If you’re reading this, then you probably already know how hard kids can make it to find time for intense study, such as academic work requires. Ah, how I grasped for any windows of opportunity when we welcomed our first child, a sweet but severely colicky chap who briefly enjoyed (if not abused) the nickname ‘Little Caesar.’ Of course, the competition for our time and attention is all the more aggressive in the modern world. Endless are today’s temptations to wander, to procrastinate, to indulge curiosity. They come to us through media and devices that feel inescapable. How true is that feeling, though? I wondered. And then, to find out, I gave it all up—social media, the news, my cell phone. This was my experiment. Here’s what I found.
Social Media
Next to—or perhaps alongside of—giving up the news, which I detail below, deleting my social media was the single greatest act of mental decluttering I have ever done. To my mind, the costs of these platforms do not outweigh their benefits. Their main upshot is supposed to be healthy socialization, but in my experience most of that can be accomplished in other ways, often with greater intentionality and depth. Of course, I did lose touch with some people, and in that way some friendships were lost—but only the ones whose lives social media had artificially extended. The connections it would have really hurt to lose already existed outside of social media and so were not significantly affected. In hindsight, deleting my social media didn’t narrow my friend circles any more than my children have by their demand on my time.
Still, the transition was tough. For the platforms I used often, I had to pass some months to fully wean my craving to know everything that I was missing out on. But after that, I experienced much greater mental quietude, being no longer inundated with information from friends and feeds. This immediately registered as feeling less busy—which is funny, since I wasn’t really doing much at all on any of these platforms. But I was processing a lot of information, which in retrospect was carving up my attention. Deleting social media reconsolidated my focus. Now, I have a much stronger grip on my attention. My head is in my hand, so to speak.
As a consequence, I don’t procrastinate. Quite simply, I know less about the world and so have less temptations to jump out of my work and into something lighter. I’m no longer connected enough to even wonder about what I might be missing. And that means that I can’t be bothered anymore with being out of the know. I can’t fear missing out on what I don’t know is happening. In the end, that’s left me with less to think about, but only in a very superficial sense. I have, in truth, so much more to think about now, so much more space in my life to ponder what really matters. Sometimes that’s my next paper; other times, it’s a new kids craft for the next grandparent’s birthday.
All of that has made me far more productive than I once was. Just to give you a sense, I worked an average of 25 hours per week in the last year of my PhD, but was able in that short time to draft my entire dissertation in one Fall semester, revise it in the Spring, polish it in the Summer, and defend (without revisions, if I recall correctly) before the start of the next academic year—all with a newborn and a one-year-old in tow. I say this as someone without a track record of prolificacy. And I have no superhuman intellectual skills—just my powers of invisibility on social media, which anyone can attain.
Beyond efficiency, deleting social media also improved the quality of my work, principally by reducing the mental interruptions that were disturbing the natural progression of my research. In my fields, history and philosophy, it’s important to work iteratively, to let ideas marinate. Too much noise and you break up that process. Too much popping in and out and you get worn down, until there’s no strength left to dig all the way to the bottom of a problem or even to see the project to its end. I’ve learned that when I’m territorial about the kinds of information I let into my mind, my work tends to be deeper and more rigorous.
Still, the disconnection might look like too great a loss to some, even from an academic perspective. For instance, I know lots of scholars who use social media for quasi-academic purposes; to liaise with other researchers, for example. I never used social media for these reasons and so may be speaking out of ignorance here, but I suspect that the threat to mental peace and productivity is all the same. Unless the only things coming into one’s feed fall within their research area, I see no difference between academic and non-academic content. Both take up mental space. Actually, academic content can be even more difficult to resist. Its intellectual nature gives it a guise of relevance, however tangential it may be (if even that) to what we actually study.
On a related point, some scholars use social media to promote their work, and so may be inclined to retain it for that purpose. Perhaps they are onto something here, since journals have started keeping track of Almetric data. In that case, the question then becomes whether social media is impactful enough to warrant its side effects. Personally, I was no longer willing to run the risk. Or, put more positively, I was reposing too comfortably to chance more disturbance.
I instead built my own website and left it to my institutions’ communications teams to circulate. For those who might be interested in this option, the cheapest way to do it is to buy a GoDaddy domain for $12 annually (USD—it’s a bit more in other countries) and connect it to a free Google Site. If you’d still like to reach people with announcements about your latest work, you can add a free listserv sign up sheet to your website using a program called Brevo. I made a guide here to save you the hassle of hunting down the links for this process.
The News
I used to think that it was important for everyone, but especially academics, to keep up with current affairs. I no longer hold that position, at least for most kinds of scholars. Today's news cycle moves faster than does most people's need to know about it, suggesting that frequent news consumption is superfluous in most cases. I suspect this has been true for quite a while, actually. Nearly a century ago, a worry of this sort was already in the minds of scholars like A.G. Sertillanges. He was writing in the 1940s—a much slower period by our standards—and even then was led to conclude that consuming the news on more than a weekly basis was deleterious to most academic work.
I tried sticking to Sertillanges’ weekly recommendation, but it didn’t go well. For one, I have too much Irish in me to find the middle that easily. So, I ultimately had to swing to the other extreme and fully cut all of the news out. In hindsight, I’m grateful I did. The distance has given me more clarity about the utility of the news to my life, which isn’t much; I’ve learned I can pick up events of consequence through osmosis. For a time, I requested weekly updates from non-academics I know who keep up on current affairs, but even this has proved duplicative and unnecessary.
All of this has been excellent for my focus. Cutting the news multiplied the mental peace I received when I deleted my social media, while also maintaining my emotional equilibrium. Unlike social media, the information overload of the news comes with the added danger that every bit of it is made to feel urgent and important; it’s difficult, at least for me, not to get whipped up on a regular basis. You can’t realize how taxing that is until you go without it for some time.
Cell Phones, Or At Least Notifications
I initially gave up my cell phone in a bid to resist the temptation of the news and other internet rabbit holes to which I was prone. I replaced it with a cheap landline and experienced more silence than I have since leaving home for college, the last time in my life that was largely internet-free. As when I deleted social media, there was a certain winnowing of my social life. Nobody contacted me unless they felt comfortable picking up the phone, showing up at my door, or shooting me an email. This marshaled in a transition period of social adjustment, which was a little lonely at first. But once my friends and I transitioned away from texting, our friendships were stronger for it. Speaking on the phone or sharing long-form emails were all improvements on quick and brief messages, as far as I could tell. It made our exchanges deeper, although less frequent—but that was more compatible with my family life anyways.
Unfortunately, this time was short-lived. Although I would’ve loved to keep things as they were, my postdoc involves a significant commute, so my navigational needs brought me back to the cell—to my husband’s cell, which he graciously lets me share. And that is where I remain. I don’t like the arrangement and dream of returning to the landline. Actually, I’ve made numerous attempts to do so, in the course of which I learned that there are things you have to ask yourself first, such as the following:
Do you have the time/ability to replace all texts with phone calls, or at least to replace all texts with emails accessible via your computer?
Do you have the geographic stability to go without navigation (as far as I can tell online, there aren’t any GPS systems that are independent of cellphone data usage).
Can you transition to a paper calendar without loss of functionality?
Are there any cell phone apps that you need for academic purposes?
Do you work in different places regularly enough to need a cell to access services, academic (e.g., Duo Push notifications) or otherwise (e.g., double authentication for online banking)?
Having said all that, perhaps the most productive approach is not to forego all the conveniences of a phone, but to simply turn off its notifications when working or customize the ‘do not disturb’ features so that high-priority items can get through. I have done this on my computer with great success. When I’m working, I turn my notifications off and check my inbox during breaks. It’s amazingly useful. No longer does the ping of a new email interrupt my flow with an anxious invitation to check my inbox. No longer can I accept this invitation that I never receive. No longer am I derailed by what I used to find when I would give the ping a yes.
Conclusion
All in all, I am freer and more productive for having abandoned select technologies. I say ‘select’ because I am very much in favor of other technologies for productivity, some of which I shared here. That’s why I consider my experiment an exercise in only ‘semi-luddism.’
While this experiment proved a boon for my work life, the measures are rather extreme and probably not necessary. I know many fine scholars with families—even large ones—who are on every social media platform and news outlet. I can only assume they are more moderate with their media consumption than I, or else are just better at thinking with a busy brain.
Even so, I think semi-luddism is insightful for anyone to attempt. How much we find ourselves hankering for these technologies when we give them up is a good litmus test for the concentration of our mental energy in these platforms. Periods away from media and devices also provide enough distance for a clear reading of their utility to our work-life balance. From there, we can imagine new ways to make these technologies work more robustly for our betterment.
You’re such a good writer, cousin!! Your language is so descriptive and captivating, and very fun to read! 🤗