Trying to Stay Calm in an Always Online World

Trying to stay calm in an always online world is less about avoiding technology and more about noticing what it does to your attention over time.

I did not always have language for this. I only noticed patterns. Noise accumulating. Focus fragmenting. A low-level tension that seemed to follow screens even when nothing urgent was happening.

I am Adnan. Most people call me Adi. Some say Addy. I answer to all three. Correcting people is rarely worth the effort.

I started out as a drummer. Teenager, loud rooms, borrowed gear, nervous first gigs, and songs that sometimes came together beautifully and sometimes fell apart halfway through.

There was one recurring complication. I’m left-handed. At festivals with multiple bands, that meant the drum kit was never set up for me. While others were relaxing between sets, I was quietly moving pedals, stands, and cymbals so my hands and feet would land where they expected. Nobody complained. Nobody helped either. It was mildly annoying and a little funny. In hindsight, it was probably good training. The world is usually arranged for someone else first, and you either adapt or you do not play.

Later I moved into programming and stayed there for about thirty years. I worked on systems that were invisible when they worked and suddenly very interesting when they did not. Quite a few are still running today, doing exactly what they are supposed to do. I have always liked that kind of work. It feels a lot like drumming. If you are doing it right, nobody notices. If you lose focus, everyone does.

Music never really left. Over the last decade or so I spent a lot of time making playlists and long mixes. Some of them are still floating around online. I enjoy how songs change when you place them next to each other. A good sequence can turn ordinary tracks into a conversation. It is still rhythm, just without loading gear into a van at midnight.

I also spend a lot of time outdoors. I am a competitive, hard-core mountain biker. At sixty, that mostly means I still push myself, but I am more selective about when and where. I love steep climbs, technical descents, roots, rocks, and mud. I just choose my lines more carefully now and recover a bit longer afterward. When I am not riding, I walk in the woods with my partner. Trees do not interrupt. Water does not ask questions. That alone feels like balance.

I am also a father of three children in their mid-twenties. That sentence still surprises me. Watching them grow into their own people has been louder, stranger, and more meaningful than anything else I have done.

One small detail from my past still makes me smile. In 1987, in Sarajevo, I wrote a computer solitaire game called pasians. At the time it was simply a learning project, something I was curious about. I only understood much later how early it was, and how many people ended up playing it. It never felt like an achievement while it was happening. Looking back now, it feels like one of those things that showed up, did its work, and moved on. Just another part of the trail behind me.

People often describe anxiety as a permanent fog. That has not really been my experience. Life has been challenging at times, but experience accumulates. You learn how people behave. You learn when something feels off. You make mistakes, notice patterns, and adjust. After a while, you usually have a sense of what to do next. Not because you are special, but because you have seen the situation before in one form or another.

Still, the always-online world does something subtle.

I can sit in the woods for hours and feel completely fine. Then I check my phone and feel a small pull. A message. A headline. A number in a red circle asking for attention. None of it is urgent, but it never really stops. It is like background noise that hums even when the room seems quiet.

So I made a few small changes.

One was learning to respect my attention. For years it felt normal to let anything interrupt me at any moment. Notifications, vibrations, popups. Eventually it occurred to me that I would never design a serious system to behave like that. Constant random interrupts, no priorities, no pause button. So I adjusted.

Sometimes the phone stays in another room. Sometimes meals are screen-free. Sometimes messages wait. Nothing dramatic. Just small decisions that make the day feel smoother and less twitchy.

Movement helps more than I expected. On days when I ride or walk, problems tend to behave themselves. On days when I sit too much, small issues suddenly think they are very important. On a mountain bike, you cannot think about many things at once. If you try, the trail provides immediate feedback. Your body brings you into the present whether you planned it or not.

When I cannot ride, I walk. When I cannot walk far, I stretch at home. I do not track anything. I just move enough to remind my body that it is involved in the thinking process. Often, something that felt heavy before movement looks smaller afterward.

Writing helps in a similar way. Thoughts pile up in my head. On paper, they slow down. Many worries look far less impressive once written out. Quite a few solve themselves without any effort from me.

People matter too. I have learned to pay attention to which conversations leave me relaxed and which ones leave me oddly tired. I choose the first kind more often now. I do not need a crowd. A few good people is plenty.

I have also learned not to worry too much about who gets credit for what. I have seen enough cycles to know that noise fades and results stick around. What goes around really does come around, usually without much drama. That is good enough for me.

So this is not advice, and it is not a system.

It is just a handful of observations from someone who has been around long enough to recognize patterns:

• Your attention is worth protecting.
• Your body often knows before your thoughts do.
• Writing clears space.
• A few good people are enough.
• Steady work has a long memory.

I have been a left-handed drummer rearranging drum kits, a programmer building things quietly, a playlist maker, a mountain biker learning when to push and when to ease off, a forest walker, a father, and often the person making sure things do not fall apart. I am comfortable there.

If any part of this makes the noise feel a little lower, then it has done what it needed to do.

I will be somewhere between a trail, a notebook, a playlist, and a kitchen where the music is slightly too loud, still enjoying the ride while the world keeps buzzing along.