I have noticed that there has been a huge uptick on my time spent on social media Reddit, Twitter, Tik Tok, Youtube and etc (I dont really use Facebook so its not an issue for me)… and to be frank it is making me feel miserable. Constantly seeing negative news and constant fighting in the news back and forth. This is why today starting at 19:00 CST I am not going to go on Youtube (except for educational purposes like learning things like physics or app development), twitter (will delete app off phone), reddit (will delete app off the phone) and etc. I also will be agree to not be looking up news on the internet. Now I will still allow myself to listen to podcasts on the way to work. Also I am allowing myself to listen to music as I do this often when working. Also I will allow myself to listen to educational audio books.
The reason I am posting this on here is because this is going to be very hard for me to do. I know if I dont do this at 21:00 CST I will be on reddit. I have created a GTbee goal ($50.00 if I fail) instead of an regular goal as I plan on only doing this for 1 week. I will give an update on Sunday (Tomorrow), Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday on if I have failed or if I am doing good. I will also discuss if I feel like it has had a positive effect on me. If I feel like it has had a major positive effect on me I may extend this challenge further.
You might be interested to read Cal Newport’s book “Digital Minimalism”, which sounds like it may resonate with you right now, and give you some good ideas. Highly recommended.
So far so good I have managed to stick to the rules and not crack. I am thinking of possibly extending the challenge to 12/14/20 after listening to the first two hours of “Digital Minimalism”.
I am still doing good. I finished listening to digital minimalism and I thought it was a good book. I feel like if I do a 30 day break from social media I can maybe introduce it back into my life slowly and not let it take over like it did before. I have decided I am going to extend this challenge to 12/14/20.
However after the first week I am going to allow myself to look at news, but like the book Digital Minimalism talked about I want to keep it limited to certain times of the day so I can stay informed without it taking up large chunks of my time. Another option would be listening to a news podcast on the way to work. I have not quite decided how I am going to do it but I will make sure to have a plan in place before the second week of this challenges starts.
What works well for me is a do-less goal for media consumption. I then use a timer to make sure that I don’t exceed my daily limit (I learned this from @narthur).
I feel that it also helps to get less upset about the state of the world. I think to myself, okay these are the 15 minutes of my day during which I look outside my happy little bubble and I cannot get too upset about what is outside of my circle of influence. If I lose control and go down a Twitter rabbit hole the timer is there to wake me up.
I have been doing this for a couple of weeks and it works really well. Surprisingly, I have no issues closing the browser once the timer rings.
Yea I feel this is why I often do it. I am currently working full time (my job is often quite stressful) and attending university online full time. However I don’t want all the free time I have to be wasted on social media and etc. I think when I go to reintroduce reddit, twitter, and Youtube I will set a timer like you (@narthur) and @felixm mentioned. As I also forget to set my up counting timers. I will probably starting using this method for the news next week (Saturday at 17:30 I started the challenge an hour and 30 minutes early) as while I dont see any issues abstaining from Reddit, Twitter and Youtube for a month, but I feel like I could miss important news by completely abstaining from the news with everything going on right now I just don’t want it to take over and for me spend hours on the news.
I am still doing good. I have decided for news on weekdays I am only allowed to look up news for a max of 30 mins a day on weekdays and 40mins on weekends. This way I can stay informed but not spend all my time on news. Thanks again for the suggestion. As far as everything else like Reddit and YouTube things will remain the same until the 14th of December.
I’d recommend Cal Newport’s “Deep Questions” podcast as well - it’s really great and features listener questions.
Also for news, you might want to check out “The Flip Side” email newsletter. It’s once a day and covers one news story, but it has various perspectives / quotes from both left and right wing sources (and sometimes libertarians too) so you can weigh the arguments against each other without having to seek out and read a ton of different sources on one news story. I find that it helps mitigate the fact that practically all news sources are extremely biased, misleading, and leave out lots of relevant information.
Personally I set up a do-more on no-twitter days, and if anything it’s been too effective: now I have to remember to occasionally read twitter. Like a lot of these things, I found after a few days I lost the impulse to mindlessly check it.
Definitely like narthur’s idea to set a count-down timer too. I have a couple of physical timers, I’ve found them very useful for various things like this.
I have now made it to the 1 week mark when this challenge was already set to end. I figured I would write about how I feel this challenge has effected me. I have noticed that I feel happier as I dont feel like I am wasting time.
The first couple days were really hard I was really tempted to just open twitter. However since I posted on the Beeminder Fourm I knew I would then have to admit defeat to others so I stuck with it. I have actually tried to start the challenge two other times but I did not post and quit the challenge the first time after an hour and the second time after three hours. I would say about the fourth day is when I noticed I had more free time than I originally thought.
I have been writing in my journal a lot more, I listened to an entire audio book “Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport” and I am almost through a second audio book “The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli”. I have been reading a lot more started “The Republic by Plato” (I find it interesting but dont fully understand it fully but enjoy reading it non the less). I have been keeping better track of my YNAB budget. I have also been talking to family and friends a lot more. In other words even just a week in and I am seeing positive effects.
I feel I am starting to figure out what I am going to replace my old habits with and so far I find them much more enjoyable . I plan on starting to work on my goal of trying to learn to develop apps for iphone, that way I can make my own apps to do what ever I want them to do. Also I bought an aurdino to mess around with.
I have been thinking how I want to reintroduce social media. At this point I don’t have a clear plan and honestly part of me wonders if I even want to. As it just wastes so much time and I do not want to get sucked back in. I will think about it more closer to the end of the challenge. If I dont have a clear view of whats going on I might just extend the challenge further. Thank you everyone for the tips. I will update my progress based on the original schedule I set for the first week or more.
I have subscribed to “The Flip Side”, I look forward to trying it out seems like a happy medium of being informed but not feeding into the outrage machine. Also I have subscribed to the Deep Questions podcast and will listen to one on my way to work Monday (I have had an issue with over listening to podcast which is why I have limited it to my commute to work, though I guess I could include my church commute on Sundays).
Yea as I progress in this challenge I plan on trying to make some new Beeminder goals. Yea I tested the countdown timer today with the news. The funny thing is I only used 15 minutes and then no longer wanted to read the news anymore.
I have the exact same experience with a no-twitter-day goal. I wanted to have 5 days a week without it, I ended up missing out on the positive influence of my Twitter timeline
I have struggled with this myself. I ended up quitting Twitter completely, but I miss some of the positive people that I was following. The annoying thing is that even the most positive and chill Twitter accounts feel like they have to share their opinion about politics nowadays (which of course they have every right to do), and that can easily lead into a parasitic process for me reading that opinion.
One trick, that I haven’t tried yet, is to use filter words for certain political artists, diseases, and other kind of topics that do not have any merit besides upsetting people. This thread motivates me to give filter words a try, because, as I said, I do miss some of the good content.
I think if filters might help you out in reaching the content you like, definitely give it a shot. The positive side of Twitter is irreplaceable for me, such that I get a little sad when people stop making use of the platform for the reason you describe.
I noticed another major change today. I was visiting my sister, the visit lasted around and hour and half. During the entire visit I only checked my phone three times. Before I started this challenge I would probably check my phone 20-40 times and not really pay attention to conversation. I feel really happy right now a lot happier then I have been in a while. I think following the idea of Digital Minmalism is going to make me much happier in the end.
Also quick thank you to @borisjoffe I LOVE “The Flip SIde”, I have only read two newsletters thus far but I really like seeing both sides thoughts. I have tried to do something similar by reading a lot of articles but it takes a ton of time. With “The Flip Side” I get that but only takes about 10 minutes of my time. I also listened to one of the Podcast from “Deep Questions” and I enjoyed it, it is kind of like a productivity podcast.
Note: A little apology I got a bit confused and did not realize I had Sunday as a day to post. Hence me posting today.
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