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It’s hard to remember what it was like in 1995 when I was running around the outside of Rushcliffe Country Park with a pager attached to my shorts and no phone in sight. I thought I was well connected when I was on call but I wasn’t.

When I went running at those times, I didn’t have a phone, so if I fell over and banged my head or broke my ankle I would have just had to find help from somewhere and get back.

It’s 24 years this year from running around Rushcliffe Country Park and the noise inflation has been catastrophic, both physically and metaphorically.

If you’re daft enough to have notifications turned on on your phone then it pings incessantly. Each of those pings is a dopamine spike but also a stress spike.

If you’re daft enough to spend more than a tiny amount of time on social media, the metaphorical noise is terrible - you’re not good enough…we’re better…we’re having a great time over here and you’re not…pay attention, pay attention…

You have to turn it off. I have to turn it off. We have to turn it off.

We have to find ways of turning it off, lifting our heads up and looking at things that are different to that. The stream of screeching and attention seeking that hits us every single day is ruining us and removing the joy. You know that you get sucked into Facebook as soon as you touch it, it’s like the Pensieve in Harry Potter. It pulls you in to another reality; away from this one and away from the things that matter.

The daft thing is though, that we’re in control of all the sources of input which are then in control of our output. But you have to be strong and we have to be strong to select the areas we get our information from and to shut out the stuff that just doesn’t contribute or help or make things better.

Blog Post Number: 1901