As COVID-19 vaccines make their way into arms, people are beginning to return to in-person life. This requires careful consideration of how to return to work, school, and the wider world in safe ways that contribute to our mental health and well-being. This is no small feat.
When the pandemic hit, we scrambled to migrate our work, education, social, and entertainment experiences to online spaces. While quarantined to curb the spread of the virus, all manner of digital resources allowed us to stay informed and in touch. In many ways, this saved us over the course of the past year. In other ways, it cost us.
As we consider a re-engagement with embodied spaces, it’s crucial that we make a plan for how to do so with our personal and communal health in mind. The sudden and unpredictable nature of the past year led to the creation of habits that both helped and hurt us in this regard. We logged more hours with screens, went long periods of time without any in-person social practice, and experienced losses of all kinds. We acclimated ourselves to a certain set of realities that will no longer be necessary to maintain. Our habits may fail us as our new normal takes shape.
Given that an over-reliance upon technology comes with certain costs to our ability to focus, connect deeply with others, and regulate our emotional states, it’s important to address our pandemic-related technology dependence now. In order to do so, we must make a realistic assessment of the technology-related habits we’ve created during quarantine and consider them alongside the values that we hold most dear in life. Once we’ve identified habits that may hold us back from re-entering communal life in healthy ways, we would be wise to set some healthy new norms to guide our trajectory toward health.
Here are a few ideas for how to begin this process.
1. Consider your technology habits in a non-judgmental way. The topic of our technology use is a sensitive one and we often feel an ambient sense of guilt or shame around the amount of time we spend with our devices. As much as possible, consider your relationship with technology without judgment. Simply notice how much time you spend with it and where you go when interacting with it. Pay attention to how you feel before you pick up a device and when you set it back down. Notice how your body positions itself while engaging a device. Recall any times in which you privileged interaction with technology to engagement with people in your space. Pay attention to how capable you feel of resisting tech engagement when you are with important people in your life.
2. Make a list of habits related to your technology use. This would include times or situations in which your use is particularly high or relied upon to help you get by as well as the places where your use is highest (in bed, in the bathroom, etc.). Once this list is completed, rank order your tech habits from least harmful to most harmful in terms of how they help or hurt your relationship with your self, your surroundings, and the people in them.
3. Identify your strongest core values. Accessing a core value list such as this one, identify your top five values. Work hard to identify those that are closest to your heart and mind in terms of ideals that guide the trajectory of your life in thought, heart, and deed.
4. Consider each technology habit against each core value. Cross-examine your tech habits list and your values list. Is the value of authenticity congruent with your social media use? Does texting only as a form of communication actually enhance your commitment to friendship? Does your use of Google search and/or media sources truly contribute to your valuing of wisdom?
5. Address/break one tech habit that isn’t serving you. This won’t be easy and, yet, is possible. Determine to insert a brief five- to 10-second pause between your impulse to engage the habit and any action you might take. Offer yourself meaningful alternatives to the impulsive tech grab and practice them so that you’ll be ready when you need them. For example, if Google searches are shortchanging your critical thinking skills, begin to pair your noticing of the Google logo with taking three deep breaths and looking out the window, offering yourself time to engage your own mind before the search.
Habits are rarely easy to break and often hold us back from living the kinds of lives we aspire to. This big, beautiful, terrifying, wondrous, anxiety-provoking post-pandemic “do-over” is the perfect opportunity for contemplation and deep thought about what has served us as well and for letting go of what has not. Let’s get to work.