Brighten your Life by Living in Greyscale
Last year, I came across the article, Feeling Good: Justin’s Program. It’s a simple guide to happiness curated by entrepreneur Justin Kan, (a startup founder and subsequent self made millionaire).
As an entrepreneur at the peak of his success, I wasn’t sure Justin was an overly relevant authority to guide me (a member of the mere middle class and occasional starving artist,) on my quest for happiness. And to be honest, many of his suggestions follow the widely accepted yet ever illusive daily practices of gratitude, meditation, exercise, diet, bla bla.
But one part of his article really grabbed my attention; his perspective on the little device that has gone and reshaped the trajectory of humanity - our mobile phones.
Justin makes the seemingly obvious yet incredibly profound observation that we “voluntarily carry around a toxic, time-wasting skinner-box in [our] pockets at all times. From the second you wake up in the morning to right before you fall asleep at night. This is incredibly stupid, and yet every smart person does it.”
iPhone’s Screen Time function of course highlights the amount of time we waste on this inanimate object. We justify this behaviour by blaming work (emails, Slack, WhatsApp), inspiration (Pinterest, Instagram), or self development (Medium, YouTube, Tinder?). But in reality, we have just become terrifyingly conditioned to the mindless, endless scroll.
On quick consideration, it became clear to me that by redirecting just 10 minutes of this mindless scrolling time each day to a more productive pursuit, I would suddenly have found myself more than an extra hour a week to actually CREATE something.
But HOW can we redirect such a subconscious ingrained habit?
JUSTIN’S SOLUTION: TURN YOUR PHONE TO GREYSCALE.
[You can do this by going into Settings > Colour Filters]
Thinking I couldn’t get more of an instant fix than this, I decided to give it a go... and it almost instantly transformed my relationship with my “toxic pocket device”.
By changing this one setting, all of the biggest time-wasting, infinite-scroll-inducing, web-spiralling culprits (Instagram, Tinder, Pinterest) - suddenly all became very boring.
To begin with, I would habitually open Instagram, but without the usual allure of bright and blaring hues the content really didn’t offer much joy. So I would close the app and instead opt for reading an article on Medium or opening kindle.
Interestingly, WhatsApp and emails became far less stressful. Without colour to stimulate the senses, my communications via phone went from being reactive, to a more procedural experience, further optimising my productivity.
I am a huge advocate for moderation and a lover for a life rule. So I operated in black and white mode Monday - Friday, allowing myself the thrills of a colour device on weekends. WILD.
During the week, I would try only use apps on my laptop where possible, (i.e. WhatsApp Web, email, Pinterest. If I wanted/needed to use any apps requiring colour, I would specifically and consciously set aside the time to do this. For example, if I wanted to unwind at the end of the day, I would make myself comfy on the couch and allow myself 10 minutes of “mindless scrolling” time on Pinterest or Instagram. But to be honest, the rigmarole of changing the settings back and forth meant I rarely actually did this.
My phone suddenly reverted from being an extension of my existence, back to the simple device it was designed to be - a tool to help me read, listen to music and speak to people in voice.
By using my phone less, I was less reactive and stressed, more inspired (as I was actually looking around at the world more!) and had a whole lot more time on my hands - allowing me to put that extra inspiration to good use!
