The world is busy, crazy, and full. Every so often we need to be reminded to get unplugged. I think about and plan getting unplugged a lot so six years ago created a personal website to simply remind me to get unplugged in my life. (If you want to take a look, you can visit here: www.gettingunplugged.com). For me, catching a sunrise, backpacking, and being with my family are my top three ways to unplug.
Jason Gay with the WSJ is a funny guy. Below is one of his recent comedic reads with a serious point. Empty out your brain, get unplugged, and recharge your batteries.
Here are some ideas to try out this week:
— Turn your phone off at 5 pm and just enjoy the evening.
— Get out in nature for at least an hour…without your phone.
— Get up early in the morning and enjoy the day before you turn your phone on. AND maybe catch a sunrise.
— Have a meal without your phone, TV, or any other electronics turned on.
— Try meditating for 5 minutes a day.
Send me some ways you get unplugged so I can add to my personal list.
Don’t Waste Time
How much time are you wasting on your phone, computer, TV, etc? Stop letting your life slip away. Put your time to good use and get unplugged.
The Joy of a Totally Empty Brain
Modern distractions cannot compete with the inspiration of old-fashioned boredom
By: Jason Gay
ILLUSTRATION: ZOHAR LAZARTo write this humor column, I had to empty my brain. I mean empty it even more than its usual echoing, empty state. Let me explain.Modern life has clogged my skull to the limit. Technology has delivered an avalanche of options to preoccupy me at any hour; the notion of idle time that can’t be filled with some form of digital distraction is foreign to me, almost unnerving.If you’re reading this column on a phone, or any sort of computer, you’re seconds away from all kinds of diversions—social media, digital games, the state of your 401(k), the latest celebrity embarrassment or political mess. If you hang right here, the Journal will offer you any number of interesting stories to grab your attention next. I enjoyed this piece about a Caribbean estate that sold for $136 million. I told my broker: I won’t pay a penny more than $135 million. Oh well. Can’t have it all.For me, the problem comes when I need to think for myself. If you read this column, you know that any kind of complicated thinking is hard for me, and perhaps impossible. My brain’s interior is not a series of mathematical formulas dancing around balletically, like it does for beautiful-minded geniuses in the movies. My brain is more like a slop-sink faucet, slowly dripping. Or an arcade machine that only plays 70’s-era Pong.If you read this column, you know that any kind of complicated thinking is hard for me, and perhaps impossible.But I still have to come up with stuff. Several times a week, I receive an email from a cheerful editor: What are you planning to write on? Do you have an idea?On most days, my head is nothing more than a dull fog of box scores, “Succession” recaps and ads for clothes I want to buy off Instagram. Ideas aren’t at the ready. There’s just a pair of drawstring jogger pants in olive. Or navy. I can’t decide.
As I get older, I realize I need to utterly unplug. My ideas will not come from my phone, a Facebook post or the latest tire fire on Twitter. For me, they come from digital distance, from oxygen and exercise and especially from time spent outdoors. There once was a time I could get ideas from staring at websites, but not anymore. I get them from looking at trees.
I know I’m not alone. The science is vast on the value of boredom and the stimulus of fresh air—it’s what opens the brain to sparks of creativity and inspiration. It’s why child psychologists want parents to strip away the iPads and help their children get comfortable offline. Hearing “I’m bored!” should not be a parenting emergency. (Except on an airplane. I’ll give a kid 15 iPads on an airplane.)
I fear we’re getting worse. Technology just gets better, as those airport bookstores get smaller. I’m wary of our artificial-intelligence future, and the notion that we will lean on bots to think for us, writing code, speeches and even poetry. It sounds like more off-loading of our brain space to technology. And to what end? To watch more episodes of “Love Is Blind?”
I don’t want to sound like I’ve figured it out. I’m not saying this brain of mine is on the cusp of a breakthrough. My brain will not save the world. It barely remembers why it went to the supermarket.
But to get anywhere real, it needs to be uncluttered. It needs to be empty. I mean empty more than the usual. It needs to be bored. And for me that means: unplugged.