A brief meditation on the power of analogue stuff.

Came across a neat blog post on overcoming digital addiction on FreeCodeCamp. The author had an interesting idea to make time out from our gadgets and the attention economy more enjoyable:

I came up with a thing I call “analog time” where I’m allowed to listen to music and audiobooks, and maybe watch TV, but nothing else. No google, no games, no social media, no nothing, except for something I can run in the background while I do something artistic or craftsy or physical.

I do like the idea of introducing more and more blocks of “deep” free time into my life, and choosing specific tools to push them forward. It reminds me of the episode of Hurry Slowly with David Sax, who wrote “Revenge of the Analog”. He hypothesised that the constraints of analogue objects help us focus better on what we’re doing, especially for any “creative” endeavour.

I find this most beneficial when I use either my notepad or the sticky notes app on my laptop, personally.