I had a 720p flat screen TV in there with a Roku, blu-ray player, VCR, VHS tape rewinder, and some VHS tapes. I moved all of that into my office. I put the devices on a small TV stand, and the tapes into one of the cubes in my Kallax shelves.

I moved one of the three desks (IKEA tables which I had positioned to form a large L-shaped desk) from my office into my bedroom where the TV used to be.

When I want to read, study, write, or just think without being distracted by or tempted to use a device with a screen, the bedroom desk will be my go-to place of refuge.

I may take devices to the bedroom desk with me when I need them for something intentional – like using the internet for research or study, or listening to a podcast – but I will not keep any chargers in there. When I'm done using them, all devices will be returned to my office, which is where they will “live” from now on.

I hope this will help me to be more intentional about how I use technology at home, and I look forward to breaking the habits of checking my phone first thing in the morning, using my phone in bed, and watching TV in bed.

Discuss...

#100DaysToOffload (No. 122) #tech #intentionism #HomeOffice #LessConvenient #writing

I have to remind myself that this is a habit that formed long before I owned my first smartphone over a decade ago. Even before my parents bought our first family computer (a Pentium 266 MHz running Windows 95). Television has been a fixture my entire life. I watched it daily growing up. I have been spending so much time staring at TVs, monitors, and displays of one kind or another for about forty years.

But for two years of my life, screen time was the exception, not the rule. From December of 2000 to December of 2002, I served as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Brazil Santa Maria Mission. During that time I was expected to refrain from watching TV and movies or listening to the radio. There were exceptions, of course, like church media or occasional holiday treats like watching The Prince of Egypt or a Disney animated film – with special permission from the mission president. But we did not own TVs or radios and definitely not computers. Our apartments were not furnished with them. We did listen to music, but only approved kinds – church music or classical, mostly. Smartphones didn't exist, and cell phones were rare and expensive – we used pay phones.

For the first year of my mission, I corresponded with my family via snail mail. It took two weeks for letters to be delivered. The second year, we used email. Once a week we would go to an internet cafe and pay probably too much money for thirty minutes of computer time to read and write emails. There was also a stretch of seven months when I served in the mission office as the financial secretary, and I used a computer often in that role for administrative purposes – we didn't have an Internet connection. But as a percentage of my total waking hours during those two years, screen time was drastically lower than the years before or since.

I don't think I was worse off for having missed TV shows, movies, and popular music that came out during my missionary years. Granted, I was committed to a work and ministry that accounted for most of my time. But I believe that screen time outside of the rare instances I described would have been too much of a distraction for me to be an effective missionary. It would have been too tempting a diversion. And I think it would have also negatively impacted me spiritually and made me less receptive to the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit.

After my two years of full-time missionary service, I returned home. It was time to focus on school, my career, and starting a family. I didn't have to follow missionary standards and rules anymore. Some of them wouldn't apply to or make sense in post-missionary life.

But I have sometimes wondered: why shouldn't I continue to follow the media standards I followed as a missionary?

If I wouldn't have watched a certain movie or TV show as a missionary – even as a rare exception – do I need to watch it now? If a particular movie or TV show or song would have been too distracting or spirit-numbing to watch or listen to as a missionary, why would it be okay for me to watch or listen to it now? Should I not strive for the same level of spirituality? The same focus on Jesus Christ and His work?

I'm not planning to get rid of my TV, radio, or smartphone. They can do a tremendous amount of good when used properly and intentionally. But I am going to be much more careful about the media I choose to consume.

The Thirteenth Article of Faith states:

If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

When considering media to consume, I want to develop a habit of asking myself: “would it have been right for me to watch or listen to this as a missionary? Why or why not? If not, does it hold to the standard of being “virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy?” If I'm still in doubt, I will err on the side of avoiding it.

Another good litmus test is found in the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet, which provides the following guidance:

Seek that which uplifts, inspires, and invites the Spirit. As you make choices about what to watch, read, listen to, or participate in, think about how it makes you feel. Does it invite good thoughts? Stay away from anything that mocks sacred things or that is immoral. Don’t participate in anything that dulls your judgment or sensitivity to the Spirit, such as violence, alcohol, and harmful drugs. Have the courage to turn off a video or game, walk out of a movie or a dance, change your music, or turn away from anything that is not consistent with the Spirit.

I have already been trying to cut back drastically on the quantity of screen time in my life, but I need to also focus on the quality. This will not be an easy life change for me to make in a media-saturated society. I may have to give up some entertaining media I have cherished for decades. I will likely soon be out of touch with a lot of the popular shows and movies and won't be able to contribute to conversations about them. But I feel it's the right thing for me and I'm going to try it. In time, perhaps, I won't have the urge to stare at a screen for any reason or no reason at all.

Discuss...

#media #intentionism #LessConvenient #faith #ChurchOfJesusChrist

It's not that I don't like the Day One app, and I'm sure for many people it's been just what they've needed to make it convenient and stay motivated to keep a journal. But it has devolved into more of a chore and “journal keeping by proxy” than an intentional effort on my part to record what's happening in my life.

By a chore, I mean the “gamification” and Daily Prompt aspects of the app. Like many apps these days, they've implemented a daily streak counter to help motivate you to create at least one entry every day. The idea is that you will want to keep your streak going, so you'll find something to write about or record every day. The thing is, you can cheat. If you miss a day – or even several days – you can create entries for those days after the fact and it will count towards your streak. I did that several times just so I could keep my streak going. So I guess it worked as it was intended, but I didn't create entries because I had anything I particularly wanted to record, I did it for the streak.

Another way I found to keep my streak going without being very intentional about it was to connect this blog and my Mastodon social media account to Day One via their handy-dandy IFTTT integration. So anything I post here or on social media automatically gets recorded in my Day One journal as an entry. So I guess that's good, because it captures my thoughts and interests and such as posted on social media. But again, it's been a way to “game the streak” and delude myself into thinking I'm keeping a journal.

Don't get me wrong, I think it's good that I'm capturing and recording anything about my life. But here's the thing. My blog and social media are public-facing. So my journal is not getting the complete picture about me, my hopes, fears, thoughts, dreams, etc.

Why not just be more intentional and make time to create more Day One entries directly? I would, except I recently decided to cut back drastically on how much time I spend staring at a screen every day. I originally focused on media – particularly video games, news, and entertainment. But it's screen time, in general, that is my overall concern.

The less time I can spend staring at a screen, the better. Because any time I'm on a laptop or looking at my phone, I have habits to distract myself and randomly poke around that have become so ingrained as to be subconscious. I need to break those habits, and the only way to do so is to significantly limit screen time.

This past week I made an effort to keep off screens in my free time and I noticed an improvement in my mood and ability to concentrate. I even got better sleep. I want to keep that going. So I need to find fewer reasons to look at a screen.

I'm going to keep Day One going – it's an excellent way to automatically capture my blog and social media, and jot down a quick entry when I have the urge. But I'm going to try using a pen-and-paper journal again to fill in the things Day One isn't fully capturing and avoid having to stare at a glowing rectangle any longer than I have to.

Discuss...

#intentionism #LessConvenient #media

But I have the same concerns about AI as I have with virtual reality and the “Metaverse”, social media, smartphones – media and computer technology in general. We talk a lot about what we gain by embracing these technologies, but we talk too little about what we might be losing or giving up.

I recently finished reading The Good Neighbor, the biography of Fred Rogers. The following excerpt (p. 341-342) echoes my concerns:

Over the years, Fred Rogers grew fearful that the dominance of television and the computer would overwhelm the simple human values he held most dear.

Excerpts from two university speeches he made in midcareer capture his concern: “It really has been very effectively communicated in many circles that computers and their relatives are more clever, are much quicker, make fewer mistakes and are more to be valued than human beings. But without human beings there never would have been a computer or anything else that we call advanced technology. That's something I like to help children remember: that, no matter what the machine may be, it was people who thought it up and made it, and it's people who make it work.

“And as we . . . find ourselves being concerned about the conditions that make life on Earth possible, we will recognize the need to make people more important than things, and we will join hands with young and old alike by putting our dominant energies into developing a sane design for living.”

He even suggested, only somewhat tongue-in-cheek, one answer to all this complexity: Turn off the machine. In an appearance at the opening of a Fred Rogers exhibit at the Pittsburgh Children's Museum in 1998, he said, simply: “I've always said the best time for our program is once it's over and the television is turned off.”

Technology has advanced significantly in the twenty years since Fred Rogers died, and his concerns have become only more relevant. It's not the technology itself that is the issue, it is how we use it and what we do with it that matters.

For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic we relied heavily on video call technology to stay connected and interact with one another safely and over great distances. My siblings, father, and I live in four different states. In 2020 we started doing weekly video calls with one another, and we have enjoyed it so much that we have kept them going ever since.

However, video calls are still a poor substitute for meeting with others in-person. Since 2018, I have worked from home either part of the time or full time. And while I am thankful that video calls exist and allow me to have the flexibility to work from home and meet virtually with my colleagues, I still travel across the country to visit the office every three or four months. Why? Because there is no substitute for in-person interaction and connection. There is a social and cultural aspect to being in the office that is very hard to cultivate with full-remote employees. Some managers of remote workers try to build some social time into virtual meetings. Mine does not. Social interaction with work colleagues fosters a sense of belonging and camaraderie that you just can't get in a 15 minute daily video call.

Likewise, the weekly video calls with dad and siblings are great, but if time and distance weren't an issue, I'd visit them in-person often, too.

#tech #intentionism #LessConvenient #AI

If it was just me planning and keeping track of my own stuff and not having to take anyone else into consideration, I could totally go all-in with paper planners. But the challenge is coordinating schedules with my wife and son.

We have used iCloud calendars to track appointments and events. We each have our own calendars, but we have shared them with each other so we can all see what each of us has going on. Every Sunday we get together and review our calendars together and talk about the week ahead. Whenever a change is made to an event or an event is added to one of our calendars, the others get notified and they can see the change reflected immediately. This system has worked well for us for several years.

I have been maintaining both my paper planner and my iCloud calendar this week. But if I stop updating my iCloud calendar, that means my wife and son will have to account for my own calendar events themselves in our weekly calendaring sessions, and I will have to somehow account for important events on their calendars in my paper planner. It also means that we would need to orally communicate any important changes or updates to our calendars throughout the week.

We could have a family paper planner or calendar, but then that means recording events in multiple places and running the risk of one of those places not being accurate. Things could fall through the cracks and there would be more opportunities for miscommunication. Could we make it work? Sure. But it creates more work for all of us without really adding any value.

In short, my using a paper planner while my wife and son still rely on electronic calendars decreases flexibility and impedes our ability to communicate and coordinate our schedules.

I don't think it makes sense for me to stop updating my iCloud calendar, but it also doesn't make sense for me to maintain both an electronic and paper planner at the same time. So I think I'm going to halt my paper planner experiment.

Another quirk that factored into this decision is that my paper planner doesn't have enough time slots each day for my schedule. It has slots in hourly increments from 8am to 8pm. But I wake up at 6am and go to bed at 10pm. I want the ability to account for all of my waking time if I desire down to 30 minute increments. I'm sure I could find a paper planner that would be exactly what I'm looking for, but it's a moot point. I've decided to keep using an electronic calendar, and they are much more flexible in that regard.

I want to continue to focus on planning better, and I do believe there are benefits to writing things down on paper in terms of organizing thoughts and planning things. So instead of using a dedicated paper planner, I will use a regular notebook to jot down events to remember, draft daily or weekly schedules, as needed, and then input things into my electronic calendar as the final “source of truth”.

Discuss...

#planning #tech #intentionism #LessConvenient #DigitalMinimalism

Topics of Focus

#faith – thoughts related to my religion #tech – self explanatory

Other Topics

#100DaysToOffload #accessories #AI #automobiles #Bandcamp #books #business #cassette #charity #Christianity #Christmas #ChurchOfJesusChrist #climate #community #compactDisc #contention #COVID19 #decentralization #DigitalMinimalism #economy #electronicMusic #EveryDayCarry #eWaste #family #FOSS (free-as-in-freedom and open source software) #friends #gratitude #haiku #health #hobbies #HomeOffice #humor #intentionism #internet #laptop #LessConvenient #libraryMusic #life #Linux #loneliness #media #meditation #mentalHealth #misc #movies #music #news #nostalgia #physicalMedia #planning #poetry #politics #privacy #prophets #retro #smartphones #SocialMedia #synthwave #travel #TV #Twitch #unity (not the game engine) #Utah #vaporwave #writing