Fidgety tools

You might have seen these fidget tools around, especially if you have younger siblings or cousins in primary school or older. Or your friends have brought it to school before. Or you might even own it yourself.

image from Google

Last night, I borrowed my brother's fidget spinner (with permission of course).

Apparently, it helps with anxiety so I thought I'd give it a try. But I was still a bit wary of its usefulness to me because I don't think I fidget. I used to stay very still as a kid, and I still do now. I don't have a habit of shaking my leg, tapping on the desk, twirling a pen around or playing with my hair. But I did remember sometimes during lessons, while listening to the teacher explain things, I'd have something from my pencil case, like an eraser or a paper clip (those thick kind), so I just put it in my bag and brought it to school.

I took it out during math lesson for a bit, when I felt myself zoning out and almost swinging into dreamland, but I put it back into my bag a bit later because I needed to use my hands to write.

After school when I was trying to get some studying done, I realised I unknowingly keep taking out some stuff in my bag and put it back about twice, to check if something was there or if I had left something in my locker. It then occurred to me that my hands were really getting restless and a bit shaky so I brought the fidget spinner out and let my hands play with it for awhile.

I guess the spinner did work for me after all, in two ways:

1. It emphasizes that I can be in control of some things. Especially when things get so overwhelming that I feel I'm losing grasp of things, the spinner reminds me that I am in full control of something. When I want it to stop, it stops. I flick it with my finger to start spinning. Stop. Flick. Stop. Feel the rounded edges of the spinner against my left hand as I spin it using my right hand.

2. It gives my mind something to focus on. Otherwise, my mind may trail away and focus on the unnecessarily small and negative things, and amplify them. For example, maybe I get annoyed or irritated at something or what someone is doing. Or I may worry about whether something is done or not, or whether it needs to be done, who is doing it, so on and so forth. So essentially it prevents me from potential overthinking.

The fidget cube was also another thing I borrowed from my brother to experiment with.

from Google

Now, usually during the afternoons when I'm (trying to) study and get some information into my brain, somehow the conditions make me extremely fidgety. I'd get out of my chair and walk to the kitchen to get food, walk to the toilet, walk to the window and look out. There's this nagging feeling inside of me that I can't get rid off, and most of the time my fingers unthinkingly reach for the phone, press the home button and swipe the password to start scrolling on social media. And this is the main obstacle when I'm studying. It happens especially in the afternoons for some reason, and in the evening when the sun has set I start to become really productive.

So this is where the fidget cube comes in. Instead of reaching for the phone, I try to engineer myself to reach for this fidget cube, because it has similar actions that one would get on the phone: swiping (the anxiety stone surface), clicking (the ball bearing or the small buttons), plus other actions like flicking a switch, toggling a joystick, a circular dial for spinning (that I find has a calming effect, this can be done with a fidget spinner too).

And I am able to rid my nagging feeling, while not being distracted by my phone and ultimately, being able to do my work/revise.

So, I'd say that I'm happy with these fidget toys and they provided me with more than I expected. The price, however, is another thing altogether.

Would I recommend it? Highly.