Behavior: I chose phone use as a behavior I wanted to change, especially phone use while I’m trying to focus on another task.
Log:
Day 1:
- 12:26: woke up later than usual, have 10 min til bus arrives but still scrolling on Instagram in bed.
- 12:38 missed the bus
- 1:07 picking up my food order and realized I had ordered for pick up for the wrong day. While the restaurant worker was remaking my order, I felt awkward and went towards my phone to look busy. I was panic texting my friends who I was having lunch with and scrolling through emails I already read.
- 2:11 On the bus, I noticed that I was zoning out and almost missed my stop. Luckily someone else had pulled the string to request the stop.
- 3:19: have to do prelab for my class, a class im not very confident in but my mind is distracted elsewhere. I’ve had two issues with an event I’ve been planning and I’ve been switching back and forth between thinking about that and thinking about my prelab. I’m not getting too far in my prelab.
- 3:36 browsed for mechanical pencils on Amazon
- 3:40 reminded of the Amazon package I just picked up. Opening it now hehe
- 4:50 in class but thinking about planning event and not what is in class. I’m looking at changing flights, table decor
- 7:00 have 30 min to read over prelab, scrolling on Instagram and texting mom about snow
- 7:17 walked into lab early and gave up on reading prelab
- 7:30 working on lab, put phone away in backpack
- 9:05 starting to burn out. Having trouble focusing. I’m re reading the same three paragraphs over and over again because I can’t get it into my head
- 9:35 felt more motivated to finish the last stretch because my friend caught up and we started working together on it.
- 11:00 opened up slack to message 247 gc but got distracted and started rebooking the flight.
- 5am bed time
Day 2:
- 11:51 woke up at 11:30 but been scrolling on my phone even though I have office hours soon
- 4:54 having a hard time focusing on my lab. Keep thinking about event related stuff — making meeting agenda
- 5:22 not feeling great 🙁 started shopping for cute vases for my summit event instead of working on the lab even though I was sitting in office hours for almost two hours
- 10:30 need to sort laundry but started looking on facebook marketplace
- 11:00 sat down to work on summit work
- 11:30 good 30 min of work tbh, going to dry clothes
- 12:15 went to pick up clothes
- 1:50 Realized that I left my phone outside in the kitchen and had been working for 1.5 on focused work time
- 2:22 took a shower and I feel a lot better. Working some more
- 3:25 got into bed
- 4:30 was scrolling through reels, getting sleep and putting phone away
Connection Circle:
For my connection circle, I decided to choose repeated actions or elements found in my log. The three most common ones include external stress, spending too much time on a task, switching my focus often, and using screen time as my only outlet for feelings of stress, anxiety, worry, and guilt from being unproductive. There’s an interesting cycle connecting external stress, spending too much time on a task, and switching focus often (highlighted pink). I realized that this was a cycle that very hard for me to break — especially when I believed that spending more time on a task while repeatedly being distracted, meant working hard. I also noticed that my only outlet for communicating my stress was ranting to my friends or family via text. This frequently led to scrolling on other apps on my phone (highlighted yellow).
One last thing I realized that when I worked in shorter intervals, I was able to stay fully focused on one singular goal. This led to me finishing the task and often switching my focus once I completed my task. It was interesting to see how switching my focus often, when paired with the right break and right work interval, yielded higher productivity.
Iceberg Model:
While completing the iceberg model, I focused on the event of taking a long time to complete a singular task. I think creating the connection circle helped me reflect on the patterns and systemic structures portions more deeply. I realized that when I switched my focus too often, I would take a longer time on a singular task due to distraction. The causes of my frequently changing focus were due to an upcoming event that I was planning, my lack of sleep (which caused zoning out), my phone being physically close to me (within visible range), and how I resort to screen time to fill silence.
I found that there were beliefs in my own head about what productivity and “working hard” meant. For example, I believed that if I tried to complete a task all at once (no matter how long it would take me), I would feel more accomplished because I worked long and hard on it. This was not the case. I felt much worse after attempting to complete a large task all at once — mainly because I failed most of the time across these two days. If I had broken up my larger task into smaller ones, and worked in smaller time intervals split apart by non-screen-time breaks, I would have felt happier and more relieved.
Next Time: I don’t think the way I recorded my log was the most helpful way. Initially, I tried to record each time I picked up my phone while trying to stay focused on a task. This was not a concrete, measurable element so for the remainder for the two days, I drifted away from recording phone use to recording my distraction periods and focus periods. I recorded each time I felt like I was being distracted from my work and each time I felt great about staying focused and completing my task. Next time, I would like to think about a more measurable way to record my log. Although I did learn a lot about myself through this process, I, myself, was confused about what I was recording. I think I’d continue keeping my phone in spot where I won’t see it and working in smaller work intervals though!
