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A computer engineer by profession, how could I not love gadgets? I live a life that’s dictated by fitbits, apps (for literally everything, such as even splitting the expenditure during a trip), my tablet and, of course, my mobile phone. I hardly watch TV now because whatever I want to watch, I do that on my tab. My routine, till recently, involved coming back home from office around 6 in the evening, freshening and lying down on my couch binge watching episodes of sitcoms or watching movies. If I didn’t do it at my place, I hung up with friends and we watched either cricket or football matches together. After I took my dinner around 9, I usually was stuck with Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. If not these, I watched anything to everything that’s trending on social media. From the aunty gormint raps to cute pet videos going viral, I literally left nothing. I started feeling that this was affecting my sleep quality in a very harmful way. Only during some late night browsing, I came across an article that said that late night gadget use at night can severely lower my melatonin levels, causing harm to my sleep. And I was realizing it for myself. My sleep was getting lesser and lesser and there was a night when I did not sleep for more than four hours. This needed to change and so I decided to turn my gadgets off after 8 PM for a week. Here’s how it went. I wrote the following at the end of each successive day.
Today is the first day of my challenge. I come home only to find my relatives at my place with some nephews and nieces who get stuck around me as soon as I reach home. It is 6:10 in the evening. My nieces ask me to play YouTube videos of some cartoons which I do for them, with one eye at the clock. I make sure I have no messages to be replied to, no hanging mails, nothing that would distract me from my challenge. My relatives leave about in an hour. The clock strikes 8 and I put my phone on flight mode. I turn off everything, including my fitbit, and put them aside. It suddenly feels like a very long day. I have my dinner around half past 8. Surprisingly, I am in bed at 10, about to doze off.
I wake up to a long list of messages and a few missed calls. I have not yet told my friends about what I was doing this week. I reply to all of them on my way to office. I had a better sleep last night and the long list of messages make me feel good. Today, when I reach home, I am looking forward for the clock to strike 8. When it does, I was in the middle of a chat. Somehow, I wind it up by 8:10 and turn my phone off. A similar routine follows. I have my dinner by 8:30 and am in bed by 9:30, about to doze off.
A new thing that’s happening for two days now is that I am having my dinner with my family, instead of alone in my room while watching something on my tab. That feels good. Today, somehow, I am not in the mood to turn my gadgets off. I am watching a very dramatic episode of a sitcom which ends at 7:40 pm. I am so tempted to watch the next episode too. I fight with myself and to distract my mind, I call a few friends. They come over and we go out for dinner. I leave my phone home. I came back around 11:30 and am about to doze off.
I am feeling that it is impossible for our generation to live without gadgets. We need some stimulation all the time and going off gadgets is not working for me. I share this with a friend who changes my mind. She is a poet and has always been anti-technological-handicap. I reach home and call her up to get motivated to keep my phone aside at 8. She does that really well and I know I need to do this to stop letting this dependence become an addiction. I turn everything off by 8. I have dinner and go for a walk for the first time without music in my ears. I can hear the katydids and crickets chirping and sense the amazing fragrance of a March evening. This feels great. I come home feeling very relaxed only to doze off.
Today evening I have an office party to attend. I think that it is going to be an easy day because parties can easily keep you off your gadgets. But there’s a bummer. I reach the party around 7 and have drinks and snacks with my friend-colleagues. But then we decide to click photos. It is past 8. I am not sure that if I am not the one clicking the photos then will it count as the use of a gadget or not. I allow myself a benefit of doubt and let other click my pictures. I keep my phone on today because my parents usually get worried if they can’t reach me on such occasions. But I make sure that I turn my data off and do not respond to any other call. I reach home around 1 and sleep.
I stay home the entire day, stuffed in my bed. For a change, instead of watching sitcoms, a thing I usually do on weekends like this, I pick up a novel – ‘The Kite Runner’ by Khaled Hosseini. I had started the book a month ago but never got time to get back to it. I spend the day glued to it, hardly looking at my phone twice or thrice the entire day. It is evening and I go for a bush walk. Relaxed by the natural sounds, I come home, have dinner and doze off.
Monday felt the best day of my life since a long time. I had been sleeping well. I didn’t need my gadgets around all the time. I had a sense of accomplishment and now I knew that life actually felt better with lesser use of technology. I learnt that one should use it to one’s comfort but don’t let that device drive you. Now, it’s not a thumb rule that I will not use my gadgets after 8 PM (I still regret missing ‘Logan’ but never mind because I am watching it today) but I will use them as less as possible, almost negligibly at night. Life gets simpler this way.
Compiled by Sangeeta Soni
(Image Courtesy: BCCL & Shutterstock Images)
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