My Plan for a Healthy Digital Diet
What I Learned at School this Week
Hey y’all,
After being off for two weeks, I am processing a few major take-aways.
Breaks often give clarity of the mind. And I literally don't know the last time I didn't type on a laptop for 14 whole days... probably not something to be proud of. So, I was hopeful to score some nuggets of wisdom from the prioritization gods.
You know that feeling when you take a long weekend off, and Sunday night or Monday morning, you have a couple projects that have surfaced as the obvious, most important items, for your week’s to-do list? Let’s call it the “refreshed brain effect.” The epiphanies were equally relevant for my work life, and my personal life.
I’ll explain below what I’m doing to accomplish these things. But the over-arching them is to do less, not more. Go deeper, not wider. For instance, I only have a few work projects (four, to be exact) that carry the most weight, and will drive the highest impact. The other ~26 projects need to take the backseat.
In summary: during the last two weeks, my sub-conscious bubbled up the goal to double-down on: focus.
Naval talks about how we are meant to hunt like lions, not graze all day like cows. I talked about this in a past post, see bullet #5. TLDR: the world is not linear. 8 hours of work, does not equal 8 hours of output. Said another way: “work smarter, not harder.” Focus; and you’ll have short, but highly impactful, bursts of productivity.
So, the question becomes, how do I position myself to accomplish these things and avoid the distractions that will inevitably attempt to steal my attention when I open up my inbox with those 389 unread emails?
The answer: a digital diet to enable focus.
For one month, I’m going to do an experiment.
I’ve found a lot of success doing “one month sprints.” Short enough to feel very attainable, but long enough to drive lasting habits. Some of the one-month sprints I’ve done before include: no coffee, no alcohol, no eating out, 100 pushups a day, reading for 30 minutes a day, Whole30, deleting all social apps.
This month, I’m doing an experiment to see if I can regain total control of my “personal OS” — my mind, attention and focus.
I should note, this was inspired by two weeks of being unplugged. But also, very much so, inspired by watching The Social Dilemma.
I urge you to watch this Netflix documentary on how algorithms (“AI”) are currently running our lives — and, currently, not in a net-positive way. [Conspicuous side-note: no one in the movie mentioned Netflix’s guilt, with their “auto-play next episode” functionality, recommendation engine, or push notifications.]
Anyway, below are the five commitments I’m making for the month of October, for my Digital Diet, in hopes to (re)gain control of my fullest ability to focus.
—> If you want to join me, or follow along, please reach out directly, or drop a note in the comments of this article below. And I’ll do my best to let you watch through the glass walls of my experiment.
“60-S-60”
Hold me to this one. It’s a tough one, but maybe the most important.
60 minutes before going to sleep, no phone. At all.
Sleep (hence the “S”).
Then, the first 60 minutes of being awake, no phone again. Like, at all. No checking texts. No alarm clock on the phone (I use a physical alarm clock). Nothing.
—> Why?
I don’t want my last thoughts — and thus my 8 hours of dreaming/subconscious processing — to be dictated by someone else. And I don’t want to start my day based on someone else’s agenda either. So, “60-S-60” it is.
Notifications Off
I’ll be disabling all push notifications on my computer and phone. This includes work chats, email notifications (if you have these on, please, please stop), texts, social pushes. Any and all “pings”.
—> Why?
I want to live pro-actively, not re-actively. I want to choose what to work on and think about each day, not have others tell me what to work on or think about. Selfish? I don’t think so.
Here’s an excerpt from The Social Dilemma:
There’s something distinctly new here [about this technological shift].
If something is a tool [like the iPhone or apps], it genuinely is just sitting there, patiently waiting.
If something is not a tool, it’s demanding things from you. It’s seducing you. It’s manipulating you. It wants things from you.
And we’ve moved away from having a tools-based technology environment, to an addiction and manipulation-based technology environment.
Social media isn’t a tool that’s just waiting to be used. It has its own goals, and it has its own means of pursuing them, by using your psychology against you.
That’s what’s changed.
SLA’s in Place for Work and Personal
In order to accomplish ^ #2, I need to have Service Level Agreements in place. Shout-out to Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek for suggesting this 10+ years ago.
Basically, people I work with need to know that I will only be checking email 2x/day and chat 4x/day. If they have something urgent (requiring a reply/decision from me sooner than the next time I’ll check chat), they need to reach me using a different method (ie: call me). My hypothesis: this will happen very rarely, if ever.
Tangentially related — I believe asynchronous communication is the future. Think: less meetings, requiring 5 people to be present at the same time. And instead: more quick video recordings (using CloudApp or Loom) and write-ups sent ahead of time, where everyone can reply on their own time.
—> Why?
See ⌄ #4.
Goal: Deep Flow State(s)
In order to work more like a lion and less like a cow, I want to optimize for deep flow states.
—> Why?
Social Apps with Time Limits (+ No Cheating!)
This one is pretty straight-forward. And probably everyone reading this has, at least attempted, this before. Deleting those apps that you know suck too much time out of your day.
Here’s the addition though.
It’s stolen from an article Dan Shipper published earlier this year, titled “How I Use Screen Time on iOS.”
You’ve set time limits for your social apps. But then, you know that little screen that pops up when you’ve hit your time limit? It says “type passcode for more time.” And, if you’re like me, you can type that passcode faster than you’d like to admit.
Enter: The Screen Time Secret Keeper.
The way your Secret Keeper will work is this: once you’ve set your App Limits and your Downtime, you will allow them to change the passcode on your Screen Time app.
—> Why?
Some of the most talented designers and engineers are tasked to keep you coming back for more. Scrolling into infinity. I don’t want to be a prisoner to their algorithms.
I’ll keep you posted on how this experiment plays out in the coming month. I hope it works. And I hope it builds long-lasting habits that help my mind stay healthy and focused on the things that I want to focus on, for years to come.
I know this was a different post than you’re used to. Let me know what you thought of it. And thank you for reading all the way to the end. I appreciate each one of you.
Cheers,
Brendan J Short
Written, listening to Washed Out