Last week I started a month-long digital declutter experiment. No distracting apps or social media. No meaningless time sinks. This isn’t a complete disconnection – it’s purely an elimination diet of the tech in my life that (I suspect) don’t provide a positive return on the time investment required to maintain them.
I’m already a fairly low media-usage guy. I haven’t used Facebook in years, I’m more of a lurker on Twitter & Instagram than an avid poster. But I still found myself on most of these and other sites far too often, mindlessly scrolling as a default time-killing action.
As I started this project, I completely closed off a whole list of sites and apps from access.
And what I noticed first was how disorienting it all was. When you are used to a certain cue-habit-reward loop and you completely interrupt it, it can be jarring. For instance, I found myself still attempting to check Twitter multiple times in a few minutes, despite each time being reminded that the app was blocked. It was, if nothing else, a quick way of seeing how deep these habits had formed.
But like any good advice on habits will tell you, you can’t simply stop a bad habit – you must replace it with an equally satisfying alternative that works on the same cues, and provides a similarly appealing reward. You’re just substituting the habit for a more productive one.
For me, those substitutions revolve around reading, exercise and productive hobbies. So when that urge to check Youtube arises, instead refocusing your attention on reading a few pages from a great book (Right now I’m reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring). It’s not a perfect substitution yet – but the fact that I physically cannot access a distracting site, even if I want to, makes the transition a little easier.
The other observation I’ve had so far is how boring a smartphone becomes when strip it down to pure utility. It no longer is a screen to pour my idle moments into. There’s really no reason to check it more than a few times a day.