In Stillness is the Key, author and Stoic evangelist Ryan Holiday recommends a less-is-more approach to what we put in our heads. Limit Your Inputs, he says. “The way you feel when you awake early in the morning and your mind is fresh and as yet unsoiled by the noise of the outside world – that’s space worth protecting.”
In a recent interview on the Honestly podcast, in response to a question about what he sees in the changing media landscape and its increasing menu of information, Holiday reiterated the point:
“The big thing is people just consume way too much of it. Too much media, and too much real-time media. We’re not zooming out enough, and we’re not getting enough context….People are way too on social media. They listen to too many podcasts…”
I find myself, almost the first thing I do when I wake in the morning – my mind fresh and as yet unsoiled – is to reach for my AirPods, to immediately pipe in the noise of the outside world. Almost always, a podcast. About the news, for example, and from a most reputable source, of course. Or perhaps a Tyler Cowan or Sam Harris, some high-brow, high-protein brain food, as soon as I get out of bed, my ankles popping on the short walk around the bed to the bathroom.
It was on such a podcast, The Ezra Klein Show, that author Zadie Smith explained why she doesn’t have a presence on social media, or even a smartphone. “When you wake up in the morning and you turn on your social app, you are being instructed on what the issue of the day is, what to be interested in. The news has always played some element in doing that, but this is total. So I might wake up in the morning and what interests me is an idea I’ve had or what I see out of my window or what’s happening locally in front of me, what’s happening my country, but the phone tells me exactly what to think about, where to think about it, and often how to think about it.”
One of the things I’m hoping to achieve with Analog is to fence off some time – to protect some space every day – where inputs are limited automatically, by pre-committed design. Perhaps when I, or my wife, or my kids, wake up in the morning, we’ll always compulsively reach for our phones. But because an Analog Routine has been set up to limit app functionality in the house to just the alarm clock app until 8am, for example, well, we’ll likely just put the phones back down. And our minds, still fresh and as yet unsoiled from the noise of the outside world, will pursue their own interests, and maybe even think their own original thoughts.