Fireside Chat: Trying out Via Negativa

There was a book written in the early 20th century called Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz. in it, he spoke about a concept which revolved around gaining from life by taking away meaningless tasks. In the novel, this was acts such as drinking at taverns and spending money at brothels as opposed to spending time and money with your family, but i began to wonder if the same method could also apply to the modern world. How much more of our life could be gained by taking away from our social media habits, streaming habits, and other tasks we deem necessary in the 21st century?

As an experiment, i downloaded a couple of apps on my phone to track such things like how often i opened my phone, how long i used certain apps, and what parts of the day i used it. In addition, i installed a time tracking app that would also track whatever other activity i was doing at the time. I was hoping to have a good baseline for my regular activity, so i didn’t change anything that i did in regards to my phone usage. For the first week, my top three usages were:

1 - YouTube - 52h 24m

2 - Netflix - 26h 12m

3 - YouTube Music - 12h 7m

Now, most of the time, i would listen to things as background noise for whatever else i was doing, but i was absolutely shocked by how much i was using my phone as a crutch to do other activities. This may just be my perspective, but if i was doing one activity while listening to something else, i could at MOST give half of my attention to both of these things at the same time. This would mean that, when i was writing, reading, studying, etc., I was not being fair to myself by placing such limits on the power of my attention. The next week, i deleted Netflix off of my phone and planned on only using YouTube at certain times of the day. The next week became:

1 - YouTube 20h 34m

2 - YouTube Music 3h 3m

3 - Chrome - 2h 28m

In the same week, my time spent reading and with my family more than doubled, my grades improved, i wrote more, and i had more time to myself since i completed tasks a bit faster because i was focused more on them. I was GAINING more life by taking away from it. Trying to make the most out of it, i continued the cycle, and this past week’s top three for my phone were:

1 - YouTube Music - 1h

2 - TimeLogger - 10m

3 - Clock - 5m

This week, I had forty hours clocked with my family, four hours in writing, read four books, finished multiple projects around the house, and haven’t missed my phone at all. I gained all of this by simply taking away time that i was giving passively to my phone. It makes me wonder what i could gain if i could find other ways to take away from meaningless tasks from my life.

Of course, this is just an example. However, i give it because it is probably the most relevant to readers. If you want to try it for yourself but don’t want to dive into it quite as deep as i did, just start off by placing your phone on the charger half an hour before bed. When you wake up, don’t touch your phone until after you’ve gotten your cup of coffee or something. Taking away habits/addictions like phone usages is hard, but doing so can be done if it’s trained like a muscle. If you can, i promise you that you won’t regret it!