etc) these devices take advantage of our biology - the way our eyes see, our brain sends signals, etc in order to distract us to another social media post as we scroll our way to another advertisement, another distraction. Devil in our pocket, indeed.
Just after waking up and making a cup of coffee, my morning routine is to dive into reading or study. I can keenly feel the difference in my ability to concentrate depending on whether or not I took only a few moments to glance at my phone beforehand.
Phones are built to relay maximal information in minimal time, and it forces the mind to make associations that drag your thoughts in every direction.
Coincidentally, I’ve been listening to the audiobook version of “How to Focus: A Monastic Guide for an Age of Distraction.” It’s a selection of dialogues from John Cassian’s “The Conferences,” and it’s an interesting peek into a medieval monk’s wisdom on eliminating distraction and focusing the mind (while, of course, being heavily encoded in Christian terminology).
You’ve hit the proverbial nail on the head. I like the phrase “the devil in your pocket.” I refer to it as “the devil’s portal.” It’s the first thing we see in the morning and the last thing we see before going to sleep. When we wake up in the morning, we’re surprised to see we’ve received texts while we slept. We react not to the fact that we’ve awoken for another day to glorify God. No, we have to read the text. Having listened to many a confession, I know it is the path to the demonic.
There's a reason why designer dumb phones like the Light Phone, Punkt MP2 and Mudita Pure have garnered such a cult following: they give us back our time and our focus. The inconvenience of not having a smart phone is far outweighed by the benefits of avoiding its addictive grasp.
I've been in the process of slowly turning my smart phone into a 'dumb phone'. Removing apps that tend to draw me in, making myself have to open up my computer if I desire to do such activities.
Indeed, cell phones are little demons in our pockets!
Johann Hari wrote a book, "Stolen Focus," in which he suggests our lives and our focus have been so deeply scattered by these devices that even if you want to focus, the odds are deeply against you. These devices, in particular are designed to take our focus with biological feedbacks that have been purposely manipulated. He claims it's no coincidence that the designers purposely will not allow their own children to have these devices before a certain cognitive age. Like the food industry with the use of corn (a product that the body does not metabolize and has been manipulated to drive hunger in products such as corn starch, corn syrup, etc) these devices take advantage of our biology - the way our eyes see, our brain sends signals, etc in order to distract us to another social media post as we scroll our way to another advertisement, another distraction. Devil in our pocket, indeed.
Wow! What a thought-provoking piece. You have inspired me to reread "Screwtape."
Thanks for making this available.
Cheers and best wishes. M. A. Murphy ("Moe")