My brain is fried. I think it has been since I was in college. I have vivid memories of having an anxiety attack in the back of my thermodynamics class and pulling out my phone to calm myself down. It also seems I'm not alone.
It feels like everyone has become increasingly aware of how hard it is to focus or even simply exist without stimulus. The damn subway surfers memes are a thing for a reason, but I think most people would agree it wasn't always like this.
I am old enough that as a kid I still played outside as my main entertainment. I didn't have a PC until I was 10 or 11, and my first smartphone was a Samsung Galaxy S3 when I was 14. So you'd think I wouldn't have iPad baby tendencies. Yet I do. I eat 90% of my meals with my phone out.
So I've been trying to crawl back control of my own brain and my time. I feel embarrassed that I am so easily enamored with the endless scroll, dopamine hit feedback loop of Youtube Shorts and (before I deleted it) Tik Tok. I've been trying some things, setting some rules for myself all in an effort to become more disciplined and intentional with how I spend my attention. I am writing about it here both in the hopes of keeping myself accountable and to maybe inspire others.
Personal Rules
Inspired mostly by Joan Westenberg's Blog Post on Rebuilding their brain I've set myself a few goals or rules that I try my best to follow so that I can take back my time. I will continue to add more constraints as I get used to the current ones or find that I need to adjust. As always, progress is not linear, so I've 'failed' in following my rules sometimes. It's all part of the process.
- Start every blog post in a notebook by hand
- I have done this for the essay on What Is Political as well as this post itself. I also try my best to do it without other distractions. No music, no videos playing in the background, I even try to mostly write either in bed or on a separate desk away from my main PC. I agree with Westenberg's assessment that this method has forced me to really think through difficult arguments without just zoning out or giving up on making my thought process make sense on paper. It is slower, but it has felt worth it.
- No more phone during mealtime
- I'll be honest this one has been hard. Even during conversation with friends I have justified pulling it out and checking my notifications after "needing to google something" that was relevant to the conversation.
- My hope with this rule and others I will try to follow in the future is to reclaim my ability to be fully present, even if I'm bored. It's something my partner has asked me for again and again.
- Spend at least 15 mins outside every single day
- Any time spent outdoors doing a chore or inevitable responsibility doesn't count. I have to choose to spend 15 mins outdoors, even if all I do is sit in a chair and sunbathe or listen to music. So no, getting the mail, walking the dog, taking out the trash, or driving to the grocery story does not count towards the time.
- Believe it or not this is difficult. I work from home, am a homebody, and most of my hobbies are done in front of a computer. I think the newfound interest in gardening will help, but I want to continue to do this.
A lot of my other changes were small, gradual, and done over a long time, as in my opinion gradual changes are more easily sustained than trying to radically turn a 180 in my life.
The changes listed below are some I've made over the years, my reasoning for them, and in what way they have changed how I use my time and more importantly interact with the endless attention economy:
Social Media
- Deleted the Facebook app from my phone - ~2020
- I got little out of Facebook at this time, as it was full of slop content, I had graduated college so the college meme pages were boring, and it was mid pandemic so we all had other concerns and lots more time. I thought marketplace was the only remaining worthy feature, but my mother insisted I not delete my full account because family in South America still used it. I also had major privacy concerns with the app, as even back then it was being reported that the app tracked your behavior across the web and other apps, even with restricted permissions and even when it "was not running" in the background. So now I typically deactivate the account for months at a time until I need facebook marketplace for something.
- Deleted my main Instagram account and the app off my phone - 2023
- This was a move inspired and encouraged by my partner, who hasn't had social media since she was in early college, and preached to me the benefits of not participating in the performative aspects of it. It was difficult for me to delete it for a long time. The app felt like the best way to keep up with my friends; to this day, I continue to miss the big life events of old high school friends. However, I don't regret it one bit now. I remember the times I used to check my posts and count the likes, comparing my photos and uploads to my friends'. I remember feeling annoyed or sad when my posts would barely cross 40 likes, and then feeling frustrated at myself for feeling annoyed. I felt very fake on that site, like I was documenting and in some ways living my life for the sake of people's attention and approval. Deleting my account legitimately improved my mental health.
- I still keep my "finsta" - 'fake instagram' for those who may not know, it's an alt account - and I transformed the account into a lurk-only account that follows community organizations and tattoo artists nearly exclusively. I never post on it, and since I don't have the app, browsing for tattoos or volunteer events has become a conscious choice. I much prefer it this way.
- Deleted my X/Twitter account - 2024
- I was fed up with both the enshittification of the site as well as the right-wing oligarch takeover. It was honestly difficult not having it, as it was the site I used the most by FAR. I initially tried using Bluesky instead, but what I realized was that while my biggest annoyances with X were about the type of ideas being platformed and the garbage bots and ads, the style of "discussion" was no better on Bluesky. I could rant for hours but suffice to say that 280 character formats encourage inflammatory "hot take" type posting and the fact that Bluesky at the time had such a dearth of quality light hearted posters/memers/characters just made that flaw in design even more apparent. I read posts complaining about bad faith replies on Bluesky just as much as I did before on X, except on X they were sandwiched between popular shitposters and my friends' tweets. I eventually deleted both accounts and apps.
- If I am out of the loop and need to read an X thread I just get the link for the thread and replace
x.comwithxcancel.com, which allows me to read threads and browse accounts even without having one. It once again makes looking at X posts and accounts a much more intentional process.
Consuming Content
- Move away from link aggregators to RSS feeds
- This could feasibly be included in the section above, but I deleted Reddit when the 3rd party app ban came about, and I am so happy I did. Place is shit imo. I am working on a little rant about that
- Beyond that, I think this has to now and in the future include Lemmy. I have enjoyed the communities there but frankly: like the Twitter vs Bluesky thing, replacing Reddit with Lemmy has been like replacing coke with nicotine - an improvement, but not exactly 'good for me'. I think moving away from crowd-curated or algorithmically-curated content feeds is a positive move towards the 'intentionality' with which I hope to one day navigate the internet. I think this video on ZIRPSLOP was a great conversation piece that helped me arrive at this conclusion. I'm not sure if I will be fully able to accomplish it.
- Reduce short-form video content
- I do not have the self control to never hit that little shorts panel in the app, but I do truly think Youtube is valuable for a lot of thoughtful thinkpieces and education and entertainment content from small(ish) creators. A straight up restriction on app time would not really fit the bill, as I treat youtube video essays like podcasts sometimes; I listen to them when I'm doing other stuff. What I've settled on and seems to be working is a 30min timer on the Youtube app - and thankfully timers on Android really lock the app down, you can't easily dismiss the restriction like on iOS - and I downloaded NewPipe which is a Youtube front-end that not only avoids me seeing ads but lets me turn off shorts entirely in settings. It's been working relatively well. I use my 30mins of youtube time for shorts when im on the toilet and NewPipe has no 'suggested videos' section.
The above is really the current baseline I want to maintain into the future. I will hopefully increase my attention span, ability to hold a thought in my head for more than 3 minutes, and ability to patiently work out a problem without the desire for outside stimulus. Maybe I will even set a maximum Youtube time at some point.
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Thoughts? Send me an email!
kagumail.uselessly535@passinbox.com
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