By Christopher Joanis 

Often represented as few bars, this signal seems to have taken over our lives.
This story comes from my experience settling in London. Just arrived in this new flat filled with lovely housemates, after a little rest the verdict was given, there was no wifi signal.

At the time it felt like I was taken back to the caveman era and that and that I was completely isolated from the rest of the world. In my own bubble.
I asked myself, Have we reached a point in this society where our lives are ruled by an internet addiction.

With great power comes great responsibilities. The web is a wonderful place that enables us to be more informed and aware of the world we’re living in. At the same time, you can easily get lost and distracted from your original purpose. There have been countless times where I would go online to look something up and five seconds later I ended up on Facebook or Instagram. Don’t get me wrong it’s fine to be on these websites but It has to be a conscious decision and not a reflex. My internet consumption had become more of a distraction. Social media, streaming, had slowly and insidiously become extremely time-consuming. It came to a point where I was on my phone for an hour and not being able to tell what I had done.

How to reverse that process. To solve this problem, I’ve come across few solutions to be more productive and effective with my time.
First of all time management is key. Planning your day leaves no margin for procrastination, distractions and overall leads to a better and healthier lifestyle. When heard about time management at SCA, I thought I tried that already and it doesn’t work for me. I tried it so many times and it was a complete failure. I may be due to my personality I’m all in or nothing. So I would plan my day without leaving any breathing space which is not recommended. You need to give yourself time to relax to be more productive in the long run. This time planning my day and achieving my daily goals seemed way easier and felt rewarding.

Turning off your phone when you’re working has proven to be really effective. Before I would always check my emails, messages, and notifications but the more you force yourself to not pay attention to these distractions the easier it gets to avoid them. When we were asked to put our phones away the first day at SCA it felt weird for the first few minutes but at the end of the day, it was so liberating. The time you usually spent thinking about Facebook messages, events, Instagram post, emails is now free to get some great work done. These distractions are not important and should interfere as less as possible with the bigger picture.

In the end, I truly believe in the power of logging out.