Recommended Read - Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

There are books I read that I find helpful, and then there are books I read that I know are going to change something significant in my life. This book is the latter. I picked up Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang because a) I'm obsessed with books on habits, productivity, and finding calm, as most of you know, and b) because I hadn't seen this topic tackled so extensively before. A book on rest, not sleep (though there's a chapter on that). That's an important distinction because rest can be active and purposeful. Rest can be magical.

As I've mentioned before, I have a tendency to suffer with writer's block and burnout. I figured that's a natural thing because I've spent the last 8 years writing about 300,000 words a year under deadline. I love my job but that doesn't mean it doesn't get stressful and overwhelming. So over the last few years, I've taken a big interest in productivity, creativity, and habits and have read books like Deep Work, Big Magic, Better Than Before, Essentialism, etc. It's an ongoing journey, so when I saw the premise and chapter titles of this book, I knew I needed to read it.

So what's my verdict? My highest recommendation. I think anyone in any type of creative, scientific, or business field should pick this up. There was so much great information, all backed up by extensive real world examples of other creatives, scientists, and business leaders along with the science and research studies that underline the points. The science parts are particularly helpful because it tells you how and why these methods work. (And gives you the justification for doing them. Science says so! lol)

I know I'll be taking away things like the four hour work window for focused/deep work, stopping in the middle while you still know what's going to happen next so your subconscious can work on it, having a morning routine and getting my writing done FIRST so that any rest or play later in the day is done without guilt. Those are just a few.

There were so many great nuggets of wisdom, I can't list them all here. But I will say that using a lot of these methods over the last week has resulted in a week of steady writing, hitting my word count every day, and having no stress about it. It's been fantastic.

So, I suggest you check out the book, but I also wanted to list the chapter titles so you can see the range of topics covered. 

Part 1: Stimulating Creativity

• Four Hours
• Morning Routine
• Walk
• Nap
• Stop
• Sleep

Part 2: Sustaining Creativity

• Recovery
• Exercise
• Deep Play
• Sabbaticals

About the book (back cover):

For most of us, overwork is the new normal and rest is an afterthought. In our busy lives, rest is defined as the absence of work: late-night TV binges, hours spent trawling the internet, something to do once we've finished everything else on our to-do lists. But dismissing rest stifles our ability to think creatively and truly recharge.

In Rest, Silicon Valley consultant Alex Pang argues that we can be more successful in all areas of our lives by recognizing the importance of rest: working better does not mean working more, it means working less and resting better. Treating rest as a passive activity secondary to work undermines our chances for a rewarding and meaningful life. Whether by making space for daily naps, as Winston Churchill did during World War II; going on hours-long strolls like Charles Darwin; or spending a week alone in a cabin like Bill Gates, pursuing what Pang calls "deliberate rest" is the true key to fulfillment and creative success. Drawing on rigorous scientific evidence and revelatory historical examples, Rest overturns everything our culture has taught us about work and shows that only by resting better can we start living better.

Now, go get a copy and get some rest this weekend! ;) 

The End of Our Screen-Free Summer: Results & Moving Forward

I can't believe it's already back to school time. Kidlet started 4th grade this week, and that marked the end of our Screen-Free Summer experiment. For those who haven't been following along, at the beginning of summer we decided that kidlet would have no video games, iPad, or computer time this summer. He could watch TV and movies with us as a family, but that would be his only screen time. (Get links to all the previous posts at the bottom of this post.)

The summer has gone so much better than I ever could've hoped for. The experiment ended up being not just great for the kiddo but for us too. We have introduced kidlet to a bit of our 80s childhood--we watched "old" movies (The Back to the Future movies were his favorite), we played endless games of UNO and rediscovered board games we'd forgotten about (hubs and I now are slightly obsessed with Upwords), kidlet and I watched a bunch of The Goldbergs (sticking with our 80s theme, lol), and so many more things (frisbee, library visits, flag football, guitar lessons, kidlet learning to cook with me, etc.) 

So what were the outcomes of the experiment?

Some things kidlet did that I know wouldn't have happened if we hadn't gone device-free:

• He got completely into his guitar lessons. I don't have to prompt him to practice. He goes to his guitar and practices daily because he wants to. In fact, he did his first concert this past weekend and in only three months, he was picked as lead guitar on one of the rock songs. He was so great!
• One day he decided that the video game he really wanted to play hadn't been invented yet, so he took a stack of looseleaf and started drawing up his plans for the game he would invent, each page was another screenshot of the game.
• He got into devising and decorating a calendar for each month to plan his activities. (see photo of the calendar in this post) So now at the beginning of the month, he maps out all the fun things he wants to do, chooses movies for the movie nights, and selects meals he wants to help cook.
• He fell in love with UNO. I have lost count of how many games we've played lol.
• He's discovered a love for audiobooks (via the library visits.)
• He inspired my husband and I to take our own hard look at ourselves and our smartphone/internet time.

And what about the things that prompted us to go device-free in the first place?

• Kidlet's motor tics, which had gotten pretty bad toward the end of the school year, have almost disappeared. Every now and then I'll see a small one appear, but it's so subtle that no one but me or hubs who know him so well would even catch it. It's a dramatic difference.
• Kidlet had started getting grumpy, irritable, and defiant with us on a regular basis, which was outside his normally sunny personality. That whole attitude/defiance thing has disappeared. Not to say he doesn't have his moments. He's a kid. But it's rare and short-lived. This has probably been one of the biggest changes. His general mood has just been happier and more relaxed.
• Kidlet's preoccupation/desire for the video games and devices disappeared in about a week. The spell can definitely be broken.

In fact, the device-free summer has been so great that I was kind of dreading the end of it because I liked the new rhythm we'd established and my pleasant kid. But I gave my word to kidlet that it was just for the summer and I wasn't going to go back on that. However, I warned him during the summer that when it came back, there would be limits.

So this week, I told kidlet that he can have 100 minutes a week on devices (any device counts unless it's something for school work) and he can budget those minutes how he wants. He was fine with that and, in his analytical way, immediately started figuring out how he wanted to budget them. But he also told me last night: "Mom, can we do device-free summer next summer? I really liked it."

*cue me doing a victory dance in my head* lol

And really, I completely understand where he's coming from. I've dialed back a lot of my social media and smartphone time this summer, too. I also took a three-week internet break when I was finishing my book. Coming back, I had a small sense of dread because the break had been freeing in a lot of ways. So I think that might be how kidlet is feeling now. So, I I told him we could do it again next summer and that just because devices were back didn't mean he HAD to use them. He could be device-free anytime he wanted. 

Yesterday was his first day back with access. He spent 10 minutes playing a video game with a friend who came over and then last night used another few minutes to create Spotify playlists of the songs he wants to learn on guitar. Then he put it all away to watch some TV with me. He didn't rush back to them like he'd been deprived of anything.

So I'm declaring this summer a roaring success. I'm so very glad we decided to give this a try. It's been life-changing in a hundred little ways for all of us. : ) 

Anyone else do any experiments over the summer?

Previous posts on the Screen-Free Summer:

• A Screen-Free Summer for Kidlet: How, Why, & If I'll Lose My Mind
• The 10-Day Update
• 5 Week Update on Screen-Free Summer

Other Related Posts:

• Morning Rituals: Breaking the Smartphone First Habit
• Research Reads from a Device-Free Summer: The End of Absence
• Thought-Provoking Reads from a Device-Free Summer (Day 2): The Power of Off

Revisiting Deep Work by Cal Newport & Why I'm Such a Devotee

This week I've been nerding out with all my non-fiction book recommendations about focus and distraction, writing, and curbing the smartphone habit. Today, I've got one last pick for you. 

I blogged about Deep Work last year (almost a year ago to the day) when I read it for the first time, and I really credit it with being the book that got me thinking more deeply (haha) about this whole topic of focus in the world of distraction we face everyday. It was my ticket into exploring this whole issue on a number of levels.

So this summer, with all my reading on what the internet, smartphones, social media, etc. are doing to our lives and brains, I decided it was time for a reread of the book that started me down this path. This time, instead of racing through it like I do when I first read a book, I reread at a leisurely pace and took handwritten notes throughout. I'm not typically a re-reader but I really felt like I got even more out of this one the second time because I've been on the journey of working on my focus for a year. So things I may have missed last time landed on this read through. I also have seen some results.

Of all the books I've recommended this week, I think this is the most "user-friendly" one because there are practical tips on what to do. Not to say the information and science of it isn't dry at times--that's the nature of this type of book and something I don't mind because I love science/research type books, but it's not a heavy or dense read like some of the others. (Like below I mention The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brain, which was awesome but very dense with history and detailed science and not something I'd recommend to a reader who isn't used to reading that kind of thing or is looking for a general overview.)

So, if you haven't seen my previous post on Deep Work, check that out here, but today I thought I'd share some quotes and thoughts like I've been doing for the other books this week.

First, the back cover summary:

One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming increasingly rare. If you master this skill, you'll achieve extraordinary results.

Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It's a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep-spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there's a better way.

In DEEP WORK, author and professor Cal Newport flips the narrative on impact in a connected age. Instead of arguing distraction is bad, he instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four "rules," for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

A mix of cultural criticism and actionable advice, DEEP WORK takes the reader on a journey through memorable stories-from Carl Jung building a stone tower in the woods to focus his mind, to a social media pioneer buying a round-trip business class ticket to Tokyo to write a book free from distraction in the air-and no-nonsense advice, such as the claim that most serious professionals should quit social media and that you should practice being bored. DEEP WORK is an indispensable guide to anyone seeking focused success in a distracted world.

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Quotes - Thoughts - Observations

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On our current state...

"There's increasing evidence that this shift toward the shallow [thinking] is not a choice that can be easily reversed. Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work."

I can absolutely tell you that over the last year and particularly this summer when I've greatly dialed back my smartphone, social media, and internet time that I can feel the physical difference in my thinking. Last year, I was afraid that something was wrong with my memory because I couldn't hold onto so many things anymore. I was afraid that I was developing ADD (despite having no history of it). But it wasn't some illness overtaking me, it was this fast-moving world of distractibility.

I was teaching my brain to always be stimulated and jumping from task to task. But now, I can feel the quieting of my thoughts, feel the ability to focus and get into "flow" with projects coming back. I'm calmer. I'm more creative. In some ways, I feel like I've stepped out of the matrix and am seeing everything with new eyes--which sounds cheesy but is the best description of what the experience has felt like. It helps you get perspective, asking, wait, why was I doing this again? Why did I find it necessary to pick up my phone every 5 minutes or check social media every bored moment I had? Why did I feel the need to document and post so many things out to the world?  Honestly, it's jarring at first to dial it all back. And then you start reaping the benefits...

On the nervous hum...

"the lack of distraction in my life tones down that background hum of nervous mental energy that seems to increasingly pervade people's daily lives. I'm comfortable being bored, and this can be a surprisingly rewarding skill..."

Which is exactly what my experience has been. I can concentrate. I can read a book without worrying if an email has come in. I can work on writing my book and not care what's happening on twitter. I can exist in quiet with nothing to do but think and be cool with that. In fact, I've come to crave the quiet, disconnected moments like I used to when I was a daydreaming kid.

On multitasking...

"People who multitask all the time can't filter out irrelevancy. They can't manage a working memory. They're chronically distracted. They initiate much larger parts of their brain that are irrelevant to the task at hand...they're pretty much mental wrecks."

I am now a devotee to unitasking. Science tells us that we can't multitask anyway. When we think we are, we're just cycling from one task to the next at a rapid pace but still only doing one thing at a time. But if I've learned anything from all these books I've been reading, it's that unitasking with purpose is where the magic lies. It's like a superpower to be able to dedicate all of your focus to whatever it is you're working on. Like right now I am writing this post. No email or social media notifications will interrupt me (because I've turned them all off permanently both on my desktop and phone.) I will not check anything until I'm done writing this and have to go grab the links to add to this post. And I will finish this post in far less time than it used to take me to write something shorter.

On the importance of boredom...

"If every moment of potential boredom in your life--say, having to wait five minutes in line or sit alone in a restaurant until a friend arrives--is relieved with a quick glance at your smartphone, then your brain has likely been rewired to a point where...it's not ready for deep work--even if you regularly schedule time to practice this concentration."

So here's the thing. This does take some time for your brain to retrain. I can say that from my own experience and also from watching my son do the device-free summer. There's almost a detox process involved. For one, shutting down a lot of the distractions may make you feel mentally tired and even a little down. Our brains are used to the constant entertainment and stimulation. Pulling back from that and replacing it with quiet time and focused concentration is a big shift. But that state passes. For kidlet, it took about a week from what I could tell. For me, a little less, maybe because despite how distracted I was, I have been writing books for years which had trained my brain for some level of deep focus. But then that tiredness/low mood lifts and the quieter, focused pace becomes fulfilling. Creative ideas start to pop up. An internal calmness develops. Plus, you're more productive on the things that count which is reinforcing. You don't want to go back to how things were. Like kidlet has taken to saying, "I think the video games and Ipad were tricking my brain."

On social media...

Don't take the 'any benefit' approach to a social media tool. Take the craftsman approach, meaning adopt a tool only if its positive impact on your success/happiness/professional/personal life "substantially outweighs its negative impacts." 

The key there is that last portion--substantially outweighs. We can find positive aspects of any social media. But just because a positive aspect exists doesn't mean it's worth the costs of the negatives a tool may have. Most of us do social media for a combination of fun/socializing and work purposes, but as we know, social media can suck up all of our time and attention because it's meant to be addictive. Companies don't want you to leave their sites. So take a hard look at all your social media outlets and determine which ones offer you more positives than negatives and pare back or get rid of the ones that are more negatives than positives. He gives a great example in the book, using a writer as the test case, on weighing the pros and cons of Twitter. I can't post it all here but it's eye-opening. And then he gives you tools on how to tame your social media beast.

On Shallow vs. Deep Work...

And finally, how do you even know what constitutes deep work vs. shallow work? How do you know if you're spending time where you should?

Ask of a task: "How long would it take (in months) to train a smart recent college graduate with no specialized training in my field to complete this task?"

If the answer is not very long, it's shallow work. Deep work is whatever your specialized skills are. For me, deep work is writing and editing. Deep work is not crafting a clever FB contest. It doesn't mean that the shallow work is not still part of my job, but it helps determine where I should be spending most of my time and effort. I have a career because I know how to write a book. That's my specialized skill. If I spend 80% of my day doing email, Facebook, Twitter, and skimming the internet, I'm just like anyone else who knows how to use a computer. So invest the lion's share of your work time in your deep work tasks and then take breaks from focused work to do the other stuff, instead of the other way around (taking breaks from distractions to do a little deep work in between.)

There are a lot more great points in the book and I don't necessarily agree with every single tactic he suggests, but overall, it was a world-shaking book for me in a good way. It's changed how I approach things completely. I highly recommend it.

And if you want to nerd out on the topic like me, here is a further reading list:

Thought-Provoking Reads from a Device-Free Summer (Day 2): The Power of Off

This week I'm taking some of the books I've read this summer while researching productivity, children and the internet/devices/video games, and how devices and the internet change our brains and am giving y'all some highlighted quotes for those interested.

I know that most people don't want to read a stack of books about the same topic, but I'm a nerd and a researcher at heart, so I love this stuff. ;) Hopefully by pulling some of the quotes from all these different books, it will give you some food for thought and also help you decide if you want to pick up the book to read. 

Yesterday I tackled The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection. Today, I'm going to cover a different book with a similar topic, but this one is more about how to protect your mental health in the connected world we live in. So yesterday's book was more philosophical, The Power of Off is focused more on psychology and self-care.

From the back cover:

Effective mindfulness practices for transforming your relationship with technology and reconnecting with your real life
 
Our reliance on technology is rapidly changing how each of us experiences life. We’re facing new issues and difficulties, we’re encountering new emotional triggers, and we’re relating to each other in new ways. As Dr. Nancy Colier writes, “How we spend our time, what motivates us, and what we want are all are on a radical course of transformation.” The promise of technology is that it will make our lives easier; yet to realize that promise, we cannot be passive users—we must bring awareness and mindfulness to our relationships with our devices.
 
“The compulsion to constantly check our devices plays on primal instincts,” teaches Colier. “Even people with strong spiritual practices or those who have never had other addiction issues now find themselves caught in the subtle trap of these miraculous tools we’ve created.” Through The Power of Off, she offers us a path for making use of the virtual world while still feeling good, having healthy relationships, and staying connected with what is genuinely meaningful in life. You’ll explore:  

• How and why today’s devices push our buttons so effectively, and what you can do to take back control of your life

• Tips for navigating the increasingly complex ways in which technology is affecting our relationships—with ourselves, others, and our devices themselves

• Self-evaluation tools for bringing greater awareness to your use of technology

• Mindfulness practices for helping you interact with your devices in more conscious ways

• A 30-day digital detox program to kick-start a new healthier relationship with technology 

With The Power of Off, Colier sounds the call for wakefulness, reminding us that we can use technology in a way that promotes, rather than detracts from, our well-being. This book provides an essential resource for anyone wanting to create a more empowered relationship with technology in the digital age.

Quotes that stood out to me in The Power of Off:

On why the internet and social media are so seductive. We think...

"If other people know about our lives, our lives will feel more real...If the world knows who we are, we will know who we are....With enough virtual destinations to choose from, we will find somewhere that we want to be."

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Like most of you know, I did a device-free summer with kidlet and was very nervous and intimidated when we started it, but it ended up being a great decision and easier than I thought. Her experience below with her daughter was similar to mine in that my kidlet handled it much better than I anticipated. I actually didn't have to say no except once because when I told him it was for the whole summer, he accepted that as fact, so he hasn't asked because he knows no devices or video games this summer, period.

"Getting kids off technology is not for the faint of heart, not once they’ve tasted the relief and glee that a princess video on YouTube can provide. Getting off technology is, in fact, hard for the whole family. In the end, for me, it’s a matter of using my resilience and my ability to stay present and connected with my love for my daughter, my deeper wisdom, and my clear intention to teach my child to enjoy herself without external entertainment. I want her to know her own internal resources and to trust the imagination and intelligence she contains. Thankfully, the more I say no, the more she returns to playing on her own, engaging herself, and being happy and proud about it."

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On FOMO, the fear of missing out. I had to deal with this some in June/July when I did a 3-week social media fast to get my book finished, but that anxiety about missing out faded in a few days. After the fast, I've been reluctant to return to the previous state, so now I'm still limiting my social media just because it feels better. I feel calmer.

"Indeed, many of us have grown afraid that if we don’t continually tell the world who we are, as everyone else is doing, we will become invisible and irrelevant."

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She also made me think more about what I post when I do post. This is no judgment from me about what anyone decides to post, but it has now given me personal pause to think more deliberately about what I'm posting.

"A Facebook post by an intelligent friend, a fifty-year-old woman, read: 'Up for an early bike ride, now followed up by some fresh fruit and an acai juice.' Why do we now use our time to report such things? Why is it important that the public know our morning juice ritual? Do we not reap the same health benefits and take the same pride in that bike ride if others don’t know about it?"

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These made me think because it's like that tree in the woods thing--if a tree falls in the woods but no one hears it, did it really happen? That's how social media feels sometimes. It didn't happen unless we post about it. (And I know the irony of me commenting on this as I blog about something I'm doing in my life, lol.) But it comes to my mind a lot at concerts when everyone has their phones up recording the performance and watching the tiny screen instead of, you know, actually experiencing the live performance you paid all that money for in order to get a low quality video that won't be as good as one you can look up on YouTube. 

"What has happened to the power of internal experience, the private knowing of what we do in our lives? It appears that internal validation is disappearing and we increasingly need an external response for each moment we live."

"The rise of technology in our lives has been accompanied not only by the drive to turn ourselves into a brand but also by an undeniable explosion in our need to be witnessed."

"And often what accompanies this swelling desire is the belief that everything we live, from every thought to every splinter, is of monumental significance and fascination to others."

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And a good question to ask if you feel you're more attached or dependent on social media than you would like:

"Ask yourself: What role (if any) does technology play in making me feel seen, known, or valued? Why is it important to me that others know about this? ...If they know, does it change the experience...? What changes or relaxes as a result of my making this experience known to the world?"

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On how our sense of self matures (or doesn't.) This definitely gave me pause since I'm in my thirties now.

"There used to be a developmental stage in life, usually sometime in our thirties, when we shifted our focus from the outside to the inside. That is, we stopped defining ourselves by what others thought of us and became more interested in what we thought of ourselves and the world. This stage could be called “growing up.” It seems that this stage of life is now disappearing for many of us. Now, the question Do I like myself? has been replaced by Am I liked?"

So if you're looking for a read that will make a case for stepping away from social media sometimes and give your brain a break in the name of self-care, this is a good one to pick up. 

Research Reads from a Device-Free Summer: The End of Absence

If you've been following me this summer, you know that we embarked on a device-free or screen-free summer for kidlet. (Device-free is more accurate because we allowed watching TV and movies as a family but screen-free summer had alliteration, lol.) Here are the previous posts:

• A Screen-Free Summer for Kidlet: How, Why, & If I'll Lose my Mind
• The 10-Day Update
• The 5-Week Update

The experiment has gone so much better than I expected. I anticipated much more push back and problems. I expected it to be HARD. In truth, week one was hard. The rest has been...surprisingly easy. We've developed new routines and habits. Kidlet knows he's going to get his devices back in very limited quantities (20 min max a day) once summer is over, but he hasn't complained or asked for devices. The pull they had on him before (what inspired this screen-free summer idea in the first place) has disappeared. So I'm thrilled that we decided to take the leap and go cold turkey all summer (as scary as it seemed at the time.)

In addition to helping him, this whole experiment has opened my eyes a lot and helped me as well. I've wrangled a lot of my device time and social media time and have developed an aversion to things that are stealing my focus. Part of that is because I'm the type of person who wants to know ALL the things about a topic when I'm interested in it, so I have read A LOT of books about smartphones, social media, internet addiction, the changes technology has caused in how we interact, how our brains function, and how we live our lives.

I'm not sure I'm capable of summarizing the wealth of information I've read this summer, but I thought, for those interested, I could post the books I've read and share some of the quotes I highlighted while reading. So, that's what I plan to do this week. Each day, I'll post one of the books I read and the quotes I found most interesting or helpful.

Now, a disclaimer, I'm posting all of this without judgment. If you're into your devices and social media and don't feel the need to disconnect sometimes or back off of it, that's totally cool. I'm sharing this because I didn't like how things were trending with my lack of focus and my free time and family time being eaten up by my phone. So if it's not interfering with you or your family, then feel free to skip these posts. But otherwise, I think there's good food for thought in these books even if you aren't looking to make changes right now.

First up is The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection by Michael Harris.

This one mainly focused on our ability to be in the quiet, to be bored, to be alone. I thought he had a lot of interesting and thoughtful things to say about how the internet, smartphones, and social media have changed us.

Here are the quotes that stood out to me:

"Evolution (nature) endowed us with minds capable of fast and furious transformation, minds able to adapt to strange new environments (nurture) within a single lifetime—even within a few weeks. Therefore, we’re always products of both inherited hardware and recently downloaded software... The flip side of all this, though, is that young brains, immersed in a dozen hours of screen time a day, may be more equipped to deal with digital reality than with the decidedly less flashy reality reality that makes up our dirty, sometimes boring, often quiet, material world."

"we now need to proactively engineer moments of absence for them. We cannot afford to count on accidental absence any more than we can count on accidental veggies at dinner. Without such engineered absences (a weekend without texting, a night without screens), our children suffer as surely as do kids with endless access to fast food. The result is a digital native population that’s less well rounded than we know they could be."

This is part of what spurred me to do the device-free summer. I have an amazing kiddo. I knew he was capable of more than running to his Xbox or Ipad every free moment of the day.

"It’s becoming more and more obvious. I live on the edge of a Matrix-style sleep, as do we all. On one side: a bright future where we are always connected to our friends and lovers, never without an aid for reminiscence or a reminder of our social connections. On the other side: the twilight of our pre-Internet youths. And wasn’t there something . . . ? Some quality . . . ?"

This one above really made me think because I think sometimes what we chalk up to "nostalgia" may be more than that. There was a quality to my childhood and those pre-internet years that's missing. I've learned this summer that it's not something that can't be reclaimed. Doing things like playing old school board games with kidlet or teaching him how to cook or watching him make up his own games has recaptured some of what I didn't even realize was missing.

"Children do need moments of solitude as well as moments of healthy interaction. (How else would they learn that the mind makes its own happiness?) But too often these moments of solitude are only stumbled upon by children, whereas socialization is constantly arranged."

I loved that line about how would they learn their minds make their own happiness. 

"Despite the universality of this change, which we’re all buffeted by, there is a single, seemingly small change that I’ll be most sorry about. It will sound meaningless, but: One doesn’t see teenagers staring into space anymore. Gone is the idle mind of the adolescent."

Things I'd never thought about, but so true. Everyone has their heads down looking at their phones now.

"Solitude may cause discomfort, but that discomfort is often a healthy and inspiring sort. It’s only in moments of absence that a daydreaming person...can receive truly unexpected notions."

Sound familiar, writers?

"What will become of all those surreptitious gifts when our blank spaces are filled in with duties to 'social networks' and the relentless demands of our tech addictions?"

"I fear we are the last of the daydreamers. I fear our children will lose lack, lose absence, and never comprehend its quiet, immeasurable value."

God, I hope this is not the case. As a writer who makes her living in the world of imagination and daydreaming, I hope a new crop of writers, artists, creators is behind me. 

"Every technology will alienate you from some part of your life. That is its job. Your job is to notice. First notice the difference. And then, every time, choose."

This quote will stick with me. It's going to make me stop and think--when I look at this device, social network, whatever, what am I looking away from? I'm not a Luddite who is going to totally disconnect from the online world, but I'm becoming a lot more deliberate and choosy about how and where I'm spending my time and energy.

Needless to say, I found this book an engrossing read. I have more to share from other books the rest of this week, but I think this one did an excellent job of making the case for creating time in your life and your children's lives for solitude, quiet, absence, boredom, and blank spaces for your brain to daydream in.

Dream on, y'all. ;)