Click. Click. Clickety-clackety-click.
It’s the sound of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Any of the reels, videos, shorts. It’s the nails on the drink cans, countertops, boxes, and so on. The sounds are used for filler, emphasis, and attention. I get it. Sometimes music and voices are not enough. But the clickety-clack gets overused. It’s a bit much, and it can be a deterrent instead of a draw. What’s intended to engage ends up repelling. Or at the very least, it makes one video sound like many others, so doom scrolling continues instead of a pause with attention.
Why does it matter? I doubt many who are reading or listening right now make an insane amount of social media content, but there is still an application. What do we do repeatedly that becomes noise instead of purposeful repetition?
Don’t just think about bad things or mundane things. These can be things we do that are good, things that have served us well. But we don’t put intention into them now. We go through the motions. We’ve let go of the why behind them. We need to re-evaluate.
Do we need to adjust? Do we need to lighten our load or ramp it up? How can we make some small adjustments that release the annoyances and bring back the motivation?
Do we need to keep it? Perhaps we need to consider whether it is something we need to hold onto. Some things are for a season. We don’t need everything in our lives forever. Few things are. We need to know when to let go.
Do we need a break? Perhaps we are resenting the mundane. We’re forcing it. We’re in a busy season, and we need to step away until XYZ is done, then we’ll jump back in—or not.
Do we need a refresh? Perhaps we need a slightly different approach. It might be a different time of the day or a different location. Maybe it’s new organization—some sort of fresh perspective.
Do we need to invite someone to help us along the way? Accountability helps. Sometimes the simple act of letting someone know we’re struggling helps tremendously. Or sharing a goal so someone checks in with us every now and then to let us know they’re in our corner.
Just like those sounds on social media, our routines can help us—with focus, balance, and health. But they can also create monotony that stifles our creativity, helps us become inflexible, and encourages monotony. Our Click, click, clickety-clackety-click becomes check, check, checkity-checkity-check. We check those boxes as if our lives depend on them.
Now I like my lists. And I get great satisfaction from checking off the items on those lists, but I know better than to live by them. They are tools that serve me. I don’t serve them. They don’t drive me. They are simply paper and pen (well, more likely, an app on my phone).
My very first published blog post (January 31, 2009) was about lists. I’m not surprised. However, I will say I by far make fewer lists now than I did then. It might be because life is simpler now. It might be because I keep the basics in my mind and am flexible with the rest. I’m not positive. But what I know is that I want as little noise as possible. It’s something I have to constantly attend to. But if I can eliminate a few clickety-clacks and checkity-checks, I’m on board.
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