Reducing Time on Electronic Devices and Regulating One's Daily Routine

I have made my son stop using his phone and computer for three weeks now; the only electronic device he has left is a Kindle e-reader, and everything else has been confiscated by me.

At first my son could not adapt; for a modern person, quitting electronic products is very hard. Now both adults and children are heavily dependent on electronic devices, and my wife and I are no exception. To help my son get through the hardest initial withdrawal period, I took time to play chess with him and, learning as I went, played his Sanguosha card game with him.

In the first and second weeks he was very miserable. Once addicted to electronic products, abrupt withdrawal really is much like drug withdrawal. Because I hid the phone from my son, his mood became somewhat manic and his words and actions turned aggressive. I played with him as much as I could, and when necessary used a father's authority to restrain him.

For every week he persisted, I gave the child 100 yuan in pocket money as a reward; his mania gradually became less obvious. After two weeks he had adapted to life without phone and computer—occasionally he needs to do homework on a computer or phone, and we lend him our own phones and computers, taking them back once the homework is done. After three weeks the child gradually built up some new habits and had basically succeeded in withdrawal. But I still control his electronics, hiding them away from him.

I myself am also stepping away from the network and from electronic products, step by step. In June 2018 I decided to uninstall Weibo, Jinri Toutiao and other apps; only a very few apps remain on my phone. I no longer update my blog on Sina, nor post articles on platforms like Jinri Toutiao and Yidian Zixun; a year has now passed and I have stuck to all this. When Baidu's Baijiahao invited me to publish articles on Baidu, I did not open an account there either. The time I spend using the Internet and electronic devices has dropped a great deal.

Two and a half months ago I decided to delete all the short posts from my WeChat Moments and never again write short posts there. I resolved to write one formal article every day, published on my own website and WeChat public account, urging myself forward a little each day and communicating this way with my long-term readers. Since then I have posted nothing on Moments except article links.

Now I hope to go still further away from the network and electronic devices, to cut by another large chunk the time my family and I spend on electronic devices, and to return more of my time to traditional living.

Electronic devices bring us convenience, but they also bring some alarming side effects: Internet addiction, neck-shoulder-spine problems, declining eyesight, and even some cancers are all strongly related to the use of electronic devices, and the time cost is enormous. Once you are addicted to electronic devices, it is as hard to quit as smoking. Unless you have great self-discipline, a modern person can hardly escape being enslaved by electronic devices.

I have decided to help myself and my family escape being enslaved by electronic devices, and the method is quitting. Cut every opportunity to use electronic devices that might occupy time and lead to addiction. For me and for my son alike, completely giving up electronic devices is unrealistic, but we can try to greatly reduce our dependence on them.

My WeChat public account will no longer enable comments, and newly written articles will no longer carry my personal contact information. I will keep writing without cease for the rest of my life, maintaining as much as possible the pace of one article a day, but from now on my articles will be published only on my own WeChat public account and personal website.

At the same time I will stop accepting unfamiliar inquirers and patients; I will serve only my long-term patients and the relatives, friends and fellow patients they refer.

From last year to this year I have deleted more than two thousand WeChat contacts; only about 1900 remain, but that number is still too large. I will gradually delete more contacts and strive to keep WeChat contacts under a thousand—of those, a few dozen are my relatives, friends and classmates, and the rest are my patients and their families.

I want to keep my core patient load to 200-500 people; I think that is a very realistic number. An attending physician simultaneously cares for only a few inpatients, at most twenty or thirty. These long-term follow-up patients, though not as draining as inpatients, still take up a great deal of the physician's energy.

Through these years of practice I have realized that the upper limit of patients I can serve simultaneously is 500. Of those 500, about 5%-10% present new issues each day, and I must help them resolve those issues. If the number of patients exceeds this, I am forced to work constantly, physically and mentally exhausted; with my energy overdrawn I cannot make diagnosis and treatment refined.

This is also an important reason I am unwilling to take on new, unfamiliar patients. Through word of mouth, the rate at which new patients referred by my long-term patients arrive is already too fast. Adding more unfamiliar patients is completely unrealistic.

So I will take time to delete all the personal contact information I have left under various articles, and also clean up the articles I have posted on other online platforms.

So as not to cause more disturbance to others, I will try to narrow the reach of my articles to a group consisting mainly of my patients and their families. These articles have a certain popular-science value and can help the patients I see deal with their diseases more rationally.

Controlling the number of patients and inquirers will greatly reduce the time I spend on electronic devices.

My cervical spine, shoulders, spine, lower back and eyesight have already been affected by replying to too many online inquiries; I do not want these problems to develop to an irreversible stage. Only by safeguarding my own health can I better solve my patients' problems.

So I hope my long-term readers can understand my plight and gradually adapt to this new change. If you truly follow my writing, you will certainly still see, on my public account and personal website, that I remain diligently writing—writing is part of my life; apart from illness and death, nothing else can make me stop writing.

Also, I hope everyone will best consult me between 5 and 7 p.m., and try not to disturb my rest on Saturdays and Sundays. In future I will see patients every morning, read, write and practice the qin in the afternoon, and try to switch off my phone after 7 p.m. to be with my family and prepare for sleep. Saturdays are entirely for teaching; Sunday is the only day of the week I can take my family out for a stroll. I hope to adjust my schedule to safeguard my physical and mental health.