Goodbye YouTube; Hello World
“Moody entry today. To be honest, I feel miserable”
That was the start of one of my journal entry three months ago. A whole slew of unfortunate events happened this year. Aside from the gloom and melancholy, I felt sluggish and unmotivated. On weekday evenings, after work, I waste majority of my time distracting myself with social media and video games. On weekends, in the midst of the most amazing Californian weather, I am either binging TV shows, or I find myself toiling away solving dynamic programming puzzles and reversing linked-lists. This sucks… I recall thinking to myself. Something had to change.
After reading Anna Lembke’s excellent book: ‘“Dopamine Nation” , I decided it is time to cut back on stimulating activities and live a more “ascetic” lifestyle. I don’t mean living like a monk (although I did shave my head for some reason), my intent was to regain balance in this era of indulgence and try to appreciate the simple pleasures again. Some may call it self-denial, but I see it as a dopamine management strategy. Like Lembke noted in the book, we are like cacti in the rain forest, the challenge is not staying hydrated; instead the challenge is to not drown.
The biggest roadblock on my road to equanimity appears to be social media; Reddit and YouTube in particular. It was quite a startling discovery when I found out that I was wasting up to 17 hours a week on my smartphone. That is almost 900 hours a year; almost an entire month of time staring at a screen! Imagine regaining a month of your life each year. Although it has been an uphill battle, I’ve decided it was worth the effort. It is natural, if not essential, to be bored every once in a while. Being constantly entertained by social media is harmful. I can literally feel my brain rotting after a long doom-scroll session on Reddit or YouTube. In some ways, it’s analogous to eating ice cream. It is amazing up to the first pint, then you just feel horribly disgusted with yourself. Social media feels like fast food for the brain.
Of course, I’ve tried to reduce my social media usage in the past. It has become almost an annual tradition every 1st of January. It is on everyone’s new year resolution list. Evidently, it is difficult to fight against the algorithms that captures our attention.
We must first acknowledge the preciousness of our attention and resolve not to part with it so cheaply and unthinkingly as we so often have. And then we must act, individually and collectively, to make our attention our own again, and so reclaim ownership of The very experience of living. - Tim Wu in The Attention Merchant
I think the key to success is to possess almost a vitriol hatred towards social media, otherwise you inevitably relapse because you’ll eventually say to yourself: “I’ll just watch this one Veritasium video because it is educational”, then 3 hours later… You know the rest. I am going the nuclear route this time, I will avoid all forms of entertainment. I will simply not allow myself to be entertained by my computer or cellphone.
I’ve had quite a lot of success in the past three months. Hoping to continue this going forward. Here is a comparison of my smartphone usage before and after:
With the extra month I’ve gained each year, I started reading again, I reconnected with friends, found new hobbies, and revived old ones. Rather than scrolling through YouTube, I started exploring the beautiful landscape of California. I’ve regained the ability to appreciate the small things in life, from a particularly well-fitting shirt, to the perfect morning tea at my local cafe. Life’s simple pleasures, ones that were so cruelly robbed from me by our digital overlords, or perhaps I willingly gave away, were finally reclaimed. In short, I resumed the very act of living.
Goodbye YouTube! Hello World!
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