darialutz-blog - Tumblr blog

[darialutz-blog]

What is Infomagical?

The infomagical challenge (found here) includes five podcasts by the New York radio show Note to Self. Each day has a challenge that makes participants consider their information overload. It encourages participants to find focus and use clear thinking in daily activities. 

[darialutz-blog]

IT WAS WHITE AND GOLD!!!

Being a meme lover, I enjoy that people make memes out of memes. 

[darialutz-blog]

The Last Day!

Todays podcast was pretty thought provoking. The discussion was based on how people spend their whole lives distracting themselves with media and technologies. An interesting quote from the show was “Nobody is going to hit the end of their life saying “boy i wish i spent more time on Instagram””. This was interesting to me as I am an avid Instagram user, of course Instagram was just the example used to demonstrate all aspects of social media and how often society spends on them, but it really did get me thinking about how much energy and time I have spent on these various social media sites.

Challenge: Magical Life. Thinking back to your Media Use Self-Assessment and the Media Use Diary Reflection Statement, create a short personal philosophy about media and information. How do you want to live with media going forward?

My personal philosophy on media and information is:

Most if not all media should only be used during personal time, and information should be taken as needed.

To follow through with this philosophy in the future, I plan to stay away from social media websites and applications during time spent with family and friends. I also plan on carefully considering what types of information I need and value when coming across articles, news, social media posts and so forth.

I think that it was an interesting to consider what I would like to take out of media and information going forward, and how I will use the experiences and challenges from this week into further consideration when approaching information and communication.

I enjoyed participating in this week's challenges, it showed me what I am capable of as a media user and how I am guilty for my own information overload. I look forward to using my experiences from this week to help me consider how connected I am with my friends and family and how I advance my media and communications knowledge.

[darialutz-blog]

Todays challenge reminded me of this really cool spoken word poem I heard about a year ago. It had such a powerful message that I remembered it a year later. 

[darialutz-blog]

Infomagical Day Four

I really enjoyed todays Note to Self podcast on face to face conversation. I found comfort in being reminded that just because a conversation has uncomfortable bits to it does not mean it is automatically defined as a bad conversation. In the podcast the host explained that seven minutes was a sufficient amount of time to see if a conversation will make it through the boring parts and pick up into more interesting topics. In the podcast they discuss how people have a need to be perfect and can do so through edits and controlled messages sent and that is why they do not prefer a face to face conversation. There is a sense of spontaneity in a face to face talk that doesn't allow you to control what you are going to say. Personally I would much rather speak face to face but when thinking about my peers and some of the communicative behaviours I see in them I do agree with this theory.

Challenge: Magical Connection. Have a seven-minute conversation with another person about something that you've recently read, heard, or watched.

Today I decided to call my mother over facetime and discuss an article posted online by the National Public Radio that I had read yesterday, Here Is What Donald Trump Wants To Do In His First 100 Days. It was an interesting discussion that of course lasted much longer than seven minuets. We began by going over concerns about the new president that were not laid out in the article. I am openly very against the views of Donald Trump and consider him a bully, my mother seemed rather indifferent due to the fact that she resides in Canada as a Canadian. Essentially the conversation began as a rant and turned into a discussion about his plan for his first 100 days. After about 10 minuets we ended up moving away from the article due to my mothers lack of interest in politics and began discussing the usual holiday break plans. I enjoyed todays challenge. One goal for this assignment was to become more connected with friends and family and although I do speak with my Mom often it was nice to have a conversation outside of the typical nagging, how is everyone doing, or what my plans are for home visits in the near future and so fourth. It was cool to have a specific topic to facetime my Mom with instead of just ranting to her over a text message. I look forward to applying this challenge to my everyday life by striving toward having more meaningful in person conversations each day.

[darialutz-blog]

Trying to keep my life together and using this article as inspiration to do so. 

[darialutz-blog]

Infomagical Day Three

In today's Note to self podcast the focus was information overload. The discussion focused on people's need for self awareness and our ability to blindly follow a crowd without taking time to truly consider why we are doing the things as we are doing them. I found their example of the dress meme funny and interesting. Personally I am comforted in the fact that in some ways many communities all over the world are so connected that if someone simply says the dress meme with no description it would be rare to come across a person who would need one.

Nonetheless to ensure clarification the dress meme was a picture of a simple striped dress. The world wide argument was what were the colours of the stripes on the dress. Black and blue, or white and gold? I found using this example to show that people consume unnecessary information accurate and interesting. I also gave myself a small pat on the back because I remember my large lack of interest in arguing over a dress colour when the meme was in it’s internet prime.

Challenge: Magical Brain. Today, try to curate your information environment for yourself. Don't read or watch anything just because it's "viral" or "trending." Instead, only focus on the information and content that you think is valuable.

Essentially only consuming information that gets you closer to a goal or information that you would take time into creating a personal connection and meaning to. Today I successfully avoided any buzzfeed article that I was truly uninterested in that may have popped up on my facebook feed. I did take time to read a daily email I receive from the Skimm.com that has a brief overview on current events, and an article on 23 Signs Your Life is a Sh*t Storm but You're Still Killing It. I find value and personal meaning in reading funny articles such as this because it gives me comfort in knowing that I am not the only one struggling to successfully live alone for the first few years while doing all that can be done to get good grades. It is also cool to read articles like these because it shows you the positive things you are doing in your life and for yourself, and reminds you that some days getting out of bed, going to class, and cooking your own dinner is a small but worthy accomplishment for the day. This is why I considered this article to be worthy of my time. I found today's challenge interesting. Even though there was one article that was written in list format that I gave into, it was interesting to see myself almost clicking on such silly articles that I would have considered crucial to spend time on reading any other day.

[darialutz-blog]

I found the ideas of Marie Kondo rather interesting and wanted to look into them more as I am very aware that not only do my media platforms need organization but my belongings could use a clean up as well. I found this article on the New York Times website and will consider taking Kondo’s advice in the near future. 

[darialutz-blog]

This is the largest number of folders and stickies I have ever had on my desktop. To be honest I am enjoying having these stickies here to add a bit of extra organization to my schedule. 

[darialutz-blog]

after the clean up.

[darialutz-blog]

Before the clean up.

[darialutz-blog]

Infomagical Day Two

Today’s Note to Self podcast was pretty interesting, and the idea behind cleaning and organizing one's belongings by simply holding it close, and deciding if it sparks joy in your heart to determine whether or not it should be kept was interesting.  I would actually call it motivational, I almost went home and cleaned my room after listening to the podcast.

Challenge: Magical Phone. Clean up your phone (or computer desktop). If an app or file is no longer useful, get rid of it, and organize what's left. 

Today's challenge was a little different for me because I actually already clean my computer desktop and smartphone applications often. Currently my computer desktop is the most cluttered it has been since I purchased it this summer. I did go through my phone applications another time using the ideals of author Marie Kondo discussed in the podcast. I would touch the app and consider whether or not it brought me feelings of joy, or if the idea of not having it on my phone brought feelings of anxiety and from there decided to keep or delete it. It was an interesting experience, that being said I already consider my phone to be considerably organized so in completing the challenge I was not brought any feelings of relief or joy, but rather just another chore checked of my list for the month. It also bothered me because I enjoy having two rows on two pages of applications on my phone and in purging applications I did not use it took away my phones symmetry. It would be pretty interesting and likely helpful to bring the ideas of Kondo over to my closet though.

[darialutz-blog]

I was interested in looking into a more detailed use of glucose in the brain and found this short article that discusses why glucose is considered Brain Fuel. 

[darialutz-blog]

Magical Day.

Challenge: Try to go a day without multitasking. At any given point in time, focus on one thing and give it your full attention.

Essentially today's challenge is to give your brain a rest by “single tasking”. In the podcast they referred to the idea of multitasking as a pattern of self interruption. It was explained that one can not actually multitask, instead your brain just shifts rapidly from one thing to the next. This has a negative effect on the brain's glucose levels causing one to become sluggish or even have strange food cravings! The idea of the challenge was to give one's brain a rest in only focusing on one thing at a time all day.  

Unfortunately today's challenge was not as successful as I would have liked. Attempts were made all day to focus solely on one thing at a time.

There were moments where the challenge was filled for small periods of time. To help myself in completing the challenge I used the self control application for computers that allows you to select an amount of time that you would like blacklist any websites that you may find distracting to complete assignments. While using self control I also put my cell phone on airplane mode to avoid allowing myself to be distracted by incoming messages and social media applications as well. While speaking with others on any average day I typically avoid being distracted by other work or my phone, and continued to focus on just being in a conversation with a person today as well. Looking at the experience it was interesting to see how difficult it can be to only focus on one activity or job at a time. It was also interesting to consider the science behind “multitasking”. I thought about when I watch a movie and get distracted by my phone and go back to the movie and realize I no longer have any idea what is going on. I was not multitasking but just shifting between two activities rapidly.

[darialutz-blog]

Just to show case how often my phone is bombarded with information. 

[darialutz-blog]

Infomagical Day One

Today is the first day of the informagical week long challenge. The challenge includes five podcasts by the New York radio show Note to Self. The first of five podcasts began with an introduction of many different technology elements buzzing, beeping, ringing and so forth. Honestly just listening to this intro made me shudder a little. I constantly feel like that is what my day to day life is like when having so many people that want to get ahold of me. There was also a section where the various voices of people would say things such as “Stretched too thin”  and “emotionally drained”, “Can’t turn it off”, “Information overload”. My attention was immediately caught by the podcast because I constantly have these feelings as well. For example last Monday I ended up just trying to take a day to myself where I did not reply to any facebook messages, texts or emails. This ended in my phone having at least 4 texts all day, 11 messages in my facebook inbox and over 11 emails. It truly was emotionally draining to be unable to avoid those trying to contact me when there was constant information being sent my way.