Are You Really Addicted to Your Phone??

Hello to everyone who is currently reading this blog post!! It has felt like forever! NOT! I am back again to share the newest things I have been learning in class. If you have read my last post, you will see that we talked about how addicted people are to their phones and discussed Zomorodi's view on why it is their fault. We also talked about Williams' thoughts on why he believes tech companies are responsible for people becoming addicted. But this time around, we discussed Rob Walker's views, which are exactly the same as Manoush Zomorodi's views. To understand his perspective, I completed one last challenge. Then, my whole class had to create a social media/phone challenge that pushes people to think more like James Williams and less like Zomorodi and Walker.

For the last challenge I had to complete, I had to choose between five different challenges. The five challenges came from Walker's book, The Art of Noticing. The first challenge from this selection is creating an auditory inventory. The instructions for this were to note all the sounds you heard at a certain time and write them down. The second challenge was to sketch a room we were just in. We were to survey the room we were currently in, walk into a different room, and sketch the room with as much detail as we could remember. The third challenge was to look out a window for ten minutes. You find a window you normally don't take time to look out of and look for three things you have not noticed before or describe what you are seeing. The fourth challenge was to repeat your point of view. You would find somewhere to sit and would sit there everyday for fifteen minutes and watch the people who passed by. This challenge was made for people to realize that not everything is the "same view" after all. The final challenge that my class could choose from was the take a color walk challenge. For this test, you had to take an hour-long walk and answer five questions. The five questions that you were asked are:

1. What are the colors that you become aware of first?
2. What are the colors that reveal themselves more slowly?
3. What colors do you observe that you did not expect?
4. What color relationships do you notice?
5.  Do colors appear to change over time?    

The challenge I chose to attempt was the sketch a room challenge. I thought this challenge would be fun to attempt compared to the other ones. If I am being honest, I felt like this challenge was more of a memory challenge instead of an attention challenge. I feel like I was just testing how well I could remember details about my own room that I stay in everyday and how well I could draw. (Which is not very good because I still can not draw to save my life.) So basically, I think I did very well in this challenge because I was able to draw all the major details of my room and include a lot more little details than I thought I was going to be able to include.

After a week of discussing the three theorists, talking about all the different challenges my classmates completed and the results of those challenges, we started to discuss our next presentation. Like I have mentioned before, our goal was to create our own social media challenge that would push people to think more in terms of James Williams and his thoughts about how companies are forcing us to become addicted to our technology, instead of Manoush Zomorodi and Rob Walker's belief that people become addicted because of themselves. So I created a challenge that combined being active on your phone while noticing the differences around you. This challenge is inspired by when I was hanging out with my friend. We were sitting in my car, scrolling through TikTok. When we looked up from our scrolling, we saw two things that we thought were hilarious. We saw two guys come up to an art installation and one of them started climbing up the art installation. The guy on top of the installation started posing in different ways while his friend took pictures of him at the top. When we shifted our gaze, we saw a staff member walking across the grass with a plastic bag and cardboard box of food. As we kept watching, we saw him start to run.  We then noticed that a hawk was following him pretty closely. That's when we realized that there was a hawks nest in one of the trees and that the hawk was probably feeling a little territorial. So the challenge I created works like this:

1. Find a place you can "people watch" (ex. park or a parking lot)
2. Note what is happening and what you can see 
3. Find something you can do on your phone
4. Look down at your phone for about five minutes, then look back up
5. Note what has changed from the last time you looked up

I think this challenge helps people think in terms of Williams' because it's not making people feel bad about being on their phone. I think that you can learn a lot from being on your phone. You can learn new recipes to try, about what's going on in the world around us, or what's happening in the lives of your friends you haven't seen in a while. By being on your phone and looking up every once in a while, you can learn new things.

That's all I have for you this time! I'll see you next time for my last blog post on here! See you next time!

why are influencers so special?

 Have you ever wondered why social media influencers are a thing? From famous Youtubers, Tiktokers and instagrammers to all media platforms, what makes people drawn to these influencers? 

To start us off, what is an influencer ?

An influencer is defined as a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media.

So how does that relate to us and how we use social media?

Social media can be used as many things but it is being transformed into a marketing dream. Every post is really just an ad for some type of product or service, with its users being the consumers/buyers. 

This brings us into influencers. They are a tool for these platforms to be able to sell us things. By using people to show their products we feel like there is a more personable approach to buying things than if we were to see an ad on Tv. These influencers connect with their audiences by sharing details about their everyday lives with us. Im sure you’ve heard the clever line of “you guys aren’t just my followers but my friends”, this is just another way for followers to feel important which can lead to us buying more products. 

Even though influencers are really just another tool to market products/services there is a strange connection we hold with them. Because they are everyday people we put a level of trust onto them, we believe them when they talk about products they actually love. Influencers are also important because they are able to voice things and create a community of like minded people. “To capitalize on engaged social media audiences, it’s important for brands to realize that social media platforms and digital influencers are not simply vehicles to distribute a brand’s message – they are actual communities with special sets of norms, values, and ways of communicating. Campaigns are most successful when companies recognize what makes every social community’s unique culture and niche interests”. 

Social media influencers may seem like they have the easiest job in the world, but when you really look at it they are the bridge from buyers to companies and creating a unique space for everyone to be heard and seen when going online. 

sources 

https://mediakix.com/blog/why-we-love-social-media-stars/

My Strange Addiction: A Cellular Device

A really clear depiction of a cellular device being in control of a person through a charger

    When is the last time you grabbed your phone? If it's been more than an hour since you've touched your phone then you are either busy doing something, or you have a stronghold on your will to keep you from something taking your focus. If it's been around 30 minutes then you are working toward that full control of your life instead of the phone. If you are like me however, it has been less than 10 minutes and there is no chance it goes on a minute longer without staring at your phone for another second. 

    What is it about these devices that keep us hooked on to them? The culture within this day and age has become heavily reliant on these devices. From alarm clocks and calendar reminders, to the pinnacle of keeping in touch with everyone and anyone through social media. We have become interlocked with the use of our phones daily. How much are we really missing out on from our phones? 

    Rob Walker wrote a book entitled, "The Art Of Noticing", which is a book filled with 131 challenges for creativity and inspiration. For the sake of this blog, this book helps with opening up a person to focusing on the actual world over the world our phones have created for us to crave. Within these challenges, My professor, Dr. Vrooman, has given us a few to focus on through our social media class at TLU. 

    Surfing through the options I found one that stuck out to me since I live on the 3rd floor of my apartment building: Look Out A Window. 

    The results of this were more radical than I imagined. The idea of this challenge was to simply identify three objects I don't usually notice from first glance. I came across some crazy discoveries. Shingles indeed are the roof protection to any housing was my first observation. It was the second observation that began my discoveries. Grass is green. How in the world does it decipher itself as green? Yes science is a huge role in that of course I am aware of all that good stuff. However, isn't it crazy how objects and the things of this earth are just the color that they are? I began to even question how our brain is able to make things function on its own without pressing buttons to create actions like a video game. I ditched the challenge at this point but you get the idea. 

    How does this connect to the original idea behind this post? I am not sure. What if we are missing the whole concept behind the use of phones? 

    Every time we see challenges like the one I used, it is all surrounded on the idea that we are the problem with an addiction to a device that is without fault. The problem seems to be forced on to the user and their innate need for social interaction, and that interaction has been filled with the capabilities of social media through phones. 

    I feel like there is another way to prepose the idea of getting more blame on the phone over a person. I prepose people mimic the concept of window shopping!

    When someone states they are window shopping, they are simply looking and not buying. In the same way, the challenge will focus on people looking without interacting, but at the time that they CHOOSE to. How does one do this? Turn off your notifications to every social media application. Our phones become a distraction from the buzz it gives in our pocket. Taking away that distraction may get us to look up more and not be pulled away from what we are focused on within that certain time frame. 

Give it a try! This isn't the absolute answer of course, but it is worth a try! 

Look Up!

Last week, we learned about James Williams' Stand Out of Our Light. We took his discussion about the way that our phones distract us from our reality and pull us into an unknowing world in which we are consumed. Over the past couple of weeks, we practiced that. We took the concepts we learned with Williams and applied them to some of Manoush Zomorodi's Broad and Brilliant and Rob Walker's Art of Noticing.

For the purpose of this blog, we are going to focus on the challenges in Rob Walker's book. Our professor provided a list of five short challenges for us to take on. Simple enough, we could choose to sit and listen to some things around us for a bit, sketch a room from memory, look out a window, sit by a window or in a room you may not normally sit in, or take a color walk.

Seems kinda dumb, huh? (I'm just saying what we all thought so if you see this, Vroomen, don't be mad).

actual representation of me people-watching at 11:30pm

I started my challenge late one night after work and chose to look out the living room window for a few minutes. At first, I had the urge to be bored and check my phone but after a while, it went away and I started noticing the number of people walking on the side of my dorm building at 11:30 at night (weirdos), I noticed a line of small trees behind the large one I had never noticed before, I noticed the number of cars in the parking, a broken light at a building across the street, and other little things.

Once I noticed the number of things I hadn't noticed before my mind began drifting further into thought:

"Where are these people going? Can they see me staring at them from the second floor? If they looked up here would I be scared? Would they? Why have I never seen anyone in the other windows when I'm walking around campus? I don't recognize them..."

A guy in my class actually did the same challenge and he went into a similar spiral. After looking out of the window for a few minutes, he somehow began thinking a lot about why we have fingers, how they move, how our brain can just tell our bodies to do something and we do.

(Now there are two types of people reading this right now: the first will completely understand because we have these thoughts on a regular basis; the other will think it is crazy because they haven't ever thought like this.)

Regardless of the reader you are, the point of the discussion we got out of class that day was about our attention. it was about how our minds have changed and stopped noticing things that aren't necessarily right in front of our faces anymore. The theory of the 3 men we have learned from and discussed recently is that our phones (and technology in general) have taken away our ability to be detailed oriented. We forget to notice the little things around us and enjoy the moments without a screen 2 inches from our bodies.

The challenges take 5 minutes of your time but they are worth it. They gave me a refreshing start to my days. They reminded me of why I go do the things I do and it's not for me to record for later, it is for me to live in the moment. Whether we are alone or with people, we need to remind ourselves to step outside of the hold technology has on us and come up for air every once in a while. 

Look up and enjoy what is around you.

Try one of these challenges and let me know...

Are we addicted to our phones?

 

Looking at his phone | Pascal Colin | Flickr

Do phrases such as these sound familiar to you?:

• “When are you going to get off your phone?”

• “It’s like you're addicted to your phone.”

• “Can’t you go 5 seconds without your phone?”

If you have heard these phrases or something similar to them, I’m right there with you. Whether you have heard these things from colleagues, friends, family, or society, it seems like we can’t escape judgment for using our phones. 

It’s ironic really. For society to normalize smartphones as a common and basically essential tool for people, we still simultaneously have this tendency to criticize our use of our technological advancements. When you really think about it, we use our phones for a lot of various reasons which can include communication, entertainment, work, etc.

In my last blog post, I discussed the teaching of James Williams from his book Stand Out of Our Light. Just as a quick refresher, Williams argues that the significant amount of attention that we may find ourselves giving our phones is not entirely our fault. Phone and app producers have made it to where they have created material that intrigues our attention constantly, encouraging us to give our attention over to these devices. Although we have our own goals, our devices have their own goal that conflicts with our own: gaining our attention. In addition to these particular phone habits not being our faults, it is also not the phone and app producers faults either. They may play a factor in this matter, but Williams points out how no one goes into their job with the intention of making people’s lives harder. We have to make efforts that encourage our devices to align without our own goals instead of fighting against them. 

However, not everyone thinks like this. A lot of people like to voice this “phone addiction” narrative because that is what they have been consistently exposed to throughout the years. Which helps this harmful narrative to continue on with shaming people and their utilization of phones. 

We are constantly made to feel embarrassed and shamed for how we use our phones or for how long we use them. This phone addiction narrative that we’ve been fed for years has even sparked the creation of support groups and treatment regiments that are intended to help a person have better control over their “addiction.”

But the word “addition” suggests that we do not have a choice in our use of our phones. Since applying the “addiction” label to devices, we have suddenly treated phones as the equivalent of drugs. When in reality, these two things are very different and have different effects on a person. Yet someone way back in the beginning of the age of smartphones placed the “addiction” label on technology because it was convenient. And as a result, we now have people self conscious about their phone habits and constantly questioning if they have a legitimate problem. 

For the past few weeks, my classmates and I were assigned to attempt various challenges from Manoush Zomorodi. Zomorodi argues that our phones hinder us from being bored. Which might sound positive to many, but Zomorodi views boredom and the state of being bored as a helpful tool that can help spark creativity and help your brain from being constantly stimulated. 

Zomorodi offered us 7 different challenges that encouraged participants to put down their phones:

1. Monitor the amount of time you use your phone.

2. No devices in motion

3. No pictures 

4. Delete “that” app

5. Take a “fakecation”

6. Observe something

7. Get bored and think about a problem you’ve been trying to solve

I tried 4 of these challenges: challenges 1, 2, 3, and 6.

Challenge #1 (Monitor the amount of time you use your phone):

Challenge #1 was pretty interesting for me. When I checked out just how long I used my phone, my phone reported a daily average of 6 hour and 6 minutes. And this challenge got even more interesting as I looked into what apps I used predominantly during that daily average. You can see those details below. 

So let's see here. Let’s try to make sense of all of this.

I use TikTok quite often. That’s not new information for me. I know that I fall down a few TikTok holes throughout the day. With an algorithm that caters towards my interests (books, art, pop culture, etc.) it’s pretty easy for me to be entertained by this app for a good amount of time. 

Safari is in second place because I use it frequently for school. I use it to log onto class pages, for my job, research material, etc. And in addition to using Safari mainly for school, I do use it for entertainment purposes as well. Mainly to read articles and watch videos. 

SnapChat and Instagram are up there because they are the two apps that allow me to chat with one of my best friends who is currently studying abroad. We’ve discovered that these apps still allow us to stay connected. 

Messages and Mail are up on this list for a simple reason: they’re my main means of communicating with friends and family. I definitely use my messages and email apps everyday. How much I use them in a day completely depends on communication circumstances.

Messenger is there because that is what my mother and I use to do our daily digital calls to catch up at the end of our days. A lot of that time is admittedly us messing around with filters and playing games.

So cool! I now know why I spend a little over 6 hours on my phone on a daily basis. A lot can happen in 6 hours, but in truth, I don't feel guilty for spending that much time on my phone. Even with using my phone everyday, I still manage to get my school work done, complete tasks for my job, catch up with family and friends, and take time to unwind on social media. I still get everything I needed/wanted to get done by the end of each day in a timely manner. And my phone helps me do all of that. So why would I feel bad about using it? I don’t feel like I'm some kind of addict that can’t control my phone consumption time. I know why I use my phone so much, and I’m happy to know this device helps me with tasks I have. Sure, at times, I’ll admittedly stay on TikTok longer than I’ve intended to, but I had fun on TikTok. And I still get everything done. So, no real harm. 

Challenge #2 (No devices in motion):

This challenge wasn’t as interesting for me compared to challenge #1. In truth, I don’t use my phone in motion unless I’m messaging someone back. The day I tested out this challenge, I only caught myself doing this once. That was when I was walking up the stairs while on my home and texting back my friend. It took me 2 seconds, and sure, I could've done that sitting down. But I headed upstairs to read a book. So I just took care of something on my way to my room. 

I didn’t feel like using my phone here harmed me or anyone else in any way. I again didn’t feel like an addict. It just seemed like a normal action that took under a minute. 

Challenge #3 (No pictures):

Now this challenge was actually pretty interesting for me. The day I tried this challenge I only felt the urge to take a picture once. It was when I was in Barnes and Nobles and I wanted to take a picture of a book so I could remember to add it to my to-read list. I caught myself before I snapped the picture and instead searched it up in Google and left the tab open for later. 

This challenge made me realize how I use photos as a reminder for myself. When you think about it, it’s a simple means of reminding one self. I take pictures or screen shots of items and then there they are in my photos. By the end of the day when I check my photos I have a helpful series of photos that helps me make sure I completed various tasks. Simple and easy. So I honestly don’t feel bad for using my camera on a daily basis. It helps me throughout my day.

Plus if I don’t use my camera ever, how am I going to capture photos like these when the opportunity presents itself?:

(Yes, that's my dog)

Challenge #6 (Observe something):

This challenge was nice. I took 15 minutes to just lay down on my bed with my dog and observe the surrounding details. I noticed things such as how the sun beams shone on my bed in a stripe-like pattern due to my blinds, the way the leaves rustled in the tree, my desk was dusty (I cleaned it), my dog’s snores, etc. It was a nice moment to just be. But if I’m being honest, I observe my surroundings all the time. I like looking for details in surrounding areas and environments that I’m in. This challenge was a nice little excuse to keep doing that.

Had I been on my phone, would I have caught all of these details? Perhaps not, but I’m not on my phone all the time. So eventually I would’ve gone back to observing. So this challenge didn’t make me feel like a phone addict either.

Although I understand that Zomorodi was trying to get us to consider a perception that didn’t include the presence of phones, I didn’t feel like these challenges were fantastic. I basically revealed to myself that I use my phone. Yup! I definitely do that. Is my phone my whole life? No. Does it aid me in my life? Yup! But as much as I use my phone for various reasons, I don’t feel like I don’t have any control over how much I use my phone or that I’m a “phone addict”. I just feel like someone that utilizes their smartphone in a society that has normalized smartphones. 

And maybe that’s how you feel. You know you use your phone, but that’s why you have a phone: to use it. Use your phone! If you feel like you personally are not happy with your device use habits, then you can work towards adjusting your habits towards your own liking. But that should be your decision. No one else's. You shouldn’t be made to feel like you can’t use your phone, or that you have to deliberately put it away in order to experience life. Smartphones are now a part of our everyday society, and thus, a part of our lives. Be aware of your habits if you feel that you need to, but don’t feel ashamed for having used your phone.

 Living with Distraction and Diminished Attention 

It is no secret that within the last decade social media has become increasingly popular since the dawn of the smartphone. Everyone is involved in it, and now, a lot of people feel as though they cannot escape it. A lot of world events, viral moments, and interesting concepts and revelations are usually shared through social media for the first time now, which contributes to people's inclination to be on social media so that they can witness these things firsthand. In the age of social media that we have slowly grown accustomed to, at times it can feel as though anything interesting that adequately stimulates your brain comes from your phone, so we start to spend more time on it as we slowly tune out the reality of the world around us. 

Recently, I took notice of my social media usage and decided to look into my phone's analytics to see exactly how much time I spent on my phone, as well as the various apps I shift between. Overall, I found that I spend at least 2 hours on my phone every day on average, if not more. Furthermore, the most used app of mine is TikTok, with a total of 7 hours on that app for the week, almost a full shift of work spent on one app. Now, there is potentially an entire blog post that could be made to discuss how TikTok is able to reliably get their customers to come back and stay on the app but for the purpose of this blog post that lengthy topic would best be sidelined for now. In total, I spent 20 hours and 42 minutes on my phone this past week and of that time, I spent 15 hours and 26 minutes just using various social media apps. Nearly a full day I spent just on my phone scrolling through endless content to stimulate my brain. Now in retrospect, I cannot help but wonder, why did I even bother? I am sure I have learned a lot during this past week from the social media content, but in retrospect, none of it has furthered my goals or helped my ambitions; so why did I spend so much time on my phone? Well, the simple answer is that I wanted to at the moment so I did, however, why did I want to?

This past unit, we spent a lot of time on James Williams and a lot of the arguments and concepts he brought to the table in regards to how we, as humans, have to adapt to the age of social media so that we do not allow it to consume our lives and make us unproductive. Instead, we need to use it as a tool, not something that preys on our innate need to be liked and decreasing attention span. In this new era, social media has taken over and it is hard to escape it, but that has been the point the entire time. Every social media app, from TikTok to Facebook, has the end goal of wanting as many people using their site as possible and ensuring they spend as much time as they are willing on the site. In addition to this, research on human psychology has been used to manipulate people into spending more time on their phones and applications, so it really is no wonder how our collective attention span has decreased and how we live in a state of the constant distraction of what could come next or what we feel we need to see in the future. No one wants to feel left out of the fun, so we scroll through and keep up with the trends. Furthermore, by design, a lot of social media applications are intended to be tailored to one's own likes, interests, desires, and weaknesses. This makes it so that when we start to think "maybe I should get off my phone and do something" something can immediately distract us, keep our attention away from the previous thought, and keep engaging and consuming media content. 

Last week, I engaged in some challenges that tested my ability to restrain from my phone use and engage in the real world more than I had in the previous weeks. Though it was for an assignment, I still think the various tests I put myself through were worthwhile. One of them, I had to refrain from using TikTok for the day. Initially, I thought that I would have an easy time and could get through it without it really affecting me. Come to find later when I am sitting on the toilet or waiting outside for my dog to finish her business so I can let her inside, this challenge was actually taking an effort of me to complete. I had to actively choose to put my phone down and just live with the world around me. Furthermore, a different task asked me to take notice of the different sounds around me. For that activity, I decided to go outside with my dog and sit there for an hour or so. I began to hear things that I previously tuned out and paid no attention to; the other dogs barking in the neighborhood, the wind blowing and rustling the leaves, the clucks of my neighbor's chickens, the distant wind chime that I could barely hear, and the humming of cars passing by. While I am sure I "heard" these things before when I was on my phone, however, I was distracted and had my attention on short videos, so I likely became habituated to the different sounds because they did not mean anything to my goals at the time. 

All in all, I can now admit that, yeah, I do probably use my phone more than necessary and I am prone to be distracted. Additionally, sure, my attention span does suck and sometimes I do blow things off if I am uninterested. However, the first step to solving anything is recognizing the problem, so hopefully, I can become more mindful of my social media use, and choose to spend more time at the moment in front of me and the opportunities it brings. 

Addicted to my phone??

 Hey everyone!!!! Sorry it took so long. I was on spring break and attempting to actually take a break from school work. But I was partially successful. Over my break, I was tasked to complete a series of social media challenges. So it was not too hard of homework over the break, but it was something that I had to think about. Overall, I had a good restful spring break and now I am ready to be back and talk with all of you! So for this post, I am going to explain what we talked about in class, what challenges I attempted, and my results from the attempted challenges.

At the start of this unit, we discussed Manoush Zomorodi's and James Williams' theories that people are addicted and obsessed with their phones. Zomorodi believes that when we are bored, we automatically go to our phones, so any free time we have will be spent on our phones. Williams' believes that technology competes to capture our attention.  One of these people blame the individual for becoming obsessed with their phones. The other believes it is the companies fault that we are addicted. Williams' wrote an entire book analyzing his theory. Zomorodi created seven days worth of different technology challenges to help try and understand how often we are actually using technology everyday.

The first challenge that was assigned to me was to track how much I used my phone and which apps were the most popular ones I was using. For this challenge, I had to turn on my Phone's tracking feature, which I had never turned on before this challenge. I tracked my phone usage for twenty-four hours and I was expecting the results I got. A majority of the time I was using my phone, I was using it for technology. My two apps that I spent most of my time on were TikTok and Twitter. The third app that I spent most of my time on is the Apple Music app. I normally have music on in the background whenever I do anything, so I am not surprised that my phone tracker says I spend a lot of time on it. The fifth app that I spent a lot of time on is the Safari internet browser. At the time I was completing some homework, so I spent a lot of time on it. I spent about the same amount of time on apps six and seven. My sixth and seventh apps were Instagram and Pinterest. I used Instagram for entertainment and Pinterest for my job. The final app that I spent the most time on in a twenty-four hour period is a matching puzzle game. When I work on homework, I have the game open on my phone, and every so often when I need a break, I will look down and play for a couple of minutes.

As I have mentioned before, I had to choose three different challenges for three different days. For the first day, I chose to attempt the challenge of not taking any pictures. Going into this challenge, I thought I was going to fail immediately. As the day went on, I realized I was not thinking about taking any pictures. I expect to at least take five different pictures throughout the day, whether it was for school or to keep a memory. Surprisingly, I passed the day one challenge and did not feel the need to take a picture of anything all day.

For my second day challenge, I chose to attempt the observe something else challenge. The goal of this challenge is to reclaim the art of observing. Over the break, I had to run many different errands. There were many errands that I had to drive to San Antonio for. Because I knew that I needed to complete this challenge, I asked my mom to go with me to run the errands so she could drive the car. For this challenge, I decided that instead of being on my phone for the drive, I would not look down at my phone. I would look out the window and notice how much had changed since I last drove to San Antonio. I have also completed this challenge successfully. What I noticed from this challenge is that there are a lot more buildings and restaurants instead of a bunch of fields like the ones I grew up with.

The last challenge I decided to try out is the get bored and think about a problem you are trying to solve challenge. I was also successful with this challenge. This one was pretty easy compared to the other two, in my opinion. I just sat on my bed and thought about how I was going to be able to get all of my school work done by the end of the semester. While sitting on my bed, dissecting my problem, I came up with a couple of different solutions for my problem. I had mixed feelings about this challenge. At first it made me feel really uncomfortable and nervous because I am not used to thinking about how many things I need to get done that far in advance. At the same time, I felt a little better because I knew what I needed to do and when certain things needed to get done.

Overall, I found these challenges fairly easy. I was expecting it to be a little harder because I do think I spend a lot of time on my phone where I do think at times I am addicted to it. I think the hardest challenge for me was the observe something else challenge. These challenges helped me understand how often people are on their phones and how it can feel like an obsession.

That's all that I have for you this time around! I'll see you here next time!