Drowning in Digital Emptiness

From time to time, I find myself scrolling my phone for hours, losing track of time. It is so easy to indulge in short videos, fragmented content, and endless feeds. I feel guilty and empty afterward. I rarely remember what I saw or learned during those hours. It's meaningless.

It feels like I'm drowning in the infinite digital ocean of emptiness, and I desperately want to escape.

A Lifeboat

I came across the concept of “shén sǎn” while reading a book about Chinese Medicine. It translates to “a scattered mind”. My mind is all over the place. When I'm scrolling my phone, my mind is scattered across fragmented pieces of digital content. And when my mind is scattered, it is weakened and loses control.

The escape is surprisingly simple: bring your mind back together. A unified mind is powerful and able to regain control of focus. A mind in power can stop and redirect attention from indulging in digital emptiness to more meaningful activities. It regains the power to escape.

But how do we bring our minds back together? According to the book, it starts with self-awareness. This requires practice. Regularly perform system checks by being aware of what we are doing and how we are feeling. Pay attention to all the sensory inputs from our body. Pay attention to the Present.

The more we practice, the stronger our minds will be. Our conscious mind would be a steady lifeboat that brings us back safely to the shore.

The Physical Environment

In addition to mental exercises, it is also important to be mindful of our physical environment. The following are just some ideas that I have that help bring my mind together:

Paper & Pen: Try using paper & pen to express ideas other than digital screens. This is something that I learned from Raphael Schaad at Config 2024: a pen is a physical representation of the mind, bringing fragile ideas directly into the real world without distractions. Paper and pen help us focus on the present moment. Digital screens might be good for execution, but paper and pen are the perfect medium for distract-free ideation, for pure exercise of the brain.
Digital Minimalism: Practice digital minimalism by being selective about the content we consume. Take control of our feed instead of being passively fed by algorithms.
Digital Detox: Finally, try a digital detox. Train our minds to be less dependent on technology. Train our minds to be comfortable with boredom. We don't need to reach our phone whenever there is a lull.

The physical world is vast and amazing. Try to experience it, feel it, and sense it to the fullest. Fill your mind with the rich variety of sensations the world has to offer, rather than the emptiness of the digital void. Escape from the digital emptiness into the richness of the physical world.

Stay focused, stay conscious.