After months of waiting, summer vacation is finally here. Essays and tests are replaced by relaxation and fun times.
My summers are packed full of swimming, jumping on the trampoline, and traveling. I spend time golfing with my dad and brother, visiting family in Colorado, and running around the neighborhood.
When I have “down time” and need a rest, I fill most of that free time with playing on my phone, sitting in the basement playing video games, and watching TV. I enjoy taking a break and watching Netflix like any other kid.
With all this time devoted to playing, I am never “bored,” which is making it difficult to get things done.
The problem is, I am having trouble managing my time. I started thinking about what my time is devoted to, and what would happen if I changed what I spent my time on. I looked back on one of my previous articles.
When I think of a topic for an article, I usually do something or hear something, which then gets me thinking about my column. When I wrote my article about the value of money, the idea came from simply checking out food in a grocery store. On the car ride back, since I forgot my phone at home, I started thinking more and more about money and what we use it for.
But, technology got in the way once we got back and I had my phone in my pocket. Throughout the next few weeks of writing that article, I kept putting it off to the side and I choose to play video games in the basement. Even when I had more than enough time to work on my article, video games always seem to be a better option.
The amount of time I am spending on technology interferes with me cleaning my room, my writing time, and my ability to sit and think a thought. I then realized that summer wasn’t the problem with managing my time. In fact, since I have no school, I should have more time than I used to.
My problem isn’t managing my time, it’s making the wrong choice on what I spend my time on. I feel like the “space” in your mind that fuels creativity and productivity doesn’t get used as often in my life because I am blocking it with technology.
For these reasons, I have decided to challenge myself to manage technology by keeping my phone on our “charging station” when I don’t need it, and writing whatever I can before I play video games or watch TV. Hopefully, I can spend more time writing because I love doing it.
When my mom takes my phone away, I will try to see it as her helping me clean my room, pulling my weight, and have a better attention span as I’ve learned, being bored could fuel creativity, which isn’t the worst thing in the world!
Near the end of the summer, I will check back in with a report on how I handled my challenge of going unplugged. It might seem tough, but my parents were able to do it, somehow!
