“Silence and solitude are crucial. Our modern world of push notifications, 24/7 cycles, and constant contact is almost completely inhospitable to the kind of retreat artists must have in order to focus deeply on their work.”
Austin Kleon – Keep Going
To be productive, you need to disconnect from technology. You need what Austin Kleon calls “silence and solitude.” I often think about how I went from being connected all the time to being disconnected most of the time. The answer is “you do it gradually.”
Why would you want to disconnect in the first place? Tim Kreider put it best when he said: “It’s hard to find anything to say about life without immersing yourself in the world, but it’s also just about impossible to figure out what it might be, or how to best say it, without getting the hell out of it again.” To do your best work, you must avoid all distractions, especially the ones offered by technology. I was recently reading a book called The Revenge of Analog. In the book, the author explains how people in all lines of work (even web designers or game programmers) do their best thinking on Moleskine notebooks. People whose job revolves around computers find small pockets of time to be creative, only using a notebook.
There’s this myth we have to work with technology all the time. American cartoonist Lynda Barry once said, “The phone gives us a lot but it takes away three key elements of discovery: loneliness, uncertainty, and boredom. Those have always been where creative ideas come from.” In an interview with Conan O’Brien, comedian Louis C.K. said something along those lines. Your phone takes something precious away from you and that’s the ability to just sit there. When you “just sit there”, not only will you be more creative, but you’ll also embrace the loneliness of human existence. There’s a healthy amount of boredom and when you no longer have that because you want to fill all emotional voids with technology, you never get to grow. You never get to think about your mortality or how your children are growing fast and there’s nothing you can do to prevent it.
Similarly, another important thing phones take away from you is being content doing the activity you choose. Phones and social media are always reminding you of the (seemingly better) activities others are doing. Some people call this the “fear of missing out”. Entrepreneur Anil Dash said, “There can be, and should be, a blissful, serene enjoyment in knowing, and celebrating, that there are folks out there having the time of their life at something that you might have loved to, but are simply skipping.”
The more distance you take from technology, the more you understand that the world won’t fall apart because you don’t have your phone or laptop with you. If anything, distancing yourself from technology will help you make the world a better place because, by the time you have access to a phone or computer, you’ll hopefully have something meaningful, creative, and unique to share with everyone else.