Saba's blog

WELCOME TO MY INFOMAGICAL CHALLENGE

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                                                  Day 5 - Magical Life

The biggest thing I took from the challenges these past few days is the importance of the word: prioritize. It’s something that is desperately lacking from my everyday lifestyle. While, I can prioritize what I’m doing, it’s clear that I have a hard time prioritizing my time when it comes to media. I can sit on my bed and scroll through my phone for hours without a second thought, however I am not retaining anything of importance during these hours. The podcasts, challenges, and media reflecting assignments, opened my eyes to the amount of time being wasted throughout my day. The 5 minutes I spend reading about “the top 5 scandals that happened during the Miss America pageant”, should be spent doing something to nurture my mind and expand it. It’s almost second nature for me to check in on Facebook to ensure that I’m aware and up to date with the latest “news”. Realistically, more than half of what I’m considering news, is simply something that made me think “I wonder what they’re going to say about this”. Most of the time, what’s being opening in another tab, is absolute junk and it’s out of habit. Unfortunately, it’s a habit for me to open an article because the title was weird, or maybe there’s an interesting picture. Moreover, simply because there is so much information readily available, does not make all of it useful. Reflecting on the media assignments we completed, it’s clear that we need to adapt to the shift in information. Not only do I believe media literacy is imperative in our society, but also information literacy. The ability to understand, analyze, reflect on the information being read. Is it relevant to what I’m looking for? All in all, I’m hoping to expand my critical deconstructing skills, and put them to work in this media driven society. Media and technology are ever-evolving, and so as a society, we need to prioritize how we use our media, and become media and information literate.

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                                         Day 4 – Magical Connection

We live in a well-connected network, and for that network to function we need to talk to each other. This sentence encapsulates the reasoning behind today’s challenge. In the podcast, they discussed a theory that it takes 7 minutes to see whether a conversation will be interesting or not. Now the challenge for today, is to discuss with someone for 7 minutes (on the phone or in person) about something I’ve read, heard or watched. Lucky for me, I have an assignment due that requires me to watch the movie Intersteller. I’ve always been fascinated with space and physics, and so this task was a blessing. Spending time with my friend who also loves space and such, allowed me to complete my challenge of the day. Before we started talking, I took notice of the time, once I noticed we were talking for a while, I checked the time again and 15 minutes had passed. I think it’s safe to say the conversation was so interesting, I lost track of time. Typically, if I want to talk about something, I will call my friends or tell them face to face. In terms of connecting, I’m not a big fan of texting. I enjoy talking to my friends face to face, on facetime or on the phone. I don’t feel as though my emotions or tone are being projected accurately when texting, and so if it’s something small that I can just text, I will. However, for everything else I will wait to talk to the other person. Therefore, this challenge was easy and very pleasant for me.  Connecting is extremely important to me, and I think the better we connect – the better off we are.

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                                              Day 3 – Magical Brain

Today, we were challenged to decipher between the useless information available online (clickbait), and the information that would contribute to my information goal (to be more creative). The podcast explains that we are flooded with information, and that not all of the information available to us is useful. In fact, being overloaded with information can be emotionally draining. Living in our media driven society has created a pathway for trending social media to become a part of everyday general conversation. It is so engrained in us to keep up to date with trending social media, and when we don’t we feel out of the loop. Upon starting the challenge for the day, I had to constantly remind myself of the goal at large. I struggled trying to maintain my distance from social media, and it was in this mindset that I realised how a part of my life trending social media is. I kept wondering if I was missing something. In doing this challenge, I have realized that the only time I am not on social media is when I am in the shower. I recognize that it was consuming a large portion of my day. Trying to stay away from “clickbait” almost felt like a sense of anxiety. I found myself looking for something to occupy my time - almost like a toddler. All in all, I came to the conclusion that I shouldn’t be so reliant upon trending social media and that we as a society use it as a time filler when instead, we should be collectively communicating. This would free up a lot of time for me to be more creative. 

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                                            Day 2 – Magical phone

The podcast for day 2 of the info magical challenge, left me questioning all the apps on my phone. Apparently, the average iPhone user has 80 applications in their phone – which is a lot to say the least. Today’s podcast makes me question these applications. Do they bring me joy? Am I going to be using this in the future? To fulfill the day’s challenge, I made some tough decisions, and cut some apps from my life. To decide whether I should delete an app or not, I asked myself why I got the app in the first place. Am I still using it? Does it contribute to my life? Most importantly, I asked myself – Does this make me happy? If the answers to these questions were no, then the app was deleted. Furthermore, the podcast suggested turning off the notification settings for my applications. At first, I thought this would be ridiculous. Without notifications, how am I supposed to know that I’m trying to be contacted? Then, after a minor panic-attack, I managed my expectations and removed the notifications for about 85% of my applications. Honestly, I instantly felt calmer. Before turning the notifications off, I had various red notifications all over my phone, and without my knowledge, these red numbers were creating a sense of stress. All in all, I feel a little bit cleaner - and lighter!

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                                                 Day 1 – Magical day

First and foremost, my goal for this week is to be more creative.  The podcast for Day 1 of the info magical challenge proclaimed that multi-tasking does not exist, and that we are in fact rapidly shifting from one thing to the next. This is depleting our brains of neurological resources (mostly glucose). My task for the day was to focus on a single task, and that I should take in information with my goal (to be more creative) in mind. Today, I tried to do exactly that; focus on a single task at a time, and believe me when I say it was very difficult for me. I spent half of my day at work where unfortunately I was not able to fulfill the day’s challenge properly. Although, I had an essay to write, and so I allotted some time during the day to start my draft. My task, was to write my draft, and to stay focused on that single task. As discussed in the podcast, I was subjected to external-interruptions however, the worst of them all were the self-interruptions. On one hand, the bright LED notifications constantly popping up while I was writing my draft were very hard to ignore. Not to mention, the sounds of the notifications as well. On the other hand, thinking of ideas to contribute to each paragraph, would lead me to daydream about random things entirely irrelevant to the task at hand. As a matter of fact, a little gust of wind coming from the window was enough to distract me and keep me distracted. All things considered, not only did completing this challenge helped me analyze the types of habits I exhibit while trying to focus on a single task, it helped me recognize them as self-interrupting. Moving forward, i’m going to try my best to focus on one thing at a time, and ensure that the single task is completed before moving on to the next. 

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WELCOME!

Join me for 5 days while i take part in a series of challenges called: Infomagical challenge. These 5 challenges are designed to help you keep focused, and discover the magic of clear thinking.

If you’re thinking of trying it out as well, here’s the link!  https://project.wnyc.org/infomagical/#section--challenges