NED The Phone Monster

Meet NED The Phone Monster.

Our phones are great but sometimes we need to take a break from them on purpose. NED (No Electronic Distractions) is a physical reminder to be intentional. It was thought up by my brilliant friends Josh and Jenny Solar. The idea being that they feed NED their phones at least 1 hour a day (on purpose) and spend that time with their kids (on purpose) distraction free! When it comes to family or friends, intentional time spent with them is invaluable. For you and for them. NED is just a crazy fun way to make that happen.

While NED is designed to help families be more intentional about the time they spend together, I would challenge you to think about how it could help you as a creative?

Why would putting down your phone help you make better art?

Here’s why:

Intentionality Breeds Creativity

Being intentional is part of creativity. The act of choosing what we put in our brains and when is the single biggest part of my creative process. And the creative process of so many others who make stuff for a living. When it comes to our phones, as awesome and helpful as they are, it’s difficult to control the messages that are coming in unless we’re controlling the time we’re spending on them and how we spend that time.

Two ways you could use NED to feed your creativity:

1) Time For Bed? Feed NED!

What if you left your tasty iPhone for NED to enjoy overnight until 9am? Or when ever is a sufficient time for you to have done something awesome with your morning? I’ve talked before about how when I wake up in the morning and grab my phone to turn my alarm off, the internet is there: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Email. All those things are great but I don’t want to spend the first 30 minutes of my day catching up on other people’s lives. Instead I want to live my own. So I will intentionally do something else like read, drink coffee, eat bacon, as soon as I wake up.

2) Preparing for a big project? Use NED as reminder for no distractions.

When I’m preparing for a shoot, I won’t look at Facebook or Instagram starting two days before the shoot because I know how it can affect my creativity. I can’t control the messages coming in so I know it’s best to just not do it. Instead I let NED serve as a reminder to not carry my phone around for those two days. He gets to eat my phone, I get to make better art. Win, win!

Creativity is about leaving stuff out and putting stuff into our brains. It’s about our brains connecting the dots. That means if we want to increase our creativity, we have to do or not do things on purpose.

I love this idea and I wanted to tell you about it! So consider yourself told 🙂

The cool thing is you get to help make NED real: You can support the Kickstarter campaign here. This could change the way families interact and it could change the way you work as a creative.

 

Happy Wednesday!