Modern life is like a show bag: The need for limits and healthy digital habits

Your attention is your most precious and valuable resource.

Where I live in Perth Western Australia, there’s an event that happens once a year that demands your attention like no other: The Royal Show.

At this show, there are extreme rides, giant fluffy toys to be won, baby animals you can pat, and much, much more.

Wherever you are in the world, you probably have an event like this, too. And if you do, chances are there is something at the show that is completely attention grabbing . . .

The show bags.

I’ve come to see show bags as being an important metaphor for modern life. Let me explain . . .

When I was a child, I couldn’t wait for the show bag catalogue to be released. I would spend hours trawling through the catalogue, carefully selecting my show bags.

“Do I get the Barbie show bag?
Or the Smith’s chips bag?
Or the Bertie Beatle bag?”

These were big and important questions for my 6-year old brain.

When we finally got to the show, my parents and I would wait in the queue at the frenzied show bag stall. I remember looking up at the display of all the bright colourful show bags and feeling really excited.

But looking back, what was so exciting about these show bags?

If you break down the contents of a show bag, there’s a bit of a formula to them . . .

There’s usually a range of ultra-processed sugary and salty snack foods and a bunch of novelty toys.

If you take a good hard look at the contents of most show bags, there’s nothing that’s really nourishing in there. It’s just poor-quality junk food. Or cheap plastic rubbish that is destined for landfill.

As I got older, I wised-up to these overpriced show bags containing mostly garbage. I stopped buying them.

Now you’re probably wondering, “What do show bags have to do with being able to study effectively? How is this a metaphor for modern life?”

I’ve come to see show bags and the Royal Show as being similar to smartphones, specifically social media apps.

If consumed frequently (even just in small doses), they are potentially damaging to our minds, bodies, and the planet.

Think of it like this . . .

A show bag is fun to have once in a while.

But if you were to have a show bag every day, would you enjoy it as much?

Probably not.

According to addictions expert Dr Anna Lembke, if you consume too much of a pleasurable thing, it makes that thing less pleasurable.

This is why they say, “Less is more”.

There’s a reason the royal show only happens once a year and you can’t buy show bags at the local supermarket. It’s a special occasion. Show bags are designed to be a special treat.

It wouldn’t be so special if it happened all the time. After a while, the novelty would wear off. You’d get bored.

As you emptied the contents of your 50th Bertie Beetle show bag or entered the Gravitron for the 100th time, you’d be like “Meh. Big deal”.

If you don’t believe me, next time you’re at the show take a look at the carnies (the carnival workers). They’re not having fun in sideshow alley. They’re tired. They want to be packing up the rides and getting out of there.

The point is the Royal show and show bags are great once in a while but not all the time.

It’s the same deal with social media. Spending too much time on there isn’t doing you any good.

Switching rapidly from doing your work to your phone and then back again slows you down. It impairs your ability to think and learn. It makes you feel scattered and anxious, too.

It’s time to start thinking of TikTok, YouTube videos and text notifications as the sugary treats, salty snacks, and novelty toys contained in show bags. Nice to have occasionally, but if consumed in large quantities, you’re going to suffer.

Just because everyone is eating Bertie Beetles all day every day doesn’t make it healthy. It doesn’t make this behaviour okay. It just means we’re going to end up with a very sick society.

We can do better. But this means we need to place limits on how much we consume.

Filling up on the good stuff

When you study with your phone within arm’s reach that’s like having a never-ending show bag of junk food next to you. You can’t fully focus your mind on the task at hand because a part of your brain is thinking about the tasty treats in the bag.

No matter how hard you try not to think about the treats, you can’t help but think about the treats!

It’s not your fault that you can’t resist checking your phone for the treats that await you. Social media apps are designed to be dopamine dispensing machines. Addictive to the core.

So, what can you do to make it easier for yourself?

How can you fill up on the good stuff (i.e. the stuff that is going to add real value to your life)?

I recently developed a powerful tiny habit. It may sound simple but I highly recommend it. The habit is this . . .

When I notice my phone is in my workspace, I will pick it up and put it away from my body in another room.

In fact, I have a specific home for my phone: it lives in pocket number 1 of a vertical wall hanger in my dining room. I have set times when I can check my phone. But outside those times, my phone stays in pocket 1.

When I put my phone in the pocket, it’s like I’m putting the show bag away on the top shelf of a cupboard and closing the cupboard door. Out of sight is out of mind.

I recommend you give it a shot.

To sum up

When you first start implementing this habit, you will probably feel a strong urge to grab your phone and look at it. But over time the urge to check your phone will pass.

The thing about focus is it’s like a muscle. You can strengthen it over time by engaging in simple practices, such as putting your phone away when it’s time to do your work and engaging in meditation.

Doing these things may be more difficult than dipping into a show bag or watching TikTok videos, but it’s probably going to deliver far more benefits in the long run.

But most importantly, when you fully focus your mind on what you need to do, there is something inherently satisfying about that. It brings you more joy and satisfaction than any 15 second video could ever deliver.

Image Credit

Ekka 2004 Showbag Pavillion” by Dr Stephen Dann is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .

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One sec app

 

Are you happy with how much time you spend on your phone?

When you feel slightly bored, do you feel a reflexive, gravitational pull to check your phone?

If you spend hours each day clicking, scrolling, and posting, I want you to know that it’s not your fault.

It’s not that your weak willed, lacking discipline, or a lazy person.

It’s none of these things.

It’s no mystery or secret why so many people waste so much time on social media. Like a poker machine, these platforms are designed to be highly addictive.

Apps like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube contain persuasive design features that hijack your most valuable and precious resources: your time, energy, and attention.

 

Why are these Big Tech companies in an arms race to capture and hold people’s attention?

Because the more time we spend on their apps, the more data they can extract and sell for social influence.

The business model of Big Tech companies is simple: Keep people glued to their platforms for as many hours a day as possible.

In other words, your time and attention equal massive profits for these companies.

In his excellent book The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Dr Jonathan Haidt presents data showing teens aged 13-18 spend an average of six to eight hours every day on social media apps. That’s close to 50 hours a week.

 

 

Dr Haidt notes that this is just the time spent on the app. It doesn’t factor in the time spent thinking about social media while they multitask in the real world.

So, that’s 50+ hours that could have been spent outside in nature, learning a language, working a part-time (or full-time) job, making art, cooking, exercising, getting more sleep, and hanging out with friends.

Let’s also not forget that these apps intervere with and harm our wellbeing and ability to think and learn.

The multi-tasking that takes place as we engage with these apps throughout the day drains our brainpower, weakens our memory, and makes us tense and anxious.

The social comparisons we engage in on these platforms also warps our perception of reality and leaves us feeling like we’re not enough.

So, here’s something to consider . . .

 

What if you could protect your time, energy and attention from social media companies?

It’s possible, and I’m going to show you how.

I recently discovered a simple tool that helps people stop mindlessly consuming social media and other addictive apps.

It’s an app called one sec.

one sec is a self-nudging tool that helps you to create barriers to Big Tech that align with your goals and values.

 

 

Here’s how it works:

As you open up an addictive app, one sec intervenes by creating a 10-second delay in opening the app.

one sec creates the little bit of friction needed to make you pause and reconsider your behaviour.

After the delay, one sec presents you with a choice: Do you want to proceed with opening up the target app (e.g., TikTok)? Or close the app and do something else?

The creators of one sec explain it works by utilising three intervention strategies:

  • Creating friction (i.e., the time delay)
  • Giving you the option to not proceed and close the target app
  • Deliberate messaging

 

It’s important to highlight that you’re in control of the whole experience. You specify what apps you want one sec to target. You can also modify the time delay (making it shorter or longer) and change the deliberate messaging.

The question is, does this app work?

Or is it just another gimmicky product that fails to change your behaviour in a significant way?

I’ve been experimenting with this app for the last month, and I’m pleased to say it’s working for me!

Even though I don’t have social media and the wicked algorithms that come with them, I recently noticed that I was spending far too much time in group chats.

one sec has helped me be more intentional and deliberate with how I engage with these chat groups.

Instead of mindlessly checking these apps whenever I have time to kill, I now have dedicated periods when I engage with them. I’m following Dr Faye Begeti’s advice when she recommends in her book The Phone Fix to “Set a finite number of times for checking social media, condensing a large number of short checks into defined, longer ones.”

This is what one sec has helped me to do, and as a result, my focus and well-being have improved. I feel calmer. My days feel longer and less frenetic.

But I realise I’m a sample size of one. Plus, I’m highly motivated to reduce my time on addictive apps.

Is one sec effective in helping others to reduce their social media consumption?

The short answer is yes.

This research study found the app one sec helped people to significantly decrease their social media consumption.

 

 

In this study, 280 participants used the one sec app for a six-week period. Here’s what the researchers found:

36% of the time participants attempted to open a target app, they chose to close the app using one sec (i.e., they did not proceed with using the target app).

 

 

Over time, participants also opened the target apps less.

 

 

Opening problematic apps less or choosing to close problematic apps before engaging with them is actually a really big deal. Here’s why . . .

Less engagement with these addictive apps means less hits of dopamine.

Every quick and easy hit of dopamine you get from social media leads you to crave more stimulation from these apps. Before you know it, you’re in a full blown dopamine driven feedback loop.

Whenever I’m stuck in a dopamine loop, I’m not #livingmybestlife. Far from it! I feel overstimulated, chaotic, and jittery. Here’s why . . .

In his book How to Calm Your Mind, Chris Bailey explains that the brain networks for dopamine and calm are anti-correlated.

What does this mean?

It means when the dopamine network is activated, the calm network isn’t.

Imagine every time you mindlessly reach for your phone to check social media, you’re moving further and further away from a state of calm.

This may explain why participants in the one sec study reported experiencing increased satisfaction and happiness after decreasing their consumption of problematic apps.

 

Other one sec features worth exploring

The main intervention features (i.e., the time delay and option to not proceed with the target app) will help you decrease your consumption of addictive apps.

But there are many other features available with this app.

As you explore the additional features, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. There’s a lot of extra bells and whistles. For example, there is the “Don’t get lost” notifications (i.e., scheduled reminders to close the target app when you are using it) and website blocking.

But like a lot of things in life, more features don’t necessarily result in a better user experience.

Ultimately, I decided to follow BJ Fogg’s behaviour design principle of ‘Simplicity changes behaviour’. I stuck with using just the basic features of this app.

I knew if I overcomplicated the app, I probably wouldn’t use it.

All that being said, there were two additional features I incorporated:

1. Strict Block Feature

I use the strict block feature every day. To be clear, the strict block feature is not to be confused with the basic block feature. What’s the difference?

If you select a basic block, you’re not really blocking yourself from the app. But there’s a barrier in place. If you try to open the target app, it brings up the following message:

 

“Be honest with yourself. Do you really want to stop this block?”

 

Whereas a strict block is a genuine bona fide block. You cannot use your target apps until the block is over.

If you have developed a mindless habit of reaching for your phone and checking certain apps, you need a strict block in place until your brain has had a chance to recalibrate itself.

Here is the tiny habit I created to give my brain a chance to rewire to lower hit of dopamine from my smartphone:

 

After I pick up my phone in the morning, I will open one sec and press strict block for six hours.

 

Activating a strict block means I’m in charge for the first six hours of my day (and the addictive apps are not running the show). This sets the tone for the day and puts me in proactive mode rather than chasing quick hits of dopamine. It also helps me stay calm and grounded.

 

A word of warning:

Even when you feel like you have regained control over your target apps, you must remain vigilant. It’s super easy to get drawn back into a dopamine-driven feedback loop.

 

2. The Journal Prompt Feature

The journal prompt is simple and effective. Before accessing the target apps, I am prompted to write about what I have done and what I feel grateful for.

I write 25 words before proceeding to the target app. This gives me a moment to reflect, which is always a worthwhile practice.

 

 

Free alternatives to one sec

There is a free version of one sec you can use, but it limits you to applying one sec to only one target app.

If you have multiple addictive apps on your phone (as most of us do), I recommend the paid version to unlock all the features.

It costs $25AUD for the year, which is value for money if you ask me. The app has already paid for itself in terms of the time, energy, and attention I’ve reclaimed.

I should mention that I had trouble initially installing one sec and getting it to work on the target apps. The process was a little finicky, and I nearly gave up after 20 minutes of trying to figure out how to get the app to work.

You can find similar intervention apps that are free and easier to install, such as ScreenZen. ScreenZen appears to be based on similar mechanisms (i.e., introducing a time delay and friction to the target app).

My brother recently started using ScreenZen to help combat his mindless habit of scrolling through social media. When I asked for his thoughts on this self-nudging app, he said, “It’s annoying.” But then he quickly added, “But that’s the point. It’s annoying, and that’s why you use the apps less.”

Another great feature of ScreenZen is that after spending seven minutes on the target app, it puts a stopping mechanism in place by prompting you to think about if you want to keep using the app.

 

Final thoughts

I don’t think anyone consciously sets a goal to spend 20, 30, or 50+ hours a week on social media. But if you don’t have strategies to combat the addictive apps on your phone, one thing is certain: Big Tech companies will hijack your time, energy, and attention.

As Michael Harris states in his book The End of Absence:

 

“Never forget that you live in an ecosystem designed to disrupt you, and it will take you for a ride if you let it.”

 

So, don’t be taken for a ride. You can easily access self-nudging tools, such as one sec and ScreenZen, to help you defend your time, energy, and attention.

Think of the things you’ve always wanted to do but tell yourself, “I don’t have the time. I’m too busy”. What if you could reclaim a significant chunk of time to do those things today? Would it be worth taking a chance on a self-nudging app?

You’ve got nothing to lose except potentially $25.

I encourage you to test out one of these apps to protect your most precious resources (i.e., your time, energy, and attention).

 

Note: In case you’re wondering, I have not been paid or sponsored by one sec to write this article.

Students often cringe when they hear two words: goal setting.

I understand this cringe factor.

In high school, goal setting felt forced. I’d think, “Why are they making me do this?” and “What’s the point?”.

However, once I got to university, I realised that goals are a helpful life strategy.

In this article, I want to share my perspective on goal setting and how this strategy has helped me to get things done.

I’m going to tell you:

• What goals are
• Why you’d want to have them
• How to stick at them
• Why you need to protect your goals from destructive outside forces

Let’s go!

What are goals?

Goals are things you want to do. Perhaps you want to write a book, jog around the block every morning, start a podcast, get a part-time job to save money or learn to play an instrument. These are goals.

Why bother setting goals?

• Goals give your life a sense of purpose
• Goals give your life meaning and a reason to get out of bed
• Goals help to focus your mind on what you want/need to do
• Goals help you to create a better, less boring life

As Giovanni Dienstmann explains in his book Mindful Self Discipline:

“We all need to aspire to something and feel that we are going somewhere. Otherwise, there is a sense of boredom in life. Our daily routine feels stale and unengaging. As a result, we seek relief through bad habits, and seek engagement through mindless entertainment, news, social media, games, etc.”

Why is it so hard to persevere with goals?

Have you ever set a goal, you felt excited, but then that excitement quickly dissipated, and you gave up on the goal?

Whenever this happens, it’s easy to think, “Goal setting doesn’t work!”.

However, the problem isn’t with goal setting as a strategy.

The problem is that motivation is completely unreliable (it comes and goes). Plus, you were probably never taught how to achieve your goals in the first place.

In other words, you were set up to fail.

There’s a lot of pretty average advice out there about goal setting. I’ve heard dozens of goal setting pep talks, and many can be summed up like this:

“Set a goal, make it SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), break it down, blah, blah, blah.”

Most students tune out when they hear these pep talks. You can feel the energy being sucked out of the room.

This advice doesn’t work for most people. And it’s incomplete.

What’s missing from these goal setting pep talks?

I’ve found that the following simple ideas can make a big difference in helping you move from inaction to action when it comes to pursuing your goals:

1. Dial down your expectations: Set the bar low

Achieving big long-term goals requires consistently engaging in small behaviours over time. You need to chip away and develop habits to get there.

For instance, after taking a hiatus from writing books (because I felt stuck and overwhelmed by the idea), I finally started writing down my ideas.

What helped me to get unstuck?

By starting small.

I told myself all I had to do was open the Word document and write one sentence. And the sentence didn’t even have to be good! But I had to do this every single day.

If I wanted to write more than one sentence, I could. But one sentence was my absolute minimum. Most days, I wrote at least a paragraph. But when I didn’t feel great, I would show up and write one sentence.

Nine months later, I had a draft manuscript ready to send to my editor.

2. Swarm of Bs: Brainstorm specific behaviours

Many different behaviours can help you achieve your goal. The first step is to brainstorm all the possible behaviours that can help you move closer to it.

One way to do this is with BJ Fogg’s tool, Swarm of Behaviors (also known as Swarm of Bs).

Here’s what you do:

You write your goal/aspiration/outcome (whatever you want to achieve) in the middle of a sheet of paper. Then, you spend a few minutes listing all the behaviours that will help you achieve it.

Dr Fogg stresses:

“You are not making any decisions or commitments in this step. You are exploring your options. The more behaviors you list, the better.”

When I was brainstorming behaviours that could help me to write my next book, I came up with the following list:

1. Use an Internet blocker app and block myself from distracting websites
2. Carry a notepad and pen with me everywhere I go (to capture ideas)
3. Write one sentence every morning
4. Speak my ideas into a voice recorder when I go for a walk
5. Use the Write or Die app
6. Manage my inner critic (when it strikes, say to myself, “It can’t be all bad!”)
7. Give myself a pep talk each day (e.g., “Done is better than perfect!”)
8. Do Julia Cameron’s morning page activity (i.e., free writing)
9. Attend a writing retreat
10. Sign up for the ‘Turbocharge your writing’ course
11. Pick up a mind map, select an idea and use it as a writing prompt

Once you’ve finished brainstorming potential behaviours, go through your list and select just a few behaviours to get the ball rolling (I selected #1, #3, and #6).

It’s well worth spending a couple of minutes making each of these behaviours ‘crispy’ (i.e., specific). For instance, for Behaviour #1, I decided which websites I would block myself from using and at what times.

3. Expect the process to be messy

When we work towards big life goals, the process is never neat or linear. Showing up and doing whatever you need to do (even just writing one sentence) can feel like a daily grind. Mild discomfort usually infuses the whole process.

Accept that’s how it is. It will sometimes feel like a hard slog, but the rewards are worth it.

The long-term rewards of working on your goals far outweigh the superficial rewards of scrolling through social media, watching Netflix, etc.

Even if you don’t achieve what you initially set out to do, chances are you’ll still be better off than you were before. Why? Because you’ll have learnt a bunch of new skills and life lessons.

4. Stop external forces from sabotaging your goals

Be careful who you share your goals with. Some people delight in stamping all over your goals and crushing your hopes and dreams.

For example, when I was 10 years old, I started attending drama classes outside of school. These classes were a lot of fun and quickly became the highlight of my week.

I remember thinking, “When I grow up, I want to run a drama academy to help boost kids’ confidence”.

I felt inspired by this idea. Drama had helped me come out of my shell and I wanted this for other kids who were lacking confidence. So, I decided to be brave and share my plans with my primary school teacher at the time.

I was expecting Mr D to say, “Good for you, Jane!”. But instead, he said with a smirk, “How do you think you’re going to do that?”

And then he started grilling me with questions . . .

“Where will you get the money from to set this up?”
“Who is going to come to your classes?”
“Where do you plan on running these classes?”

On and on Mr D went.

Ugh. “Just stop Mr D!” I wanted to scream.

I was left feeling crushed.

So, take it from me: Be careful who you share your goals with. Because some people get a kick out of squashing stuff (e.g., your dreams).

But nowadays, there’s a more powerful (and often overlooked) force that can mess with your goals: social media

If you’re constantly checking social media and looking at what other people are doing, that’s time and energy you could have spent working towards your goals. But that’s only part of the story . . .

Social media exposes you to a hodgepodge of content: the best bits of people’s lives, advertising, conspiracy theories, and outrage-inducing influencers. All this noise messes with your goals by subtly shifting and changing your worldview, beliefs, attitudes, and what you view as important in life.

In his brilliant book Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy, ex-Google strategist and now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams shares his struggles with this. He states:

“. . . I felt that the attention-grabby techniques of technology design were playing a nontrivial role. I began to realise that my technologies were enabling habits in my life that led my actions over time to diverge from the identity and values by which I wanted to live. It wasn’t just that my life’s GPS was guiding me into the occasional wrong turn, but rather that it had programmed me a new destination in a far-off place that it did not behoove me to visit. It was a place that valued short-term over long-term rewards, simple over complex pleasures.”

He adds:

“…I found myself spending more and more time trying to come up with clever things to say in my social posts, not because I felt they were things worth saying but because I had come to value these attentional signals for their own sake. Social interaction had become a numbers game for me, and I was focused on “winning” – even though I had no idea what winning looked like. I just knew that the more of these rewarding little social validations I got, the more of them I wanted. I was hooked.

. . . I had lost the higher view of who I really was, or why I wanted to communicate with all these people in the first place.”

When you go on social media, you need to realise that there are thousands of highly intelligent people on the other side of the screen and it’s their job to figure out how to capture and exploit your attention.

In short, the values and goals of these big tech companies are not aligned with your values and goals. Facebook’s first research scientist Jeff Hammerbacher summed it up nicely when he said:

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads . . . and it sucks.”

Take a moment to think of the people who you admire. How would you feel if you saw them spending vast amounts of time distracted and obsessed with social media?

I’ll leave you with this powerful quote from author Adam Gnade:

“Would you respect them [your biggest hero] as much if you saw them hunched over their phone all day like a boring zombie? No, you want them out there in the world doing heroic things, writing that great novel/song/whatever, saving the planet, standing up for the disenfranchised, or whatever else it was that made you love them in the first place. Let’s try to be as good as our heroes.”

Whatever you want in life, work out what you need to do to get there (i.e., the concrete behaviours), and then roll up your sleeves and get started.

You know you need to prepare for exams, but you tell yourself, “I’ve have plenty of time”.

But how much time do you actually have?

It’s hard to get a sense just by thinking “My exam is in three weeks.” After all, three weeks sounds like plenty of time, right?

Don’t be fooled. This is your brain playing tricks on you.

No one ever has a full three weeks (504 hours) to prepare for an exam. Thrown into the mix is time for sleep, getting ready for school or work, working on assignments, socialising with friends and family, etc. Plus, you usually have more than one exam to study for.

But we can forget this. And when we do, we end up procrastinating with our work and it piles up for our future selves to deal with.

What’s missing is that your brain needs clear visual feedback. It needs to have a sense of the big picture (i.e., all your commitments laid out in front of it).

How can you quickly get a sense of the big picture?

By using a year-at-a-glance calendar.

Earlier this year, I printed out a massive year-at-a-glance calendar (A0 size).

I scheduled all my upcoming presentations, holidays, important events (e.g., birthdays), deadlines, etc., onto the calendar and placed it in a prime position where I couldn’t miss it.

This calendar has made all the difference. It grounds me in reality, helps me feel more in control of my schedule, and gives me clear visual feedback. It also makes me think twice before I agree to take on a new project.

In the past, whenever I’ve said yes to a new opportunity, I haven’t always been grounded in reality. Too many times, I’ve been unintentionally cruel to future Jane.

Let me explain . . .

Back in 2016, I was on the home stretch with my PhD. The path forward was clear. After years of struggling with my PhD, the end was in sight. I was on track to hand in my thesis in a few months’ time.

But then something happened that threw me off course (well, erm, I threw myself off course).

I was asked by a company to run a series of workshops. Without even thinking, I said “Yes! I’d love to!”. It seemed like a great opportunity. One that was too good to pass up.

When I shared the news with my PhD supervisor, she seemed to think differently. Her face said it all: a mixture of concern and confusion.

“Why did you say yes to this? Do you need the money? What about your PhD? You’re so close to finishing”, she said.

The truth was I didn’t need the money. I said yes because without having my other commitments staring me in the face, I had all the time in the world. I was engaging in magical (delusional) thinking. I fantasised about having superhuman capabilities and being able to do it all.

I was wrong. There were only so many hours in the day, and something had to give.

To cut a long story short, pretty quickly the magical thinking wore off, and I regretted taking on the job. I had burdened my future self with a ridiculous amount of work and unnecessary stress.

But worst of all, I had delayed handing in my thesis by several months. A few months might not sound like much in the big scheme of things. But when you’ve been plugging away at a PhD for seven years, every month becomes precious. I risked losing momentum.

If I could teleport back in time and place a year-at-a-glance calendar in my office space, I like to think that I would have prioritised my PhD over the shiny new opportunity.

The value of laying things out in physical space

I recently finished reading an excellent book called ‘The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain’ by Annie Murphy-Paul.

In this book, Annie explores nine principles for expanding our intelligence (note: these principles are not taught in schools). She argues that instead of pushing our brains to work harder and harder, we can use our bodies, relationships, and surrounding environment to boost our cognitive abilities.

In the chapter called “Thinking with the Space of Ideas”, she writes:

“Whenever possible, we should offload information, externalize it, move it out of our heads and into the world. It relieves us of the burden of keeping a host of details “in the mind,” thereby freeing up mental resources for more demanding tasks like problem solving and idea generation.”

After reading this book, I understood why a year-at-a-glance calendar can be such a powerful tool. Seeing all your projects and commitments in one glance allows you to think smarter and more strategically.

These calendars also help to orient you in time. You can see how much time you have between now and doing the things you need to do.

Your projects and deadlines stare back at you every day. There’s no escaping them.

Seeing your life in this way also helps you to plan and pinpoint busy periods.

Here’s an example . . .

This month, I have more presentations scheduled than usual. This means I need to manage my energy levels, prioritise sleep, and eat healthily.

But a quick glance at my calendar tells me I have a few ‘free’ days before all these talks begin. I can use this time to cook a few meals to pop in the fridge and freezer to make life a little easier during this busier period.

One of the worst things I can do when I get busy is order takeaway food and sacrifice sleep to work. I refuse to do it as it always backfires. If I’m functioning at half capacity, my talks and work will suffer.

These calendars can also provide useful information to help you manage your energy levels, reduce ridiculous workloads, and avoid burnout.

Earlier this year, there was a week when I delivered more talks than usual. During this week, I found myself taking 15-minute power naps between talks to recharge before the next one. Even with all these power naps, by the end of the week, I felt tired. I drew a tired little emoji face on my calendar to represent this.

That tired emoji face is a constant reminder: you have mental and physical limits. Don’t overdo it.

Making your year-at-a-glance calendar

It’s important to find a calendar that is both aesthetically pleasing and functional for you. This means you probably can’t just go to the shops and pick something off the shelf.

You could order a hard copy calendar online, but when the year is already well underway who wants to potentially wait weeks for their calendar to arrive in the mail?

Here are some cheap and fast DIY options:

You can purchase a digital download online and take it to your local print shop on a USB stick. Some templates display the month as a long list of days; whereas other calendars group the month into weeks, with each week on a separate line (see examples below).

Alternatively, you could buy a monthly calendar, cut it up, and stick it together.

One of my friends suggested I try doing this. I gave it a shot, but my calendar looked like a failed arts and crafts project (with messy bits of tape plastered everywhere). Plus, the boxes were too small and cramped my style.

After some trial and error, I purchased a digital download from Etsy for $20AUD and printed it A0 size for $10AUD. All up, my calendar cost me $30AUD – money that was well spent.

The bottom line is you have to figure out what works for you and how much you’re willing to spend.

Tips for using your year-at-a-glance calendar:

• Write on the calendar when all your exams, appointments, special events, and major projects will take place.

• If you don’t yet know the specific dates of each exam, note the week they begin and assume the worst-case scenario (your exams will be sooner rather than later).

• Consider laminating your calendar so you can use whiteboard markers on it.

• If laminating is too expensive, use sticky notes and washi tape instead.

• You can mount your calendar on core-flute material or foam board to give it a sturdier structure.

• Resist the urge to put every detail on your calendar. Focus on the big project deadlines, appointments, exams, etc. The details for what and when you work on each project can go into your weekly planner and/or on your to-do list.

• If you have the wall space, consider printing your calendar A0 size (841mm x 1189mm). You want plenty of space to write in each box.

To sum up

In our noisy world where we are bombarded with endless opportunities, many of us would benefit from embracing analog tools like the year-at-a-glance calendar. These calendars help to ground us in reality and focus our minds on what matters.

If you have a lot going on in your world and find yourself saying “Yes!” to every shiny new opportunity that comes your way, do yourself a favour and create a year-at-a-glance calendar. Having your commitments stare you in the face every day is a simple but powerful way to live with greater focus and intentionality.