
May Sky Challenge - zooli
https://mayskychallenge.com/
======
cdubzzz
Lately I’ve been wondering if an upcoming generation is going to be more anti-
technology, or at least anti-smartphone. I’ve got a 2.5 year old who will
occasionally say, “put your phone down, daddy”, or even swipe it from my hand
(though we of course try to discourage that, hah) when I’m not paying enough
attention to him. As he has grown up and started doing this, it has made me
much more aware of my phone time and generally decreased my usage. He clearly
notices when I do use it and doesn’t like it if he’s expecting me to engage
more with him. I’m curious if this will lead to him seeing smartphone use as
some sort of uncool adult thing.

~~~
phoenixdblack
I don't think smartphones will stay with us for very long. They'll probably be
replaced by future technologies less clunky (and yes, I am calling
smarthphones clunky) in favor of things like glasses, contacts and implants.

I think our children won't be "anti-smartphone" in the same vain as we are not
"anti-mainframe"

~~~
dangus
I don’t buy your vision of the future because interacting with things with our
hands is the most intuitive interface.

And the idea that we will jump to having our devices being able to read our
mind seems like a stretch.

~~~
phoenixdblack
I don't think we'll jump straight to mind-controlled (that sounds weird)
devices, but I'm pretty confident we'll be there by 2040.

As VR and AR progresses there are great new features like hand tracking, which
allows for even higher precision than swiping on your phone. I agree with you,
interacting with things through your hands is really intuitive, but I don't
think we have unlocked it's full potential.

~~~
ashtonkem
I remain dubious about VR/AR, because the use cases have remained incredibly
narrow. VR has remained a more or less video gaming only niche, and AR is
something I interact with once a year or so, mostly to see if furniture would
fit.

It’s possible that future technology will make it more useful, but on the
current trend it doesn’t seem likely that AR/VR would surpass even my Apple
Watch usage, let alone iPhone.

~~~
jschwartzi
Me too. People forget that the technology they're supposedly replacing is
something we use in public. So any replacement technology needs to not erase
the context of being in public around other humans, and it also needs to be
discrete. VR and AR are not particularly discrete, and they also erase a lot
of context so they're non-starters outside of very specific technological
environments like CAD.

------
soneca
I wake up and the first thing I do is check my phone and I don't think that's
unhealthy. Quite the contrary I believe.

It is a slow start to the day and I feel connected to friends and family. I am
living abroad, a few hours behind my native country where most of my friends
live. So when I wake up, there is already a lot of activity in the WhatsApp
groups I am part of. I don't use WhatsApp professionally, so it's just
personal stuff. I love to read trivial chatting from my friends and family
first thing in the morning. Specially living abroad. Specially these days of
Covid.

I also check Twitter and HN, but just a quick look, not the reason I pick up
my phone. I spend about 20min on WhatsApp, 5min elsewhere.

It also wakes me up, so I don't oversleep. Then I am ready to go the bathroom,
prepare my breakfast and when I get to work, I am ready and sharp.

I believe people use the idea of picking your phone first thing in the morning
as an image and a proxy for phone addiction, I don't think it is. I believe I
would be less healthy if I had my phone locked away from me in the morning.

~~~
samatman
Please understand that what I'm about to say isn't to be taken personally. I
don't know you, and I'm taking your word for it that you have a healthy
relationship with your phone.

Something functional alcoholics will often say is "I don't have a problem, I
just like a beer with dinner, nothing wrong with that", and a usual response
is "okay, then how about you take a week off? If it's just something you like,
then that should be no problem".

Of course, that's where the excuses start!

This May challenge is conceptually similar. Nothing in your morning routine
would be disrupted by more than 120 seconds, if you took the time to look at
the sky and appreciate it before starting in with the phone.

Again, I'm mentioning this on behalf of _other people_ who might be a bit in
denial about how they start their day.

My personal routine starts with plugging the laptop into the monitor and
brewing coffee, and browsing Twitter and HN while my brain wakes up. I'm not
big on my phone in general, especially not lately.

But I'm intending to add looking at the sky for the month of May (although not
joining a Facebook group, yuck!).

It sounds nice.

~~~
soneca
Makes sense. I've been considering letting to check the phone in the living
room (currently my office too) just because sometimes there are videos/audios
that I want to check, but my wife is still sleeping.

The watching the sky thing is more of a marketing device that I might skip
though.

------
lagilogi
I cannot see the sky from my apartment. So If have to wait until I leave for
work or other reasons.

I don't remember my parents having this problem with their newspaper. They did
look at the newspaper before the sky every morning.

~~~
shlant
> I don't remember my parents having this problem with their newspaper. They
> did look at the newspaper before the sky every morning.

This seems to be a pretty common comparison, especially as a reply to older
generations remarking on everyone always being on their phones. Kind of a meme
at this point[1][2].

It really makes me think that not a lot of thought/concern is given to the
major difference between print media and modern technology/social media: print
media is a one-way relationship. There is no interaction between the reader
and the newspaper - it's a passive information source.

Social media on the other hand is a two-way, highly interactive, highly
curated information source/communication tool and that is where the comparison
falls flat on it's face. To compare the two in the context of mental
health/anti-social behavior/distraction etc. is missing the point.

And for anyone interested in some research on the subjects of technology and
social media as it related to kids, I will always plug the non-profit I work
for:

[https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research](https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research)

1\.
[https://memeworld.funnyjunk.com/pictures/Kids+these+days+alw...](https://memeworld.funnyjunk.com/pictures/Kids+these+days+always+on+their+phones_9a6937_6005297.jpg)

2\.
[https://miro.medium.com/max/1080/1*U36hBj8i-C7JJJxS4MP2HQ.jp...](https://miro.medium.com/max/1080/1*U36hBj8i-C7JJJxS4MP2HQ.jpeg)

~~~
oaiey
Especially considering, that the printed old-fashioned Newspaper (at least if
you select the right one!!!) has a professional writers and a more calm
perspective on the world than social media and everything what we consume as
media nowadays.

~~~
JacobDotVI
Historically old-fashioned newspapers haven't had a calm perspective. Their
headlines were the original clickbait.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism)

~~~
Mediterraneo10
In a number of countries, yellow journalism was a feature of the _evening_
newspapers, not the morning ones which represented more reasoned, respectable
journalism. So, people at least didn’t start their day with yellow journalism.

------
frogpelt
I love this idea but I found this part hilarious:

"You can join the event on facebook, so we can keep in touch, and see how
popular this gets! Invite your friends, spread the word!"

The reason people look at their screens first thing in the morning is to see
what everybody else is doing.

~~~
komali2
Speak for yourself, I look to see how much money I lost that morning with bad
option bets

------
_Microft
Look at the sky especially now during the lockdown. It's beautiful. I couldn't
have imagined how distracting planes were until now that I have seen the sky
without them.

~~~
Loughla
Two nights ago a series of 40-50 satellites flew over. It was genuinely
disturbing to see. I live where the night sky is dark, and full of stars. It
was already pretty out here, but the lockdown, with less air travel, has
really helped the sky.

And then this line of SUPER bright satellites came over. I think they were
part of the Spacex system of satellites. I'm hoping there aren't more coming.
They were brighter than the moon, really, just smaller.

~~~
Cogito
FYI there is a known issue with the brightness of recent SpaceX satellites,
that is being worked on.

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1252986968058802177](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1252986968058802177)

The important bits:

 _Everyday Astronaut @Erdayastronaut Apr 23_

Is there a reason they’ve been brighter and more noticeable lately? I feel
like tons of people are spotting them all of a sudden and they went fairly
unnoticed before.

 _Elon Musk @elonmusk Replying to @Erdayastronaut_

Solar panel angle during orbit raise / park. We’re fixing it now.

~~~
schoen
Definitely a "living in the future" moment: you can just ask the satellite
owner and get a personal response immediately. (Also, the satellite owner then
rolls out bug fixes to the satellite constellation.)

------
alex_young
For everyone concerned about your alarm, try existing without one!

I gave up alarms over a decade ago, and I never wake up late. You have a great
internal clock in your own head and the subtle stress of knowing an alarm is
pending is horrible for actually getting restful sleep.

Don’t believe me? Try it on a weekend or two, or if you have a week with few
early events, set a resolve to do some task by a specific time and remind
yourself to wake for it before going to bed. It’s amazingly simple once you
get used to it.

~~~
munificent
My experience is that if I have an event that I need to be ready for and don't
set an alarm my brain switches into panic "Oh shit, I overslept mode!" and I
wake up way too early, repeatedly, and end up with a terrible night's sleep.
In fact, I get that whenever I travel for work even though I _do_ set an alarm
because the disruption to my routine makes me afraid I failed to set it
correctly.

What I find helps the most for getting restful sleep is to do this at night:

1\. Set an alarm for when I want to wake up.

2\. Go to bed at a time that makes my sleep duration an integer multiple of my
sleep cycle. For me, that's around 3.5 hours. I'll feel more rested with 7
hours of sleep than 9 because at 9 hours I'm woken from deep sleep.

3\. When I get in bed, mentally how much time between there is between now and
my alarm going off. Deliberately tell myself, "My alarm is going off in X
hours."

Setting an alarm cures my "I overslept!" anxiety. The other two points help
align my alarm to my sleep cycle so I'm in shallow sleep when it goes off.

------
unethical_ban
A few thoughts:

* Comparing newspaper to infinite social media feeds and online resources is a very incomplete model

* There are clearly people who see the value in this, so don't be so quick to dismiss it. I feel the same as /u/convolvatron in that the quarantine has really screwed up my routine, and has worsened my addiction to social media/internet/interacting somehow with the digital world. The days where I wake up and make coffee/have a pre-Internet routine are better on the whole.

* Don't assume this post thinks _everyone_ needs this - it is a recommendation for those who do, or those who simply like trying different habits.

* Finally, as a compromise, if you insist on some usage in the morning: Consider only using your alarm, and getting an email subscription or podcast of the morning's news. Though it dilutes the utility of this exercise, I believe the worst part of electronics addiction is the unbounded nature of it. Having a clear boundary of "one five minute podcast" or "only check email / SMS of friends" is much better than "Load up the times, post, reddit, HN, Facebook, messenger, Whatsapp, Hangouts, Slack, Signal, and the city paper".

------
t0astbread
The first thing I do in the morning is look outside and try to guess the clock
time from the shadows and the position of the sun to test my sense of time and
to check how fucked my sleeping schedule is. So I guess I've already done
this? (If you don't count the days when I've set an alarm because my phone
doesn't have the "shake to shut up" feature and it wouldn't make sense to
guess the time if you've just woken up to an alarm.)

Except for that, I generally don't use my phone a lot. I don't trust most
mobile apps because I have no good way of isolating and limiting an app's
capabilities on my phone (compared to the web where things like uMatrix and
related tech are commonplace) and the few apps I do have are more of the
information-pull rather than the information-push type (although that's
unintentional).

Maybe a bit off-topic but I think mobile operating systems are generally more
a burden than a help for me. Android's design decisions make a lot of sense
for a lot of people's needs but for me it's just too limiting compared to PC
operating systems so I simply don't do a lot on my phone.

------
mercora
i have no clock in my bedroom, the first thing i do in the morning is looking
out of the window to see where the sun is at currently...

~~~
gfiorav
Just answer: do you use vi?

~~~
mercora
no way, emacs only ;)

~~~
TeMPOraL
So you look out of the window and at the modeline :).

------
Robotbeat
I did this last night. It was awesome. I’m in the city, so I can’t see much,
but did see the beautiful crescent Moon (and the dark, barely-visible
Earthshine-illuminated portion), very bright Venus nearby, Orion (with a red
Betelgeuse whose brightness has now recovered after waning for months), and
then I saw a spectacular stream of just-launched, orbit-raising Starlink
satellites emit from the North Star and fly past the handle of the Big Dipper.
(Plus a couple other non-Starlink satellites earlier.)

(On a side note, it seems that SpaceX has made really good progress on solving
the in-service brightness problem of Starlink, and hopes to launch all their
satellites—starting with two launches from now—with low enough in-service
brightness to be invisible to the naked eye once on-station.)
[https://spacenews.com/spacex-to-test-starlink-sun-visor-
to-r...](https://spacenews.com/spacex-to-test-starlink-sun-visor-to-reduce-
brightness/)

~~~
war1025
My family just finally learned where Venus is a month or two ago. It's so
obvious once you know, but I always assumed it was just another star or
something. I get an unreasonable amount of joy out of seeing it up there each
night.

------
swiley
Even before the lockdown I made a habit of going out and looking at the sky
and the farthest/highest thing I could find every morning right after I wake
up.

Before it was just nice, now I feel like it’s keeping me sane.

------
fredley
One of the best small changes I made was sleeping in a different room to my
phone. We now have a charging station in the study where all our phones and
other devices charge. When I wake up I often go through breakfast etc. before
going to get my phone.

If you're stil sleeping near your phone, stop it. Alarm clocks are very cheap.
You don't need any of the fancy features of your phone's alarm - you'll adapt.

~~~
yoz-y
I like the idea in theory but I always use my phone to actually fall asleep by
listening to some monotonous audio. Before doing this I had extremely hard
time falling asleep.

~~~
CDSlice
One option if you really want to sleep in a separate room from your phone is
to get a dedicated audio player for your bedroom. Depending on the features
you need (Bluetooth, streaming support from Spotify, etc.) you can get one for
around $70 to $300. You could also get a Raspberry Pi and automate playing
your monotonous audio at your bedtime each night. That would be cheap and a
neat quarantine project.

~~~
yoz-y
This can help. I use my old phone that I otherwise use for dev. It does not
have games and social networks on it so it's harder to just spend time on
something.

------
third_I
The idea is nice, great even, but...

No but seriously.

Who, in 2020, grabs their phone first thing before hitting a drink, or
bathroom, or wash your face or whatever you do when you wake up?

I (37M) find it weird. In 2010, sure, it was all new and I was younger maybe.
Nowadays I just don't even have to refrain myself, it could be 10, 20 minutes
before I look at any screen. It would usually be my laptop actually.

Am I the exception? I'd think a technologically mature crowd to be much
less... dependent, less hooked to their phone. I would think of this being an
actual _challenge_ for the mainstream Facebooking / Instagramming /
Twittering, but not people like us...

[work notwithstanding, evidently, sometimes we need to grab the phone but
that's irrelevant to my observations]

~~~
janee
Same. I keep my phone face down and on do not disturb, on my nightstand, and
only pick it up once I'm ready to start the work day.

I find even seeing the app icons for notifications on my lock screen can lead
me down a nonstop work path where you end up in you PJ's at 11h30 with zero
caffeine in you and a feeling of a day already passed.

~~~
third_I
> even seeing the app icons for notifications on my lock screen can lead me
> down a nonstop work path

I totally know the feeling! I think it's really biological, low-level:

\- dopamine! It's like a shot, the brain gets triggered.

\- familiarity: "feels like home", habits take us to our comfort zone.

> you end up in you PJ's at 11h30 with zero caffeine in you and a feeling of a
> day already passed.

Haha, yeah... I've been there so often in my teens / twenties.

I think it was self-love + discipline that let me exit that loop. Treating
myself like a (inner) child and their parent all-in-one person: forces one to
think about well-being first, it gives a feeling it's the "right thing to do"
to let yourself chill and avoid that kind of time vortex.

------
vharish
I need to turn off the alarm though :(

~~~
third_I
That doesn't count IMHO, it's just a couple taps most likely, you're not
engaging with the device (it's merely an overkill alarm clock at that point).

;)

------
m0llusk
This is a great opportunity for a LookAtTheSky app.

Personally, I like to combine both modes by using moon tracking apps to watch
my favorite sky object.

~~~
interestica
Ha! So like an AR type app that lets me see my social media feed overlaid on
the live views of the sky on my screen? ....

------
madengr
You had me there until Facebook was mentioned. Though I’m typing this in bed
at 5:26 AM as I can’t sleep.

~~~
acctng
Same here.

------
jackhalford
Excellent, I'll be doing this. We can never build enough awareness about our
subconscious behaviors.

------
m4rtink
So I though this is about some nice astronomic phenomena one can see in the
sky during May (like the spectacular post launch Starlink satellite "trains")
but it is just some weird anti smartphone addiction campaign. I am
disappointed. :P

------
ASalazarMX
Every day I look up at the sky and landscape before looking down at my phone.
It doesn't make any significant difference in my day.

But whatever that makes people lives more varied in this isolation is fine, I
guess.

------
kharms
.

~~~
jermaustin1
I've been doing a similar routine. But walking instead of reading. I wake at
6:30, take a short walk around the block, eat breakfast, then start work by
7:30. Take a break around noon for lunch and another 2-3 mile walk, then call
it quits at 3:30 to 4:00, and either go out and do some wood working or
another walk. Then shower before bed at 9:00-ish.

------
harimau777
Does anyone know what the background picture is?

~~~
interesse
I guess it's a Maypole:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maypole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maypole)

------
fanatic2pope
> Well, just do it! You can join the event on facebook,

Fail.

~~~
zooli
i believe that the main audience of this campaign are hardcore fb users, it's
easier to target them there. but any suggestions are welcome, how to reach
people nowadays?

------
amelius
Bonus if you do a Sun salutation (yoga).

~~~
RawChicken
Extra bonus if you praise the sun

~~~
Cthulhu_
[praising intensifies]

~~~
Infinitesimus
What a fitting username lol

------
fctorial
Or both by using the camera.

------
reagular
y'all need to do shabbath

~~~
sdoering
Why?

What is it with pushing religious stuff into peoples faces? I believe it is
offensive to people who either have a different religion or none at all.

One could just say: "You should do a day of digital detox every week. Like for
example people do on Shabbat. Or in other ways."

~~~
mikestew
_One could just say_

Or you could just give people the benefit of the doubt, read it that way to
begin with, and save us all a lot of grief. Regardless...

 _I believe it is offensive to people..._

If you have a personal beef, say it clearly. The rest of us don't need you to
run interference for us. I'm of a "different religion" and I think it is an
outstanding idea.

~~~
sdoering
> If you have a personal beef, say it clearly

I have no beef. I just stated my personal opinion. And I even stated a way how
it could be framed with religious content in the text.

I still feel I did a reasonable critique with an idea of how to communicate in
a less offensive way towards others.

------
nonbirithm
I always would like to participate in these but end up taking advantage of the
rules, without fail. My guess is I'd get up, walk over to the window, pull
down the blinds to ensure light enters my pupils for five seconds, then go
back to bed and promptly read HN for half an hour. It would still count. I
wouldn't even be able to see it since I'd probably not even bother to put on
my eyewear just to see five seconds of sky.

I'm trying to work out my intended goals if I'm going to attempt such a thing.
I do believe cellphone usage in bed is a negative. But if that's what I'm
trying to combat, I'm not sure just "looking at the sky first thing in the
morning" is going to help me accomplish reducing phone usage in bed. Because
once I've looked at the sky for the morning, I'm free to do whatever, and
there's only one other thing I'm going to do first thing in the morning.

The same happened when I tried to follow a course on building self esteem. It
consists of writing three positive experiences and three things you're
grateful for each morning. The author noted: if you're skeptical at staying on
track, try it for 30 days. You'd be surprised at yourself.

All that happened was that I did this for exactly the 30 days, stopped cold,
and haven't found the motivation to start again. Rereading what I wrote during
that time on the occasion, I fail to see what I accomplished.

Same with a 30-day morning exercise routine. My thoughts: I'm no longer
indebted to follow this person's advice. I've tried it. I've forced myself
through it. I don't feel any different, except perpetually exhausted
throughout the rest of the day. Now what?

I still want to do these things, because there's clearly _some_ benefit to be
had if someone went out of their way to host an entire webpage for this
concept, and stating that it "sounds easy" as opposed to "it _is_ easy".
Exercise leads to better health. Writing some words supposedly leads to better
mental health.

Yet it always feels compulsory, like someone on the Internet has the power to
control my behavior against my will, and if I "fail" the "challenge" I'll
think less of myself for it. The only reason I'm doing this is because someone
I don't know suggested it, and the whole point is once you start, you _have_
to follow through. So essentially, I feel like no matter what happens I'm
roping myself into something I will not stick through to the end. Then I end
up dreading every moment of it, eventually forgetting why I even bothered to
try it in the first place amongst how forced and tiresome it is, and
inevitably go back to my usual habits.

Ultimately it comes down to consciously not trying and staying the course in
equilibrium, or trying, failing, and managing to convince myself I didn't have
it in me, or that I see no benefit. For something as simple as scribbling some
notes in a journal.

I noticed that my desire to exercise disappeared entirely the moment I bought
myself an exercise bike and put it two feet away from my desk at home.

I also tried sleeping for a week with my phone in a separate room. Cue not
being able to fall asleep outright until 3-4 AM for the entire week. At least
12 AM with my phone on night mode was better for my health before.

I don't get it. Maybe when next month comes around I'll just have to try
harder, as they say. For $DIETY_NAME's sake, it's just _looking at the sky_.

------
qqssccfftt
I looked at the sky this morning. It was cloudy. There wasn't really much
there.

This is literal boomer newspaper comic type stuff at 75 upvotes.

------
wnevets
phone bad

------
dangus
Stop telling me what to do.

Seriously.

I can look at the phone and the sky in one day. I enjoy both of those things.

~~~
ver_ture
This is a suggestion made to ease the habit of deferring to our phones for
everything, starting with the first action. I welcome this initiative for
decreasing how often I reach for my phone by at least one, and digging up my
old alarm clock.

------
GoToRO
Or not look at the sky, instead make sure to ask for your rights so that
looking at the sky is something that just happens. No need to blame and shame
people.

~~~
Dobbs
I really can't tell if your comment is some an anti-lockdown statement, or I'm
completely missing what you are trying to get at.

~~~
GoToRO
Not related at all. I was referring to how people would cram in a town that
provides nothing except a job. No parks, no common spaces, no joy.

------
PretzelFisch
My two cents, I don't care about your addiction don't assume it is mine too. I
wake up at 4:30 am and hit the "gym". So yes my first screens are an alarm,
then the ipad to keep my mind distracted. around 7 I enjoy watching the sun
come up while I have a cup of coffee to make the most of SIP. When life was
normal I would walk to work and enjoyed that a lot. I also make it a point to
go outside for 1-2 sort walks each day.

I don't see much difference between my use of tv,cpu compared to my parents
tv/paper/magazine or grand parents tv/radio/paper and magazines. Every
generation has new socialization norms and every one has to fight for
attention.

