Since a few months ago I’ve been feeling much more productive, calmer and efficient at work. I attribute this improvement to a couple of decisions I made regarding the use of my phone and social media.
For a long time I struggled with social media overuse, in particular Reddit and Youtube. I would find myself watching videos or continuously scrolling, sometimes for hours. Most of the time the content wasn’t even particularly interesting. But part of my brain was hooked to the constant consumption of information, it couldn’t stop. In his song Welcome to the Internet, Bo Burnham summarizes that feeling perfectly with the line: Apathy’s a tragedy, and boredom is a crime. Anything and everything, all of the time.
Apart from the immediate loss of time, which prevented me from doing other things I enjoyed, this overuse also put me in a restless state of mind that persisted long after I stopped using social media. It made my mind more scattered and less focused. Even though I wasn’t using social media while working I was having a hard time putting my thoughts together and concentrating on the tasks I was doing.
During the past couple of years I put a lot of effort into fighting this. Tried a lot of different approaches with various degrees of success and iterated on them until I came up with my current setup that has been working really well for almost half a year now.
In the beginning I tried to fully rely on willpower, I made a conscious decision to not open these apps or websites unless I really needed to. It obviously didn’t work for long. Once the brain gets agitated it is quite hard to slow down, take a few seconds to think about what is happening in the moment and decide to stop.
Another naive approach I took was to simply block everything I could. On my phone I uninstalled all the distracting apps and blocked the respective websites on the Hosts file of my laptop. This solution worked quite well for about a month, however it was too radical for the long term. The reason for this, and why social media can be so addicting, is that these platforms are also very useful. I do want to use Youtube sometimes to learn new stuff about my hobbies as well as Instagram to keep contact with my friends and so on. So blocking them completely is going too far.
The solution I currently use is more balanced than the previous two and fixes their respective problems. I still allow myself to use social media so I can benefit from connecting with friends and find out more about interesting topics but limiting as much as possible the mechanisms that keep me hooked.
It started with my phone. I put a timer on every app that I was finding myself mindlessly scrolling in. This was accomplished using the Digital Wellbeing app. Each timer resets at midnight and once it runs out I can’t use the app for the rest of the day. The reason behind this, is that 15 minutes of Reddit or Instagram per day is more than enough for me to check out what is happening. Having the time restricted this way also changed how I use the apps. Now I open the app with a purpose, I know what I want to see and can’t afford to waste time on content I don’t find valuable.
Even though using timers was very beneficial, it shifted part of the problem to the laptop. There are many situations in which I run out of time in the app but I still want to use the platform. For example I am in the middle of a conversation with a friend on Instagram when the time runs out or I want to read a subreddit wiki but I’ve used all the time in the app. In situations like these I used to open my laptop to continue what I was doing but often found myself getting distracted and falling back to the mindless consumption. To address this, I installed the News Feed Eradicator browser extension. It removes all feeds from the websites I need to use, therefore minimizing my chances to get distracted while still allowing me to search and consult what I am looking for.
The last thing I did was to set up a scheduled turn off and turn on on my phone. Every workday it automatically shuts down about one hour before my bedtime and then only turns itself on again a couple of hours after I wake up, when I am already working. Not using my phone right before going to bed gives me time to slow down and promotes better sleep. Not using it first thing in the morning helps me stay calm and collected for the rest of the day.
Changing how I use social media resulted in a better state of mind during the entire day, however I felt the biggest impact during work, where the need to focus and reason is higher and longer. I get way less distracted and can stay concentrated for longer periods of time. Even though I am quite happy with this last setup, it is not perfect, so it’s important that I keep myself aware of my habits and social media use to continue improving.
If you have any comments or questions about this post, feel free to: