A Tale of Too Little Time, and Shattered Attention

“You might notice a slight odor,” the old man said casually, as he welcomed my sister and brother-in-law into his home. They were out for another day of house hunting on behalf of the charity they both serve, and they quickly realized that they had a much different concept of “slight odor” than the old man did. “I wanted to throw up,” they told me, as the wall of odor assaulted them immediately upon entering. My pregnant sister was able to maintain her composure long enough to see that the dining room was home to four litter boxes rather than a dining table, but she soon told the seller that she would need to step outside with their young daughter (not wanting to offend the man, she said that the toddler simply needed a snack). My brother-in-law held out long enough to report that the backyard was also filled with enough “cat boxes” for many cats to shelter in, and he estimated that the seller shared his property with no fewer than 17 cats. Needless to say, my sister and brother-in-law didn’t pursue purchasing the home.

It’s easy to see the absurdity of this situation, from the “outside looking in” — few of us live in anything approaching the visible chaos of what my sister dubbed “the cat house.” But of course, the owner of “the cat house” almost definitely didn’t acquire 17 cats in one trip to a pet store. In all likelihood, he began his pet ownership with one or two cats. When these cats provided him with benefits like companionship and a welcome sense of responsibility, he probably adopted the unspoken assumption that more cats would provide more of these same benefits. It’s easy to imagine him bringing in one more cat at a time over the course of several years; plus, some of the cats may have been a result of his inaction, as cats that had not been spayed or neutered had kittens. Small adjustments that might’ve seemed reasonable at the time, like putting one litter box in the dining room, spiraled into an entirely different trajectory for his home and his life — and by the time my sister and brother-in-law met him, he was probably genuinely unaware of how ridiculous his living situation truly was.

Unfortunately, as much as we’d like to deny or ignore it, we’re all susceptible to falling into some kind of excess that’s all but invisible to us. All human brains become accustomed to what’s “normal,” which enables us to focus our mental energy on responding to what’s out of the ordinary — and to some degree, this is very helpful and even necessary. As James Clear explains in his book Atomic Habits, this same dynamic underlies all our habits and makes them so powerful. But of course, we can easily fall into habits that are unhealthy or not in our best interest long-term — and though the impact of these habits may be relatively small at the outset, their influence on our lives compounds over the days, weeks, and years that we practice them. Before long, we’re living in our own personal version of “the cat house,” built on assumptions that we didn’t consciously realize we had — and we’ve convinced ourselves that the discomfort we feel is just a “slight odor.”

In this issue of Digital with Discernment, we’ll take a brutally honest look at some of our unspoken, potentially unexamined assumptions about our technology habits, and consider the case for taking dramatic action to break out of our unhealthy patterns. I’ll be drawing largely on Cal Newport’s incredibly insightful book Digital Minimalism, and using some simple math to help us more objectively evaluate whether our society’s “new normal” aligns with what we want for our lives. Finally, we’ll be expanding our “spring cleaning” goals (which we set in part 1) to apply our new perspective to our days more broadly, addressing even the forgotten “crevices.”

This month I’m also trying out something a little different with format. While it’s great if you can read the whole edition in one sitting, each section is semi-standalone — so if you find yourself called to a “real-life” responsibility, or if you want to prioritize time with your loved ones before you’ve finished the full edition, feel free to finish up a section and start again at the next heading when it suits you (you can even copy the link to the next section using the “chain link” icon that appears when you hover your cursor to the left of the heading!). Each numbered section should take about 5 minutes to read.

One of the most piercing statements in all of Digital Minimalism, in my opinion, is actually found in the book’s short introduction, when Newport is summarizing what readers of his earlier work told him about their struggles with technology use in their personal lives. While Newport is mainly focused on explaining how he came to write about the topic, his imagery hit me like a load of bricks when I saw it on the page for the first time:

“The urge to check Twitter or refresh Reddit becomes a nervous twitch that shatters uninterrupted time into shards too small to support the presence necessary for an intentional life.”

For me, this language conjures memories of accidentally knocking one of my family’s daily dishes off our kitchen counter and onto the tile floor. Our dishes are remarkably “break and chip resistant” under most circumstances, but they’re still made of glass, and the speed with which my husband and I often move has sent those poorly placed pieces careening to shatter into hundreds of incredibly sharp shards. Our kids have broken far fewer of these dishes than we have, and do so rather infrequently, but my oldest did manage to send his cereal bowl to its doom only a month or two ago. Both my older boys were right there when the bowl shattered, and I explained to them the need to be more careful while I cleaned up the mess (not to mention the frequent reminders I’ve given them since) — so I know they theoretically understand that the dishes they’re now trusted to use aren’t incredibly strong. And yet, they’ve recently taken to declaring, very confidently and in all seriousness, that our plates are made of metal — one of the strongest materials they know of.

It occurs to me that we adults make a similar mistake with our conception of our time — and maybe more significantly, our attention. Sure, we’re probably able to control our attention more effectively than our children can control theirs, in much the same way that my family’s daily dishes are harder and stronger than the plastic ones my older boys used to use. But if we’re honest with ourselves, a simple, quiet “ping” or vibration from our pocket (or a nearby surface) can shatter in one second whatever focus we were attempting to devote to something, or someone, more important. (And that’s not to mention the “nervous twitches” that aren’t related to notifications.)

We may have good reason to overestimate our ability to pay attention to what really matters to us — many of us have concrete accomplishments to point to, such as completing a challenging major in college, becoming proficient at playing an instrument or sport, or even attentively supporting a friend through a crisis. But are the conditions we’re now subjecting ourselves to on a daily basis really the same as the conditions that fostered our success in those accomplishments? Or are our frenzied new habits sending our self-control careening out into thin air, to crash against the cold, hard reality that our digital devices and “services” are designed to demand our attention?

We often spend the majority of our days within arm’s reach of a portal to an endless amount of personalized information, entertainment, and intermittent positive reinforcement1 — but because constant connectivity is “just how the world works nowadays,” most of us have adopted the unspoken assumption that it’s no big deal (or at least we act that way despite our unease). In fact, this leads to a whole lot of mindless “checking”; it’s now “normal” to pick up one’s mobile phone over 150 times per day2 — and that’s not even considering our usage of tablets, laptops, televisions, and “smart” speakers. Put another way, it’s now abnormal to spend more than 6 and a half minutes at a time without at least a quick glance at your phone. It’s as if we carry around a sledgehammer, ready at a moment's notice to pulverize any amount of time, large or small, during which we find ourselves unoccupied or “understimulated.”

So, what can you do to stop smashing your time and attention to bits on a daily basis? You can start by getting the indisputable facts about your own usage — in this case, your “daily pickups” of your phone. In the past I’ve focused more on my screen time metrics, which are certainly worth examining as well, but I think Newport makes a good point — the impact of digital technologies is not just about the sheer amount of time lost, but the deeper impact on what we can accomplish with the time that we do have. We need to stop treating our “pickups” information as a point of passing interest (“Wow, do we really check our phones that often?”) and make a simple but eye-opening conversion that shows us the size of our “shards.”

Unfortunately, it’s not particularly easy to get to your “pickups” data — almost as if the companies involved don’t want you to think about it and make changes to your habits. Below I’ll outline how both iPhone and Android users can see how many times per day they personally check their phones, then demonstrate the simple math that converts that data to a timescale. (If you consider yourself less mathematically inclined, I won’t be offended if you make use of the bulleted list below, rather than doing the math yourself.) We’ll then discuss how to think about our numbers.

For iPhone users, these two pages from Apple (here and here) were the closest I could get to an explanation directly from Apple; neither page shows you how to get to your pickups information, or exactly what is included in their definition of "pickup" (The Verge claims that "If all you do is turn on the screen, that’s not enough to get tallied," but I don't see any source for that claim). Essentially, you'll need to find "Screen Time" within your iPhone's Settings to turn the feature on if you haven't already. Once you're in the Screen Time Report, you’ll need to select “See All Activity” under the initial graph, then “Week” rather than “Day” at the top of that next page.3 Scroll down past the sections “Screen Time”, “Limits” (if you have any), and “Most Used” to find “Pickups”.4

For Android users, this page gives slightly more detail than Apple’s pages. You’ll need to set up “Digital Wellbeing & parental controls” within your Settings if you haven’t already. Note that Android reports “unlocks” rather than “pickups,” which is more descriptive but likely doesn’t reflect any mostly-mindless screen-tapping you might be doing (e.g., checking the time or seeing if there are any notifications you missed). Therefore, you might want to round up your “unlocks” to approximate your “checks” (though I will use the three terms interchangeably below for the sake of brevity).

For the math: To approximate the time between phone “checks,” we’ll assume that the vast majority of your phone use is spread across 16 waking hours per day — that is, you’re not regularly on your phone late into the night. (If you are regularly getting less than 8 hours per day of sleep because of your phone use, your pickups might be further apart, but your sleep and health are suffering, as we discussed in the previous edition of Digital with Discernment.) Once we have this assumption, we simply have to convert waking hours to waking minutes, and divide by phone pickups. For example, to get to the numbers cited above, the math would be:

(16 waking hours per day) times (60 minutes per hour) = 960 waking minutes per day

(960 waking minutes per day) divided by (150 phone pickups per day) = 6.4 waking minutes between phone pickups, on average

To do the math with your own numbers, simply divide 960 by your total daily “pickups” or “unlocks” (that is, substitute your number for 150 in the example above).

For the less math-savvy among us, here are a few more examples (using “check” to refer to “pickups” and “unlocks” interchangeably):

• If you check your phone 75 times per day, you spend fewer than 13 minutes before looking back at your phone, on average.

• If you check your phone 100 times per day, your phone usually pulls you in again less than 10 minutes since the last time you checked it.

• If you check your phone 125 times per day, you have about 7 and a half minutes before this habit kicks in.

• If you check your phone 200 times per day, you have only 5 minutes between picking up your phone and picking it right back up again.

• If you check your phone 250 times per day, your eyes are drawn back to your phone well before 4 minutes have elapsed.

One more important note: the numbers above don’t actually reflect the time you spend with your eyes away from your phone — if we assume (rather conservatively) that each pickup leads to around 1 minute of use, that means we need to subtract one minute from all of the figures above to get to the “final answer” of how much time, on average, we spend looking away from our phones. That is, if you check your phone 150 times per day, you’re really left with more like 5 and a half minutes for everything else between checks. And remember, we haven’t actually taken into account any other screens, the fact that many phone pickups lead to more than 1 minute of use, or the cognitive impacts of context switching (i.e., we can’t immediately and seamlessly switch what we’re thinking about without cost).

So, how much time do you have to “fit in” everything else in your life? That statement sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? And yet, if we’re leaving ourselves mere minutes before we get sucked back into our ever-present glowing rectangles, what are we doing other than simply shoving the things that ought to be most important to us — that we claim are most important to us — into whatever time is left over? And if we’re honest with ourselves, are our minds really “off the screen” in the moments we’ve wrested away our eyes?

I do readily admit that some screen use does help us prioritize what’s most important to us. You can certainly make a case for using your phone to video chat with loved ones, capture a particularly precious photo or video of your children, or access ideas and information on topics that you’re passionate about, which you would have no way of finding otherwise. But we need to be truly honest with ourselves — do those types of uses really make up the majority of our screen use? Do they even make up even a sizable minority of our “pickups”? Or do we find our days — and in turn, our lives — dictated by our whims and the “productivity tool” in our pocket, which is steadily pulling us deeper into the mire of distraction and unproductive guilt?

I also admit that some “pickups” make our lives considerably more convenient. For example, a few years ago I asked my mom how she used to make credit card payments, because I couldn’t conceive of how you’d do that without the infrastructure of online banking. (Honestly, I don’t remember her explanation in detail, but it seemed incredibly lengthy and tedious.) I’m definitely not suggesting we all go back to using our digital devices for only the bare minimum of what we can’t accomplish any other way. However, I know we can be more thoughtful and intentional about when and how we use our screens to accomplish these tasks. Probably even more importantly, we must all acknowledge that our “portals to everything” will inevitably suck us into other things we weren’t intending to do if we’re not exceedingly careful with how we use them. If we’re saving hours of time on the tasks that our screens have made much quicker and easier, but losing the same amount or even more to brand new distractions, what have we gained?

If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that the things that matter most to us, including what Newport calls “high quality leisure,” require planning — and planning requires significant amounts of time and attention. This is true whether we want to do something “bigger,” like arranging the logistics of a week-long vacation with our loved ones, or something “smaller,” like attempting to be intentional about which books we share with our children. While we may pursue these effortful but worthwhile endeavors — we likely will go on a vacation, or read some library books to our kids — how often have we sabotaged our enjoyment of these same meaningful activities with entirely unrelated screen use? And how much richer could both our planning and experience of these activities be if we could make new technologies work for us, instead of letting them work on us?

Ultimately, we need to return to the question implied in the excerpt of Digital Minimalism that I quoted above: what kind of life do we want? Do we want to spend our days attempting to cobble together shards of time and attention, feeling constantly harried and distressed, only to find that the years have passed us by in one long blur, like the ultimate “infinite scroll” to no particular end? Or do we want to reclaim our time and attention, and use it to craft an intentional, meaningful life in which we cultivate treasured relationships and persistently pursue the things that matter most to us?

When I first listened to Digital Minimalism (the audiobook), I was impressed by how carefully argued and explicitly reasoned the book is — but the fact remains, no one can prove that you, personally, need to take drastic measures to wrench your attention away from your digital devices. It is theoretically possible that you, specifically, could be successful with what Newport calls “modest hacks and tips.” But as someone who’s tried a wide variety of these hacks — from Tristan Harris’s now 7 year-old suggestion to hide apps in folders, to changing my phone’s lock screen to something meant to arrest my mindless use, and beyond — I’m inclined to agree with Newport when he says,

“…willpower, tips, and vague resolutions are not sufficient by themselves to tame the ability of new technologies to invade your cognitive landscape — the addictiveness of their design and the strength of the cultural pressures supporting them are too strong for an ad hoc approach to succeed.” (pg. XVI)

We need more than a way to decrease how many times we check our phones each day; we need to retrain our brains to gravitate toward more meaningful pursuits, even if they’re not always easier. Just as importantly, we need to be brutally honest with not only ourselves, but also our friends and loved ones, and admit that we need to make and maintain a comprehensive lifestyle change — we can’t just implement a short-term “digital detox.” We need to start the process of adopting an intentional, foundational philosophy of technology use that aligns with our values — even if we feel like our current situation “isn’t too bad.”

That’s why it’s my strong encouragement for you to read, or listen to the audiobook version of, Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.5 I know it’s strange for an online article to give you “homework” instead of summarizing or incorporating only key points from a book, but Digital Minimalism is so well-written and full of valuable information that I think it’s worth your time to read it yourself. You definitely don’t have to agree with all the arguments in Digital Minimalism — I’m not sure I do — but I do think the arguments are worth considering.

You also don’t have to read the whole book before you begin to take dramatic action to improve your technology habits; Newport himself says,

“[s]tart with this declutter, and then once your transformation has begun, turn to the chapters that follow to optimize your setup. As is often true in life, getting started is the most important step.” (pg. 60)

And finishing the first section that Newport refers to should be quick work; the audiobook version of Digital Minimalism is approximately 7 hours long, and the first section Newport refers to comprises slightly more than one-third of the book — so listening to this first section would take less than 3 hours, and reading it silently to yourself would likely take less than 2. That is, if you replace just 20-30 minutes of your low-value screen use per day with listening to or reading Digital Minimalism, you can complete the relevant section in under a week.

I do want to note a key caveat before you begin reading Digital Minimalism, however. While I deeply respect and admire Newport, I think the concept of the “digital declutter” that he proposes could do with a name change, because I don’t think I’m alone in feeling a rather visceral reaction to the term “declutter.” I’ve been working my way through (in fits and starts) the books How to Manage Your Home without Losing Your Mind and Decluttering at the Speed of Life (both by Dana White) — and though I really enjoy White’s candor, humor, and practical guidance, I have a long record of prioritizing anything other than decluttering. Sure, many of the things that have risen higher on my list of priorities have been worthwhile, like nurturing an infant and spending time with loved ones. However, enough stuff has accumulated in my home over the years that I can understand what White meant when she said that sometimes (before she figured out and implemented the things she describes in her books), she felt like burning her whole house down to deal with her overwhelming situation. Of course, she knew she couldn’t; her family did need many of the things that were obscured by the massive amount of stuff they didn’t — and therefore, she needed to learn how to declutter “at the speed of life.”

Though I strongly agree with Newport that the vast majority of us need to take dramatic action to change our digital habits, it was six months before I revisited his book with a sense that I needed to implement what he calls the “digital declutter.” As I reread the book’s opening pages, I still felt a sense of confusion and distress — how could I tackle this huge challenge when my life was so busy and my attention was already so fragmented? Finally, it clicked. We may not be able to “burn it all down,” but we can start fresh, to a very large degree, with our own digital habits. While physical decluttering requires you to do much of the decision-making upfront, Newport’s “digital declutter” actually works largely in the opposite way.

The basic idea of the “digital declutter” is to determine which uses of digital technology are optional and cut those out of your life entirely for 30 days, while maintaining the ones that are necessary or truly high-value, and using them with clear limits that Newport calls “operating procedures.” During the 30 days, you carefully consider your values and intentionally spend time doing non-digital things that align with them. After the 30 days, you can allow optional digital technologies back into your life, but only if they pass a rigorous test. As Newport notes, this final step is key — and as I realized, it’s what makes the “digital declutter” work in largely the opposite way of a physical declutter. Starting with a (mostly) clean slate frees you to do much of the difficult decision-making gradually, without pressure to make hundreds of “final” decisions under time constraints. Plus, in a physical declutter, you need to determine how to get the physical things you no longer want out of your house — but with a “digital declutter,” the things you don’t let back into your life will simply never clutter your mind or steal your attention again. For these reasons, I’ll be using the term “digital reset” instead, in keeping with Newport’s description of the digital declutter as a “jarring reset” (pg. XVIII).

First, I’m going to be honest with you — though I think a digital reset will be simpler than a physical declutter, I don’t necessarily think it will be easier. For example, we must be honest with ourselves about the weakness of our willpower, and explicitly commit to specific strategies that will remain in effect regardless of our motivation. I won’t claim to be an expert, having not yet completed a digital reset myself, but I highly recommend reading James Clear’s Atomic Habits to supplement Newport’s suggestions in Digital Minimalism.6 For example, I plan to keep my phone out of sight as often as possible, perhaps leaving it in my purse in the coat closet when I get home from dropping my kids off at school — which aligns with Clear’s advice to break a bad habit by “making it invisible.” Probably more importantly, I recently wrote a physical list of all the apps on my phone within my bullet journal, then deleted the vast majority of the apps that don’t “make the cut” of “non-optional.” This follows Clear’s direction to “make it difficult” to perform your bad habit — plus, I can’t make my old excuse that I might forget to re-download an app I really want back in my life at the end of the 30 days.

I also completely agree with Newport’s quote above, that we must address “the strength of the cultural pressures supporting [new technologies]” in order to successfully reset our technology habits. For far too long it’s been an “open secret” that the vast majority of us have an unhealthy dynamic with our devices, and it’s time to stop with the charade. I’m not saying you should tell every acquaintance that you’re doing a digital reset because you’re worried you’re wasting your life. On the other hand, I don’t think anyone needs to be embarrassed to tell their close friends and family that they’re taking 30 days to closely examine and “reset” their technology-related habits. As Melissa Urban explains in The Book of Boundaries, your loved ones want to support you in your quest to be healthy, but they don’t always know how to do so — and therefore, it’s kinder to them to explicitly state what you need, rather than expecting them to figure it out on their own.7 (If it wasn’t already clear from the above, I think having a healthy relationship with technology is a key aspect of health today.)

For example, you might clearly explain to your close friends and family that you won’t be available via Instagram messaging for a full 30 days, but you will be checking your text messages every evening, and will be happy to chat with them “live” (on the phone or video chat) during specific timeframes.8 You can certainly “customize” your approach as necessary, but do so intentionally and carefully, striving for compromise rather than concession. For example, if your husband usually picks up the kids from school but sometimes has things come up at work, it’s reasonable to be available for a call from him — but be sure to put safeguards in place so you’re not routinely hearing totally unrelated notifications on the off chance he calls. Your phone’s notification and “focus mode” settings can help in scenarios like these; alternatively, you might ask him to leave a message if anything comes up, and plan to check your phone briefly at the time you’d need to start getting ready for school pickup.

Finally, we’ll need to be honest about both our progress and our challenges. If you got a “spring cleaning partner” after reading Spring Cleaning for Technology Habits, Part 1, make sure to ask them if they’re willing to support you in this next phase of “spring cleaning.” If you didn’t get a partner or haven’t yet read the previous edition of Digital with Discernment, I’d encourage you to start there. Either way, be honest with your friends and family about any help they can give you. And of course, be honest with yourself — honestly accept that there will never be a perfect time to do a “digital reset,” then earnestly and explicitly commit to putting in the work anyway.9 Yes, check for decreases in your screen time and “pickups” metrics, but more importantly, take the time to truly reflect on whether the way you’re living is increasingly aligning with the life you want. Today’s tech companies have a vision for how you’ll spend your time, which has become the “default” for our culture — but you have the power to reject their paltry excuse for a life. I can’t promise it will be easy, but I can promise it will be worthwhile.

As we work to be honest with ourselves about our technology habits, I hope you’ll take to heart some additional advice from Atomic Habits, in the chapter titled, “Walk Slowly, but Never Backward”:

“Your current habits have been internalized over the course of hundreds, if not thousands, of repetitions. New habits require the same level of frequency….What matters is that you take the actions you need to take to make progress.” (pgs. 146-147)

I’m sure my work to make progress with my technology habits will continue over the course of many weeks, months, and even years, so please don’t be too hard on yourself if yours does too — and certainly don’t give up if your “digital reset” doesn’t start smoothly. Though I’ll be expanding the scope of topics I write about in future editions of Digital with Discernment, I expect to revisit the topic of technology habits sooner than next spring. For now, thank you for coming this far — and let’s continue together!