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Digital rituals

Letter #70 • July 25th, 2023

→ Read on the web​

Transforming a habit into a ritual can be surprising. While habits are unconscious and almost automated, rituals are deliberate, carrying intention and a deeper significance. For instance, we can have the habit of applying skincare to our face every evening, or watering our plants every weekend. When transformed into rituals, the smallest acts take a different flavour. What is it like to be immersed in the moment when we moisturise our face, to focus on the sensation of our fingers running on our skin, and to appreciate that we are engaging in an act of self-care? What is it like to pamper our plants, to be attentive to their growth, to delicately dampen their leaves instead of mechanically watering them and moving on?

Here’s the kicker: we can’t replace all of our unconscious habits with deliberate rituals. Being deliberate all day would require us to make a decision for every tiny action we take, such as validating our bus ticket on our commute or pressing the elevator button. Since our brain doesn’t have the capacity to constantly be present, we automate certain behaviours.

It's an valuable exercise to examine our habits and wonder: what would it look like if it were a ritual? How could we infuse more meaning into our routine? In today's edition, we'll dive into rituals for our phones, one of the best digital well-being apps, and the double-edged sword of site blockers.

Enjoy the read, and I'll see you next week!

- Clo

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🌳 Rooted read

​The Dao of Using Your Smartphone​

I’m excited to share this calmer, almost more poetic take on our relationship with our technology. In this article, professor of religious studies and classical Chinese thought Alan Levinovitz adopts a different view from the usual “tech-life balance as a way to increase productivity”. Taking inspiration from Confucianism and Daoism, he argues that rituals are key to reenchanting our relationship with tech. He believes that instead of striving for efficiency and measurable goals, we should add some uselessness to our digital life.

While habits are an unconscious way to navigate the world, rituals - of friction, of sacrifice, of transgression - allow us to inhabit it more mindfully. By deliberately cultivating practices that carry meaning in our eyes, we can alter the way we apprehend our phone. Here’s an example from Alan Levinovitz:

One of my personal digital rituals is to track my mood & daily activities before I go to bed. I use an app for that, which gives me powerful data on correlation between my mood & activities since I've been using it for nearly 5 years. That's right, I've gathered this data for 1885 consecutive days.

→ What about you, do you already have rituals in place around your use of tech? If not, would you like to create some?

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~ a short break from our programme ~
~ here's how you can be more deliberate with your phone ~

Do you intend to spend time learning a new language or practicing an instrument, only to end up mindlessly scrolling on your phone? Are you struggling to spend quality time with friends & family, often getting distracted by emails or social media?

• If you're tired of letting your phone dictate how you spend your time
• If you want to make progress towards your goals rather than letting social media grab your eyeballs
• If you think it's time to better connect with your loved ones and stop being only half-present

... let's work together.

To help you be more deliberate with your phone, I offer 1:1 coaching. By signing up for the digital well-being Action Plan, you'll get personalised help, 1:1 calls, powerful questions, tools, and scientific knowledge to get out of your way. As a certified digital well-being coach, I will guide you through every step to kickstart your digital well-being transformation in only 2 weeks.

~ resuming our programme ~

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🌿 Featured vines

Jomo is a fantastic digital well-being app that takes a mindful approach by inviting us to reflect on our tech use with powerful in-app journaling. For instance, you can categorise an app by whether it was positive, neutral, or negative for you today. You can also go deeper by selecting what you used it for: connecting with friends, learning something new, mindlessly scrolling, etc. The design is gorgeous, and the team regularly rolls out new features. Try it out for free, and use the affiliate code TTSG15 to get 15% off annual and lifetime subscriptions. Download Jomo on iOS.

The Boonly is an insightful newsletter sent every Sunday for anyone craving a spark of wholesome curiosity, an antidote to “hustle culture”, and the permission to rest, relax and enjoy your Sundays. An email I open every week like a gift. Sign up here!

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🌱 Seed for growth

Think twice about site blockers.

According to research led by attention researcher Dr. Gloria Mark, site blockers are not always good for us. It actually depends on our personality. For people who tend to be more impulsive and have poor self-regulation, they’re great! Site blockers do the work instead of the person who might struggle with it.

However, for those with good self-regulation, site blockers can actually be harmful. How come? Well, since they are good at self-regulating, they can easily take a short break online, and then come back to work. When deprived of that possibility due to the site blocker, they keep working through, don’t take breaks, and end up feeling burnt out. Make sure you pick the best solution for your personality!

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🪴 Bolstering branches

Whenever you are ready, I would love to help you reach tech-life balance:
→ Discover the science behind 30 healthy digital habits with the Tech Bliss workbook​
→ Book a 1:1 coaching session where we'll craft a robust personalised action plan together. I'll help you go from overwhelmed and distracted to present and focused.
→ Invite me to give a workshop at your company. I love to help teams with interactive presentations, to raise their awareness and help them craft better tech habits.

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→ Sharing it on Twitter or other social platforms
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→ Make a donation to the tip jar below

Want to share some feedback? A relevant resource you’d like me to feature? Let me know, I respond to every email.

See you next week!

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