Automating Myself!

At precisely 5:00 am, the alarm goes off, waking me up to the sound of crystal bells. I take a quick glance at my phone, and three pieces of breaking news pop up, along with the latest furious tweet from the one and only Donald Trump. I quickly glance at my calendar for the day and then ask Alexa to play the news while I am still brushing my teeth. As the coffee pot boils, I scroll through my emails and catch up on my WhatsApp conversations, which has notched up a healthy 250 postings since 10:00 pm the previous night.

I sit down for my meditation using the Calm app, one of the many apps I subscribe to. Soon, I head towards my gym with my smartphone and log in the time and every move I make. 30 minutes later, I log into the heart rate app and get home, take a gulp of my protein drink, and jot down the time and the calories on my diet app. I then open up the weather app, take a look at how inevitably bleak the Chicago weather is going to be. After my bath (during which time I ask Alexa to ask me the 'question of the day' and play songs from my playlist, ensuring that my mind is fully occupied in the process) I note down how many calories I eat on the calorie counter (100 calories over the limit), take a look at my Fitbit which shows that I have walked only 2000 steps, worried that I am not going to be able to catch up to the 10,000 steps standard. I then use an app to kick start the day with a motivational quote and get down to work.

Constant beeps remind me when I should take a break, even a nap (for precisely 20 minutes). I get those gentle nudges about when to take a Mindful Moment, when to eat what, when to stretch, when to socialize and so on. When I hop over to the grocery store to buy stuff, I now regularly scan the receipts. If I have a cash expense, I log int the Expensify app. This worked well until my wife discovered most of the cash expense was related to Starbucks (I had, for a long time, successfully managed to avoid the discovery of spending $6 for coffee by creatively hiding it under different expense headings and not using the Starbucks app.) 

And on it continues- my app addiction. I log into an app every 5 minutes or so. Sometimes, it may be to register a habit, sometimes, it could be to monitor an action (I monitor my heart rate several times a day, don't ask me why!). In the evening, I seek to indulge myself on the Netflix app or amazon prime app and close out the night with logging into gratitude journal before I turn on my sleep app.

Once a week, I download all the results. Much to my disappointment, I never seem to live up to the standards. Not just mine, but anyone else. I often look at the Instagram app, or Facebook and notice that the fellow who shows off his bulging muscles seems to have hit the gym for a fraction of the time I have and yet has the 6 pack that I don't. The folks on Facebook seem to be on holiday forever, or their children seem to complete unbelievable feats of human endurance. I once looked at the casual dress style for over 60 on Pinterest, and quickly found it gave me an inferiority complex. Unknown to my wife, I promptly brought two sweaters at about $100 apiece and discovered that it did nothing to my looks, unlike the pictures I saw.

By the end of the week, I am exhausted; of not meditating enough, not sleeping enough, not exercising enough, not eating the right stuff enough. My heart rate shows no improvement, my blood pressure has worsened, and the only thing that seems to be going up is my expense chart as each of these app subscriptions is costing me a pretty penny to say that I am completely, woefully inadequate a human being.

My smartphone owns me, not the other way around. I have delegated myself to it. It checks me, reminds me, scolds me, motivates me, measures me, protects me (supposedly)…and has overtaken someone else in my family who had the sole right on these issues for over 30 years, and she did all this for free! I have now subscribed to a variety of apps that show up on my credit card statement every month!

As I become increasingly 'automated,' I now see my life in charts. Just this morning, as I lazed around ignoring the reminder to visit the gym, I now feel guilty when My app showed 'red'- warning signs of me being a bad boy. I am now reminded that I cannot get to be another Mark Walhberg who is so ripped that his shirts often tear when he shows off his muscles. Neither can I be like George Clooney, whose dress sense is so elegant that I would go bankrupt in trying to buy the same stuff he wears. Why go that far, even my neighbors seem to be doing better. One guy went to Machu Picchu, Bali, New Zealand, Hawaii all in the same week!

Seriously, have we lost control of ourselves? In automating ourselves, we are always in the race for 'becoming.' I subscribe to an app on automized habits, only to find that every minute of every day is to be accounted for for…chasing some goal or the other. In the race to 'become,' we trade off the 'being'…the ability to stop and smell the roses of life- to take that extra hour to lounge in the bed, to eat the breakfast that would make you blush in disclosing it to anyone, to take the secret nap in the afternoon for more than twenty minutes or to peel away to go for a movie. Life is not a constant race to get better and better in everything, but in knowing the limits of where and how to retain your humanity and humanness. Let not automation steal the small pleasures of life.

Stop subscribing to those apps!