Description: Dr. Tina Boogren invites you to embrace tech-free moments. Learn how setting small tech boundaries can improve your daily life.
Resources: The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
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Transcription: Hi, and welcome to Self Care for Educators. I am your host, Dr. Tina Bogren. This is our fifth season and our sixth episode. This week, my invitation to you is to per usual, something I'm working on myself, to invite in some tech-free time into your day. Pretty recently I read the incredible book, The Anxious Generation. I know many of you have read that book. It's excellent. Just kind of really talking about for parents, for educators, Gen Z and what we've done to them with technology. I could go on and on.
But how I want to relate that to this episode this week is really that book forced me to kind of pause and think about my own technology use. And I've really developed some habits I'm really happy about. But as always, some weeks are better than others. What I've been really trying to implement is tech-free time, especially for me, it's in the evening. So as we know, decision fatigue sets in during the day, we get tired in the evening, one of the shortcuts our brain makes is- we want to do nothing. And the easy thing that we can do when we wanna do nothing is just scroll.
And listen, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I think there's a time and a place to just kind of let our brains go and watch all the cat videos or whatever it is. And yet, It's a danger zone, right? Cause I can find, I'll just speak for myself, I can find myself, yes, I have a moment of escape, but then that leads to, I don't know, like an hour or two of escape. And I just don't always feel so great spending so much time just scrolling. It doesn't, let me put it this way, I don't ever scroll for a long time and then get done and go, “Man, I feel energized and awake and alive.” Instead it's like, “Oh God, did I just really look at, look at all those dog videos for that long?” Right? And my brain does, like all of us, the comparison. And even though I feel like I've done a pretty good job of curating my social media feeds to be positive places, there's still all the ads and everything that you just can't control. And so it's just something for me personally that I want to kind of get a hold of. And so I like kind of setting some boundaries and getting a habit and a ritual set around things that are important to me.
And so what I'm going to work on this week, and I'm going to invite you to do it as well, is to just create time in the evening that I'm just calling tech-free time, where instead of scrolling, I'm going to, and ideally for me, I don't even want to watch TV. I want to be away from a screen. So I love to read. I love to read. And for some reason though, even though I love it, it can be hard for me to stop. Um, I mean, not just literally start chapter one. I mean, pick up the book and start reading because it's so much easier to just pick up my phone and start scrolling.
But I know that if I declare this time in the evening tech-free time, it's going to nudge me towards picking up that book and reading that book. And it's going to make me so happy. I want to do more reading. I love reading. I mean, I read a lot, but oftentimes I start reading right before I go to bed and I'm tired and I fall asleep so quickly so it can take me a while to get through a book. But I envision, especially this fall season that I shared in the last episode, how much I love fall and sinking into it. Like picturing this time in the evening where I light my candles, my pumpkin bourbon candle. Oh, that smell. That candle from Target, the bourbon pumpkin, I think I said pumpkin bourbon, bourbon pumpkin. That smell, that scent is, oh, I love it so much.
So I picture myself lighting the candle, kind of getting in my reading chair and just settling in with my book and putting my phone away, away, away, away. So I am not distracted by it and it doesn't have to be all evening. I can allow myself a little bit of scroll time, but I'm going to set a time for myself that works for me where it's just tech-free time. And I'm going to dig into the pleasure of reading. So figuring out for you, if this is something that appeals to you, do you want to declare tech-free time for you or for your family? When do you want tech-free time? Maybe that's at lunch. Maybe it's in the morning- it doesn't have to be in the evening. Figure out what works for you and how are you going to spend that time so that it feels like something you can look forward to? Rather than just avoiding the phone and then feeling anxious of like, “well, I don't know what to do.” What, what can you do?
So maybe you can go for a walk and you might need to take your tech for an emergency, but you're gonna just not listen to music, not listen to a podcast, make it a tech-free walk, and just put your phone away. You've got it for an emergency, but you can just, mm, sink into that. Maybe it's time with your family, maybe you're playing a game together, maybe you are cooking, doing some meal prep, you are painting, or whatever your thing is. Making sure that you put the technology away to allow yourself to do that thing that you love so much.
So let's make it, not a tech-free week, but tech-free time this week and see how that makes this feel. See if that's a happiness boost. As always, I'm cheering so hard for you. Thank you to Adrienne for helping to make this podcast happen in such a big way. Thank you to Solution Tree and Marzano Resources. I just pinch myself still after almost 14 years that this is the job I get to do. I'm so grateful for it. And to you, my badass self care squad. I am so grateful for each and every one of you. I'm cheering so hard for you. Feel my hand on your back as you move through this week and make it a great one.
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