I only buy about two books a year, because I read a book or more each week. Thank goodness for libraries! There’s a little problem with my latest library loan; it’s covered in sticky notes, and library really doesn’t want books returned that way. With that many sticky notes, I had to have my own copy of The Power of Off by Nancy Colier.
The Power of Off is subtitled, The Mindful Way to Stay Sane in a Virtual World. If you haven’t been bitten by the Mindfulness bug, don’t be scared off just yet. This isn’t going to get woo-woo, I promise.
The book is broken into sections:
- Our relationship with technology
- Our relationship with others
- Our relationship with ourselves
- Creating space- inside and out
- How to liberate ourselves from a teched-out mind
- Mindfulness practice for the digital age
If you think your actions might be driven by outside forces, or if you’ve ever wondered if you are addicted to your digital devices, this book is for you.
If you are Type-A, this book is for you.
If you are looking for reasons or strategies to engineer your own or your family’s escape from tech, and only get techie on your terms, this book is for you.
If you are looking for an app that monitors and possibly limits your tech usage, LOL, this book is probably not for you.
I intended to give you some pithy quotes from all the pages that I marked with Post-It flags. There are some really good statistics in there about how Americans use their phones, tablets, and other screens. There are some simple (but maybe not easy) steps that this practicing NYC-based psychotherapist/author offers. Most of all, there is a resounding sense of it’s not just me- everyone is struggling to be modern, digital, and live life in the real world at the same time.
No one ever taught us how to manage so many distractions and devices. We can either accept someone else’s normal of anxious, insecure, frantic, and responsive to electronic noise. Or we can be us again. The Power of Off can lead us back to us.
Have you read this book? Have you struggled with this topic? Pin for later.
