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This article is part of\u00a0<\/i>Upstream,<\/i><\/a>\u00a0The Daily Wire\u2019s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories \u2014 from our featured writers to you.<\/i><\/p>\n ***<\/i><\/p>\n Dinging. Buzzing. Notifications. Alerts. Reminders. These punctuate modern life, ruining our attention spans and leaving us feeling tired, burned out, and depleted of our energy. <\/span>We watch our screens, wishing we weren\u2019t, and it seems like we\u2019re powerless to look away from the constant swirl of content. But there\u2019s a better way of living if we were willing to fight for it.<\/span><\/p>\n In a world of six-second videos, most of us don\u2019t have the attention span to read the books we want or write the stories that float around in our heads, but it\u2019s possible to restore the focus and creativity we\u2019ve lost.<\/span><\/p>\n Based on my own experience before and after getting rid of my smartphone, the question isn\u2019t how to do it. We all know we\u2019re unhappy spending hours a day looking at the bright pixels of social media and Netflix, mindlessly consuming. <\/span>The question is whether we have the strength to make our lives harder on purpose, to be bored sometimes, and to experience the doldrums of life. Then we can become creative and curious again.<\/span><\/p>\n As a homeschooled kid, I\u2019d get my schoolwork done early, usually by lunch. That way, I\u2019d have hours before the other kids got home from school to play with my siblings on the empty neighborhood streets. Eventually, we got bored of our scooters and bikes. <\/span>We craved something new and exciting, so we lashed a bowl-shaped bamboo chair someone had thrown in the trash to wheelie boards we\u2019d gotten for Christmas the previous year. The resulting vehicle allowed one kid to be pulled behind another by a rope \u2014 like a street tube that could be flung down the driveway and pulled around and around.<\/span><\/p>\n It was dangerous. It was janky. It was extremely fun.<\/span><\/p>\n One day while we were playing with it on the street, a pedestrian stopped. She must not have seen all the DIY flourishes because she had the audacity to ask, \u201cWhere can I get one of those for my kids?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n You couldn\u2019t buy that death trap anywhere. It was concocted out of toys, trash, and duct tape using a creative streak born out of sheer boredom and a zero-dollar budget.<\/span><\/p>\n Our best ideas come during times of silence, reflection, and nothingness. <\/span>When we\u2019re consuming content, whether social media or streaming services, we\u2019re thinking about how to get what we want, to get a dopamine fix, to feel something. Sometimes, we don\u2019t even want what we\u2019re getting, but we\u2019re too locked into the cycle to break out of it.<\/span><\/p>\n You can\u2019t read that book you\u2019ve been wanting to crack open for years when you\u2019re used to short videos riddled with ASMR and horse hoof cleaning.<\/span><\/p>\n When I was working as an editor of a daily newspaper, I\u2019d get emails constantly. I had an Apple Watch that would let me know about new notifications. I\u2019d get texts throughout the day, Facebook notifications, beeps, pings, and warnings about new OS updates. <\/span>I wrote for my job, but I never wrote for fun. I never read magazines or books. Who had the time or the mental willpower? At the end of a long day, it was just easier to put on \u201cThe Office\u201d again or watch a new show on Apple TV.<\/span><\/p>\n Then my wife and I got rid of our TV in hopes that we and our children would spend less time in front of it. We saw how even a few minutes of screen time affected our daughter\u2019s behavior and our own.<\/span><\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t until after I traded my iPhone for a Light Phone, which has only the most basic apps and an e-ink screen, that I started seeing changes in how I was able to focus. I also made a point not to use my computer after normal work hours, barring job-related emergencies.<\/span><\/p>\n Suddenly, it was possible to read magazine articles at night, even if it took several days to get through one. It was easy to listen to albums all the way through. I started calling people more to connect with them and hear their voices. <\/span>Without all the noise of modernity, the constant distractions, I also started finding time to write fun stories, to build a novel in my head and start to write it on paper. Our deepest thoughts thrive in the quietness of our minds, I have found.<\/span><\/p>\n By filling our heads with endless streams of videos, podcasts, songs, clips, reels, streamers, edits, and movies on demand, we leave no room for ideas to flourish. We don\u2019t spend time thinking because we don\u2019t have to anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n When we\u2019re addicted to the feeds and the algorithms, we\u2019re the pedestrian who walks by a good idea and says, \u201cHow can I have that?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s not technically difficult to start your new life. Get rid of your TV or hide the power cord, get a <\/span>dumb phone<\/span><\/a> or <\/span>severely limit<\/span><\/a> the capacity of your smartphone, stop filling your head with other people\u2019s stuff, and wait for your mind to reset itself.<\/span><\/p>\n The transition from consumer to one who is creative and curious takes time. It\u2019s not an easy switch to flip, and the fight is difficult to maintain. I can actually feel my attention span being sapped after using certain sites. It turns out that switching topics every five seconds isn\u2019t good for us.<\/span><\/p>\n The intellectual costs of our age are staggering: How many poems will never be written? How many songs will never be sung? How many great books will go unread? How many short stories will go unpublished?<\/span><\/p>\n With AI use increasing, our collective creative slump is only going to get worse. Thankfully, we hold the power to take back our ability to create and build our focus back. <\/span>We just need to work for it. And that\u2019s harder than it has ever been.<\/span><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n