About My Digital Self

This post was inspired by recent events and a short chat with a friend. There are two main points:

• Create distance between your happiness and big tech
• Cultivate resilience

There are so many digital sources of information that it's easy to lose oneself or slip into a state where we bind our happiness to the faith of one corporation. Even myself, I'm not immune to this. As a developer and active person in tech, I have my own favourite technologies, trends, and mindset about what constitutes “good” and “bad”. It's easy to lean onto the desire for “my thing” to be a winner in something. Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone would be using my IDE, preferred my colour theme, my phone brand, my music streaming service etc?

The risk is that our passion and happiness may become entangled with the faith and public image of said corporation or technology. One day, you're joyfully posting on Twitter, and then it gets exploded into pieces by a hostile take over. You love your favourite brand of gadgets, you've even devoted personal time to learn how to create apps for their platform and create content promoting their products, only to discover they don't have your best intentions in mind.

These kinds of influences are fleeting in nature, and so it's up to us to take charge of our emotional wellbeing. I know it's easier said than done, so if I were to brainstorm on that, I'd start here:

• Focus on what truly matters to you, rather than what's trending. What have you made that makes you feel proud? What have you built that your future self will feel good about?
• Limit tech consumption — let's call it a digital detox, or rather a mindful usage of social media, personal electronics and “AI” things. “Do it all” kinds of apps and services are convenient, but often what we truly need is but a fraction of the whole. Perhaps there are smaller and simpler alternatives that will be just as satisfying without being overwhelming.

Resilience can mean different things. Practically, technological resilience means that your precious memories will survive the unthinkable. Did you back up those photos? Do you know what to do if your phone's vendor goes dark for a day? For a week, etc.?

Another form of resilience is the ability to build a stronger sense of self, one that does not require so much external validation to thrive. Did you get likes on that social media post? What if most of the likes were automatically generated? Does the number matter in some way — did it change your life? My take on this is that one can refocus on the positives in one's life, activities that bring joy and the sense of fulfilment, especially such outside tech.

There was a time when one of the hardest questions for me would be when people asked about my hobbies. “Well, you see, I work as a developer, but my hobby is also developing apps”… lol 🤪. While it may make me sound like a 10x developer, it also has a sad aspect in that tech is required to bring me fulfilment, which is suboptimal. Thankfully, things have changed since then, and today I find myself enjoying many aspects of life. In fact, existing outside tech has been a great source of unique inspirations — something algorithmic social media and brand “content” simply can't offer.