Do you feel in control of technology? Or is technology in control of you?
If you’ve ever had the experience where 5 minutes online turned into several hours, it’s probably a sign that you’re not in control.
And why should we bother to be more disciplined about our screen time?
Well for starters, e-obesity is on the rise. As Daniel Seiberg states in his book “The digital diet: The 4-step plan to break your tech addiction and regain balance in your life” –
“our increasing appetite for gadgets and the web has made us lazy and less active”
In fact, research studies show that technology contributes to a sedentary lifestyle and weight gain.
At some level, we all know that the chair and screen aren’t great for us. But nevertheless, here’s what we tend to do:
When you’re feeling bored you log onto Facebook, email or to play candy crush (whatever takes your fancy). And you keep checking back in to see if a friend has posted something interesting or keep playing the game like someone addicted to the pokies.
This sort of behaviour can leave you feeling frantic, frenzied and zombified.
So what’s the antidote to a screen sucked, zombified existence?
We need to reclaim our lives – Amish style.
That’s right. We can learn a thing or two from our Amish friends about how we can better use technology.
Here’s the thing – contrary to popular belief the Amish are not anti-technology. They still engage with technology but they are not mindless about it.
In the article “Amish Technology: Reinforcing Values and building Community” Jameson Wetmore sheds light on how the Amish perceive technology and their relationship with it.
So here’s what we can learn from the Amish –
The Amish live according to their values, one dominant value being caring for community.
They understand that technology is not value free and realise that it can take them further away from the things they value by impacting on social relationships. For this reason, the Amish carefully spend time examining new technology before adopting it.
Now I’m not saying you should abandon your iPad, Facebook and email and return to the days of handwriting letters to friends.
And there’s certainly no need to trade in your car for a horse and buggy. But the act of stopping to pause and reflect on how certain technologies impact on our lives is a smart move and one that perhaps more of us should consider adopting.
Daniel Sieberg ask us –
“Why don’t you delete or deactivate your Facebook or MySpace or Twitter account? What’s stopping you? How is it improving your life?”
He encourages us to walk away from these technologies for a time and suggests it can be an empowering experience.
But before you take the plunge, it may be a good idea to get a sense of the modern technologies you engage with and how long you spend on each. Notice how you feel before and after using each one. Does it leave you feeling irritable? Slightly annoyed? Frustrated?
After careful consideration, it may be time to press delete, unsubscribe or put the gadget away.
Try it and see. And just remember, this isn’t about being anti-technology. It’s about making technology work for you and optimizing the conditions for human fulfillment.
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If I’m honest with myself, there was a time when technology was doing me more harm than good.
On Facebook, I frequently fell into the comparison trap (comparing myself to people who had posted delicious dinners, amazing holiday photos, etc).
On Twitter, I’d get baited by trolls (and I’d foolishly take the bait).
Throughout the day, I’d constantly check my phone and email, which left me feeling jittery and chaotic.
Big Tech was constantly hijacking my time, energy, and attention. Every time I retreated to my devices for a quick shot of dopamine, I moved further away from my goals. I didn’t like this, and I knew something needed to change.
Over the past three years, I’ve implemented many practices to regain control of my time, energy, and attention (including deleting all social media).
These practices have made a big difference in my life. But I’m well aware that not everyone feels the same way I do about Big Tech, nor are they in a position to be able to delete all their accounts.
Following a school presentation, I spoke with a small group of year 8 students. I shared with them that I didn’t use any social media, to which a year 8 girl quickly chimed in:
“My grandma has Facebook. What’s your excuse?”
Her words struck me like a bolt of lightning. I didn’t know what to say.
It highlighted how adopting these apps is the norm for a young person.
When everyone else has a smartphone and is using social media (including your parents and grandparents), why would you question using them?
I couldn’t forget the year 8 girl’s words. While I appreciated her candidness, it left me slightly disturbed.
At the same time, it increased my motivation to resist Big Tech. I started searching for role models: people actively resisting Big tech and this hyperconnected, fast-paced way of life.
One community kept popping up in my research: the Amish.
The Amish are often portrayed as being technologically impaired. A classic example is Weird Al Yankovic’s music video Amish Paradise (a parody of Coolio’s mega-hit Gangsta’s Paradise).
In this video, Weird Al sings:
I never wear buttons but I got a cool hat
And my homies agree I really look good in black, fool
If you come to visit, you’ll be bored to tears
We haven’t even paid the phone bill in 300 years
But we ain’t really quaint, so please don’t point and stare
We’re just technologically impairedThere’s no phone, no lights, no motorcar
Not a single luxury
Like Robinson Crusoe
It’s as primitive as can be
While the Amish still mainly travel by horse and buggy and shun many modern technologies, such as televisions, radios, and cars, they are not ‘technologically impaired’ as Weird Al makes out.
When it comes to cultivating healthy digital habits, there is a lot we can learn from the Amish.
The Amish have a set of strategies that guide the adoption and use of different technologies. These strategies have allowed them to avoid being pawns for the goals of Big Tech companies, which make massive profits by seizing people’s attention.
I recently read a fascinating book called Virtually Amish, written by Dr Lindsay Ems. For her PhD research, Dr Ems spoke to Amish people about their relationship to modern technology (e.g., smartphones).
She argues that the Amish take control of their tech tools and thrive. Through adopting similar practices, we can thrive, too.
Below, I share how you can thrive by emulating Amish practices and beliefs around technology:
The Amish are not technophobes. They are ‘technoloselectives’.
They carefully consider the tech tools they’ll adopt and their functionality, tweaking them to help them achieve their goals.
The Amish don’t mindlessly purchase the latest gadgets and gizmos. Instead, they think about their values and goals and how the technology could cause unintended harm to themselves and the wider Amish community.
What are your goals?
Do your tech tools help you achieve them, or do they distract you from them?
The Amish are guided by their values (i.e., the things that are most important to them). Their values underpin everything they do.
So, what exactly do Amish people value?
• Community
• Connections with others
• Living a simple and slow-paced life
• Living a spiritually rich life
• Being self-sufficient
The Amish use these values to guide their adoption of technology.
An example of this can be seen with the arrival of the home telephone (not smartphone). Dr Ems shares how the Amish decided to ban the telephone from being inside the family home.
This ban came about after careful consideration and reflection on their values. The Amish value connections with family, friends, and the community. They don’t want to be the kind of person who interrupts a conversation by answering a telephone call. For this reason, telephones are located outside Amish family homes or nearby.
What are the things that are most important to you?
How does technology impact on those things?
Does it enrich those things or diminish them?
The Amish understand that technology can cause harm. Subsequently, they intentionally delay adopting new technology until they see its impact on others.
Does it destroy family life? Does it wreak havoc on their ability to pay attention and distract them from their spiritual life?
If so, the technology threatens their culture and religion, and for these reasons, it should be avoided.
Before adopting a piece of technology, the Amish need to be clear about two things:
1) The functionality of the technology (what it can do)
2) The potential social impacts of the technology
Once they deeply understand these things, it is then decided whether the technology is adopted or not.
It may come as no surprise that Amish people view the smartphone as an incredibly dangerous innovation. Many Amish communities have bans on this device.
How do you feel after spending time on social media?
Have you seen things posted on social media that weren’t true or were exaggerated?
When an Amish person wants to use a new technology, that technology will go through a formal decision-making process.
The community (in particular, the leaders) will consider the future with this technology. They’ll try to imagine how the technology could change their way of life.
Questions the Amish reflect on include:
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of the technology?
• What might come with it that we might not anticipate?
• Could someone get addicted to it?
• Is it a need or a want?
• Can the technology be restrained?
In her book Virtually Amish, Dr Ems provides the example of an Amish business owner asking the community leaders if he could have permission to use a label maker for his business.
After careful consideration, the leaders ruled label makers could be allowed for the following reasons:
• They are not addictive
• They can’t be used for recreational purposes (e.g., playing games or entertainment)
Think of a new technology (device or app) you want to adopt. Could it become addictive?
Many Amish people believe the issue is not whether you use a smartphone or social media but how you use it. It’s important that the Amish remain in control of their use of tech and place limits on it.
It’s also important that the technology is not visible (i.e., you don’t pull your smartphone out in Church or during a conversation). Being discrete in the way one uses technology shows respect for Amish values.
How do you use the tech in your life?
Are you in control of your use?
Amish people think about not just how they use the technology but what kind of person they become when they use it.
This point resonated with me deeply. I can’t say I’ve always liked who I become when I use certain technology.
A few years ago, I babysat my friends’ children when my friends went out for a kid-free meal. I look back and cringe when I think about how the experience unfolded.
Before going to my friend’s place to start babysitting, I got into a heated text discussion with some people in a group chat. Things were said that upset me.
For most of the night, I was on my phone, texting back and forth, not present with these young children. At one point, the little boy tugged on my arm to get my attention. “Aunty Jane, come play!” he said.
What can I say? I felt terrible. This certainly was not my finest moment. I had become the kind of caregiver I am usually quick to judge: distracted and disengaged.
I vowed to avoid trying to resolve issues by text and leave my phone at home next time to be fully present with the kids.
When you use social media, what sort of person do you become?
The Amish take modern tech tools and modify them to help them achieve their goals.
The plain mobile phone is an example of this. Amish people have created a mobile phone that can only make calls. It doesn’t have a camera, games, access to the Internet, or the ability to send text messages.
Similarly, the plain computer allows Amish to make spreadsheets, do word processing, and construct simple drawings. This allows them to complete tasks without being distracted by other things.
In other words, the Amish create what David Kadavy (author of Mind Management, Not Time Management) would refer to as sticky tools. A sticky tool allows you to stay focused on a task without getting distracted.
What sticky tools could you consider adopting (e.g., a basic flip phone and Internet blocker app)?
The Amish take pride in growing their own food, raising barns, baking their own bread, tinkering with robotics, inventing, and making their own clothes. They are not big consumers, but they embrace a simple lifestyle and encourage human creativity.
In the modern non-Amish world, many of us are doing the polar opposite of this. We have fallen into the trap of consuming content mindlessly online (e.g., watching people bake bread instead of baking our own bread).
Don’t get me wrong—the Internet is an excellent learning tool to help us build our skills. I have turned to YouTube for many instructional videos on how to make and fix things. But doing this requires discipline because it is all too easy to get derailed by other distracting videos.
The bottom line is this: the more time we spend online, the more ads we are likely exposed to and the more our consumptive desires are stirred up. Is it any wonder so many people feel so dissatisfied with their lives?
Instead of mindlessly consuming, what can you create today?
The Amish embrace tech with inbuilt friction. In fact, inconvenience is considered a virtue.
Dr Ems shares that many Amish technologies intentionally contain ‘speed bumps’ and ‘friction’. The reason for this friction is to prevent Amish people from wasting time on the device.
I’ve found this is one of the positives associated with using a ‘basic phone’.
Last year, I experimented with using a basic flip phone with limited functionality (I could only make calls and send texts). Texting on this phone was so painfully slow that it made me want to avoid getting into long text discussions with people. It was easier to pick up the phone and call people.
Using a smartphone to text your friends may be easier than making a phone call, but as the Amish strongly believe, easier is not always better.
How can you build friction into your tech use?
Can you embrace analog alternatives to decrease your screen time?
How much control do you have over your time, energy, and attention? As Chris Bailey writes in his book How to Calm Your Mind, “On the Internet, our intentions very quickly slip from our grasp.”
If you want to thrive online and offline, consider adopting some of the tech habits of the Amish. By limiting their tech use, the Amish have been able to remain mentally free and protect their way of life.
If more of us adopted Amish tech practices (e.g., being intentional with our tech use and placing limits on it), we’d most likely feel calmer and less anxious. We’d also spend more time engaged in activities that bring us joy and are aligned with what we value.
This means you need to prepare yourself mentally and physically for them.
You can work so hard to memorise large quantities of information for an exam, but if you’re not mentally and physically prepared, all that hard work can sadly go to waste.
When it comes time to take your exams, you have to relate to yourself as a professional athlete. Leading up to the day of the big performance (i.e. the exam), you need to eat nutritious food, be in the right frame of mind, manage your nerves, and allow your body to rest. These simple things can make all the difference to your exam performance.
You may be thinking “But isn’t this just common sense?”
It is! But creating healthy habits takes time and practice.
It’s one thing to intellectually know you should be eating well but it’s another thing altogether to incorporate healthy meals and snacks into your lifestyle.
I see a lot of students drinking energy drinks, getting very little sleep, and eating highly processed foods in the days leading up to exams. I have to admit, there was a time when I engaged in these behaviours too. I can tell you from personal experience, this is a recipe for mediocre grades and a miserable existence.
Here are my top 10 tips to prevent burnout and boost exam performance:
Sleep is critical to the learning process, exam performance, and wellbeing. Yet it’s usually the first thing students sacrifice to get more study done.
If you miss two hours of sleep each night for a week, the cognitive effects are as bad as going without sleep for two days straight!
Studies have also found that if you stay awake for 18 hours straight that’s like having a blood alcohol level of 0.05. In other words, it’s like being legally drunk. Your ability to focus, think, and learn will be seriously impaired.
You can’t adapt to getting less sleep. As adolescents, you need about 9-10 hours of sleep per night to be as alert as possible when you wake up.
If that feels unachievable, try to just get an extra 15 minutes of sleep tonight. Gradually increase this each night until you reach your target.
Often students stop exercising when they start preparing for exams. They think “I don’t have time to exercise!”. It’s as if they think they must spend every moment studying. Don’t fall into this trap.
Movement is your friend when it comes to studying for exams.
Research shows engaging in regular physical movement will help you to study more effectively. Firstly, it’s a great way to relieve stress and release feel good chemicals. Secondly, it gets the blood flowing more efficiently to your brain, which can give you a cognitive boost.
One study found students who engaged in 5 minute movement breaks every 17 minutes during a lecture retained more information and could focus better.
Every time you engage in a short movement break, you’re enhancing your study sessions.
Research has found that students who skip breakfast experience a decrease in cognitive performance and alertness compared to students who eat breakfast.
Eating a nutritious breakfast will give you a cognitive boost before an exam. It will also help you to feel fuller for longer, stabilise your mood, and give you plenty of energy to get through the exam.
Here are some healthy breakfast ideas:
Muesli or porridge with nuts and fresh fruit (e.g., berries) Wholemeal toast with a variety of toppings (e.g., baked beans, tomatoes, and avocado) and a piece of fruit A healthy homemade smoothie (click here for my brain boosting smoothie recipe)
Your brain requires adequate hydration to function properly. Drinking water ensures that your brain receives the necessary fluids to perform tasks efficiently, such as retaining information and problem-solving.
Take regular sips of water as you study. It’s a good idea to have a glass of water or a reusable drink bottle within arms reach.
You may even want to create a tiny habit to remind yourself to engage in this simple behaviour (e.g., “After I finish answering a practice exam question, I will take a sip of water”).
Many years ago, I started thinking that my teachers and lecturers were out to get me. I thought they would mark me down wherever they got the chance. As a result of this distorted thinking, I became too scared to write anything in one of my first tests at law school. After receiving a terrible grade (5%), my brother said to me:
“Remember sis, your teachers want you to do well. They will try to give you marks wherever they can. It’s in their best interest to do so.”
Don’t worry about writing a perfect answer. If you’re unsure, be brave and still write something down. Even if it’s just a few dot points, it’s better than nothing. You may not get any marks for it, but your teachers won’t take marks off.
Just remember, most of the time your teachers are on your side and they want you to succeed. When you do well, it makes them look good.
Chances are there will always be something that you could have studied more thoroughly come the day of your exam. But on the morning of an exam, you can’t do much about that, so there’s no point worrying. Worrying will just deplete your finite energy, which you need to conserve for the exam.
Instead of worrying, try saying this to yourself before each exam:
“I now know so much more than I did before. I’ll be able to answer many questions in this exam.”
Telling yourself this positive micro-thought will allow you to enter the exam in a calm and confident frame of mind.
It’s normal to feel a bit nervous before an exam. But there are certain things and people that can push your anxiety levels into dangerous territory and impair your exam performance.
For example, coffee and energy drinks will skyrocket your stress levels. Similarly, hanging out with people who have a lot of nervous energy and are venting about the exam (“I’m going to fail!” and “I hardly studied!”) are going to leave you feeling distracted and a little jangled.
Before the exam, do your best to isolate yourself from these people. If you’re worried about offending someone who is venting to you, you could say “I’m sorry but I really need to do some last minute cramming”. Then proceed to pull out your notes and pretend to read them.
How many times have you stayed back after an exam to talk to your friends about what you put for each question? Have you ever felt terrible after doing this?
It can be reassuring to know that you wrote the same answer as your friends. But if you find out that you wrote something completely different, you may start to second guess yourself. If you have another four or five exams to go, this may throw you off your game.
This is why I don’t recommend engaging in a postmortem of the exam until you get your results/exam paper back.
When you walk out of the exam room, tell yourself:
“That exam is over. There’s nothing I can do to change how I went. It’s time to move on!”.
You could imagine yourself locking the exam in a box and throwing it off a cliff or rolling it up and stuffing it in a bottle and throwing it out to sea. The point is you need to mentally disconnect from that exam and focus on studying for the next one.
If you come across a question that you’re not sure how to answer, stop for a moment and take a few deep breaths (in for the count of 4 and out for the count of 4).
A simple breath activity you can try is the Box Breathing Technique. This involves imagining yourself breathing along the sides of a box (breathing in for the count of four on one side, out for the count of four on the next side, etc). Repeat this 2-3 times. Then take a look at the question again.
If you are still unsure how to answer the question, move on to another question.
The worst thing you can do is panic (remember, stress impairs your ability to think and recall information).
By engaging in Box Breathing, you can help yourself to remain in a calm and stable state.
Many of us are familiar with writer’s cramp. This can be caused by gripping onto your pen too tightly. Try loosening your grip a little.
Alternatively, experiment with a range of different pens. Some biros require you to press down hard on the page to make a mark, but not gel pens. The ink just flows onto the page!
The reality is, even with a good gel pen, your elbow will start to hurt at some point if you’re taking a 3 hour exam. When it does start to hurt, have a rest for a few seconds (yes, you have time to do this). Stretch your arm out. Shake it a little.
Treat each exam like a mountain hike rather than a 100 metre sprint. Resting for a few moments here and there will be time well spent and will enhance your overall performance.
These simple strategies can help to elevate your exam performance. My advice is to start small. Even if your exams are several weeks away, select one or two of these ideas and start testing them out today. At first, the strategies will require a bit of mental effort. But like anything in life, if you persevere they’ll become second nature to you and they’ll just be things you do without even thinking.
Want to learn more exam strategies? Click here to download a free copy of 70 ways to ace your exams.
If you find yourself watching random videos when you need to be studying, you’re not alone.
This behaviour is most likely due to the fact that you’re feeling stressed and tired.
When you’re freaking out about everything you need to do to prepare for exams, this rapidly depletes your willpower and energy. This is why you’re more likely to give into temptations and distractions.
Obviously, you need to get some rest (and you won’t get that sitting in front of a screen for hours on end).
But you also need tools and techniques to help you stay focused and create a buffer between you and the things that are likely to derail you and hijack your attention.
I recommend checking out Stanford university’s clever website Screentime Genie.
Screentime Genie is a big collection of screen time reduction strategies. But you won’t be left feeling overwhelmed by these tools and techniques. Here’s how it works . . .
You answer a few basic questions about the tech habits you want help with (this takes less than a minute to do). The Screentime Genie then presents you with a tailored selection of techniques to explore.
For example, let’s say you want help in the following areas:
1) Social media – I waste time on social media
2) Distractions – I get distracted while working
3) YouTube – I waste too much time watching YouTube
After answering questions about the specific platforms you use as well as your motivation levels to change (low, medium, or high), Screentime Genie pulls up from its collection the most appropriate techniques to match your current situation and motivation levels.
It recommends that you just select 2 or 3 strategies to begin with.
Professor BJ Fogg says that there are over 150 different strategies to cut down on screen use on the backend of this website. But you’ll only ever be presented with a small selection of strategies.
I think the decision to present only a few strategies at a time is smart. Imagine being presented with a list of 150+ different strategies all at once. Kind of overwhelming, right?
But when you’re only presented with a handful of strategies, you’re more likely to select one or two and actually do something. And doing something is always better than doing nothing!
My only criticism of Screentime Genie is that some of the suggestions are a little tame and don’t go far enough. For example, there is a suggestion to delete social media from your phone and only have it on your computer. But I couldn’t see any suggestion to delete your social media accounts.
My guess is that the creators of Screentime Genie probably think the idea of deleting all your social media accounts is just way too extreme to put out there. But it’s not really that extreme when you think about it.
Back in 2017, Former Vice President of User Growth at Facebook Chamath Palihapitiya stated in a speech at the Stanford Graduate Business School that he no longer used social media (at the time he said he had posted less than 10 times in seven years). He said:
“If you feed the beast, that beast will destroy you. If you push back on it, you have a chance to control it and reign it in. And it is a point in time when people need to hard break from some of these tools, and the things that you rely on.
The short-term dopamine driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works. No civil discourse, no cooperation, misinformation, mistruth . . . it is eroding the core foundations of how people behave, by and between each other. And I don’t have a good solution. My solution is I just don’t use these tools anymore. I haven’t for years.”
I also haven’t used these tools (i.e., social media) for nearly 2 years now. I can tell you this is the simplest solution to dramatically cutting back on your screen time. And it’s one worth seriously considering.
For many years, I experimented with using lots of different plugins, Internet blocker apps, and programs to help reduce my time online (particularly on social media). These tools stopped me from getting completely screen sucked and allowed me to focus on pursuing my goals. But it took time to research, use, and manage all of these tools (and that was time with my eyes glued to a screen).
For some strange reason, it never occurred to me to just delete all my social media accounts. The penny only dropped when I read Jaron Lanier’s book 10 Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now.
Lanier states:
“To free yourself, to be more authentic, to be less addicted, to be less manipulated, to be less paranoid . . . for all those marvellous reasons, delete your accounts.”
So, I hit delete.
This simple act gave me hours of my life back. It helped me to reclaim my brain. Life became simpler, too.
For this reason, I believe Screentime Genie could go further by including Jaron Lanier’s suggestion to “detach from the behaviour-modification empires [social media] for a while.” And he’s not talking about a 2-3 day digital detox like Screentime Genie suggests. Lanier is telling you to detach for at least 6 months.
But even if you do decide to delete social media from your life, this doesn’t mean you’re rejecting the Internet and all screens. You’ll still find yourself looking at and/or touching a screen hundreds of times per day (e.g., watching shows, reading the news, responding to text messages, and checking your email). Screentime Genie can help you in these other areas.
Overall, Screentime Genie is a fabulous free resource that can assist you to cultivate a healthier relationship with technology. It provides an extensive range of strategies to reduce your screen time and be more mindful and present. So, why not give Screentime Genie a shot?
See for yourself if this little web Genie can make some of your screen time wishes come true.
Dr Jane Genovese delivers interactive sessions on learning to learn, combating procrastination, exam preparation, how to focus in the age of distraction, habit formation and much, much more!
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