#digitaloverload

[cyber-soul-smartz]

Graceful Detachment in the 21st Century: Strategies for Digital Balance and Inner Peace

Discover the power of graceful detachment to enhance your emotional resilience and well-being. Learn practical strategies for navigating life's challenges with poise. Subscribe now for more insights and tips on living a balanced, fulfilling life!

[thebarefootcreative-blog]

Digital heart of darkness

Some times you can't see the wood for the trees or in my case for the past month the Jungle for the leaves.

After a interesting and demanding 2019, involving a change in career position ( from being creative director at an agency to the exciting but sometimes uncertainty of a freelance creative ), the fluctuating and breakneck speed the creative playing field is evolving at ( the change from clients needs from more traditional media to a long list of digital deliverables and formats) plus the never-ending narrative of Brexit and the economic and business limbo it creates.

We decided as a family to pack our bags and throw ourselves in a Swiss family Robinson adventure around Vietnam. 

Now id like to say I was off the grid, a kind of creative Colonel Kutz surrounding myself with ex-creatives from by-gone agencies deep in the jungle formulating a new brand idea for M&S whilst receiving client feedback and repeating to myself the ’horror the horror’. But I wasn't. It seems near impossible these days to be completely off the grid, as long as there are a few fellow humans around you'll probably be only a few hundred yards away from a mobile phone tower.

That said I was detached from the constant bombardment of ads, TV, campaigns and radio scripts that you take in every day. I was also separated from the constant LinkedIn updates of all the great work that people have created, or self-affirmations of the awesome job one has worked on or how many hits the most recent social campaign has had for the new season of ’Love Island’.

There is a magical moment between the 25th and the 28th where on most digital forums the online chatter seems to drop to a post-apocalyptic level. Like Jim from 28 days later walking around London shouting ’ hello, is anybody put there’, you feel comfortable in the thought that everything has finally slowed down.

It's during the past few weeks I asked myself is all this digital overload good for the creative mind? I sometimes feel that if I'm not up to date with the next innovative technique or I haven't seen that recent campaign everyone is talking about I'm going to be left behind. 

A recent article I was reading stated that

staying in the loop becomes yet another item on our infinite to-do lists. There simply are not enough hours in the day to take in all the media that is presented to us. ’Attempting this hopeless feat often leads to a sensation of drowning in a sea of words, pictures and websites.’ This mental exhaustion should come as no surprise given the science of the brain our minds were designed to focus on one task at once. Thus, forcing them to multitask causes inefficiency and cognitive discomfort, triggering the release of stress hormones and adrenaline. The result? A catastrophic concoction of mental fog decreased productivity and creativity, and ensuing inner panic.

When I did finally log onto the creative forums what I noticed was that my mind didn't feel fogged or overloaded it wasn't craving its fix, scrolling down page after page, reading, liking, sharing, but instead focused on the purity and downright creative beauty of one idea that caught my eye ( that I’d missed ironically in my absence) and stirred that old emotion of ’damn I wish I'd have thought of that’. Something we should all feel as creatives every day.

BBC Creative - Dracula 

A tightly edited promo, a striking print campaign and an ingenious six-sheet. No event held in Highgate cemetery where you can throw stakes at Little Minx and have a selfie taken with them, No app that allows your voice to sound like a 16th Century Borat or a social campaign where you can stalk people through the streets of London, jump out screaming “ I want to taste your blood” scaring the bejesus out of them whilst your friend films it and sees how many likes you get. All of the above should be kept for season 2.

So as I sipped my third Mai Tai ( yes three), sitting on my porch planning my return to the battlefield surrounded by jungle and night frogs croaking their harmonised goodbye lament I wondered how I could keep this creative Toaist frame of mind. Does one need to constantly enter this technological heart of darkness to appear out of the other side refreshed? How can one become part Buddha part Picasso in a world full of distraction?

Brian Solis, digital anthropologist writes, "When we avert distraction and focus in order to create and achieve our goals, we feel capable and successful.

Purpose also pulls us out of our harmful self-focus and makes us feel part of something bigger, beyond ourselves. It frees us from our rumination about ourselves and the past and keeps us oriented toward the future, with a sense of what we can contribute."

If we can remove some of our daily digital consumption it may inspire us to stop, reflect, and recover a connection to the creativity and deeper purpose we need for living happy, healthy lives and succeeding as individuals, organizations, and as a society at large in the digital age. 

Of course, I'm super aware whilst writing this I'm in some part adding to the problem. Damn - ’Om’

[laurarosser]

Testing (mis)Feeds at the Fine Art open studios at Plymouth University

Dot matrix printer printing live tweets, the #brexit literally wore the ribbon out

[cryptograndma]

digital overload

[mommyoverload-blog]

Memories

In our digital age, everything is saved. Facebook shows us our memories of past posts, TimeHop shows us past pictures we took on our phones. A quick email search can pull up an email from the dawn of your hotmail account. It’s like a digital diary that can never truly be erased. But, what happens when you would rather not relive that pain or remember that time or have to feel those feelings again?

This happened to me this morning. A friend sent me a text looking for a recommendation for a counselor for her son. I typed ‘counselor’ in the search bar of my email and there it was.... an email from an old... something. I refer to this sender as a ‘something’ because it was never really titled. Boyfriend seems so silly with the type of relationship that it was or wasn’t. Anyway, it was serious. More serious than I am ever able to fully admit to myself that it was. It was also toxic in that this person ALWAYS made me feel crappy about myself amidst all the compliments and profession of feelings. It wasn’t him making me feel that way. It was me. I shouldn’t have opened the email. I shouldn’t have read and then re-read my response. I should have tried to delete it (again) and let it go to whatever cyber purgatory old emails go when they are never truly deleted. I think I had blocked all those old feelings out because they were too much for me to bear. That ‘something’ was an emotional rollercoaster of so many feelings that I felt child-like in trying to process them all. I sat at my desk, reading, biting back the tears and fighting off the chills and trying to just forget once was and is no more.

20 years ago, I would have picked up a letter instead of opening an email. If it hurt, I could have burned it and watched the ashes of the paper float away and pretended all the feelings associated were floating away too. Today, in 2019, we can’t do that. Sure, we can hit delete or create new accounts but, it’s all still there. All the highs and lows and goods and bads are all still there. All the hurts and joys are still accessible with the scroll of a mouse and an innocuous word typed in a search bar.

So, where do we go in the digital age when we want to forget? How do we put this part of our past away when it just only ever goes to a cloud somewhere that Apple controls and can be brought back when we least expect it?

I will likely regret someday typing these words out. I won’t want to remember typing this because it will remind me of an email that reminded me of feelings that I never wanted to remember again as long as I lived....

Hopefully by the time that happens, there will be a cure for the deletion of digital memories....

[cwprintdesign]

This blog was from before #stayhomestaysafe, but it's possibly even more relevant now - especially with #digitaloverload! I use all five steps here, and when I miss even one of them I notice my #productivity is lower. Read more about how to get productive with paper here: https://j.mp/2Wb988h #entrepreneurlife #leader #girlboss

[creativefibro]

New on Living Creatively with Fibro: Wellbeing and your Environment https://livingcreativelywithfibro.uk/wellbeing-environment/ #Temperature #Decluttering #DigitalOverload

[hspsos]

HSP SOS #11 - Highly Sensitive Persons & Social Media Anxiety

Ever needed to deactivate your Facebook account, take a break from Twitter, or forget about Instagram entirely? Social media and the sometimes shallow feel of the Internet can be a real struggle for highly sensitive persons.  Anxiety, depression, and loneliness can be triggered by the digital world.  On this episode Michelle and The Captain discuss what all of this means for HSPs, and what people can do to make their time online a more positive experience.

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Referenced Book:

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain - http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/about-the-book/

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Find HSP S.O.S. on social media HERE:

On Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/hspsos

  On Twitter at: @hsp_sos

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Email the Crew:

FeelzSpecialist@gmail.com for Michelle Lynn

Cap@TheCaptainsPod.com for The Captain

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For more Highly Sensitive Feelz, visit HSPSOS.com!

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  Keywords:

HSP, Highly Sensitive Person, Social Media Anxiety, Anxiety, Depression, Introvert, Elaine Aron, Susan Cain, Quiet the Book, Digital Overload, HSP SOS

  Hashtags:

#HSP #HighlySensitivePerson #SocialMediaAnxiety #Anxiety #Depression #Introvert #ElaineAron #SusanCain #QuietTheBook #DigitalOverload #HSPSOS

  Check out this episode!

[rkapur105]

Tweeted

Wise words on self care and digital overload from @annelamott via @donyaeger! #motivationalquotes #selfcare #digitaloverload https://t.co/pjc3u2nJvd pic.twitter.com/T2tddWB6xY

— Rajat Kapur (@rkapur105) September 19, 2019

[aioftheday]

A Journey From #InformationOverload to #DigitalOverload to #AlgorithmOverload https://t.co/of9bWcl9wy

A Journey From #InformationOverload to #DigitalOverload to #AlgorithmOverload https://t.co/of9bWcl9wy

— AI Of The Day (@AIofTheDay) January 26, 2017

from Twitter https://twitter.com/AIofTheDay January 26, 2017 at 11:14AM via IFTTT

[cyber-soul-smartz]

Graceful Detachment in the 21st Century: Strategies for Digital Balance and Inner Peace

Discover the power of graceful detachment to enhance your emotional resilience and well-being. Learn practical strategies for navigating life's challenges with poise. Subscribe now for more insights and tips on living a balanced, fulfilling life!