The essential importance of headspace
How and why to get it
I have just spent two days and nights with two friends of 37 years, in a beautiful place where this was one of the views. We did a lot of talking, laughing and listening and we each had time on our own. Most importantly, we did a lot of thinking. The thinking took place during the talking, laughing and listening but probably most of all in the times on our own.
The first day and evening the conversation was all about catching up on our news. On the second day I asked a question: “If you had a magic wand, what one thing would you change about your life or yourself?” You can only ask that question in two circumstances: a) a position of non-judgmental trust and b) when you know that none of you is going through something awful, because then the answer to the question is both too obvious and also too sad.
I am only going to talk about my own answer because the other answers are not my business to share.
My answer might sound trivial but in fact the important point is what is behind the answer and what else it says. My answer was, “That I would be able to stop time-wasting with my phone/social media over-use.”
Because, yes, I over-use my phone (etc) in a really damaging way. (I will explain what is being damaged in a minute.)
Three things you need to know about me first:
I have written a book about and regularly give talks to health and education professionals about screen time and phone and social media use. The Teenage Guide to Life Online shows that I know my stuff on this.
I absolutely appreciate the genuine and important benefits of our devices and all the things we can do on them. A lot of what I do on my devices is useful and beneficial to me and to my work.
I am known as someone who is ambitious, intelligent and self-motivated. Of all people, I should be able to use my phone well and not be dominated by it.
But I am outrageously and harmfully addicted. I recognise and hate this in myself.
What do I mean by “harmfully”?
Surely this is an exaggeration? I don’t get involved in online arguments. I don’t receive abuse or hate. I don’t look at my phone while driving. I never have my phone present when I’m talking with other people. I don’t deliberately watch violent content. I don’t find myself drawn into conspiracy theories and I’m not involved in any of the various topics where vitriol and outrage abound. I get my work done and don’t miss deadlines.
Yet, yes, I am being harmed by my over-use because…
…I have lost the time for thinking.
This is a very big deal. It’s a very big deal for anyone this has happened to.
Why is this a big deal?
One of the harms from phone or device over-use is not that it is in itself harmful but that it takes us away from certain other activities that are not only healthy but necessary. The activities which we know that people, and some people more than others, do less of when they spend more time on their phones are:
Physical activity including outdoor activity
Face-to-face conversation (and deep conversations - because the presence of a phone shallows the nature of the discussion)
Reading books and other offline hobbies
Sleep
Thinking and daydreaming
What’s so special about thinking and daydreaming?
For much more on this, I recommend a book which has been very influential for me: The Organized Mind by Daniel Levitin. It’s a book I refer to frequently in my talks, too.
Having time - even small bits of time - to think allows you to do the following:
Process what you have just learnt or heard. If you go straight from learning something to learning something else to learning something else, those first two things don’t get a chance to be embedded and fully processed. You are less likely to understand them fully, to store them in the appropriate and retrievable place in your mind and to recall them well later. This applies both to factual or procedural learning as well as to random ideas that you might have had or read or heard. If you don’t think about those ideas, they won’t have meaning or effect.
Have ideas - be creative. Being creative is important for everyone, not just people like me whose livelihood explicitly relies on it. You can - should - have creative ideas about how to: do your job differently or better; manage a relationship that isn’t going quite right; manage a project at school or work or a personal project; help someone who is important to you; find ways to change and improve your life; achieve your dreams or even have a dream in the first place.
You might have ideas about how to: create or build or mend something in your house or garden; organise a gathering or party or event; start a group or community; raise money for charity; design a special cake; solve a problem, big or small; write a letter or give a speech; write a story or poem; do something better than you did before; explain something to someone who doesn’t understand; create a dance routine.
I could go on and on and on about the things you could do by simply applying your mind to them - by thinking about them.
They are all - all - things that you cannot do, or cannot do as well, if you don’t spend time thinking. And, usually, the more time thinking the better the result, within reason.
Ask a creative person whether they ever have a good idea, or whether they ever manage to develop an idea well, while nipping on and off their phone. No, they have those ideas when they manage to get away from dominance of their phone.
My problem was - I say was, because I’ve solved it - not that I was spending hours at a time on my phone or that I wasn’t getting my work done. The problem was that I was losing all the small moments when thinking could have happened: the times waiting for an appointment; on a train; doing my make-up; cooking; ironing; waiting for the kettle to boil. Just constantly picking up my phone and checking for a message or, if not messages, scrolling on Instagram or even my news app.
So, what is (was) the solution?
And would it work for you? I strongly believe so. It has to be tweaked to the specific behaviour or habit of the person, but I believe I could make this work for any of you. (If you wanted me to. You can’t change if you don’t want to!)
It’s all about breaking the habit cycle. I’m influenced here by a book I read some years ago, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. There is also Atomic Habits by James Clear but Duhigg’s is the one I remember better.
In those books, and doubtless others, you’ll learn about the habit loop. The cue (trigger) leads to an action which becomes routine and the reward that comes from it makes it more likely that the cue is again followed by the action.
But, if looking at my phone leads to me not having creative thoughts, this is surely not a “reward”, so why do I do it? There are two ways in which it is a reward: a) looking at our phones is inherently rewarding even if nothing happy happens, because the dopamine rush which heralds the reward comes before we’ve even seen whether we have a happy thing on our phones and b) there is a reward in doing something easy and certainly looking at my phone is easier than having a creative idea.
So habit-changing theory, which I already knew plenty about from my understanding of psychology, tells me that I need to insert something to break the power of the cue, so that the cue leads to something else.
This leads me to the IF/THEN strategy expounded by Walter Mischel, of the Marshmallow Test work.
The idea here is that you create a new rule for yourself, along the lines of “IF I notice my cue/temptation to do the things I’m trying to change, THEN instead I will [do something else].” This something else could be as minor as taking a sip of water, standing up and doing deep breathing for six breaths, saying something to yourself - anything that has only a positive consequence.
Specifically, what is my IF/THEN strategy?
What was the “THEN” action which I neatly inserted into my life (about 500 times a day) to break the action of picking up my phone to check for messages/waste time?
I am not telling you because I’m reserving it for the School Library Association audience I’m speaking to a their conference in June. It is verging on genius, though I say it myself, because it is simple, powerful, positive. It’s carrot more than stick - in fact, there is no stick.
Has it worked?
It is working absolutely brilliantly, thank you!
By the way, we also need to harness the theory of intrinsic motivation, which is something I will talk about in the online event I’m planning. See below. Failure to do so is behind the failures of all official campaigns to get people to change, for example by eating more fruit or doing more exercise.
What have I spent my new thinking time on so far?
The novel I’m trying to write and which is at the stage where it needs a lot of thinking
What I need to get done by the end of January
How I can alter my involvement in a particular group I’m involved in
How to manage a situation in my work which I could ignore but I shouldn’t
Things I want to ask my assistant to work on
Some talks I’m giving at a school next month which require and deserve a lot of thought
This article
Would you (or your family) like help with your phone/device use?
If you would like focused help working out how to build an IF/THEN strategy into your life/lives and to learn evidence-based strategies to improve your use of phones and other devices, as well as the fascinating science about what’s really going on when you use our phones, I’m thinking of doing a small group online (Zoom) session on this. Please contact me (email n@nicolamorgan.co.uk) or comment below if you might be interested. By expressing interest you are not committing to anything. The cost is likely to be something like £25 per household and I would limit the numbers so that everyone would be able to get their questions and problems in (though you would also be able to remain invisible if you wanted.)
What now?
When you’ve finished reading this, turn your phone (etc) off and spend some time thinking about it. You could do this while walking, ironing, cooking, gardening, running, or just sitting - anything where you are not taking in more information.