Screens + Focusing

In his article “Scrolling,”   Gavin Francis mistakenly blames devices for the deleterious effects of the apps that run on them. There are many experiences one can have while using one’s phone (or “screen”), and it’s misleading to treat the most egregious experiences as characteristic of the whole. 

Phones are protean devices whose use varies wildly depending on what software we install and which websites we visit. Rather than characterizing devices as evil, we should focus on curating our use of them. The process is really no different from what we do with in-person relationships: cultivate the ones that enrich us and avoid those that are toxic. 

Devices can be used to check in with close friends or engage with intellectual pursuits: e.g., following epidemiology twitter; perusing science papers on arXiv; or reading back copies of NYRB. This should be enriching when coupled with saying goodbye to our toxic friends, the demon applications like Facebook and YouTube. If we pursue healthy phone use this way, I don’t see the need for demonizing devices altogether. 

Data and Society has done some interesting work in this space, particularly this report

Curation and Focus

So All It Takes is Focussing and Curation — certainly not easy things to consistently achieve, perhaps not even possible to consistently achieve. So I thought I’d mention my techniques, nothing revolutionary here, which does raise the possibility that they could even apply to other people 👽

I find Timeboxing key. Definitionally managing ones’ own personal time is the kind small project-based activity that’s amenable to the technique. It’s worth reading the wikipedia page as it emphasizes what I call the cut-to-fit aspect. You reduce the items until they comfortably fit into the allotted time, and the allotted time has to comfortably fit into the time which is actually available. 

The primary criterion is to make sure that your core information feeds comfortably fit into the amount of time you almost always have available each day. It can’t just be for a usual day, that won’t allow enough margin for unusual days. If more than a day or so a week exceeds the time allotment, you’ll be swamped before long. One approach to this is to separate out core feeds (those you want to read completely almost every day) from occasional feeds (those you’ll only review infrequently). I also find it helpful to partition feeds to different times of day/activities, since there’s times, e.g., while having first coffee of the morning, that a light cognitive load is appreciated.

Different feeds (& I’m using the term very loosely here — just places that one periodically goes for information, could be Twitter, RSS or a specific publication front page) require different frames of mind, and different time frames — it could be easy to take a quick break on instagram, while a dive on philosophy twitter usually requires both more setup time and more time to read each item. For similar reasons the giant aggregating platforms e.g., Twitter should be disaggregated to fit a way that suits both your schedule  and the way your mind works. I have some feeds I only look at every couple of months, while there’s others I look at every hour or so.

The mix of feeds and their grouping (feed bins 👽), is going to be subject to frequent tuning, due to changing interest and external influences, e.g., following more epidemiologists in a pandemic. 

Another technique is to evaluate how frequently you get much benefit from a feed vs to how much time it takes to review it. This isn’t really a counting exercise (#good/#total posts) as much as time/value of post. Some feeds pre identify items with subjects like Week in Review  etc. which isn’t of interest if you look at every post during the week, but if you only look for that post each week, it’s an invaluable time saver.

In addition, since finding new feed sources is at least as important as eliminating ones that are no longer useful, it’s good to have a few sources that have broad remits, are generally trustworthy, and vet their recommendations well. These could be reporters, high profile experts who view public communication to be important, etc. They are critical resources to have: someone you can turn to who will provide a vetted source when a new topic becomes important.

Off course, adding a new source, necessitates getting rid of an old one or more, to keep within your time budget.