In this guest blog post, Britt from Tiny Ambitions shares her three tips for staying mindful and present in a hyper-connected world.  Given how our digital landscape looks in 2018, it's not surprising that staying mindful and being focused is harder than ever. Our attention is constantly being hijacked — social media posts from friends and family, articles from bloggers and news outlets, and the latest Internet trends are all cloying for the small slivers of attention that we have left between our jobs, relationships and other life commitments.

In this post, we share why innovative educators are moving toward phone-free classes, and how Flipd empowers them to do just that. 

Flipd is a platform that helps reduce digital distractions and phone use during class. Not surprisingly, however, educators using Flipd have discovered that it can also help shape and change behavior well beyond the lecture hall. One such person is Dr. Alicia Drais-Parrillo, a psychology professor at Penn State University, who has been using Flipd with hundreds of students for the last three semesters and closely observing its impact.

Stewart Reynolds, better known as Brittlestar, has the dream job. A social media celebrity with over 400 million views of his content, the suburban father of two teen boys has created viral video videos for brands like Disney, ESPN, Subway, Walmart, KFC, and numerous others. As the self-titled (and well-deserved) "Internet's Favorite Dad", Brittlestar quite literally eats and breathes the internet.

What’s the first thing you see in the morning? Is it your spouse or your pet? The sun? If you’re like most people, you’re probably awoken by a phone, vibrating within arm’s reach, its alarm blaring at you that it’s time to wake up. For you, and many of us, the very first thing our eyes will adjust to is that small screen and all of the shiny new treats it has to share. But if this is indeed the relationship you have with your phone, then ask yourself — How healthy is it?

Every new year, media tends to focus on weight loss and a healthier you — gyms offer up free membership trials and weight watching ads saturate our news feeds, all while mental health awareness takes a back seat. But as we've discovered after the first few days of 2018, it's become increasingly important to pay attention to our mental health as much as our physical health. 

According to a 2016 study by Flurry Mobile, the average person spends a total of 5 hours a day on their smartphone. Considering many of us work or attend school for a large portion of the day already, this is a significant (and alarming) amount of time.

As the holidays approach, so does exam season for students across North America. By now, educators hope (and expect) that students have learned everything needed in order to succeed, which means that they must comprehend the course material in addition to the notes they took throughout the semester. But for most students nowadays, these notes live on a laptop, and there is growing evidence that typewritten notes may not be what's best for students.  So, we ask — are your students really as prepared as they could be?

These days, nothing is more challenging than complete and uninterrupted focus. Even just five minutes of meditation gets the best of us when you have a to-do list the length of your arm, conversations that need replying to, and emails to check. Our society is drunk on information and content, and it can often feel close to impossible to disconnect.