I was fortunate enough to have gone on a functional medicine retreat this past weekend–Four days in beautiful Asheville, NC. One of the greatest things that came out of it was a ‘rule’ to turn off our phones for the entire trip 
. I knew that I have been a slave to my device for some time and had been reminded of that by my wife (and kids). It wasn’t good. I turned off the phone on Friday and literally didn’t pick it up until Monday morning. At first I felt naked, but after about 15 minutes, I actually started to TALK with my fellow retreaters-and made a lot of new friends! I was so much more focused and engaged with the conversations.
How does this relate to your memory? Memory and learning is a parasympathetic process (think our ‘rest and digest’ nervous system)- When you are constantly on your phone or worried about missing the latest email or the last text, we are in sympathetic overdrive. The stress hormone, cortisol is surging in preparation of the next worrying thing. We aren’t able to focus or retain much. For example, I used to be really good at remembering names, faces and phone numbers. Over the past several years, I recognized that I started to not be able to remember new names/faces. It was frustrating.
To bring it back to my retreat experience, I was at this retreat with about 15 colleagues I had only met via zoom; after the first day and a half, I was able to connect with each of them in a meaningful way, and able to remember not only their faces/names, but details about their families, where they are from, what they are thriving with or struggling with, etc
So the answer is to get rid of our phone for good, right? Wrong. Our phones are amazing devices with many beneficial features; but you can certainly become addicted to the screen. In order to limit some of these addictive apps, a couple of ideas:
1. Delete your social media app(s). You can still log in on a computer to check in on friends, see what you missed, but it won’t be as easy to do or as mobile.
2. For gmail users, Check out Boomerang for gmail. Download the extension for your web browser, and you’ll be able to pause incoming emails. This has been huge for me. I now only receive new emails until 8:30am, then again at 12:30 and 4pm. During those off times, boomerang holds them ‘at the door’ waiting for the pause to stop. All of a sudden, i don’t have to worry about a missed email that I need to respond to immediately because nothing is coming in. My experience during the retreat was that there really aren’t any dire emails that I was receiving that couldn’t wait a few hours. Productivity goes up, focus increases, learning increases.
Last but not least, consider the ‘do not disturb’ feature on your phone and utilize it. You won’t be interrupted by the latest group text or message from a local retailer about a sale that’s “Today Only”!!
Try out these simple hacks to be able to make your device work FOR you, not AGAINST you. I hope you found this helpful!
