The Switch
Choosing where we want our attention to be
Our lost being
Three women are sitting side-by-side on a coral stone step; one is making chapati on a portable stove, whilst the other two keep her company with light chatter. A group of young men are taking shelter under a tree as they break from soccer; the only thing in their hands is a water bottle that is passed around between them. Four children are kicking a disposable water bottle through imaginary goals; they are still doing this two hours later.
The refreshing slowness and simplicity of local life in Zanzibar stood out to me as soon as we had arrived on the island. However, it took a little while longer before I noticed one of the most striking differences from home - most people’s heads are looking up. Not down. That is, there are very few people sitting around staring down at their phones.
When this realisation hit me, I felt stunned. Not at what I was seeing, but by comparing these behaviours to the more familiar habits we have in other parts of the world. Images from home bounced through my mind – people on public transport, in waiting rooms, walking down the street, waiting in queues, sitting at cafes - the rare exception for us to be still (particularly when on our own) without picking up our phone.
I thought about my own behaviour around devices, including what had caught me by surprise when we first moved to Zanzibar. The first few weeks were full of travel and transition, and adjusting to a new abode that was very different to our home in Melbourne. Before I knew it, our kids were using our iPad a lot more than usual. It was as though we had accidentally left our standard screen-time boundaries on a lonesome seat in the departure lounge of Tullamarine airport. And I noticed how easily I had justified this behaviour - Well, we live in a small space here, and the kids have very few of their toys, no outdoor area, no TV and we are all jetlagged (and I need sleep!) so they can have more screen time.
I was applying less limits in Zanzibar – a community where there is less ‘screening’ and more ‘being’. We had come here to experience a different way of life, and I had been justifying our children using the device more? Thank goodness I finally caught myself – What am I doing?! They have pencils, paper and paint. They have the board games we brought over. They have a soccer ball and so many locals in the street are eager to kick with them. We can all jolly well find something else to do! After this stern lecture I gave to myself, I stashed my iPad back in my suitcase, zipped it up tightly and tucked it under the bed. And it was as though as soon as I had turned the iPad off, the lights to the issue came on.
Thoughts about modern society’s escalating addiction to devices have subsequently taken an uncomfortable seat in the front row of my mind.
Our addiction to devices
I wanted to explore this more. I picked up Johann Hari’s latest book called ‘Stolen Focus’ - an examination of the attention crisis that is worryingly creeping across the globe. Among other causes, Hari explores how current technology is designed to be addictive - manipulating us to keep scrolling and clicking – by playing on the reward system in our brain. Whether it’s a text message, a ‘like’ on Instagram, or a Facebook alert, each notification satisfies our evolutionary need to feel acknowledged and needed, and generates a pleasurable feeling. This typically releases dopamine – the feel-good chemical - which then motivates the behaviour, perpetuating the habit. The dopamine reward pathway is the very same one that is activated by addictive substances.
We now have access to endless information - news updates, social media feeds, the weather forecast, the live football ladder - at our fingertips. At all times. The more information we consume, the more we want it. We are generally uncomfortable with boredom and regularly experience a huge difficulty with being alone with ourself and our mind. It appears that the more options we have for ‘connecting’ within our device, the more disconnected we become with the world outside of our device.
Many of the moments that we spend on our devices may seem inconsequential in that very moment. I have often heard the voice in my head say, I will just quickly check this notification first or this text message will only take a few moments. And a few moments are all it may take. But similarly, a few moments are all it takes for my child to look up to see if I saw his basketball go through the hoop. A few moments is all it takes for my partner to see that I am too distracted and therefore stop himself from sharing an exciting achievement in his day. A few moments are all it takes to miss eye contact with a stranger who offered a morning smile on my sunset walk. A few moments are all it takes for a striking cloud formation to change in the sky. A few moments are all it takes for these important moments to be come and go whilst our attention is glued to a screen.
One of my biggest concerns is how my screen use may be impacting my children. This issue is being referred to as ‘second-hand screen time’ - by us adults not being flexible with our own phone use, we are unknowingly setting kids up to be addicted to screens. My kids are yet to have their own devices, but I know I am running out of time to become more conscious of my own phone behaviour, if I want to have greater creditability and success in helping them to become more aware of their own usage, when the time comes.
What can we do?
The problem is huge. We can feel overwhelmed, and even hopeless, by the enormity of the issue. Particularly given the powerful forces that are continuing to create the addictive content, gradually grooming us to be a species that experiences so much of the world through a screen. As Johann Hari emphasises, systemic changes are required to address systemic issues.
However, when it comes to making individual changes, I believe that there is one roadblock that can be resolved. I realised that when I started trying to be on my phone less, the problem was that I was trying to be on it less. Simply trying to use it less, was not working.
And this is because one of biggest barriers to behaviour change occurs we focus too much on what we want to remove from of our lives. Rather than focusing on what we want to add in. This focus on ‘less’ or ‘stopping’ something in our lives, can potentially disempower us. If instead, we reframe this to I want to be more…. the experience can transform to one that is empowering.
Therefore, to make a change we need to become aware of our values - our personal WHY.
Some examples of our personal WHY may include the following:
I want to be more present / engaged in the physical & natural world around me.
I want to be more present and engaged when I’m with my family / kids / partner / friends.
I want to have more focus and be more productive.
I want to be more active and do more of the other things I enjoy in my life.
I want to experience more in-person interactions (spontaneous and planned).
I want to have more control around social media, with particular apps, or with my device as a whole.
I want to be the change that I want to see in the world.
I want to be a good role model for my kids.
I want to take care of my mental health.
I want to take care of my sleep.
Once we have clarified our WHY, we then need to identify HOW. And I decided to create a practice that brings together both.
The practice is called The Switch[1] It is a process that allows us to ‘switch on’ the lights of our awareness, to give us back our capacity to choose where we want our attention to be.
In addition to behavioural boundaries (which are very important for allocating time to be physically separate from our devices), The Switch is a practice for the very moment.
The Switch
The Switch involves asking ourselves three questions:
1. Is it helpful, right now?
2. Is it urgent, right now?
3. Is it allowing me to be the person I want to be, right now?
Question 1: Is it helpful, right now?
How is being on my device (and its content) making me feel right now? Is it making me feel better or worse about myself?
Is it serving me (and others) or is it depleting me?
Question 2: Is it urgent, right now?
Our minds do a very good job at telling us that we have to attend to that notification, immediately! But how often is that really true? Can it wait 5 seconds, 5 minutes or even 5 hours, if it means that my attention can be somewhere more important in this moment?
Which takes us to Q3…
Question 3: Is it allowing me to be the person I want to be, right now?
What is my device taking me away from in this moment?
It is allowing me to be the person / friend / parent / professional / partner, I want to be in this moment?
With this third question, we tap into our values - our personal WHY. It is the foundation question that underpins the first two. It allows us to choose the most important place for our attention to be, in that very moment.
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When asking ourselves these three questions, we may choose to switch our attention back to what is happening in front of us in the physical world. Or we may switch to being in our thoughts. Or we may even choose to be on our device. The difference here though is that by using this process, we are choosing to be on our device, rather than the device choosing us.
Think of this difference as a bit like walking a dog. When we are walking an untrained new puppy, it is often pulling on the lead; the puppy is largely controlling the pace and direction it takes us in. We feel out of control and our attention is very distracted by it. However, when the dog is matured and trained, the walk is instead guided by us. We choose the direction to move in and our attention opens up to what else is happening around us in the moment.
When we consciously choose the device, based on our WHY, we are able to be flexible with our behaviour and hold the device more ‘lightly’ (both literally and figuratively). We become less likely to be so absorbed and to go down the rabbit warren of never-ending content. We are also more likely to put the device down and look back up to the physical world, when our values are calling us to.
Reminding & Reflecting
Two add-ons to practice around these three questions are Reminding and Reflecting
Reminding: When we have become unintentionally switched off and distracted, it is very important to not judge ourselves for this. We cannot expect ourselves to stay switched on; it’s impossible to stay aware when our humanness (e.g., thinking) and the world around us (e.g., the addictive content in our phone) will take our attention away. Instead, it’s about ‘noticing’ when we have become switched off. I like to see noticing this as a wonderful reminder of what matters to us. Simply observe it that way, and then see the moment in front of you as a fresh new moment to switch your attention back to where you want it to be.
Reflecting: After we make a switch, we need to reflect. It is very important to acknowledge that we have switched ourselves back to being the person we want to be and living the moments we want to live. This reflection empowers us. It motivates us and reinforces the practice – making us more likely to hold our WHY in our minds as much as we can, to make the switch again.
Familiarise yourself with the process - read it out aloud a few times and perhaps even write it down. The Switch then becomes accessible in the moment. All I need to do is picture the three questions as soon as one of my son’s calls my name, and I emphatically toss that phone aside and bring my gaze up to this curious little person that forms my WHY. To show him my WHY.
These small moments count. All together, they make up our life. Each moment of switching our attention, when our values are calling us to, therefore matters.
[1] The Switch’ practice is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) principles, including various metaphors that have been developed by ACT practitioners (e.g., Harris, 2007; Bailey, Ciarrochi, Harris 2013)