Latter Day Lent: Day 1

So I've made it through the day and I have a few thoughts, and still feel I haven't thought through this process as well as I should have. Yesterday I went and deleted the vast majority of apps, including eBooks, games, social media, etc. Today, I have only re-downloaded Pokemon Go (for social interactive purposes with spouse, who loves game) and Fitbit (I appreciate some of the health-tracking tools, even if I haven't used them much on a regular basis).

It's hard to address the feeling that this is kind of a fad type of decision, like when I decided to try eating vegan on a weekly basis. I believe this will be easier to sustain, though. Vastly limiting my access to my phone during work made a huge difference. Because of the holiday, I'm doing 4 tens this weeks and the days are long and difficult, but I did generally feel it was easier to focus on my work.

A couple of ground rules that I think are important to uphold: no downloading any more phone games for the next several weeks, no using the phone in the car (obviously), no using the phone at the table during meals, no using the phone during the morning after waking up. I also need to read up on som of the more traditional, historical, and spiritual aspects of Lent. I anticipate printing up a Wikipedia page to limit the time I'm explicitly online. This is one of a few questions I need to grapple with for this project.

Other questions:

• I love to google search or browse Wikipedia to answer questions and feed my curiosity. To what extent should I limit that? Maybe limit it outside of work hours unless the question is directly pertinent and also during 1-on-1 time with my wife?
• What should my attitude be toward eBooks and language-learning apps? I want to build habits and think that regular practice on Duolingo could be beneficial, but also to some extent I use all technology as a crutch to avoid engaging with people and my environment.
• How can I plan ahead for keeping a healthy balance in my digital habits once I lift the restrictions of this challenge? I'll be back tomorrow.

--Joshua

Latter-Day Lent: Day 0

I hour ago I saw this goofy post on Twitter that reminded me that Lent starts tomorrow. As a Latter-Day Saint, I've never practiced or acknowledged Lent before, but the thought about it got me excited about a rought idea I could follow. I'm a big phone addict, and I check my phone far too often, engaging with Google Searches and games all the time at home. these things are even a distraction at work, many times. I don't know nearly enough about Lent, never having been taught about it, but I understand those who practice it give up something from the day of Lent to the day of Easter. This year, that will be 46 days from February 17th to April 4th. I'm not sure that this is something I can keep up with, but it's something I'd like to put honest effort toward. I don't feel like I have my spiritual dimension worked out very wll, and it would be nice to learn to focus my attention and energy to things that help build me up and improve myself. So I only have a vague idea of how well I can commit to this, but I'm going to try to do my own Latter-Day Lent, focusing on minimizing my attachment to my phone. I've deleted all the apps on my phone for gaming and learning (Pokemon Go, Elvenar, TFT, languages for Chinese and Japanese, Duolingo, etc.) I will limit myself to 5 minutes a day on Chrome for rudimentary searches and ban myself from using YouTube at all. I'll come back tomorrow with a 5 minute post about how it was to follow this and thoughts on how I can modify it to make it more sustainable and rewarding for me. --Joshua