Right now, for so many people self-isolating in the face of the escalating coronavirus pandemic, technology is the main link to the outside world. It’s allowing us to maintain crucial contact with friends, family, and coworkers, and providing information and much-needed outlets for joy, amusement, and creativity in a rather bleak time. However, it can also be the source of deep anxiety and distraction: never has it been easier to stress-refresh your Twitter timeline looking for the latest Covid-19 numbers, or pick up your phone to text a friend only to fall into a mindless internet black hole.

Of course, this has always been the dual nature of our networked world: the potential of limitless access to information and connection curbed by rising rates of anxiety-related disorders, and an increasing allergy to focus and attention. But as Cal Newport, a computer scientist who teaches at Georgetown, says about our self-distanced moment, “what the current crisis does is take those elements that make technologies tricky to deal with in the normal case, and basically turns it up to 11.”

In recent years, Newport has become a go-to resource on all things digital, one of the rare voices that resists the lightning-fast speed at which technology develops, calling for slow and deliberate consideration about how the tech we use is affecting culture and human behavior. In his books Deep Work and Digital Minimalism, he offers practices that can help readers reclaim autonomy over devices that can all too easily hijack attention (in the first, he explains the merits of mono-tasking and deep concentration; the second helps you think about developing a personal philosophy of tech use that prunes back all platforms that don’t bring value or purpose into your life).

With screen time on the rise, we reached out to Newport for advice on how to best navigate the current moment. His advice won’t just help you avoid the “distraction spiral” that can eat your day in a whirlpool of anxiety and stress—it’ll help you rethink the importance of intention throughout this unprecedented period of isolation, and why determining how you spend your quarantine could help determine how your life spins forward once this is all said and done.

In Digital Minimalism, you put forward an idea that is meant to help people reclaim autonomy over the way they use their devices. This strikes me as a moment—when we’re all locked at home—when that would be particularly important.

The underlying ideas [in Digital Minimalism] are being thrown into stark relief. There's this core idea that technology is this dualistic thing. Now we're all thrown into a world where we have to be inside on technology all day. It's absolutely a lifeline—and yet that negative side of tech has never been more intense.

The analogy I like is from Plato's Phaedrus dialogue: the soul can be thought of as a chariot driver trying to control two horses. The chariot driver represents the rational thinking, planning part of the human mind. One horse is the noble impulses, and the other horse is the base or ignoble impulses.

You can take a tool, like a social network, and if you use it real carefully, you can empower the noble horse in that allegory. It can elevate what you're able to do with your day, and the quality of your life. If you use it casually, like a psychological pacifier, it just supercharges the ignoble horse. You find yourself completely spiraling, lost in anxiety and distraction.

Have you found yourself struggling, or being more tempted? Or maybe you’re so well-practiced that you’re immune to it?