Sitting at the nail salon doing nothing, like a lunatic

I went to the nail salon the other day after work. I'd been running around all day and staring at a lot of screens, so when I sat down, I put my phone away and took the chance to just stare off into the distance and let my brain rest.

As I put my phone into my bag, the nail tech looked at me and told me I could still use my phone with one hand while she did the other. I said I was alright without it, and she asked me another time if I was sure before I explained that I'd stared at enough screens that day. Staring up at the big wall of nail polish bottles, a few minutes later, she gestured to a rack of magazines and asked if I wanted to flip through one. I again said I was alright. And the whole incident got me thinking — why are we so obsessed with keeping ourselves distracted?

Sitting in the chair, I continued to ponder this. I wondered if the nail tech was concerned that I would be too focused on her work if I wasn't distracting myself. Except that I honestly wasn't even watching her work, and was totally zoned out at the wall. It seemed like she was genuinely trying to make sure that I enjoyed myself, and to her, that only seemed possible if I was keeping myself busy consuming media.

As companies work to make their platforms more addictive, it seems we've built up this idea that everyone must be occupied with something at all times. Companies basically see a minute away from their platform as a minute of unrealized profit. The economy is built on capturing our attention, and over time, it has basically brainwashed us into feeling like we need to give our attention to something 24/7. When we have an extra second, we feel the urge to pick up our phones and check Instagram, or text messages, or email, and even when we really don't have a second, we feel the urge to pick up the phone and do something that we don't need to. These platforms steal our attention in the extra seconds we have and in the "extra seconds" that we don’t have. 

There's a revolt against this attention-stealing that's been brewing for a while, but internet addiction among the public is so strong that it's not exactly normalized yet. We see this in posts on TikTok about people successfully "rawdogging" their flight and just staring out the window for a couple of hours, and the idea of "dumb phones" trending, so people aren't bogged down by having the universe at their fingertips on an iPhone. What's telling, though, is that in a lot of these posts, sitting through understimulation is positioned as a huge feat, when just 10-15 years ago, these understimulating conditions were the default. It's crazy to think that in our world today, what used to just be normal life now feels like something you have to work up to. Our attention spans have been recalibrated by social media to crave constant input, and now it’s stillness that requires the effort, instead of that being the standard. 

It didn't take long for the market to notice people trying to opt out of attention stealing, and start selling that opt-out back to them. There are wellness apps that function with the purpose of blocking other apps and limiting screen time. These apps are profiting off of cutting down your phone stimulation, but the irony is that they only work by becoming another app you have to pay attention to. It's not just software doing this either. Take Brick, a product you stick on your fridge or wall, and then attach your phone to it so that you can't use it. It's not a digital platform, but it's still profiting off of stealing your attention away from the attention-stealing platforms, same as the apps. There's literally an economy growing based on stealing back stolen attention. That juxtaposition is what got me paying closer attention to my own habits.

Whether waiting for the subway to come, waiting for a latte to be made, or even standing at a stoplight, there's an itch for something to fill the space in my mind. Sometimes, I catch myself doing five different things on my phone in my ten-minute walk home from the subway. I love to keep my days busy, so sometimes the things I'm grabbing my phone for in the one minute that I wait for a coffee are useful, but definitely not all of the time. I've also noticed as well that I'll feel understimulated if I'm not listening to music or a podcast while I'm doing things like making dinner or cleaning my room. It's this sense that there's not enough going on, and I think it stems from living so much of my life under such high stimulation from the internet. It's like my body's adjusted to that overstimulation as its natural state.

There are times when I do feel totally overloaded, and that's when I take out the headphones and walk down the street just listening to the sounds around me. It's funny what a difference this makes, even in New York City, where walking down the street is chaotic even without music blasting in your ears. But I immediately feel more at peace when I remove some of the stimulation. On days when I'm reaching for my phone all the time, I start to feel like I'm manually blocking out thoughts from my mind. In these times, even a ten-minute walk without any technology feels like it completely opens my mind back up, letting thoughts be free to circulate without being pushed out by watching a TikTok. We all know sitting on social media is bad for productivity, but it feels like it's bad for my creativity and clear thinking as well.

In the time that I sat in the chair with just my thoughts, I felt like I was able to think about so many things that I hadn't given my brain the time to process. I started out thinking about stimulation and the internet, then drifted to what I was going to pack for my trip that weekend, what I'd make for dinner when I got home, and eventually, what longer-term goals I wanted to put more focus on in my daily life.

It's the moments of silence that allow you to look outward and inward, and assess your own thoughts and emotions. Those are probably the thoughts that crash down on you when you go to sleep at night, and setting aside a few minutes throughout the day to let thoughts come and go with no distraction could ease the severity and anxiety of that. It's always these moments, staring out the window of a plane with no wifi or walking through the park with my phone away in my bag, that make me feel more centered. I left the nail salon that day with new goals for the pottery I'd been working on, new goals for my career, and fresh motivation to get started on it all.

A few hours later, I got into bed and fell victim to a doom scroll (oh, how easily to go back to the things that are bad for us). I landed on a video of a guy talking about how scrolling stunts our thought process. I made it about five seconds into the video before I closed the app and put my phone away. Pretty meta that we're talking about how bad social media is for our brains, via social media. I closed my eyes and went back to the mental space I'd been in at the nail salon, letting my thoughts filter in uninterrupted. And I think that may be the real motivation and productivity hack here: just leaving your thoughts uninterrupted more often.