{"id":2307,"date":"2020-01-02T08:35:34","date_gmt":"2020-01-01T22:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/?p=2307"},"modified":"2020-01-02T08:35:34","modified_gmt":"2020-01-01T22:05:34","slug":"the-analog-january-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/student-health-and-well-being\/2020\/01\/02\/the-analog-january-challenge\/","title":{"rendered":"The Analog January Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

I follow the blog of a guy called Cal Newport<\/a>. He writes on productivity and digital minimalism.<\/p>\n

He regularly posts tips for productivity and connecting to what matters.<\/p>\n

He just recently posted his Analog January Challenge<\/a> and I thought I’d link to it here.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s a collection of five commitments that last one month. They\u2019re designed to provide you a crash course introduction to the types of satisfying analog activities that will reduce the anxious attraction of your screens.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The five commitments are as follows:<\/p>\n

READ<\/strong>
\nCommit to reading 3 \u2013 4 new books during the month. It doesn\u2019t matter if they\u2019re fiction or non-fiction, sophisticated or fun. The goal is to rediscover what it feels like to make engagement with the written word an important part of your daily experience.<\/p>\n

MOVE<\/strong>
\nCommit to going for a walk every single day of the month. Try to make it at least 15 minutes long. Leave your phone at home: just observe the world around you and think.<\/p>\n

CONNECT<\/strong>
\nHold a real conversation with\u00a020 different<\/em> people during the month long challenge. These conversations can be in person or over the phone\/Facetime\/Skype, but text-based communication doesn\u2019t count (you must be able to hear the other person\u2019s voice). To hit the 20 person mark will require some advance planning: you might consider calling old friends or taking various colleagues along for lunch and coffee breaks.<\/p>\n

MAKE<\/strong>
\nParticipate in a skilled hobby that requires you to interact with the physical world. This could be craft-based, like knitting, drawing, wood working, or, as I\u2019ve taken to doing with my boys, building custom circuits. This could also be athletic, like biking, bow hunting, or, as is increasingly popular these days, Brazilian Ju Jitsu. Screen-based activities don\u2019t count. To get the full analog benefit here, you need to encounter and overcome the resistances of the physical landscape that surrounds you, as this is what our minds have evolved to understand as productive action.<\/p>\n

JOIN<\/strong>
\nJoin something local that meets weekly. For many people, this might be the hardest commitment, but it\u2019s arguably one of the most important, especially as we enter a political season where the pseudo-anonymity and limbic-triggers of the online world attempt to bring out the worse in us. There\u2019s nothing more fundamentally human than gathering with a group of real people in real life to work on something real together. This has a way of lessening \u2014\u00a0even if just briefly<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 the sense of anxious despair that emanates from the online upside down.<\/p>\n

I’ve chosen to go with ‘Read’ as this was a goal I had set myself for 2020 generally.<\/p>\n

The idea, as I understand it, is that rather than trying to reduce your time spent on digital devices, instead increase the time spent in the analog world<\/strong> and that will have the duel effect of:<\/p>\n