Our digital overlords have taken over: Meta, Alphabet, Amazon... Can we take back a little bit of our time – and money – by going back to the analog life, at least in some ways? 

The other night, I was preparing my kitchen for an evening of cooking. I was excited to cook chicken afritada, a basic but flavorful Filipino stew with a tomato base, trying a 5th attempt to slice the carrots and potatoes as consistent a size as I can and getting them as close to al dente as possible. To assist my endeavor, I pulled out my handy dandy brick of an iPad Air 1st gen, which isn't actually handy: the iOS is so old, that practically no apps include updates for it anymore. But at least I can still use it while I cook!

After placing my iPad Air in its designated spot on the kitchen counter, I automatically plugged it into the wall. It had been turned off from my last use, so I booted it back up, expecting the battery to be completely gone. 

To my great surprise, the battery was full! Past Joanne must have had the foresight to turn off the device after its last use, but Present Joanne couldn't even fathom that a device's battery could even be full. I had grown so accustomed to using devices the way that I use my phone: keep it on until the battery is almost dead or just dead. Plug it in before bed. Wake up with its battery fully charged. Repeat.

With my iPad Air, I had also gotten used to its terrible battery life, that a dead battery was completely normal to me.

But the full battery upon rebooting got me thinking: Could I ever operate my phone like that? Turn it off completely each night? Turn it off completely instead of turning on Do Not Disturb?

From Analog Life to the Matrix

I'm an elder millennial. I grew up sharing a landline with all 5 people in my immediate family, and then some if my parents rented out a room to a fellow Filipino expat. I also grew up listening to this beautifully maddening sound before logging on to Young Internet, when a 3-minute song took 30-90 minutes to download.

I didn't get my first dedicated cell phone until I was in high school. Turning off my phone was typical because who would call me in the middle of the night? They could call my landline because why waste my minutes or theirs?? (For you young ones reading this: in the early cell phone days, you had to stock up on and buy literal time in minutes to talk to your friends on your cell phone. The unlimited era is glorious – please count your blessings.)

Many years after the early, innocent days of Facebook that started as a college networking platform with a chronological feed (I really miss the chronological feed days...) and many generations of phone technology after T9 predictive texting and the Nokia 3310, we are now living in the Matrix: we are plugged in to our phones at all times of the day. In fact, they're not even phones. They're compact computers with incredible processing power, allowing many of us to work directly from the phone. I can send emails from my phone like nobody's business. (I even taught myself type without looking at the tiny keyboard, much like I did for my QWERTY keyboards. KEYBOARD NERD OVER HERE.)

We play the New York Times Crossword and Wordle on our phones, use the scientific calculator (just me?), and collaborate with our coworkers on our phones. Our phone is also our camera and video editor and dark room, all in our hand. We even use our phones as our alarm clocks, so the incentive to turn it off completely is not very high for all the functionality it brings to our daily lives.

[SIDE NOTE: Consider, too, that Meta is known to track more than just the clicks on the websites you visit. With how much data they mine, they can even predict locations you might visit in the future. WILD. Yes, you can definitely turn off location services so that they don't track that data. But they're still tracking cookies – little pieces of code that essentially leave your fingerprints behind to sell targeted ads that you see on your Instagram feed as if Meta was listening directly to your microphone. (I'm in for the conspiracy theory that they could easily be guilty of that, but that theory has supposedly been debunked... I'm not 100% convinced...) But I digress. I'll have to address my qualms with Meta in another post.]

What do you mean by analog life?

Technology has made insane advancements in just the past 100 years. Consider that early computer chips developed in the 1970s housed about 2,300 transistors which were around 10,000 nanometers each. Today's computer chips? The smallest transistor is now about 3 nanometers small (10,000 times smaller than a strand of human hair!) meaning a single computer chip can house up to trillions of transistors. 

No wonder the digital age has brought us society-altering devices like the iPhone. And it has certainly hastened our productivity: imagine how we would have communicated at work just 25 years ago – fax machines were still used, snail mail was still a thing, and we didn't yet have electronic signatures to sign contracts.

But technology has also disconnected us from a slower, more present life. 

So my challenge to you, dear reader, is to intentionally slow it down. Here are some examples of how I personally do that:

• Photos: I intentionally have a few photo albums I curated myself. I selected a handful of photos, printed them at CVS, organized them, and placed them in beautiful photo albums. What a lost art! Two of my most prized possessions are my wedding album and my homeland honeymoon album, both of which I'd gotten custom made by an artist on Etsy. In the latter are pictures of my husband and my trips to his Motherland Germany and my Motherland Philippines, trips I'll never forget. Instead of using a service like Shutterfly to print a book of those photos, I opted for the analog route because I missed the tactical feeling of 4x6 photos organized neatly in a photo album, curated thoughtfully and purposefully.
• Music: My household is constantly rotating vinyl records on our old record player and old giant speakers, which adds much more mindfulness to our music selection. Instead of setting up an infinite-playing playlist on Spotify, we spend a few minutes selecting a record from a collection of vinyls, sprinkled with our own acquired records and many inherited from Conrad's parents. Don't get it twisted – Spotify is my number one used app. But I like mixing it up with physical media every chance I get.
• Meals: My husband and I instituted a formal rule to keep our phones out of our meals. We keep it in the same room in case of emergencies, but for the most part, we do not look at our phones while we eat our meals together. It allows for time to catch up on the day and to enjoy quiet moments together. 

Take the Red Pill like Keanu

So, what if we took the red pill and rewound a bit to our analog life? (If you don't know what the red pill or Keanu are, a movie night for The Matrix is absolutely required for further learning.) What if we unplugged from the Matrix, aka our phone, for a few hours at a time, or even at night while we sleep? How much time could you get back if you weren't stuck doom scrolling on Instagram or X? (Personally, doom scrolling steals at least 1-2 hours if I'm not mindful.)

What would you do with that time? 

The biggest pushback I get when I pose this to friends or family is, "Woah, I'd be so bored!" Totally agree. I get it. Our phones provide an endless supply of time fillers while we wait for our turn to see the doctor or while we wait for our food to come at a restaurant or while we wait for our bus to come. Even my three-year-old son, who is glued to the TV whenever it's on anywhere we are, claims being "boring" (his cute way of saying bored) if he's not watching "Spiderman and His Amazing Friends" or playing "Mario Kart" on the Switch.

Benefits of being bored

Being bored seems to be a lost art in this digital age. But according to Psychology Today, Eastern cultures, and a growing body of research, boredom can be a key to finding more meaning, fulfillment, and creativity in your life. 

I found that to be true for myself. The pandemic challenged me with my boredom, as I'm sure it did for many millions of us during this dark time. Instead of pulling out my phone or laptop, I leaned into my boredom. (It definitely wasn't easy... For me, it revealed deep calcified trauma that I have since been healing from. Another story for another day...)

Part of what I discovered by leaning into my boredom was my desire to learn a skill that my parents were unable to gift me as a kid – how to play piano. It was the most nourishing thing I did for myself during the pandemic, and I wouldn't have followed through with it if I hadn't been bored out of my mind.

So, imagine if going back to the analog life in small ways can provide big impact? What could it uncover about the time you give back to yourself? What could it uncover about the way you spend your time in the first place, which often can translate to how you spend your money?

After all – and I say this in a totally non-toxic-capitalistic way but in a mindful manner – time is money.