Disconnect to reconnect
Unplugging from an overstimulated world may help us engage better
Kelly Ng
IN RECENT months, I have heard several friends, on separate occasions, share their experiences with “floatation therapy”.
Participants float for an hour in an enclosed pod of water containing some 600 kg of Epsom salt to help them stay buoyant. The idea is that immersion in silence and “sensory deprivation” helps our bodies and brains enter into a deep state of relaxation.
“Here you are free from mental stimulation and physical strain,” reads the website of Palm Ave Float Club, which offers floatation therapy in Singapore.
At first and as usual, I was sceptical.
While I still don’t feel particularly interested to try this out, as more friends started giving it a shot, I began to consider the value of newfangled “alternative therapies” in our overstimulated world.
After all, I had also recently overheard someone say they enrolled their 3-year-old children in meditation classes.
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Well, perhaps it is a good thing that some among us are being intentional about recovering the peace and quiet that we used to take for granted.
Long runs used to do this for me. I used to relish that hour or more of being away from devices and taking in what the natural environment has to offer.
But now, running does that… only barely. Every now and then, I whip out my phone to capture scenes on the run and to pay for a bottle of isotonic drink. I usually start the run with cellular data turned off, but my fingers would invariably migrate to the various social media apps during these photo or water breaks.
We perceive a need to stay connected. “My job requires me to stay on top of the news” is what I would always tell myself.
Our pandemic-driven affinity with technology also does not help any intention to disconnect. Last year, I went for a 4-hour bike ride without my phone and had completely forgotten that I needed the TraceTogether app to even enter a hawker centre. (May those days be over for good.)
But we were already losing the art of listening and engaging long before the pandemic. In Is Google making us stupid, Nicholas Carr’s 2008 essay for The Atlantic which he later developed into a book, the American writer expressed concern that the Internet makes our minds take in a lot of information but chips away at our capacity to concentrate and contemplate.
Deep reading, which used to come naturally to him, has become a struggle. Carr wrote: “My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”
More than 10 years on, Carr’s words hold truer than ever for me.
The phone is often the last thing I look at each night, and every morning, I wake up to a dozen alerts from the news apps I’m subscribed to. Throughout the day, the phone stays by my side, offering equal parts convenience and distraction.
I read a lot – frequently in snippets, often no more than 280 characters – but retain little. Several times I’d wanted to return to a story for a deeper read but had forgotten the source, because I’d been distracted by too many other on-screen things in between.
It’s been widely documented that multitasking impairs our brains. Yet so many of us are living these hyper-connected, always-on lifestyles. Every notification seems important, every text message seems urgent. As a result, we struggle to stay focused on one task.
To some extent, I think the hyper-connected life impairs our hearts, too. We are less able to engage with what we read and with those we are talking to (virtually) because we are constantly jumping from one screen to another. I have sometimes replied to emails or text messages in a jiffy and then found, on hindsight, that they could have been worded in a more considered way.
What an irony that the perceived need to stay digitally “connected” is making us less cognitively and emotionally engaged. It is no wonder then that some have taken to floating in a pod of saltwater to recover some peace and quiet.
As for me, I reinstated the no-data rule on my runs a few months ago. I have also started to carve out some time each weekend to think back on conversations and encounters throughout the week, while making note of significant takeaways in a handwritten journal.
I have not taken the leap to quit social media. But early this week, I began to limit personal use of these platforms to 15 minutes daily, although none will probably be better. (Before this, I was spending an hour a day on Instagram… Gasp.)
Here’s hoping that these resolutions stick – and that we can all make the most out of technology without letting it take away what matters to us.
Farm hour This was rather a quirky route my running mates and I checked out in a quest to get away from the hustle and bustle. Life slows down a little amidst the farming community. It’s far-flung, though – you’ll probably need a car to get there.
Distance: 11-12km
Route markers: (A) Car park along Jalan Tapisan, opposite Home Team Academy (B) The Animal Lodge (C) Toh Orchids (D) Teo Joo Guan Horticulture – u-turn after this (E) Trace back your steps to the junction between Lor Pasu and Lor Semangka (F) Kok Fah Technology Farm (G) Qian Hu (H) Back to car park along Jalan Tapisan
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