Page 6 - Attention Hijacked: Using Mindfulness to Reclaim Your Brain from Tech

Over time, gaining awareness of how my tech habits were
impacting me gave me freedom and control over how I engaged with
technology. It has not meant that I have stopped using it altogether. It
has not meant that I have completely stopped all my unhealthy habits.
Just as I still sometimes eat Cheetos, I still sometimes mindlessly scroll
through Instagram. The difference is that I have gradually shifted
toward a healthier tech lifestyle, and I have tools to help me notice
and reflect on both how my choices make me feel and how they
support me in living my values (or not).
With this book, I would like to offer perspectives, awareness
activities, and practices that can help you shift toward the relationship
you want with technology, rather than the one you might just fall into
(or have already fallen into). How much time on my tech is too much time?
Which parts of my online life are life-sucking, and which are life-affirming? Do
I find things IRL that are meaningful and joyful? I started asking myself
these questions after more than a decade of practicing the mindfulness
I learned from teachers in yoga and meditation traditions. To this
day, I find I have to be very careful to not get swept up into mindless
technology use. Once I became more familiar with my own struggles,
pitfalls, and ways of managing my tech use, I wanted to share what
had worked for me, and learn about my students’ experiences, in this
technologically-focused age.
After five years of teaching English, in 2016 I started teaching
mindfulness to students full time, working intensively at a local
STEM high school. I quickly realized that I couldn’t talk about
mindfulness without touching on technology, as technology has
become completely integrated into all parts of our lives—especially
for you currently in high school and college. My students often
told me that they both loved and hated technology for the endless
opportunities and endless distractions it offered. Together we puzzled
over how to develop healthy relationships with these tools, and out
of those many years of conversation, we created the exercises and
practices in this book.

8 Attention Hijacked