the offline experiment
two months of creating more than consuming
Experiment: What’s possible if I spend the next two months turning down the noise of social media and tuning into my inner-voice and wisdom instead? I’ll create more?
Hypothesis: I predict that by reducing the amount of time spent online viewing, liking, checking the creative output from others - the more time I’ll have to create. If I can block these apps, I’ll be able to save time, energy, emotions, and attention.
3 KEY TAKEAWAYS
Quick Disclaimer: Despite the reflections in this article, social media has allowed me to create an ADHD-friendly business from home. Instagram and TikTok, have allowed me to connect with my online communities of more than 70,000 wonderful people who continue to support and celebrate my artistic endeavours. It’s also not lost on me that you and I will most likely be reading this article on our phones.
1 . More Apps Blocked, Less Temptation
With a daily screen time that was reaching obscene levels of 5+ hours of mindless checking and scrolling, you would think that blocking the social media apps would have been more challenging. But, surprisingly not.
After almost a decade of sharing my life, thoughts, and building my business to be completely online - I found the break to be liberating. With the freedom to completely ignore the existence of Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok came the permission slip to stop putting pressure on myself to post. Rather than being overwhelmed by financial stress, as my visibility online is directly related to my ability to connect with future clients and therefore my monthly income, I actually signed more new clients than ever before. Emails popped up from interested clients and the universe kept sending the most aligned people my way.
I felt true creative freedom.
Using the OPAL app (fancy referral code VPAM5, ha) I locked myself out of the big three time-wasters from 9AM-4PM then 5PM-10PM. With just one cheeky little hour squeezed in from 4-5PM as a treat after I finished writing for the day. Thanks to this shift, my screen time was cut by 49% each day. Impressed? I was.
*I’ll admit that it felt good to let myself steal a quick 15 minute break time to find a particular post, watch an interesting video with lunch, or suss out a good recipe. I prefer to set soft goals than hard, rigid rules. So this worked for me.
My next scary steps will be to adjust the session difficulty by either increasing the delays or choosing to make breaks impossible, which I can’t decide if I would hate or find helpful. Then add the YouTube, Outlook, and Realestate apps to my block list.
2 . Gee Whiz, Humans Are Hunched Over Screens
If you jump on board this offline experiment, you’ll immediately notice the socially accepted and increasingly visible phone addiction epidemic. Suddenly hyperaware of all the strangers that you drive by, walk past, wait with, or sit beside in day to day life.
At the bus stops, shops, parks, doctors, and scarily even some while they’re meant to be driving. Their heads are pointed down, drawn into their own curated feeds, always checking or scrolling. I wouldn’t be surprised if the impact on our posture is some kind of evolution for humanity and that one day retirement homes will be full of bent over little old people. Maybe they’ll still be looking down at that tiny world in their screens.
If you want a jump scare there are some WILD images online of an AI generated ‘MINDY MODEL’ representing some extreme predictions of human evolution, including (in their words) text claws and tech necks. Tech apocolypse?
Want a great song recommendation? Listen to ‘listen to you might find yours by tom rosenthal now’ whenever you need the reminder to go offline. It’s whimsical lyrics:
Go on any train, bus, plane, and you’ll see people
who have stopped looking out of windows…
Don’t be one of them.The world is the one that lies before your feet,
in the people that you meet,
the smells, the sounds, the sights, the skies,
tell the world that you are ready and it replies.
You see I’m not sure what the secret to happiness is,
but I’m pretty sure it starts when you go outside.
- Tom Rosenthal, You Might Find Yours (2019)
3 . The Experiment WORKED
I wrote 23,417 words in Scrivener, which organises your writing into chapters and works well with my brain’s need for multiple tabs but also a sidebar where I can easily sort everything with headings and subheadings for easy access. Additionally, I started a mess of Word Documents full of ideas and drafts that added up to another 23,000 words. Excuse me? Excuuuuuse me? 46,417 words.
Printing out my proposal and holding it in my hands healed a younger undiagnosed version of myself. A tiny ten year old girl, short for her age, standing excitedly in front of her Year 3 teacher Mrs Yates, holding a stack of pages in her hand. She’d felt inspired to write a story and buzzed with anticipation. Ten pages in total. Ten pages for a ten year old is basically an entire manuscript. This teacher, instead of fostering my creativity or encouraging my passion, scolded me for getting off-task and noted that I had obviously rushed through the writing without checking it as per usual.
I have never forgotten that moment.
This is why I became an advocate, a validating voice speaking comforting words of wisdom for other neurodivergent adults who have their own crushing experiences like this one. Echoes of every criticism and correction that we’ve heard at home, work, and in our relationships. People who feel entitled to tell us that our way is wrong, or less than. I’m getting on a rant here, but before I move on, let me say this…
Please take the time to celebrate your tiny steps towards a more compassionate ADHD-friendly life by noticing whenever you advocate for your needs, honour your differences, or rewrite their shame stories. Notice it. Celebrate it. Tell someone about it. Training your brains to reject the negativity bias that Mrs Yates had allowed to dampen her days and crush the spirit of a young creative neurodivergent kid.
You betcha I’ve happy cried pretty consistently in celebration of this achievement. A long term project requires planning, prioritising, organising, and sustained attention. I needed to manage time, regulate my emotions, and stay motivated. I used every strategy in the ADHD coaching book to persevere (gross word, I know) so that I had a finished-ish book proposal come April 1st - TODAY!