Meanderings: Intentional Use of Tech

Tech use should be intentional. Each thing used should have purpose.

Just trying to use less might not be the answer…

What I’m realizing is that the best way to determine your “tech diet” is to think in terms of using tech intentionally. If “intention” is the guiding principle, you can weed out the usages that are superfluous and “bad for you.”

Scrolling through Instagram is not intentional use of tech, but going on social media for a few minutes to check personal messages and see what your friends are up to, maybe is.

It’s hard to place a ban (whether complete or partial) on tech usage since it is, for better or worse, a part of our lives now. Saying something like “I won’t use tech during __ and __ hours” or “only one hour of screen time a day,” while might seem to be helpful, is just an arbitrary decision. It does nothing to help you live your life better.

Tech is a tool, it needs to be treated as a tool, and you don’t just decide how much time you will use a tool in a day. Like you don’t say “I’m only going to use my pens for 30 minutes, and once I’m done with that 30 minutes, no more!” This is a very haphazard handling, and puts all the focus on an arbitrary amount of time, which in many cases just makes you think about your usage of tech while you’re using it, at the expense of your actual productive use of it.