Read more: Finding Focus in a Content-Heavy World

Long-form is the way.

There is something that happens to my mind after I’ve consumed too much content. There is a tipping point. A cliff’s edge. It always starts small – checking emails which leads to clicking links; reading pages, then paragraphs, then headlines; gathering all the relevant inputs for the day’s workflow. Just a quick scroll, then another. I switch between screens.  Open the laptop. Open the phone. Soon I’m surrounded by text and images, and push notifications, and the incessant demand for my attention until that tipping point arrives and I’m lost in it again. I’m lost in the deluge of information (or pieces of it, anyway), of never-ending content, of quick video clips and images. My attention is fractured. I feel my mind go with it – scattered across the screens.

Hours go by like this. I complete a task, post a deliverable, then get lost in the loop again. I look at the clock (where did the time go) and wonder what I have accomplished? Nothing meaningful. Nothing of significance. Nothing that makes up for the scarce time I am exchanging for it.

This time is brief. And I am wasting it. Again, and again, and infuriatingly, again.

I yearn for slow. I yearn for substance.

I yearn to exchange this time I have for what is meaningful – moments with my family, reading books with my son, writing by hand, hot coffee on quiet mornings, walks through the evergreens. I yearn to be grounded in the practice of my life.

Being present is, undoubtedly, the answer. A simple and yet incredibly arduous solution. Because even without living in the digital world we would still become captured by thought. But there is something specific about the heavy onslaught of information, about the sheer volume of flashing content, and about what it does to our stream of consciousness. There is something about the way our brains have come to scan through headline after headline, reel after reel. It fractures our attention. It steals our focus. It’s what gets me to that tipping point where I feel I’ve lost my time (and my mind) to it without intending to.

And somehow it infiltrates our experience of the world around us. Even without a screen in front of me, I sometimes find myself repackaging the moment for later – framing the photo of something beautiful or interesting or unusual for social, writing the caption in my head, saving it for some future reconstruction instead of just experiencing it in the present. And for what? The vast number of photos in my camera roll that have, in the end, never amounted to much. They gather digital dust. And once again, I plunge back in, consumed by the cacophony of content.

I long for stillness.

I long to sit and write, quietly, without interruption. I long to read a book without picking up my phone. I long for concentration, for flow, for focus.

And I know that means silencing the apps. It means putting the phone away. It means working differently. Or at least I’d like to think it does. The attention economy is bigger than any of us. I couldn’t do my job entirely detached from it.

But I remember there used to be another way. It’s like the centre my mind is always trying to return to. It’s always trying to get back to that equilibrium. And I’ve taken breaks from social media (a whole year, once) and I suddenly had perspective again. The perspective of seeing the absurdity of it all. But as I’m consistently reminded, that’s not a sustainable approach. This is how the world, and work, works. The news cycle spins round. The content machine must be fed. Social media serves a function. But there is a balance to be struck. One in which I am not plunged mindlessly into the abyss of content. One in which my mind is not splintered by its scraps and snippets.

The way there is the longer way, the harder way, the slower way. The way there is long form. It’s creating something that lasts longer than a digital flash. It’s (trying) to create something of substance. It’s the piece that takes work, takes time, takes commitment. It’s reading, reading, reading (books, and long form writing, and things that are difficult and sticky, or things that take time to unravel). It’s an attempt to create something, and to do something, that feels like a valuable exchange of my time.

I want to find myself lost in something more substantial – something to hold still in my mind, to examine, to consider. Something that isn’t so fleeting and transient. So that my attention may be whole instead of fragmented. So that I stand a chance of being present in the moment.

And there is a place for digital, but not at the centre of my experience. Not as the first input of my day. Because if I am not mindful in how I consume content or how I use my time, I’ll find myself wasting it. And it’s interesting – I notice I cannot manage to explain this experience of time without the terms ‘use’, ‘spend’, ‘exchange’, or ‘lose’, which only adds to the illusion that I have sovereignty over it. Yet, it still matters how I treat my time, how I fill my days, how I spend my life. It is still a matter of what I do with this precious, finite gift. It does make a difference what ideas and information I explore, of what I allow in.

If nothing else, it may come down to how it makes me feel. I don’t want to feel like my mind is scattered. I want to have focus. I want to work in flow. My intuition is telling me (it’s always told me) that writing is the way. It’s how I’ll learn and grow (in truth, it’s how I always have). It’s how my work, and my writing, will evolve.

Where that may lead, I do not know. Maybe these long form pieces will be of no value to anyone but me and the time I took to craft them. The time I took to be focused on them. But in the end, that’s how I would like to spend my time. Present. Focused. As whole as I can be in my experience of life – watching my child play and grow, creating something of value, being present for the wonder of it all.