Combating digital addiction in pursuit of digital nirvana

The holy trinity of my digital darlings – tablet, laptop and smartphone. I cannot imagine the daily hustle of working without any one of these. A feeling of emptiness quickly envelopes the mind whenever I am unable to access any of them even leading to momentary thought paralysis!

For someone whose entire life revolved around these digital delights, it wasn’t any less a supreme sacrifice to establish strict rules of digital engagement and even worse strictly adhere to it.

But at stake was losing my conscious self to the virtual world. And the stark realization that instant communication was proving more of a distraction and less a productivity enhancer!

At the core of my path to “real world” redemption lay the struggle to curb my natural instincts to glance those notifications that kept lighting up my screens! Even now I am so bloody damn tempted to sneak a peek, but swore not until I finished writing this piece. So if you are reading this piece, it’s safe to assume victory this round. 😉

A simple two-step process put me on the path of promised redemption from my digital addiction.

Goodbye push mail! Deactivating email push notifications and checking email by syncing only when I chose to. Next, switch off all social media notifications and allow myself the luxury to check only once in 90 minutes or after I completed a particular task.

Though it sounds simple, this could be incredibly demanding on your mental stamina especially taming a mind that has been conditioned to years of information overload & abuse.

Yes, it could be overwhelming initially. Withdrawal symptoms like frequent opening of my Twitter and WhatsApp gradually eased. Over a period of time I began realizing this could possibly be the single most liberating experience I have had in a while. And what was equally more startling was how much more efficient it turned out to check and reply emails periodically rather than giving into impulsive instincts to type away a response. (Average 90 minute gaps worked for me.)

Setting expectations for others too will be in order as they should get used to the idea of a response in few hours instead of instant replies. And yeah let’s face it, most things ain’t super urgent. If it is, wouldn’t they just call?

My wife always complained she had to compete with my phone for attention. I realised I was slowly but surely losing a part of myself to these seemingly irresistible temptations.

A candid second person observation & psychoanalysis stint concluded that it wasn’t just a hijack of my emotional faculties but a complete sabotage of my ability to appreciate real world events that the mobile & digital age had resulted in!

Digital discipline is key to attaining digital nirvana. Each one of us needs to have strict rules to engage which would determine both checking and responding to the myriad of notifications our smart phones and tablets so un-repentantly push down our throats! The compulsive disorder to check & respond to these can be corrected only if we lay the ground rules and stick by it.

When done right, digitalism can be a source of pure joy and a productivity powerhouse else it could quickly metamorphosize into a reckless distraction engine that consumes all your energy and time.