Page 9 - Attention Hijacked: Using Mindfulness to Reclaim Your Brain from Tech

inspired, and excited to really explore your own life and build a
healthy relationship with yourself and your technology.

How to Use This Book

My first word of advice: don’t just believe anything I say. One of my
favorite things about working with teenagers is that they don’t just
blindly accept things. Research it for yourself. Investigate on your
own. Ask questions. At the same time, I invite you to stay humble and
open to the possibility that you might learn something. Only then can
you be surprised, amazed, and empowered. Only then can you create
a healthy technology diet that works for you.

New Tech Users
Some of you may be newer tech users. Perhaps you have had a tablet
or a school laptop for a while, and you are reading this book in
preparation to get a phone. If so, welcome! And, lucky! You have the
clear advantage of not having developed any bad habits or discovered
those pitfalls that others of us have already realized. Creating healthy,
useful habits from the get-go is much easier than having to go back
and change habits. I hope this book can serve as a road map for you
to consider the ways you can set yourself up for a healthy relationship
with your new device. You might find some of the sections are more
or less useful to you, so feel free to skip around as it makes sense.

Experienced Tech Users
For those who are no strangers to tech and may have developed some
less-than-ideal habits, this book gives you some space and time to reflect
on your tech use. For the time being, can you suspend defensiveness?
Can you try to open yourself up to considering how your habits may be
impacting you? This is like a giant lab experiment, and your experience
with tech is what you’re studying. The more open and curious you are,
the more you can set up habits that work for, instead of against, you.

Introduction 11