Scrolling through your phone, watching endless TV, Netflix and chill, all poor quality leisure. You and your beautiful brain deserve better. Does that mean we should throw away our smart phones and go live with the Amish community? Well, except you chose to. If however, you want to still remain ‘Century 21 compliant’. smart phones, Netflix and all, keep on reading for better technology and lifestyle habits you can adopt now, which your brain will thank you for later.
Hello Darling.
Thank you for coming by my Real Estate corner on the Internet. I am excited about life and I hope that you are too. That is not to say we don’t have challenges, but I heard something recently that both got me thinking, at the same time gave me peace.
“This world was not made to give us any comfort”.
True that!!!
Times change so much. Just check the news. If I was getting my comfort, never mind joy from this world, I would never be joyful beyond 3 mins. Thankfully, changing times don’t change a timeless God.
God remains gooooood, and in that, I have JOY!!!
I pray you do too.
Plus it is my birthday on Wednesday, yaaaay!!!!
And if you know me, I always make a fuss on my birthdays.
At the end of this blog, I have a birthday request to ask you, which you can give.
As we said in the intro, we wanna discus better habits around our technology in particular, and lifestyle in general.
Before we proceed, I must say that I did an amazing YouTube video here on High quality leisure…
That video would form a great foundation for this blog post, so check it out first, then come back and continue. don’t worry, the blog will be waiting for you when you are done. Hehe
Ok, so now that you have watched it, I wanna emphasis just one of the points I shared in the video.
Ready?
Schedule your poor quality leisure!
Stuff like scrolling through your IG streets, watching Netflix endlessly, checking out every body’s whatsapp status, following twitter trends, and bookmarking every gossip/news blog.
And by strategically, I mean schedule it.
One mistake we make is to let it creep into every time of the day, especially when we get bored or tired with work, and for most people, every 3 mins because they are addicted.
What this means is that you keep fragmenting the ability of your otherwise intelligent brain to FOCUS and do some DEEP WORK, which is what will lead to high value output, not all the mediocrity and poor work we see today.
If you keep interrupting your every moment with dings and pings, you weaken your brain’s ability to focus and that is a dangerous place to be, and progressively so.
They are like the junk food of the brain, and even though it may feel good in the moment, like all junk food do, the end result is never worth it, especially when we don’t control the portion and frequency of consumption.
Like I have always said, when we are consuming content online, we sometimes think of it as ‘just….’, but it is not ‘just content’, it is TRAINING.
For every kind of content we consume, we are training our brains to be weak or strong.
High quality content feed the brain, like research, reading a good book, mental activities that require you to think, beyond passive consumption, and so on strengthen the brain muscles.
So we must feed the brain more of this, and at a higher frequency, and even before the junk food entertainment, a.k.a passive scrolling and consumption, goes in to take space. Which is why it is real dangerous to begin your day with scrolling through Instagram. The sugar high you feel from that junk source, will soon crash you.
True!!!
So, how do we navigate social media and endless scrolling!!!
Simple, SCHEDULE IT!!!
Determine ahead of time, when you will indulge in these poor quality leisure, and control the quantity of time, and frequency of consumption.
As said, please do not start your day with it.
As a believer, we are best off starting our day with some precious quiet time with Jesus. Open your Bible and read. Where possible, especially if you cannot resist the pull of the phone’s dings and buzzes, don’t use a Bible or Study app on the phone.
That battle is too hard and not easily won, and frankly, there is no need to engage in it.
For me personally, as I plan my day, I make sure to get on whatsapp or check emails, which are the major ‘low quality leisure’ I have, I make sure I have done at least 40 to 50% of my main work, and even then, I time it, and when it is done, I go back to work, waiting for the next time I get to check.
I find that it is even more exciting that way, as messages, especially the social ones, have cumulated some, and so I can handle all of it at once, instead of checking endlessly even when there is nothing to see.
Then I do my best to drop my phone at a certain time of the night, except for very important work.
I am certainly not perfect yet, but I don’t let poor quality leisure take complete control of my life, ever.
Now, if you need more context on this, especially if you are wondering how to navigate this if you work primarily on social media and all, please read Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism. It is absolutely brilliant.
Don’t forget to watch the video too.
And, gosh, seeing how many kids are getting addicted these days, it is necessary we start to take drastic steps. I love that in some Western countries, they are making laws to protect kids from the effect of digital devices and algorithms, and even regulating the kind of content they make available for kids.
Brilliant.
However, we as parents and caretakers must do our best from home too. Which is why if you need help, I gotcha!
This Thursday, It’s Possible is gonna be LIVE!!!
A 3-day deep dive Masterclass into yell-free parenting and low-screen kids.
Would appreciate if you can help me share this flier anywhere you have your people.
Can’t wait to see you in the Masterclass.
To high quality consumption!
Eziaha
P.S.
eziaha@eziaha.com
That’s the email.
Send me your prayers.
If anything I have written or said online or in a live meeting with you, or my life in any way has blessed you, would you share with me the gift and blessing of your words? Not general words like ‘you are amazing’ but specifics. Your gift of words would help me keep fighting and winning the war of words the losing devil keeps trying me with.
Excited to slowly read, enjoy and savor your GIFT of WORDS to eziaha@eziaha.com