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Before I knew it, I was looking at my phone again.
It wasn’t as if there was anything I wanted to see.
My hand was just moving.
A notification comes.
I reply.
Another comes.
I open a video.
I watch it at 1.5x speed.
The next video starts on its own.
Before I knew it, an hour had gone by.
Nothing was left.
Attention, scattered to pieces
It is said that the information a person today takes in each day equals a whole year’s worth in the Edo period.
Phone notifications keep stimulating the brain, 24 hours a day.
Work chats, social media, news — something is always cutting in.
“Time to do nothing” is nowhere to be found.
Even when you try to rest, your attention gets pulled toward something else.
Tired, and still unable to sleep.
The brain keeps running, yet nothing builds up.
The luxury of ease
Going to the gym means changing, getting there, changing again — some days that alone is enough to break the mood.
Pool isn’t like that.
You can walk in still in your suit on the way home from work.
All the equipment is there at the hall.
You don’t end up drenched in sweat, so no change of clothes, no shower.
It’s charged by the hour, so thirty minutes or an hour, you decide by how you feel that day.
There is almost no effort involved in getting started.
On a tired weekday, that is just right.
The moment I picked up the cue, I forgot the notifications
Read the angle to the millimeter.
Picture where the cue ball will go.
Foresee the next layout —
Standing before that one shot, everything else fades.
Work emails.
LINE messages I haven’t answered.
Whatever was on my mind a moment ago —
The extra tasks, one by one, slip out of view.
Before I knew it, I had set my phone down at the side of the table.
Even when it buzzed, I didn’t mind.
For the first time in a long while, I was thinking about just one thing.
Scattered attention returns to a single point
It isn’t that you are resting your brain.
If anything, you are concentrating.
But because the extra tasks are gone, it grows quiet inside your head.
Time spent focused on one thing is scarcer than you think.
Which is exactly why that quiet felt so good.
👉 Put down the phone, pick up the cue. — Pool, for a digital detox.
On the way home
When I opened my phone, a pile of notifications had come in.
But strangely, I didn’t feel like rushing to reply.
For the first time in a long while, my head was quiet.
Tonight, it seemed, I would sleep well.
👉 You’re not the only one who couldn’t keep it up.
👉 See the Yokohama Billiard Hall Guide
👉 Billiards resources from Japan and around the world, organized by purpose: Billiards in Depth (latest updated hourly)
