Digital Well- being in times of COVID 19
I greeted the year 2020 with a firm resolve that I would not have myself hooked on to any gadgets or devices (not that I’m particularly fond of them but they were generally addictive). But as the old saying goes, Resolutions are meant to be broken. In my case, however I was forced to break it.
An important off-shoot of the COVID era has been the increasing dependence of people on PC’s, laptops, and even mobile phones. The Education sector in particular has the whole “Online Learning or E- Learning Vertical” see an upsurge. If that is not all the idea has put immense strain on teachers, expecting this lot of regularly anti — gadgeteers to fixate themselves to a chair and laptop. And this is literally the case with every other profession I know of.
This has of course stepped up the need to be available online for often exposing us to higher levels of radiation and consistently damaging our eyes. However, there is a way to be at the top of all of these challenges by making certain alterations to your own life.
Firstly, limit yourselves to working continuously at the laptop and PC. If you have the chance to make sure you rest your eyes for every 1 hour of screen time. Since my 8th floor home overlooks a lot of greenery, I make it a point between my virtual classes to just stand for a full five minutes concentrating only on the greens. The next thing that I do is mindfully detach myself from everything that isn’t helping me grow. I also invest a full 7 minutes to watch the sun — set. I do this with a sense of gratitude that I was able to work on all that I have. I have also started working on my photography daily so as to hone my skills even in the 7 minutes I may have to have a quick cup of coffee.
Dinner has been suitably brought forward with my shift timings changing and this too has become a welcome change in our lives as a family. Thanks to me my parents too have to have their dinner on time.
Today, I prepared a list of 20 people I am cutting off from. This is important for my own mental health for small talk is meaningless for people who like honest and deep conversations. Small talk has very little productive meaning and if our relationship isn’t growing, it must get going. So while I may not cut away entirely, my communication I have decided will be limited maybe to weekends or perhaps even once a fortnight. This is by no means selfish. Sometimes we must cut off if people have to understand our worth and value. This is important for our own sanity. Plus, this keeps me away from social media for good.
The third and most important thing I have recently started doing is to turn on the Digital Well being app on my phone which goes on when I go to sleep and turns off around the time I am to wake up. This means that my body is well rested and so is my mind. When my body’s battery is charged up I wake up in the morning fresh as can be.
As for the headaches I have started working on it consciously carving more time now for mindfulness at the beginning and the end of the day.
Give yourselves the time and the space in your head for your body to work as hard as is possible. This is important. If we can give devote ourselves to ourselves with the same amount of dedication and devotion that we are giving our work, we will find a noticeable difference in our new found reality.