Why You Should Read: My Brain Has Too Many Tabs Open
A handy book to ease up on our digital addition
The title of this week’s book is very relatable, at least for me.
My Brain Has Too Many Tabs Open by Tanya Goodin caught my eye because it describes exactly what’s going on with my brain on a 24/7 basis, ha.
Context: I am a millennial mom with a full-time job with a perfectionist tendency and an info-collector shtick, so I do have way too many tabs open on my laptop, phone, tv, and brain 🥲
This book is a nice medium-length book that offers readers input and stories about how our technology habits 💻 are affecting our relationships, work, and daily lives.
I am sure most of us would already have an idea that too much tech is not good, and Goodin intends My Brain Has Too Many Tabs Open as a book to confront these issues and provide the tools to deal with them.
It is a fun and great book to be used as a conversation starter with your teenage children, friends, or loved ones who are struggling with technology’s bad impact on their daily lives.
Below I share the top 5 thought-provoking input from My Brain Has Too Many Tabs Open:
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Top 5 Thought-Provoking Input from This Book
🥇 Quantified Selves
n. the phenomenon of self-tracking every element of our lives with technology, aka ‘lifelogging’.
With the advancement of wearable technology like smartwatches and health trackers ⌚️ to assist with self-monitoring and improvement, we can see more people using them in daily lives.
I have a friend who is obsessed with tracking and optimizing her sleep patterns and another who is so intent on closing her ‘rings’ by the end of the day 💪 It’s pretty funny/impressive how obsessed they are - these friends will not miss a chance to talk about their sleeping patterns and step counts!
Productivity nerds especially love wearable techs as they believe these gadgets help them to optimize their lives to the highest possible level 📈
While wearable tech can help us improve our overall health, unfortunately, some take it too seriously.
If you are so worried about optimizing the sleep patterns that you keep waking up at night to check your graph…
… or strongly committed to 10,000 steps a day 👟 that you decide to walk around the house and sacrifice quality time with your family, then you need to stop and reflect on your tech consumption.
We all want to be our best selves and health is undeniably important, but be careful about letting tech take over our human judgment. You get no medals for closing the rings every day, but you will be much appreciated when you choose to sit and catch up with your kids at the end of the day 🤍
👺 Trolling
n. deliberately targeting individuals online in chat rooms, message boards and forums, social media and other platform by posting inflammatory messages, with the intent of provoking a reaction.
I am often on Reddit and online forums, mostly as a silent reader 🙊 I enjoy reading people’s thoughts and opinions on these forums, and have discovered tons of interesting information I never knew I’d be interested in, lol.
However, a bad thing about online discussion platforms is that they are rampant with trolls 👺 It is really disheartening to see people trolling, gossiping, and condemning others, under the guise of anonimity.
It’s not just a matter of different opinions on personal matters, I have also come to learn that people will say *anything* to defend their favorite celebrities/sports stars/politicians/cult leaders/etc. People would readily come to each other’s “virtual” throats and slam others for critiquing their idols.
Sometimes, the obsession becomes too much that these fans even critique and troll their own idols for whatever “flaws” they seem to display at that time 😥 Badminton fans troll their national players for losing a match, and K-pop fans troll their favorite girl groups for not trying and smiling enough on stage.
As a silent reader, I have never experienced being trolled, thankfully, but I can only imagine the mental torture it must be for certain people who are trolled online.
If you find yourselves becoming the target of online trolls, the only thing to do is just not engage ✋️ Stop feeding the trolls and they will quickly run out of gas to go on. If necessary, block the account that’s trolling you.
💻 Multi-Screening
n. the use of multiple digital devices at the same time, for example mobile phones and the television.
Goodin defines multi-screening when you divide your attention to more than 1 screen at a time: scrolling through your phone while watching TV, looking at your laptop during others’ presentations or playing games on iPad while watching a movie 📺
Uhhhh. I am absolutely guilty of this.
It is understandable why a lot of us do this (not that I am defending myself), because not all things that we are watching on TV is good right? Some parts of the drama/movie are boring and there’s nothing wrong with swiping our phone for a quick scroll, no? 😶🌫️
Well, according to Goodwin, splitting our attention on multiple screens is not good for our already declining attention span and memory retention 😵 When we try to take in information from 2 sources simultaneously, we absorb less information compared to focusing on one thing at a time. Our attention span becomes worse and some research shows our brain become less intelligent when we keep multitasking!
We spend a lot of time and resources trying to get the latest meditation app and a spot in the yoga class, but truly, all we can simply try to do first is to focus on one thing at a time.
Be more present 🙆♀️
🛍 Vampire Shopping
n. online shopping late at night, usually between 1am and 4am, aka ‘zombie hour purchasers’.
According to trend analysis, nocturnal shoppers, cheekily labeled as vampire shoppers 👻, spend 20% more than shoppers browsing during the day! Shoppers spend longer on the apps or online shopping sites at night and even more so during winter time.
Well, I can barely keep my eyes open at when the clock strikes 10 at night so it is amusing to me that people can stay up so late and even do their shopping in the middle of the night, ha.
The existence of shopping apps triggers impulse purchases by:
bombarding tons of updates, advertisements, and sales notifications to users’ phones, and
making purchases easier than ever with the introduction of single-click payment.
If you are one of these vampire shoppers, Goodwin advises you to just take a step back and let the items remain in your cart 🛒 without checking out.
Even if you wake up the next morning and still want the stuff, it’s more likely that you’ll make better purchasing decisions 👍🏻
💭 Digital Legacies
n. the sum of all the digital presences, accounts, and assets you leave behind when you die.
This is a topic that I sometimes think about when I lie down on my bed at night.
What happens to social media accounts, emails, subscriptions, etc when we die? What about our online pictures, tweets, comments, and remarks? Would they stay online forever when we left the Earth?
There are options to memorialize social media accounts by freezing them in time so that they cant never be logged into or updated.
But I have thought about this and came to the conclusion that when I die, I want all my digital traces to be erased 👋
Should you feel the same way, Goodin advises us to plan and have conversations with our loved ones on this topic. You can specifically update your will for your digital accounts. Document all accounts and login details in a secure place, so that the ones you leave behind can assist and act on your digital profiles as you wish 🤍
Info: Facebook lets you appoint a ‘Legacy Contact; who is authorized to instruct them on closing down your account after death. Twitter/X requires a copy of a death certificate to do the same.
These are just a handful of great input from My Brain Has Too Many Tabs Open by Tanya Goodin. This book is great in the sense that it is not overly preachy, unlike a lot of other technology-psychology-related books. I am already bookmarking several pages on topics to be discussed with my husband 🫣
Can you relate to any of these? Excited to have this discussion with all of you!
Until next week 👋
Additional Reading
Two publications I recommend for keeping up with all things technology: Digital Native and Tech Brew.
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