Digital tools over digital drugs (Alt: Go at human pace)

Part 1: Ten things to take into 2025

Welcome to this 10-part series on 10 things to take into 2025.

I’ve loved Catie Payne’s Reskillience podcast's '10 Things’ series, in which her guests gather a list of 10 things that are alive for them right now—things to inspire a more resilient, skilful future or maybe a better way to put it: ‘10 foundations for a F YEAH! Existence’. If you love Catie’s podcast, you can support it here on Pateron.

I’m inspired to riff off Catie’s awesome project by jotting down 10 things I’m taking into 2025 - which has given me an opportunity to sprinkle in all the juicy changes that are happening for me this year too.

I’m aiming to publish new parts of this series weekly. You can look forward to future posts crammed with big thoughts and big shifts in mindset. Some things to kick to the curb and leave in 2024. Some new and some well-established habits, some ambitions, some intentions, a fun prototype, and some gentle reminders I (and maybe you too?) need to take into 2025.

What are you taking into 2025? Let me know in the comments, I’d love to know.

Ok, let’s go!

Thing #1: Digital tools over digital drugs

(Alternatively: Go at human pace)

I was a late adopter of the mobile phone. I could see all my friends being so contactable, which seemed very undesirable to me. In my late teens and early 20s, I wanted maximum freedom. If people needed to contact me, they had to call my home and leave a message with my mum. Brilliant. 

These days I’m wondering whether we are using digital technology, or is it using us?

Being a creative in the 2020s means splitting your time sometimes in rather unbalanced proportions between making things and making content about the things while trying to keep up with never-ending changes to algorithms and lists of marketing and social media tasks. I’m starting to find it exhausting.

Having to spend so much time in the world of social media trying to get your work seen by an increasingly distracted audience is like dancing around the edge of a black hole. At any moment you can go from being a content creator to being a content consumer and being sucked into the black hole of scrolling. Sometime later you snap out of it, and think, what was I doing again?

Does this happen to you?

Dr Anna Lembke says that social media is a ‘digital drug’ in this 2023 ABC article.

Digital devices are designed using the same psychology as other addictions.

"They are engineered to be addictive, and they work exactly as intended."

“When we're repeatedly exposed to pleasure-producing stimuli, our brains adjust, and eventually, we need more and more just to feel "normal," or not in pain, Dr Lembke says.

Known as a dopamine-deficient state, this cycle can lead to depression, anxiety, feelings of hopelessness or insomnia.

It’s so difficult to know what to focus on or how to feel with ALL THE THINGS happening in the world right now, let alone trying to navigate that while tech bros are trying to tap my attention as well.

Now, I’m not the Luddite I was in my youth and I’m not calling for the fall of the internet (yet). I truly appreciate the power and usefulness of digital platforms, apps, hardware, and the mycelial nature of how the internet connects us globally.

I love sitting in my car using the parking app, rather than fighting the dastardly parking meter in the teaming rain. Genius.

But… I want to start thinking of these incredibly useful digital technologies as tools. Something to pick up and use with agency, and then put down when I’m done.

It feels like a courageous action to empower your agency over digital distraction in a world that seems intent on amusing itself to death.

I want to make more things with my hands without creating content for every step of the process.

I want to spend more time in the community and with my friends, making deeper connections and having more real conversations.

I want to do things that involve all of my senses, not just my sore ol’ eyes and ears.

I want to do things that are restorative for my nervous system.

I want my hands and mind to learn skills that are un-Google-able, and for my heightened instincts to switch from being alert to notifications to being alert to small changes in the real world around me.

I want to model for my kids (and anyone else paying attention) that maybe it’s possible to use digital tech as a tool and show that it’s cool to live in a meaningful way without a digital addiction.

I want to go a human pace.

What does this actually mean for me this year?

Well, some mini and mighty changes:

• I’ve whoa-ed back from Instagram personally. I found so much joy and inspiration in the reels and other content I’ve seen there recently, but OMG, I’m so done with the time-consuming and addictive nature of it. So I’m not posting there personally anymore, just the occasional update from the club and my newsletter.
  These changes have helped me compartmentalise Instagram and my mindset has shifted. I haven’t watched a reel since before Christmas, and I think my nervous system is grateful, and my attention span is expanding. I shall report back any new findings.

• I’m doubling down on one of the club’s core values and making it even more offline this year. I’ll be making some announcements there soon.

• And the BIG ONE is that I’m taking a hiatus from commercial photography this year (or maybe forever), which will hopefully lead to less screen time, and way less time with my brain in digital-marketing-world, for both my own business and the brands I work with.
  I’m currently training to be a relief library worker bee with Libraries Tasmania. I’m excited for a new challenge, and to work in a team environment, connected to the community.

Thank you for reading this installment of Ten things to take into 2025.

Are digital distractions on your hit list for 2025 too?? I’d love to hear from you.

Keep an eye out for the rest of this series coming to your inbox weekly.