This week’s post is called “I Might Forget Your Birthday.”

Because this week, I finally turned off all the notifications and alerts on Facebook.

I thought I wouldn’t mind them.
I told myself they were helpful.

But the truth?

They were distracting. I could see people had commented for example on something, or a birthday reminder popped up...clogging up my email.

Just a constant, low-level interruption....but grabbing my attention every now and again nonetheless.

And after six weeks off social media, I can see it more clearly than I ever did before.

When you step away from social media, something unexpected happens.

At first you might think you are missing something, a kind of loneliness sets in...

But then there’s space.

And in that space, you realise just how much you were being “bombarded.”

Birthdays.
Memories from 8 years ago.
Friend suggestions.
Event reminders.
Someone commented.
Someone liked.
Someone else is having a birthday tomorrow.

Each alert seems tiny. Harmless.

But collectively? They fragment your mind.

Gloria Mark, a psychologist, who researches attention, has found that after an interruption it can take over 20 minutes to properly refocus.

Twenty minutes.

We think we are glancing.
But neurologically, we are switching tracks. This happened to me every single day.

For years, Facebook remembered birthdays for me.

And in a way- It told me when to care, when to act and even suggested what to say.

But somewhere along the way, I realise that I outsourced something deeply human — the act of remembering.

There is something beautiful about holding someone’s birthday in your own mind. Writing it in your diary. Sending a card because you remembered — not because you were prompted.

Cal Newport writes in Deep Work:

“Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.”

When you remove the noise, you begin to see what truly matters.

And perhaps it isn’t responding to 23 automated reminders in a single morning. Right?

Johann Hari, in his book Stolen Focus, writes:

“Your attention didn’t collapse. It has been stolen.”

That sentence stopped me in my tracks when I first read it. Because distraction today is not accidental.
It is engineered.

Tristan Harris, in his TED talk about persuasive technology, describes our phones as “slot machines in our pockets.”

Every alert is a lever pull.

A small hit of novelty. I can hear the slot machine sound just like the notification ping.

And suddenly your morning — which began with tea and quiet — becomes a stream of micro-interruptions.

Distraction  for me is not just about productivity.

It is about presence.

When we are interrupted all day long:

• We skim instead of savour.

• We half-listen.

• We rush responses.

• We forget how to sit still with one thing.

It affects how we read, how we think, how we connect.

And perhaps most subtly, it affects how we remember.

...So I Might Forget Your Birthday

And if I do, please forgive me.

It won’t be because I don’t care.

It will be because I am learning to remember differently again.

I have found  buried in my desk my small birthday book.
I am writing dates down by hand.
I am choosing fewer alerts — and more intention.

I would rather send one thoughtful card that I have remembered myself than 50 quick “Happy Birthday!” messages prompted by an algorithm.

There is something slower in this way of living...I've always preferred it!

And perhaps that is what these six weeks off social media have been teaching me — not withdrawal, not rejection — but discernment.

Clarity about what deserves my attention.

Because attention is not infinite, it is time, it is precious.

And I would rather spend mine on reading and writing, on beauty, on people — and on remembering you the old-fashioned way.