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The virtues must adapt to the needs of its different societies.
I’ve been going through cycles of screen addiction. It’s not great, but really common. I’ll delete an app off my phone and find my attention centered now on another one. I’ll turn on grayscale mode and then turn color back on. I looked into less powerful phones only to immediately miss my navigation apps. I’ll add home wifi filters, but then switch to data.
There are many different remedies, all have varying success rates. To this day I still feel that I sync time into a hole. My brain has been monopolized by psychological algorithms.
I was in Mexico City recently and met a film director. He had turned on grayscale for his phone. He deleted social media apps. To paraphrase, he said something similar to:
When I needed to use the bathroom, I would get up from my laptop and take out my phone to watch videos. I could not even fathom being bored on the way to the bathroom!
What’s been more important to me than individual toggles is building a concrete philosophy and framework. The one I’m now building looks at boredom as virtue.
In truth, it’s not boredom that’s the desired output. It is the secondary effects of being bored. Your mind will go mad looking for interest and hopefully devolve into a productive mode of thought. Often, the best way to be productive is to just remove everything that is more interesting than the productive thing.
I really like this essay by David R. MacIver called My (no-longer-)secret magical practice that goes into the concept of a secondary anchor.
The goal is to once again weaponize boredom into productivity. While doing something productive, you will eventually lose focus. When this happens, you draw your focus to something more boring, like a rock. This object won’t be able to hold your focus for long until you crave the more interesting thing - the main task.
I don’t always have a main task. Sometimes the task is finding the task. I make lists each day for what I want to accomplish, but I don’t sit down for many minutes to construct it. Usually the tasks are obvious - sometimes they aren’t.
Forcing yourself to be bored once in a while gives you the opportunity to think. I used to have a lot of great ideas when I was bored. Oh how I hated the boredom, but maybe it’s akin to going to the gym.
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