Reclaim the Throne.
Resisting the big tech attention coup. Re-coronating our minds.
Welcome, data subject
Data subjects. Fucking data subjects! I read about some big tech companies referring to humans as that. And we’ve made that very easy for them, haven’t we? Us, with our cricks in our necks, our strained eye balls and hunched postures, lurched over our pocket computers for hours on end each day. It used to be easy to be bored; a vital headspace for optimal creativity. A clear mind grants us access to the unconscious. We need to ponder, remember, fantasise, and solve problems. We sat upon the bathroom throne as the kings and queens of our minds. These days, we’ve demoted ourselves to court jesters dancing to the merriment of social media feeds. We’re distracted, deafened by ego shrieks, divided and downtrodden by news cycles, at great cost to our personal growth.
Reclaim the Throne is The Creative Condition’s campaign to recognise the need for a downtime revolution. The resistance to the big tech coup of our minds starts with our arses. From there, we will reclaim the bus stop, the park bench, the underground train, the taxi, waiting rooms, receptions, and the good old walk from A to B. These clutches of two, five, and ten-minute windows add up to a valuable, regular chunk of time to spend on something better than the algorithm sludge we’ve been pumping into our brains for too long. I hope you’ll join the cause and report back with news of your own glorious anointment.
tL;Dr
Big tech is robbing our downtime. Natalia Talkowska asked me when the last time I took a shit without being on my phone was. It scared me. I’m highlighting the need, for the sake of creativity, to reclaim all those opportunities at the bus stop, in reception areas, and in queues. Rest, daydream, make, imagine, plan, or ponder; whatever it is, we can all enhance our lives by breaking the time-thieving habit of defaulting to our devices.
What else?
This habit will take some breaking. I get it. I’m a father and business owner, so I’m time poor. Occasionally, phone-based tasks require immediate attention. But if we’re honest, most of the time, reaching for our phone is no more than conditioning, a suboptimal use of our precious time and energy. Exorbitant sums of money have been spent to train us this way, instilling the ever-present feeling that something vital awaits on that screen. But usually, it doesn’t.
I realised how bad I’d allowed myself to become, spending every visit to the bathroom on my device, so I put a new layer of security in place – a question to myself: When I start pawing at my pocket, I ask my deathbed self if they would sign off on this use of my time. If they would, then I go ahead. But when the answer is ‘no, use this moment better, or you’ll regret it when you’re into those twilight years,’ then I divert my attention elsewhere.
Since committing to this promise to my future self, I’ve consumed three biographies in six weeks. And that’s just on the toilet. Maybe you don’t spend 20 minutes on the throne. If you’re a bank robber – in and out in no time – how about constructing a haiku in your mind as you do your business and wash your hands? You could have an anthology drafted in a week! Or even if you don’t commit the poetry to record, you’re working your mental muscles, drawing on your reservoir of lived experiences. Just switching off and staring at the wall for a minute is a terrific, creative use of downtime. Those ‘EUREKA!’ moments don’t happen when our brains are trapped on social media timelines or held hostage by incessant WhatsApp group activity. The fact our brains default to these platforms should alarm us, but once the habit is broken, they slowly stop yearning for the empty promises.
On the dog walk, I lend all of my senses to the woods, the chats with fellow dog owners, the madness of the hounds, and the incidental details on the streets. I used to use part of that walk to post on LinkedIn. Oh, the shame!
I could go on, but you get the idea. If every spare moment of every day is bought and paid for by big tech interests, then we’ll sleepwalk into solipsism, subservience, and surrendered dreams. I doubt you want that any more than I do, so let’s spread the word.
Reclaiming the throne can transform lives by reintroducing invaluable time we didn’t even notice they’d mugged us for.
Beyond the bathroom
A non-exhaustive list of places and priceless moments to reclaim for the kingdom of your creativity:
The bus stop, train stations, airports, ports, and taxi ranks (especially taxi ranks) time on public transport, receptions/waiting rooms, time with friends and loved ones, TV/film watching time, walks from A to B, time sat on benches, strolls, moments of procrastination, waking and pre-sleep moments (many Nobel Prize winners had their revelations in these moments), on escalators, on staircases, while hiding (recreationally or for survival), in queues, at work, in hotel rooms, drinking alone in bars, on dog walks, on space stations, while smoking or having a brew, during meals or breaks, while lost, A&E (Hospital emergency areas), at gigs and sporting events, at exhibitions, exam revision or study time… to be continued.