Offline Experiment
What
- Limited time online. I currently spend 2 to 4 hours a day on my phone and over 7 hours on my computer.
- Not specifically screen-free, since I am currently in a place where I don’t have access to a library, my book collection or other knowledge resources, and I don’t have a notebook.
- More time spent on deliberate hobbies that require an offline component, something to get me back in touch with my body and my interests outside of puttering around between the same three apps or websites without focusing all that much.
- Slowly begin a migration towards the analog without needing to fully discard the digital; to make the physical medium my primary plane of existence, instead of considering maintenance for the rest of my life, which happens on various privately-owned platforms that I don’t trust.
Why
- Other than highly specific activities that should take no more than 2h a day on average, I’m not even sure where my time on these devices is going.
- I can feel my creativity, sensitivity, and willpower slipping away anytime I try to focus on any endeavors that require these things, like focused reading or trying to let myself engage fully, emotionally with a piece of media.
- I’m tired of the deep mistrust I’ve come to have for most digital services. Predatory subscription prices, unreliable long-term service, enshittification, siloing… These are all things that have made me weary in my experience of the Internet. I would like to be more self-reliant in the way I collect and organize information, and only use the Internet for what I used it back when it was still enjoyable: Connecting with people I can’t otherwise talk to, to share things I can’t share in other ways.
How
- Having Wi-Fi off by default
List of Activities (ordered by ease of access as of writing)
- Japanese lessons
- Reading
- Cooking
- Exercise (biking, stretches, calisthenics)
- Journaling
- Writing (poetry, notes, not-about-self)
- Correspondence (cutoff for: These are going to be hard to do with the materials I have right now, but I would like to when I go back home)
- Photography
- Boardgames
- Figure drawing
When
I want to start with a reduction of my current screentime from July 15th to the end of the month, as a way to ease myself into the slower paced routine.
- In July I will:
- Set up frictionless ways to avoid timesucking online activities.
- Limit my online time to 4 hours total in both devices. These 4 hours will be spent on planned activities (mail, catch-up, downloads, research) or scheduled friend time.
- Prepare a routine to keep entertained and busy during offline hours. This might include caching articles (or printing them), downloading media (music, shows, movies), scheduling harder tasks (exercising, cooking) and assigning non-timely goals for activities (when to stop studying for the day? is finishing a book or a movie a stopper for other kind of media in the day?)
- In August I will:
- Increase the amount of planning of online time to hopefully reduce the total time spent online on non-friendly gatherings to 2 hours.