My phone keeps beeping, vibrating and calling for my attention. How on earth am I supposed to get anything done? Someone liked your post. Someone sent you a message. Someone emailed you. “Oh wonderful - I’ll check this, respond quickly and I’ll get back to whatever I was doing” - This is what I used to tell myself. That did not happen. What did happen after I checked those messages or emails is I would end up going through multiple apps and notification chains.
If I attempt to reply to a friend on Instagram, I’ll find myself checking stories, watching a few reels and liking posts - “So many interesting things are going on!” The simple notification has gone from a quick check to a deep dive into many different worlds. Going back to writing text or coding is not as stimulating. My brain would end up being very disappointed. After years of dealing with this during my education and career the detriments of the technology became clearer.
The problem was two fold - One, I completely forgot what I was doing before and now I’m on my phone for the 12th time. The second problem is that I’ve found myself in a viciously addictive environment again. It’s hard to get out of dopamine hell. While I check all cool reels and stories I quickly lose track of time and find myself bouncing between multiple apps. Each notification pulls me in like a blue light attracting a mosquito *ZAP*. Hours gone in a way that’s opaque to me by the end of the day. I check my screen time at the end of the day and gasp in horror - Some days I’d see up to 4 hours on that one application.
The same justification was always used.
I’ll check a few things, respond quickly and I’ll get back to whatever I was doing
“It’s a new day” I say - “I won’t be addicted today” I tell myself. “Productive activities are all that I will engage in”. “Let me place my phone over there far away and I’ll be good”. A few hours go by and my productivity is pretty good. Focus, flow, and at this point I won the war against my phone. *Ring Ring Ring* I run to my phone and see it’s my mother so I answer it. “Hey mom, how are you doing? I’m doing well. I’ll come over at 6PM and have dinner. Ok … love you too … bye!”. That was a nice wholesome phone call right? Well now this evil device is in my hand again.
I know! I have a great idea! I deserve to be rewarded for my hard work and focus - “Let me check my favorite social media platform - Instagram time!” Thirty minutes go by and I realize I’ve seen enough coffee reels. Let me go make a coffee too and I’ll get right back to what I was doing. These mini episodes of checking your phone are slowly making you go mad. We need to fight back somehow. This cycle may or may not repeat itself multiple times throughout your day.
I’ll check a few things, respond quickly and I’ll get back to whatever I was doing Stop Ahmad STOP
There has to be a better way to deal with this
Through some miracle I stumbled upon Cal Newport’s books Digital Minimalism, and Deep Work. I told myself that I’d apply some of the principles found in these two books. The most important one being “Do Not Disturb”. I needed to dumb my phone down and prevent it from pulling me in. Do Not Disturb helped me avoid almost every single notification on android. Don’t worry, my loved ones could still message and call me. I set up exceptions for necessary contacts.
The other thing I did was remove Instagram because that application is a black hole. The reasons I used Instagram were not compelling enough for me to have access to it 24/7. I instead moved to using the web version. The web version is less addicting and my addiction slowly faded into nothing.
After about 2-3 years I can only imagine how many hours I’ve saved myself. 3-4 hours a day over the course of 2-3 years adds up. We’re talking something like 2-3k hours?!
I’d highly suggest for anyone wanting to deal with this to come up with a plan. To avoid doom scrolling and being sucked in - to the roulette machine. Cal’s books are a good starting point. He may convince you to use them in a way that’s less detrimental than the way these apps were designed to be used.