For some time, I noticed a quiet drift away from the habits that help me feel grounded. Morning writing with a cup of tea, lingering in a book, hearing the world before speaking into it — these rituals were gradually replaced by phone time. I found myself looking forward to the next update from channels I follow, or refreshing the news more often than the news deserved.
While I’m fortunate to have support with social media, the reflex remained: a subtle pull toward the screen, as if the device were tapping me on the shoulder throughout the day.
Researchers have compared smartphones to a parasite of attention — a system brilliantly designed to consume our focus without nourishing anything important in return. What I began to notice was not dramatic, but cumulative. The very practices that regulate the parasympathetic nervous system — writing, reading, walking, silence, conversation — were being slowly displaced by passive consumption.
The cost was subtle: less spaciousness, less curiosity, less presence.
For me, a pause began to feel less like restriction and more like reclamation.
The Nervous System and the Economy of Attention
Our attention is not neutral. Where we place it shapes our physiology, emotional tone, creativity, and relationships. Our devices are engineered to stimulate dopamine-driven reward pathways, creating micro-loops of anticipation that keep us checking, scrolling, and returning.
This design does not make us weak; it makes the technology powerful.
Couples often tell me that their greatest sense of disconnection comes not from conflict, but from divided attention — the partner physically present but psychically elsewhere. The same is true internally: when our attention is fragmented, we become separated from ourselves.
The Pause
A few months ago, I began consciously pulling back from online engagement. No announcement. No manifesto. Just a quiet experiment in recalibration.
What I rediscovered was time, uncompressed time, to think, read, notice, and write with more curiosity and less hurry. It reminded me that stepping back is sometimes the only way to step back into what matters.
A Practical, Gentle Pause
This isn’t a call to abandon technology. It’s an invitation to notice the trade.
Here are a few ways to experiment without judgment:
Track the pull
For one week, simply notice how often you reach for your phone and what emotion precedes it — boredom, loneliness, urgency, habit.
Check your body while scrolling
Are you breathing?
Are your shoulders up?
Is your jaw tight?
Do you leave the phone calmer or more activated?
Create small boundaries
- No phones at the dinner table
- An hour unplugged before bed
- A phone-free walk
- Charging the phone outside the bedroom
Each boundary is less about restriction and more about choice.
Returning to Ordinary Life Without a Lens
Once even a small amount of space opens, ordinary life becomes vivid again:
- Eating
A meal without distraction allows the nervous system to register nourishment. - Outdoors
Birdsong, wind, uneven ground — these are anchors the body trusts. - Bathing
Warm water softens muscles and invites a different pace. - Driving
Without constant input, the mind wanders — and wandering is not wasted; it is where creativity forms. - Before Sleep
Without screens, the nervous system transitions instead of crashes.
These small acts signal: I’m here. I’m not somewhere else.
Presence as an Offering
After a period offline, I didn’t find myself missing much. What returned wasn’t boredom — it was capacity. More presence in conversation. More ideas with beginnings, middles, and ends. More attunement to the dogs beside me, the people across the table, the rhythms of the day.
When we offer someone our attention, we offer something irreplaceable.
Human influence is not measured in followers but in presence — the calm, warmth, and steadiness we bring to the people and animals we share life with.
The pause is not about deprivation.
It is about choosing what we want to belong to.