Great, so my brain isn't a doomed potato after all. Just need to sleep, exercise, eat well, socialize, reduce stress, stop doomscrolling, learn a language, play chess, meditate, avoid sugar, limit screen time, and reverse the entropy of the universe. Easy.
If you stop using your phone for anything other than communicating (yes, not just the loose "stop doomscrolling" advice) a lot of these will come naturally. It will lead you to using a real alarm clock and not using your phone after going to bed, which will make your sleep schedule that much more consistent, and also improve quality of sleep. These will probably give you more motivation, which you'll need because the time you used to waste on the phone now needs to be occupied by a real hobby, and here comes language learning, chess, music, etc.
> These will probably give you more motivation, which you'll need because the time you used to waste on the phone now needs to be occupied by a real hobby, and here comes language learning, chess, music, etc.
Man, that "probably" is doing a ton of heavy lifting.
And the causality is the opposite in my experience. I view my smartphone as a maladaptive way of self-soothing. Locking away my phone just means I'm left with unchecked anxiety I can't think myself out of, and I've only deprived myself of one more method of addressing it (nonoptimally).
People without constant stress have less temptation. In times where my anxiety is the lowest due to sheer circumstance, any reason I have to doomscroll vanishes and I can then occupy my time with a hobby. But it's not because I chose to do away with my phone that I'm able to do so, it's because I didn't have to spend all my time and effort fighting stress. The less stress, the closer the "choice" gets to being a no-brainer, entirely automatic.
In econometrical terms it would be "double causality", as it forms a vicious cycle. Using your phone to self-soothe leads to not developing real hobbies, which leads to more isolation, which leads to more phone usage.
Say you decide you're now a chess person. Instead of doomscrolling before bed you find relaxation in the meditative study of chess games for an hour a day before going to bed and now you use your phone only as an alarm. You join your local chess club to play IRL during weekends and attend some classes too. What were the effects? Well, there are the proven long-term cognitive benefits of learning and practicing chess, there's the immediate cognitive and emotional benefit of a larger social circle and a community, and medium term you'll feel good about yourself for achieving milestones (getting to 1000 ELO, winning the weekly tournament, etc.)
None of that would have happened if you had stayed on your phone. You probably already invest just as much time on it as you would in chess in this scenario, but it has no ROI, it is designed to suck you in.
> Man, that "probably" is doing a ton of heavy lifting.
I think "giving you motivation" isn't the right way to frame it, but "probably" isn't doing heavy lifting. More like providing the affordance that wasn't there because the phone took it away and convinced you that you didn't need. Like a typical drug addiction or pretending you don't need to make friends because you have colleagues.
People are spending the amount of extra time on their phone every day that it takes to raise kids, so if you've never figured out how to allocate that time effectively, it's a good place to start.
> If you stop using your phone for anything other than communicating (yes, not just the loose "stop doomscrolling" advice) a lot of these will come naturally.
People before 2007 slept, exercised, ate well, socialized, reduced stress, learnt a language, played chess, meditated, avoided sugar, limited screen time, and reversed the entropy of the universe.
They 100% socialized more and slept better, I think. People used to have hobbies, too, at the very least watching TV and movies and talking to others about it... Lots of people nowadays just get home and do nothing but scroll
At the risk of being simplistic and reductive... you just... stop.
Unless it's calling or texting, what you do via phone can almost always be done on a computer/laptop. Allot a certain time of your day/week for handling life shit via a desktop or laptop, and a certain time of the day/week for reading news. Limit it to just that timeframe, and try to keep that timeframe small. Avoid social media as much as you can within that.
Honestly, the only way I found is to go cold turkey and really focus on hating the smartphone and "always online" culture. Reading up on the dangerous effects this stuff has on us and our children really helps with motivation, too. You won't stick to it if it's just for a specific reason like improving sleep or trying to read more books or whatever
>Just need to sleep, exercise, eat well, socialize, reduce stress, stop doomscrolling, learn a language, play chess, meditate, avoid sugar, limit screen time
these are mainly issues in america, canada and parts of europe. I'm currnetly down in colombia. I walked 30 min just to get to a cafe. am activly learning spanish with locals which also checks of socializing. I drink black coffee and you won't have much time for screens if you meet someone to keep you focused on them.
Honestly, these all start to happen naturally when you start dedicating yourself to doing something first thing in the morning. I spent my 20s smoking cigarettes, drinking as much as I wanted, eating whatever. Then after a pretty intense LSD trip I decided to re-dedicate myself to a daily meditation practice. No excuses, just every morning wake up and sit for 20 minutes.
The first thing you realize is that your sessions are a lot more fruitful when you don't show up to your morning practice hung over, or on 5 hours of sleep, or after a night of chain smoking. After that practice was established for a year, I started working out. And then you realize your training is better when you're feeding your body correctly, so your diet changes. Etc. They all flow into and out of each other, as they're all essentially the same practice.
The important thing I've found is when you want to begin a new habit, put it first thing in the morning. No excuses. Actually, this reminds me of something I read in an interview with David Bowie years ago -- when asked what he learned to appreciate as he got older his answer was just "mornings".
Yep. Good sleep makes many other decisions easy. Anecdata, but while I normally have a healthy Mediterranean diet (after many years of binge eating), if I don't sleep properly, hell unleashes.
If I eat well and I am well rested, I feel energized and positive, so I can go for exercise and then, why not, a meditative walk. If not, I die on my couch binge eating and watching nonsense.
Don't forget to have a diet low in histamine. Figuring out how to do it is a fun exercise - some of the stuff that's rich in it is otherwise genuinely healthy, like spinach.
