On Boringness
Feb. 5th, 2018 08:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moominmollyA week or two ago, I read an article in the New York Times (oh Times, I still can’t quit you) about turning your phone to grayscale to make it more boring. The idea, says the article, is that if your phone is less exciting, you will be less hooked on it in bad ways. And while I love how much I can stay in contact with the world via my phone, there is no denying that I spend too much time looking at it when I would rather be doing something else.
I’m all for a good brain hack, so I gave it a whirl. Took the color out of my phone, but set the Accessibility Shortcut to bring the colors back if I needed them to look at a photo. Instantly my feeling was UGH, WHAT HAVE I DONE? What Puritan anti-fun bullshit is this, deliberately sucking the joy and beauty out of an object? Even the Times article has called it making your phone “worse”, and I had to say I agreed.
For a few days I kept finding that I had turned the colors back on just for a moment and then left them on. Inevitably I would notice this when I felt myself getting sucked in and cycling through apps without motive. But as I’ve become better and better about leaving it grayscale, I think it’s working. Now, to me, the bright colors and red badges on my home screen look shocking. And I haven’t done any kind of systematic analysis, but it certainly feels like I’m more likely to perform the following magic trick:
* Pick my phone up for a purpose
* Use it for that purpose
* Put it back down again.
One pleasant side effect of making the phone less interesting to look at is that it makes the world MORE interesting. I’m spending more time casually observing things, which has always been one of my favorite pastimes, so that’s cool too. Also, I love seeing people’s selfies and Instagram photos in grayscale. I always check them in color too, but it feels like I get a secret window into the composition.
So I dunno! My brain often doesn’t generalize to other people’s brains, but I’m finding this exercise more interesting and joy-filled than I had expected to, based on that initial OH FUCK YOU, PURITANS reaction.
If you’ve tried it: how’s it working for you?
I’m all for a good brain hack, so I gave it a whirl. Took the color out of my phone, but set the Accessibility Shortcut to bring the colors back if I needed them to look at a photo. Instantly my feeling was UGH, WHAT HAVE I DONE? What Puritan anti-fun bullshit is this, deliberately sucking the joy and beauty out of an object? Even the Times article has called it making your phone “worse”, and I had to say I agreed.
For a few days I kept finding that I had turned the colors back on just for a moment and then left them on. Inevitably I would notice this when I felt myself getting sucked in and cycling through apps without motive. But as I’ve become better and better about leaving it grayscale, I think it’s working. Now, to me, the bright colors and red badges on my home screen look shocking. And I haven’t done any kind of systematic analysis, but it certainly feels like I’m more likely to perform the following magic trick:
* Pick my phone up for a purpose
* Use it for that purpose
* Put it back down again.
One pleasant side effect of making the phone less interesting to look at is that it makes the world MORE interesting. I’m spending more time casually observing things, which has always been one of my favorite pastimes, so that’s cool too. Also, I love seeing people’s selfies and Instagram photos in grayscale. I always check them in color too, but it feels like I get a secret window into the composition.
So I dunno! My brain often doesn’t generalize to other people’s brains, but I’m finding this exercise more interesting and joy-filled than I had expected to, based on that initial OH FUCK YOU, PURITANS reaction.
If you’ve tried it: how’s it working for you?
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no subject
Date: 2018-02-05 01:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-05 02:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-05 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-05 04:10 pm (UTC)Here's the most florid headcanon I have about heart emojis:
💝 is 💔 that you've tied back together, through willpower or time or love, and maybe it's more beautiful or maybe it'll also just always be a little broken inside. But either way, you made it.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-05 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-05 02:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-05 04:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-05 04:18 pm (UTC)Now with less unjustified neuro-appeal!
Date: 2018-02-05 05:06 pm (UTC)Re: Now with less unjustified neuro-appeal!
Date: 2018-02-05 09:29 pm (UTC)Re: Now with less unjustified neuro-appeal!
Date: 2018-02-24 03:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-06 03:52 am (UTC)Ordinarily, I check my phone about every 4 seconds. I am, however, not bothered by this fact. On the contrary, I'm tickled to death that I love my phone so much.
But I read your post and decided to give this a try. It's been all of a day now, and here is the verdict:
1) I still check my phone about every 4 seconds.
2) However, I enjoy it even more now. It just looks a lot nicer in gray. This experiment made me realize that the color adds pretty much nothing to my experience, and just tends to distract and annoy me. So now I might go to checking my phone every 3 seconds instead of 4. I am, in any event, not even slightly tempted to ever go back to color.
3) I'd hoped this might help with battery life, but based on this one-day experiment, it looks like my battery runs down at about exactly the same rate as ever. That's too bad, but this whole thing is still a definite win.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-06 02:34 pm (UTC)Eventually I gave it up because it annoyed the hell out of me and didn't seem to change my behavior. Some of this may be due to the fact that I'm a designer - I pay attention to (among other things) color as a routine activity.
I do try to curate more carefully the things I engage with. Facebook is right out, and I've tried to find an assortment of interesting folk to follow on Twitter, including people like Muslim scholars whom I'd normally not read. As a result my social media stream tends toward the humorous and educational. Yes, politics is still rage-inducing but it helps me to engage from the view of people unlike myself but who share many of my ideals.
That said, I live with an electronic umbilical almost all my waking hours, which is probably unhealthy in all sorts of other ways. Worth thinking about.
Thanks for sharing this!
no subject
Date: 2018-02-11 03:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-02-24 03:27 am (UTC)