Do you exercise? Run or bike or lift weights? I find that’s a good time (running especially) to just leave the phone at home and have zero technology and zero external sensory input other than the birds and cars in the neighborhood. I know lots of people like walking with podcasts, but I personally have an aversion to it. If I’m out walking, I don’t want to be on any device.
Long hikes are also a great way to digitally detox. Go out on a Saturday without your phone and walk in the woods for several hours. If you’ve never done it, it’ll be uncomfortable at first, but I bet you’ll be amazed at how much your mind relaxes after several hours out in the woods with your thoughts.
I’m one of those young people who grew up with technology, and in some ways use it too much, but reading this I realized I’ve got a pretty healthy balance. I only got a Twitter for business reasons and I’m really not big on social media. Usually go the entire weekend without getting on, and it doesn’t feel like I missed anything. I listen to a lot of podcasts, but try to cut off in the evening before bed. Pretty much everything I do on my phone - even when I use it a lot - is intentional.
Thanks for the discussion of digital addiction - I've similarly been dissatisfied with the time that's sucked away by Twitter and a degraded ability to focus. It's frustrating, as Twitter has also been a remarkable medium for exposure to people and ideas that I wouldn't have otherwise encountered. That very utility feeds back into the addictive property via fear-of-missing-out, i.e. "if I don't check Ye Olde Bird App, I'm going to miss some important idea or piece of information!" There's also the perceived value of the chronological timeline for parsing breaking news or an evolving crisis. While the real-time component can be very useful __if filtered to the right sources__, the phenomena of "Twitter Expertise" leads to pretty low signal to noise ratio without a lot of effort invested. Even when appropriately filtered, events processed in real time always have higher uncertainty. There's a great essay I periodically reread (relevant to my own work as a data scientist) titled "Whom the Gods would destroy, they first give real-time analytics," <https://mcfunley.com/whom-the-gods-would-destroy-they-first-give-real-time-analytics> and I think it generalizes to real-time social media for breaking news surprisingly well. Upshot being that while Twitter-in-a-crisis __feels__ useful, it's certainly less informative than we'd like to believe.
My first quasi-successful step at mitigation has been using the Freedom app, which allows cross-device scheduled blocking of mobile apps and websites (while I've kept the Twitter app off my phone for years, I just end up with a permanent Twitter tab open in Chrome). There's enough friction to disable it (have to uninstall, and for some reason that feels much more like a failure of self-control than the "I'll just take one little peak at Twitter" that usually leads down the rabbit hole) that I don't circumvent it, and I really feel like I've started to regain focus and productivity. I'll have to give Digital Minimalism a read, as it would be nice to feel sufficiently in control of my own digital consumption that I don't need time-locks on my devices to maintain productivity.
I've definitely found it harder to maintain focus and lately, even tweets seem like mind numbing walls of text that my brain just doesn't want to deal with. I can barely finish a paragraph of a book without my mind wandering, or stopping to do or check something else. It wastes a tremendous amount of time.
I've long since removed other social media from my life, perhaps it is time Twitter and Reddit to join the scrap heap too. I don't need them professionally; for me, they exist solely to pass the time and there are far better things I can be doing. Plus, I frequently come away from a browsing session feeling sad or angry. It eludes me how our brains become addicted to that which makes us miserable. I feel blessed that being born in the early 80s, I remember a time before computers and social media so hopefully I can shake the addiction and rediscover the person I once was.
It reminds me of a video by an excellent educational YouTuber, CGP Grey. On his second channel, he discussed this same thing and the steps he—successfully—undertook to improve. Link as follows for anyone interested. https://youtu.be/wf2VxeIm1no?t=64
On the Digital Minimalism: Good points and thanks for the discussion. I find #6 a bit harder since I feel I learn so much from the podcasts and audiobooks that I listen to when I cannot physically read. I think the overall point is that one should make a conscious use of one's time to avoid squandering (I was going to use a term for urinary expulsion...) it on trivial and non-consequential uses.
Of course commenting here is likely a violation of #8 so I am in a bit of an infinite loop.
Do you exercise? Run or bike or lift weights? I find that’s a good time (running especially) to just leave the phone at home and have zero technology and zero external sensory input other than the birds and cars in the neighborhood. I know lots of people like walking with podcasts, but I personally have an aversion to it. If I’m out walking, I don’t want to be on any device.
Long hikes are also a great way to digitally detox. Go out on a Saturday without your phone and walk in the woods for several hours. If you’ve never done it, it’ll be uncomfortable at first, but I bet you’ll be amazed at how much your mind relaxes after several hours out in the woods with your thoughts.
I’m one of those young people who grew up with technology, and in some ways use it too much, but reading this I realized I’ve got a pretty healthy balance. I only got a Twitter for business reasons and I’m really not big on social media. Usually go the entire weekend without getting on, and it doesn’t feel like I missed anything. I listen to a lot of podcasts, but try to cut off in the evening before bed. Pretty much everything I do on my phone - even when I use it a lot - is intentional.
Good luck!
Thanks for the discussion of digital addiction - I've similarly been dissatisfied with the time that's sucked away by Twitter and a degraded ability to focus. It's frustrating, as Twitter has also been a remarkable medium for exposure to people and ideas that I wouldn't have otherwise encountered. That very utility feeds back into the addictive property via fear-of-missing-out, i.e. "if I don't check Ye Olde Bird App, I'm going to miss some important idea or piece of information!" There's also the perceived value of the chronological timeline for parsing breaking news or an evolving crisis. While the real-time component can be very useful __if filtered to the right sources__, the phenomena of "Twitter Expertise" leads to pretty low signal to noise ratio without a lot of effort invested. Even when appropriately filtered, events processed in real time always have higher uncertainty. There's a great essay I periodically reread (relevant to my own work as a data scientist) titled "Whom the Gods would destroy, they first give real-time analytics," <https://mcfunley.com/whom-the-gods-would-destroy-they-first-give-real-time-analytics> and I think it generalizes to real-time social media for breaking news surprisingly well. Upshot being that while Twitter-in-a-crisis __feels__ useful, it's certainly less informative than we'd like to believe.
My first quasi-successful step at mitigation has been using the Freedom app, which allows cross-device scheduled blocking of mobile apps and websites (while I've kept the Twitter app off my phone for years, I just end up with a permanent Twitter tab open in Chrome). There's enough friction to disable it (have to uninstall, and for some reason that feels much more like a failure of self-control than the "I'll just take one little peak at Twitter" that usually leads down the rabbit hole) that I don't circumvent it, and I really feel like I've started to regain focus and productivity. I'll have to give Digital Minimalism a read, as it would be nice to feel sufficiently in control of my own digital consumption that I don't need time-locks on my devices to maintain productivity.
I've definitely found it harder to maintain focus and lately, even tweets seem like mind numbing walls of text that my brain just doesn't want to deal with. I can barely finish a paragraph of a book without my mind wandering, or stopping to do or check something else. It wastes a tremendous amount of time.
I've long since removed other social media from my life, perhaps it is time Twitter and Reddit to join the scrap heap too. I don't need them professionally; for me, they exist solely to pass the time and there are far better things I can be doing. Plus, I frequently come away from a browsing session feeling sad or angry. It eludes me how our brains become addicted to that which makes us miserable. I feel blessed that being born in the early 80s, I remember a time before computers and social media so hopefully I can shake the addiction and rediscover the person I once was.
It reminds me of a video by an excellent educational YouTuber, CGP Grey. On his second channel, he discussed this same thing and the steps he—successfully—undertook to improve. Link as follows for anyone interested. https://youtu.be/wf2VxeIm1no?t=64
On the Digital Minimalism: Good points and thanks for the discussion. I find #6 a bit harder since I feel I learn so much from the podcasts and audiobooks that I listen to when I cannot physically read. I think the overall point is that one should make a conscious use of one's time to avoid squandering (I was going to use a term for urinary expulsion...) it on trivial and non-consequential uses.
Of course commenting here is likely a violation of #8 so I am in a bit of an infinite loop.