Focus in the Face of Too Much

Focus seems the first casualty when it comes to using technology these days. Whether you're on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or your drug, I mean social media, of choice, I feel that we are made to feel that everything should keep coming at us, from notifications (which you can deactivate) to program updates (which you can't) to videos or audio playing on your phone (which you think you can stop ... but you can't) to ads progressively creeping into your apps (which, again, you can't stop, except for after the fact).

I read somewhere recently that the most precious thing we can have is our focus and that with our phones, these supercomputers in the palms of our hands, we readily hand over our focus. Sometimes it can be a good thing. Connecting with friends, family or loved. Finding out about something you're passionate about, whether art, music, books or comics. Or maybe you want to keep track of the snowfall today (it's Canada) or the news or something you are following. But just as often or more often than not, the interruptions are inconsequential. That is, they don't affect your daily life, not really. But we are made to feel that we should keep checking and keep enduring any bells, whistles and prompts from our hand-held gadgets. Many alerts, notifications and background data from all the apps on your phone you can turn off, although not a single app advertises this fact. 

Even the updated Microsoft Word attempts to correct your words or suggest others as you type them, and the spellcheck rates your work in percentages of formal language, conciseness, clarity, which amount to a constant tut-tutting of judgement and assessment that simply has no business in the artist's workshop. The artist can judge their work well enough, with recriminations and praise and questioning, more than well enough with a program nagging them.

I mention all these factors because I think focus is precious. You cannot accomplish much or anything of note without it, whether work, running your life, working on a book or a piece of writing or simply trying to see something through, whether it's mounting a handrail for a staircase, trying a new recipe, exercising or simply thinking.

So I have been thinking about the idea of focus a lot recently. I've got a lot on my desk, from promoting my new book to getting organized to planning ahead to revising my new horror novel to, simply, getting things done. And I feel that a lot of social media, while often positive, can be erosive to focus across the board. When's the last time you turned off your phone. Think about it.  I mean, really, simply turned it off? Or just left it somewhere you would remember, intentionally out of reach, so you could do something without its presence? And trips to the bathroom or driving do not count.

All that said, I know I am a rare voice in the cacaphony of perpetually swirling an shifting winds of social media and cell-phone culture and apps. But I reserve the right to turn off the phone at times. When I am editing or revising or writing these days, I put my phone to sleep and place it face down, on a table across the room. I don't use the Internet except for editing and revising and, only then, for research such as mainly fact-checking.

However, I know that cell phones and technology culture is held in somewhat of a rapture and that we are almost the unwitting program running in response to the alluring software and hardware. I won't proselytize further, I know that a lot of the tech has very good uses and some users seem to manage it quite well. But, that said, I don't know what managing cell-phone use looks like, and I don't see much in the way of books or guides about how to manage the impact of constant cell-phone on our everyday lives. I know that Canadian author and journalist Michael Harris wrote The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection, which touches on a lot of this. For a month, he taped his cell phone to the kitchen counter and only used it like a landline as when he grew up in the 1980's. Harris argues for the return of the space to think, or the absence, where one could imagine, think and simply be, without the constant sensory overload of technology. 

On that note, I am considering dropping a social-media platform for a day, or simply doing a digital-detox day, where I turn them all off, save texting with a friend, and email. Regardless, I know that when I need a focus, and to think, to dream, to work on my vocation of writing, the cell phone needs to be out of the picture. For myself, sometimes simply sitting down, cross-legged, and letting your mind be or drift is one way to just let your thoughts air out and change without looking for constant visual input. This can lead to meditations and discussions about mindfulness, but it doesn't have to. You are completely within your rights to sit and think or not think and be. So, that's one way to go to unplug.

Virginia Wolff said that self-doubt is the greatest enemy of the artist. I would argue that, today, lack of focus is an equal, if not greater, enemy. So, don't forget that you can turn your back on your tech. You don't owe it anything, much less your continual attention. So, if you don't see a post, tweet, or any other online missive from yours truly, it's likely because I am trying to live my live, or master-piecing a piece of writing, from poetry to novella to second-novel revising.