Let’s Scroll Lock

Today morning while I was having my best cup of coffee I looked at my phone to see an alert to login into medium.com. Soon after that, I opened my banking app to check an alert that popped on the screen followed by a WhatsApp message that landed on my phone I had to open it and reply to the message, and then the same time I got a LinkedIn alert I had to reply to a recruiter for an open position. And then guess what started to happen? I started scrolling on my phone to see the interesting posts with the next and next and until the point that they were no new posts pending to scroll.

Photo by Adrian Swancar on Unsplash

We are in a world of device scroll, the moment we touch our devices we start scrolling for more and finally we scroll to a point that the posts are done and there are no new posts beyond it. We have the best Netflix movie on the landing page we tend to scroll for more. We play our favorite pastime song on YouTube, while that’s running, in parallel we move our remote cursor scroll in search of the next song.
Knowingly or unknowingly we are constantly missing this moment of our life. We are so busy scrolling that we are missing to talk to the person sitting in front of us, we are forgetting to call family and friends. What makes me more surprising is, though the mobile has given an alerting system to touch the phone when it alerts we still tend to touch it even without an alert and look for an update. And, though we do not have an update or alert we unlock, land on an app and finally the scrolling begins again. This happens all through the day in and out.
We are missing our energetic days, productivity, health. We are constantly forgetting to go out for walking breathe that fresh air, we are forgetting to get some sunlight and we are forgetting everything except for that something which has an option to scroll.

Here are 10 things that you could do to optimize the usage

1. Limit your apps to not more than 2 slides
2. Group apps into the folder so that when you unlock your phone you will search for what you want instead of landing on the app that consumes your time (All Banking apps into one folder and shopping apps into another folder)- Initially this might look a bit confusing and might not make a lot of sense eventually you will find the purpose in it.
3. Have a caller name be called when your phone rings so that you can avoid looking at the phone for scam and marketing calls
4. Don’t take your phone along with you when you don’t need it(like Restroom when you are at home).
5. Keep it away during bedtime and other times keep it 6 feet away from the body to avoid radiations.
6. Turn on silent mode when you are in a meeting.
7. Use speakerphone option to avoid radiations for most calls, unless it’s personal
8. Use voice messaging instead of typing long messages. iPhone has this inbuilt feature. You don’t necessarily need WhatsApp to use this feature.
9. If you want to talk to someone, call them and talk instead of long messaging that way you don’t need to wait until the other person replies to your message.
10. Don’t upgrade to the latest version of devices unless it’s needed. Every new version of it has a new feature that consumes our time more and more.

My idea behind writing this article is to convey to the readers that knowingly or unknowingly we are missing the best and most active days of life by scrolling devices. Here are the 3 final thoughts that I tried and the results were jaw-dropping.

1. Put your phone away during workouts — I was able to do a complete session that was planned.
2. Put devices away during morning rituals — I noticed my mornings were more active and positive. In a media interview, the greatest cricketer of all time Sachin Tendulkar shared his thoughts this way “ I always believed in preparation. Nothing is guaranteed in life. The result is not in your hands. But preparation is.”
3. Put devices away during family time — I got a lot more time to spend with my family than usual.

Image courtesy: Google Images

STAY ACTIVE, ENJOY THIS MOMENT AND THIS DAY.