Grab Bag: A Framework for Living Well in the Digital Age - 'The Shimmer'
A better way to use technology to aid us
tl;dr - The Shimmer Podcast series was probably the most impactful I’ve ever listened to, and I want all my friends and loved ones to listen so we can talk about it and live better. Just do it.
Picture pulled from Erick Godsey’s Instagram post, which is compelling in and of itself.
Welcome to ‘The Shimmer’ - You’re Already Here (..and you can’t escape it)
In October, a friend shared "The Shimmer" podcast series, and it has fundamentally changed how I’ve experienced the world these last two months. I highly recommend listening to parts 1-5 and 7. Stay with it through the beginning of part 1, just trust me.
It offers a compelling framework for understanding technology's role in our lives and our collective story, along with practical solutions that are deceptively simple yet challenging to implement.
I anticipate ‘The Shimmer’ shaping how I navigate our increasingly digital lives. This post shares four aspects:
Core concepts from The Shimmer series
Suggested practices
Why this resonates with me
An invitation to join me in experimenting
1) The Concepts of The Shimmer Series
Host Eric Godsey applies Buddhist principles to modern Western life, drawing from the 2018 film Annihilation to describe the internet as "the shimmer" - an invisible force surrounding us, like an alien presence that's taken residence in our world. This force offers unprecedented opportunities for knowledge and mastery, yet seems to have an insatiable appetite for our attention.
You already know this, but the statistics are sobering: we check our phones an average of 144 times daily and spend about four and a half hours on them. For younger adults (18-34), it can be up to 200 checks per day - roughly every 4.9 minutes we're awake. Honestly some of those numbers feel low.
However, this is far more than just another cautionary tale about technology.
Godsey notes that humanity has experienced four major paradigm shifts in our history:
Language
Writing
The printing press (which enabled the scientific method, and ultimately the atomic bomb)
The internet.
We're perhaps the first generation conscious that we’re living through such a transformation as it’s unfolding. This brings well-documented challenges (especially around social media and attention), but also presents profound possibilities:
Godsey promises that those who learn to navigate the shimmer effectively can use it as a tool for learning and connecting that leads to developing unprecedented mastery, creating wealth and prosperity that exceeds our needs, and finding our unique communities that will help us thrive.
2) Practical steps to ‘surf the shimmer’
Principles, via Godsey:
Find Your Purpose: Answer Mary Oliver's question - "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Having clarity helps direct your efforts rather than defaulting to whatever the algorithms serve up.
Hone Your Focus: In a world of information warfare and trillion-dollar companies vying for our attention, we must deliberately cultivate our capacity to focus. Extended meditation is key. I particularly enjoyed his reframing of ‘enlightenment’ to be the state at which you can focus your attention easily on any task - the beginning of being able to accomplish anything.
Use Technology Intentionally: Every interaction with your phone or internet should have a defined intention and duration - even if that's just catching up on friends' Instagram posts. Some tactical steps include:
Turn off push notifications for social media apps
Quarantine social media apps in folders that require multiple clicks to access
Block specific times for social media usage
Track your daily phone usage and patterns
Cultivate Deep Work: practice what Godsey calls "Dharma sprints" - 90-minute periods of focused work or presence. At work, this means setting a clear intention, minimizing all distractions (especially email!), and reflecting afterward on what you accomplished. At home, it might mean putting your phone away for 90 minutes to be fully present with family - not thinking about logistics or future challenges, just being there with your loved ones.
3) Why this resonates with me
This framework transcends the tired narratives where everyone seems to be either an unabashed tech optimist or advocating we throw away our phones and move to the woods. The reality is more nuanced.
Technology inevitably wants to prey on our consciousness, yet it's also an essential tool for excellence in almost any field. It's not going anywhere, barring societal collapse.
It’s like we've given carpenters unprecedentedly powerful tools to build the most beautiful houses imaginable. But instead of building, they're getting distracted watching what other carpenters are doing, tinkering with side projects, and ultimately forgetting to build the house in the first place.
I don’t know about you, but I want to build the beautiful house.
4) An Invitation
I've tracked various metrics (sleep, alcohol, caffeine, meditation, exercise) in a daily spreadsheet since 2018, and it's gradually but undeniably changed my life. What gets measured gets improved. I’m tinkering with a "shimmer usage" metric - tracking how much I use my phone, particularly how often I pick it up unconsciously.
We all know how good it feels to be at work on our best days - the flow state where focused & creative, moving efficiently through tasks, and feeling energized rather than frazzled. I want to cultivate that feeling, and it’s more readily available when we’re deliberate about our relationship with technology.
And it’s so hard to do! I watch my mind ping-pong between thoughts. I'll want to be fully present with my daughters but find myself looking at my phone. I'll end a not-particularly-challenging workday feeling exhausted from endless task switching. This isn't how we're meant to live, but technology is undoubtedly a tool that can help us reach our goals. The Shimmer has reinvigorated my desire to use technology wisely rather than reject it entirely.
I'm extending two opportunities:
Join a community practicing regular Dharma Sprints. Let's support each other in creating spaces for deep work and presence.
Start tracking your "shimmer usage." Begin simply by counting conscious vs unconscious phone pickups each day. I'll share my tracking template to help us get started.
Would you be interested in joining me in this experiment? Reply to this email if you'd like to participate, and we’ll work together to leverage these miraculous tools to help us (actually) build better lives.