Slow your roll

Rebooting is a biweekly newsletter about how we can use technology to take better care of ourselves.

Breakups have an impressively crushing knack for making you hate every single dumb thing you come across online. Suddenly you’re getting ads for all the events you two would’ve loved to attend together, all your friends suddenly look happier with their partners, and you see that occasional rogue picture you took together that you swore you deleted from your Instagram. Post Malone was right, it’s a lot. 

But even if you haven’t tossed heartbreak into the mix, it’s still easy to get bogged down in the never ending pile of bummers you encounter online. Even the lightest of Bad Content can easily drag you down and wilt away at your seemingly promising day. And sure, unfollowing  downer-prone busters can help tidy up your feed, but eventually you’re going to find something that rubs you the wrong way. 

That doesn’t mean the Internet is all bad, though, and you don’t have to follow Posty’s lead and ditch it altogether to feel better. Here’s a few things I’ve done to make being Extremely Online a bit less strenuous:

Draft it up: I get it. You’re in a heated argument about why they didn’t like your selfie, or telling someone that their political take is bogus, and your fingers are ready to fire off that perfect response you’ve crafted. But you’re probably going to wish you hadn’t included that one jab, or maybe you misspelled their name and you’re embarrassed. Whatever the case, it’s nice to use a text or note taking app like Drafts to jot down all your thoughts and make sure that if you’re gonna send the other person a novel, it’s one worth reading. If you want to take it a step further, you can even schedule emails to send 10 minutes later so you can quadruple check your message before there’s no turning back.

Simmer down: Even the most engrossing longform article doesn’t stand a chance against a sweet text from your crush or a peek at how many likes your new picture’s getting. I like to send all my articles to my Kindle via Pocket2Kindle (Instapaper has this baked in for premium subscribers). Now, whenever I want to dive into something that'll take a bit more time, I can grab my Kindle and jump right in, knowing that no pesky red bubbles will get in my way. For even more resistance, put your phone on silent until you’re done.

A slower feed: Sure, Twitter’s great for getting the latest takes on whatever’s happening, but it’s also exhausting. Sometimes you don’t need the latest on what’s going on in the world the second it happens; sometimes you just wanna find nice articles to read through while you sip your coffee. Using a service like Feedly or Inoreader, you can set up a feed of all your favorite blogs and topics, giving you a finely curated list of things you might like, without all the commentary. Just don’t toss too much general news into the mix and muck things up.

In the news

How to Make the Most of Apple’s New Privacy Tools in iOS 13 (The New York Times): Sure, loading up your phone with flashy new apps and games is fun, but you should still be careful about what you let those apps do on your devices. iOS 13 introduced features like Sign in with Apple to make burner emails when making new accounts online, silencing calls from robocallers, and more ways to stop apps from tracking your location. If you’re worried about privacy (and you should be), this guide is a great place to start. 

Everything You Need to Enjoy One Tech-Free Day a Week (Wired): We’re all exhausted by technology all the time. Some might suggest a digital detox, or switching back to a dumb phone, or just practicing some self-control. But Tiffany Shlain suggests taking one day a week to go completely device-free in favor of an analog utopia. This sounds appealing, and the excerpt makes a good case that ditching tech for 24 hours won’t be too costly, but it’s a pretty heavy time investment to prepare for it and make sure everyone you may need to be in touch with knows ahead of time. It’s fine to step away from your screens for a while (and we all should!), but crafting another line of communication doesn’t entice anyone to actually use it. Instead of hitting the nuclear button, try slowly reevaluating your relationships with your devices and figure out what role you want them to serve, the role they’re currently serving, and how to mend the divide between the two.

Something Nice

Planta: I’m slowly getting into having house plants. They’re a lovely way to get into a routine, and they add a nice bit of hominess to your pad. As much as I love them, though, I will never be the person to remember how often my plants need to be watered. Planta lets me scan each plant, toss it into my inventory of plants, and it’ll automatically remind me when each of my buds needs a mist or a thorough watering. 

As always, if you have any questions, feedback, or just want to say hello, feel free to drop me a line on Twitter.

My thanks to Medea Giordano for editing this issue.