I’ve now been ‘powering down’ daily for over a month. For one part of every day, I’m interweb-free. I feel alternatively uncomfortable and calm. I hate the feeling that I’m falling behind, that work is buzzing on around me and I’m not part of it. I can practically see the emails piling up in my inbox, all awaiting me. I wonder if I’m actually making more work for myself.
At the same time, my mind is more at rest. I don’t know any other way to put this. There are fewer needs scrambling it, clamoring for attention. And this feels foreign to me, and not at all natural. I love energy. I love activity. I’m used to having more than one task shooting across my brain at any given time. These tasks enter via email, or Hootsuite, or phone, and they bounce in my head until I’ve subdued them. Today, they’re not there. In their place is an itchy, unnerving knowledge that they’re gone, and I miss their presence, but there’s something else too. There’s a flat, silent calm. At any given time, I have only one task on which to focus, and it’s a simple, one-dimensional one: plan a reading lesson. Fill the coffee pot. Make a phone call. Let the dogs out. Let the dogs in. Draft a chapter. Massage a paragraph.
It’s not that these things are simplistic things. It’s just that there’s only one at a time.
I quickly realize how many times per day, per hour, per minute I glance down at the screen of my phone. Instead, I now glance up, at the sky, and notice the clouds. What a cliche! I glance over at my sons and take stock in what they’re doing: do they need help with their homework, do they look happy, do they need a haircut. I talk to them instead of ‘just a minute’ them.
I greet the dogs more. I notice the hum of the house more. I close my eyes more.
I’ve always said that technology makes our lives infinitely easier yet infinitely more complicated. And complicated isn’t easy. It’s not even a very impressive parlor trick; watching all those balls in the air makes everyone around me dizzy as well. As it turns out, there’s a subtle grace in doing less. It’s not as flashy, but there’s something beautiful about the the way it moves through the day, a new type of focus poised on tiptoe within it.
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I am figuring out, the farther I go along, that multitasking is overrated. We are told, in many various ways, that this is what women do – that if we are not doing it all at the same time, then we are not doing it right, then we are inefficient and ineffective. Ugh!!
I have come to realize something about myself. I am happier and more effective when doing one thing at a time. I used to confuse this with laziness or inefficiency. Now I know that it’s the way my brain was meant to work.
Shannon recently posted..Tough Questions
I rarely use my cellphone for anything and forget it all the time–forget to recharge it or leave it on the counter or just not check it. I’m some hillbilly or something. But I do feel a little more free by not being a slave to it.
thekitchwitch recently posted..Greetings from Sunday
This is definitely inspiring, Amy. I am finally learning that multitasking is overrated. In order to sink into any moment, good, bad, or indifferent, you must pay attention. Complete attention. Thanks for sharing your progress.
Rudri Bhatt Patel @ Being Rudri recently posted..There Is Peace In The Ordinary
I’m wrestling with this Power Down thing every day. Some days I do very well. Close the email, the Facebook, and focus. But I also feel like I’m “just a minute”-ing my kids for most of the day, and never focusing. I think there’s perhaps another part of this we have to consider: in order to take advantage of a power-down time, we have to plan what we are going to DO with that time, so we don’t spend it flailing.
Kathleen Basi recently posted..What I Learn From A Kindergarten SpEd Re-Eval
Oh, holy cow, I just had a vision. THIS is my Lenten discipline.
What a great concept…Powereing Down! I need to try this, even if it’s only 1 hour a day. I am so glued to my phone, email, facebook, texts, games, etc. If I could put my phone away for 1 hour and give my kids my undivided attention, we would all be much happier.