Anuradha Sridharan

This happened during the ICC Men's World Cup 2023. K and I used to watch the matches with Tamil commentary in our home. This telecast didn't show any product ads, except for Disney Hotstar movies/series-specific ads. The semi-final matches were telecasted on a big screen in the community hall. We went there one afternoon and watched a few overs with English commentary. There were way too many ads though we weren't paying much attention to them. After spending some time there, we decided to go back to our apartment.  As we were walking back, we both uttered this sentence at the same time, " How about we order some samosas? It's been a long time! ". There was an ad for a paint brand (I guess) that showed a plate of samosas. Our minds didn't register the product or the brand name, but were more focused on the samosas that looked so delicious!😉 We ended up ordering samosas and enjoyed them that evening. I remember when we used to watch Masterchef Australia ep...

  First book of 2024, is a gripping, eye-opening read in many aspects. Though I have read some of the principles and factors in other books like Digital Minimalism , Deep Work , Indistractable , and Why We Sleep , Johann Hari's Stolen Focus is an informative compilation of 12 different factors that have stolen our focus and attention. What I liked about the writing is that the author doesn't talk from the perspective of giving advice. His experiences on his relationship with devices, steps taken towards digital detox, and various factors that he attributes to the deterioration of his focus make the reader feel easily connected with the author. Anecdotal and relatable, that's how the book begins in the first few chapters. The author then slowly unravels the factors one by one, with his personal life experiences, interviews with experts, and related examples. Depending on the factor(s) that impact your attention the most, you will be able to relate to certain chapters more t...

 You might have noticed your laptop making a loud sound whenever the fan runs fast. This happens when the processor is working on intensive tasks or when the ventilation is poor. You might have also noticed your smartphone getting heated up whenever you perform tasks like recording a longer video or when used for a longer duration. The same happens with our minds too. When the mind is overworked or when there are too many demands placed, we experience certain physical sensations - increased heartbeat, faster breaths, and startles whenever there is an unexpected stimulus from the external environment. You feel jittery, you might experience shaking of hands or legs, and your hands or feet might sweat a bit. Even before these sensations start to show up, you might have observed this background hum of anxiety - too many thoughts running, too many things to do, too many goals to achieve, too many habits to start, too many habits to quit, etc. Anxiety is a word that is used in common par...

  Thanks to the Information age we are currently living in, we consume humongous amounts of content every single day through multiple sources - books, social media posts, podcasts, videos, webinars, conferences, workshops, courses, and much more. Irrespective of the source, we can group the content (across various topics/genres) into 3 broad categories. Since I create a lot of food-related content, let me elaborate on these 3 categories using examples from food. Information - Mostly facts, either verified or unverified. For eg, nutrition profile of millets, recipes using millets, where to procure them => a few examples of content that fall under this category Perspectives - An individual's analysis / understanding / experience / interpretation of a concept / topic. For eg, I write about how consuming millets have helped me in reversing my PCOD. This is my perspective and may / may not apply to everyone.  Implementation - An individual's approach / action / next steps tow...

  10 tips for effective time-boxing Around a month back, I shared in this post that I plan my day in 15-min time slots. I have received a couple of DMs on how to go about doing it. I spoke with someone in detail last evening on the same topic and I felt it would be useful to share my strategy and a few tips for those who would like to follow a similar time-boxing strategy to manage their time. Disclaimer - Nothing listed below is carved in stone. I'm a human and I do tend to deviate at times from whatever I had planned.    I don't follow any rigid schedule during weekends and festival days. This helps me to demarcate weekends and weekdays more clearly, given the current pandemic situation.     (1) Identify the days and timings to plan depending on your working days/sleep schedule etc. I plan my regular weekdays (Mon-Fri) in 15-min time slots from 6 AM to 10 PM.       (2) Take a paper (or a digital calendar) and split the time into time slots that...

  Over the past few months, we keep hearing this phrase " dealing with new normal " in various contexts - life as we deal with the ongoing pandemic and post that. As I was ruminating over this phrase, I had an epiphany. The new normal isn't something new to us. We have been facing "new normal"s since the beginning of mankind, with every little change we embrace.  A decade ago, I didn't have a smartphone, but once I embraced it, it became the new normal. Until around three months back, I was using a knife with a 3" long blade for chopping vegetables, but then I shifted to a new one with a 4" long blade . The new knife has become the new normal for me and I find it difficult to use my old knife. Mind you, I had been using the old knife for 5+ years. Every little change we imbibe in our lives sets a new normal. Whether this new normal makes our lives better off or worse off is dependent on multiple factors - some that are under our control, while some...

   In the book "Hooked", Nir Eyal talks about the "Hook" framework for building habit-forming products. One of the components of the Hook framework is Variable rewards. When a person gets engaged with a product, variable rewards keep him/her hooked onto the experience, like that of a slot machine. You never know what you might expect. So you continue to engage and get different rewards - new content, new images, new gossip etc. All our news feeds and social media feeds are classic drivers of this behavior, with the promise of variable rewards. These variable rewards are enabled by what is called an "infinite scroll" feature, a powerful one that can keep you hooked onto a product/app for more time than you can imagine. In my journey of mindful content consumption, I have become extremely wary of products that have this infinite scroll feature. Email - no infinite scroll but there is a variable reward. You never know what email you are gonna get but still re...

  In my previous post , I spoke about the two obstacles we face as we pursue digital minimalism. I shared a few thoughts about one of the obstacles - seeking external validation. In this post, let's talk about the second obstacle - "instant gratification".  Instant gratification , in simple terms, is our expectation that we need to get what we want as and when we want it, at that very instant. The "WANTS" are not only materialistic by the way. They could be anything in this connected world - information, entertainment, recognition/appreciation, completion of work etc. An email arrives, we open it immediately. A WhatsApp group message arrives, we check it immediately. We start reading a book, we share about it on social media right away. As we seek more instant gratification, we lose our ability to stay patient and wait for things to happen. We avoid work that requires perseverance and patience. We get stuck in a world of busyness. To give you an example, I have ...

As we pursue our journey towards digital minimalism, we encounter two key obstacles along the way. External validation Instant gratification Both are related to some extent but there are also subtle differences. In this post, let's focus on the first obstacle - external validation. In simple words, external validation is the feeling we experience because of the reaction we get from others. We feel good when others appreciate our words and actions and we feel bad when others don't approve of it or criticize the same.  While growing up, we experienced external validation in the form of tests, exams and competitions in schools and on occasions when we met our relatives during social gatherings where we were appreciated for our good behavior. Such instances didn't occur every day for most of us growing up in the 70s and 80s. As a result, I notice that most of us born in those decades do not associate our self-esteem strongly with external validation. It is only my general, bias...

This morning, I deactivated both my Twitter and Facebook accounts. I haven't been active on either of these platforms for the last couple of years. It didn't make sense to leave the accounts idle when I'm not using them. Ever since I started taking steps towards conscious content consumption, this task had been on my mind but I was hesitating, thinking I might login if needed. Yes, the same talk we have with ourselves when we don't want to get rid of old stuff at home - "This might come in handy one day. I might use it sometime". Sounds familiar?  FB keeps sending notifications by email that so-and-so has uploaded a pic, posted an update etc. The best part is this message - "So much has happened since you logged onto Facebook". When you login to check, the notifications count will be 4. And all of them will be exactly similar - so-and-so uploaded a pic 🙂 Grateful to both the platforms all these years. FB helped me connect with many of my school and...

I came across this term " Precrastination " in Chris Bailey 's newsletter. We all know about procrastination and its impact on our productivity. But precrastination is something new.  From this article , Originally  coined by David Rosenbaum , a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, “precrastination” is a little-known productivity trap in which we rush too quickly into tasks. The main intent of the article was to showcase how we rush into tasks, sometime on autopilot mode or the need to get rid of them to clear our mental space. As I was reading this article, a thought struck me about areas where we precrastinate easily without much awareness. For instance, you are working on something. An email pops up. It is a newsletter. You quickly scroll through it and find an interesting article. You click through the link and read it. There is a new article linked to it. You click through that as well and continue reading it. Turns out 15 minutes have go...

After I shared my post on how we can win back our attention and focus , I received a couple of messages - " What you say is true. I have tried to come out of my phone addiction. I would become conscious, delete apps etc but the effect would last only for a few days. I end up in the same addictive phase again. Why does this happen? " I started to become more conscious of my phone usage after reading this fabulous book " Deep Work " by Cal Newport back in 2017. With the initial motivation, I was able to cut down my phone usage for a few weeks. I had uninstalled FB and Twitter apps but over the course of the year, my Instagram and Youtube usage shot up. I just shifted from one app to another but the behavior remained the same. A similar experience happened in 2019 after I read " Digital Minimalism " by the same author. Though I became more conscious of my overall digital usage, I do tend to go back to old ways of mindlessly checking and scrolling t...

  I bought my first smartphone in Apr 2013. It must have been a similar entry time for most of you in India, +/- a couple of years. In a time span of less than a decade, we have become addicted to this device. Some of us even take it to the restroom. No, I don't do that. Except for restroom, smartphone travels with me everywhere around my home 🙂 It's worth thinking about how we have become so addicted to our phones in such a short period of time. It isn't entirely correct on our part to blame the device. Our smartphone has made our lives easier in multiple ways - be it cab booking, grocery shopping, navigation, instant payments, capturing photos and keeping in touch with our loved ones. When we use it as a functional device, we seem to be in control of it. But when we start using it as an emotional crutch / boredom banisher / a way to escape from reality / coping mechanism to distract from uncomfortable feelings, that's when we yield the control and we feel ...

Last July, I had written a post on how I track my daily habits . One of the habits I started to practice is "No screen usage after 8:30PM". It's been more than a year now and for most days, I managed to stick to this habit. Yes, there were days when I mindlessly scrolled through Instagram or watched random Youtube videos but such nights were fewer. What I have observed during those nights is that I could literally feel my eyes flickering for a few minutes before I could sleep. Have you felt that sensation? I don't watch much of TV/Netflix/Prime. The main reason being I hardly find content that I like to watch. Most of the content that comes up is too dark, violent, explicit which makes me squirm and feel uncomfortable. On those rare nights when I watch a movie until midnight, my sleep cycle gets quite disturbed and the next day morning routine goes for a toss. My only screen dependency is my phone and thanks to the cut-off habit, I have stopped my usage pos...

  Most of us have become more conscious about what we put in our mouths. We have now reached a stage where we need to become more conscious about what we put in our minds as well. Similar to junk for the body, there is junk for our minds too. Yes, I'm talking about the various forms of content we consume. It is even worse, you know how? Even if you can gobble up a party pack of Lays chips in one go, our stomach would eventually push the Stop button and say, "Enough, I can't take it anymore". But with content, we can keep consuming so much in a single day. Our appetite for new content can never be satisfied unless we end up with eye irritation or headache late in the evening. I love reading and I consume content in all forms - books, videos, articles, blogs, news etc. I used to be active on all social media platforms. I used to "Pocket" so many links, just so that I can read them at a later point of time. I used to open so many tabs in my brows...