Beginning anew after forming an unhealthy habit
Photo by kalei peek on Unsplash
Last month was hard for me. I meant to build my coaching and organizational development skills. Instead, I dabbled in crypto investments and found myself quite addicted to technology staying up late to watch numbers on a screen go up or down.
The last week, I joined a meditation retreat offered by Plum Village, an organization founded by Thich Nhat Hanh. I spent no time on a computer at all. Additionally, since everyone at the retreat was vaccinated, I was able to take off my mask around new people for the first time since the pandemic began.
I saw very clearly as I meditated with this community that I was as addicted to technology as someone who uses a drug is addicted to a drug over the last month. I wished to modify rather than end my relationship with technology. Despite its benefits, I had gotten into an abuse relationship in which I kept using technology instead of sitting with my discomfort. That addiction cycle led to depression. As a result of my 5-day meditation retreat, I feel a level of joy and happiness that I haven't felt in the last month.
So how does one begin anew? After this retreat I feel in a great position to try. and have committed to setting better limits and structuring my day more.
Setting better limits
Clearly I can get into a place where my best intentions to moderate can be overwhelmed by certain activities like online gaming, crypto investing, and more. To avoid this in the future, I’m going to experiment with different limits on my internet usage.
Avoid using my phone while taking breaks
During a break, it is easy to switch from my laptop to my mobile phone. As soon as I got back from my meditation retreat, I realized that those breaks didn't renew my energy at all. My increased awareness helped me realize that after using my phone on break, instead of feeling more creative and energetic, I felt more tired. The breaks I took were simply less productive computer time.
Turning off my computer earlier
My second change is a tweak to the past habits I've developed around limiting my technology time. In the past, technology free weekends have worked well for me, when I just don't look at a screen for 24 hours. I’ve also learned about sleep hygiene and typically stop using my screens an hour before bed time.
During this meditation retreat, where I didn’t look at screens at all, I noticed I had really vivid dreams every single night. I attribute this partially to not using screens. Typically, I almost never remember my dreams. On the retreat, these dreams felt very rich. I am excited about ways to dream and remember my dreams more often. I'm going to stop using screens 2-4 hours before bedtime to see if I can remember my dreams more each night as I did on the meditation retreat.
Structuring my day
The second change I’m committed to making is to restructure my daily schedule. When I took a sabbatical from Google in 2017, I discovered how much I enjoy no-meeting mornings. Since then, I have almost always booked my time from 9am to 1pm to give myself plenty of creative time each day. This hasn't happened 100% of the time, but has probably happened 70-80% of the time (thanks also to my next role as a data scientist that was not too meeting oriented).
The issue I noticed with this structure is that I was allowing myself large chunks of time to follow my innate energy during this time as an experiment to leverage my creativity. Unfortunately, in this last month I used this time for non-creative activities like online games when I got to a difficult task or wanted a break.
I’ve now tweaked this structure. I noticed on this meditation retreat the power of shorter focused tasks like an hour of walking meditation, or an hour of what they called working meditation. In between these tasks, there was free time to rest and recharge. I’ve changed my schedule where I have categories of tasks and buffer times around them in my no meeting time. In fact, I’m writing right now during one of them! As a result, my breaks are built in, and I'm more clear on what I want to accomplish during each slot. I’m excited to see how it goes!
So, hopefully this is interesting and useful to you whether you’re aware of an addictive habit you’d like to change or seeking to reset for any other reason. Your time is your life, so how you limit and structure it can have a big impact! Let me know if you do anything interesting to avoid addiction or unproductive habits you have.