You're not about to read something super deeply thought, that will make you reflect your decisions along your life or whatever. Here I’ll describe an experience I made myself pass through, which I wanna share with you.
During the last year I was working as an employee, so my time schedule was very strict. Also, working 12 hours a day seemed a lot, so during my free time I used to feel like I should relax.
Back then I had the Facebook app installed on my iPhone, and I must say that their effort to make their users increasingly spend more time inside their environment is really working. Whenever I used to open the app, I used to spend a very long time browsing useless stuff. But why? We are aware that it’s pointless — we are conscious beings — yet we still do it. At that moment, my guess to that question is that my brain had a “task accomplished” feeling because I had spent much time working hard, so I deserved that “fun” time.
So, to help my brain get used to spend time accomplishing more productive tasks instead of completely wasting my own time, I did two changes to the app: turn off all notifications, and get it away from my home screen. I simply hid it in a folder, out of the view.
Those changes made me access the app less often at first, because I didn’t have the notification to remind me to open the app, nor the app icon in my home screen, that had the same effect. But, after a couple weeks, I clearly noticed that my brain learned its way to the hidden folder, to open the app even when I wasn’t really looking for it. Whenever I caught myself staying still and my phone was accessible, my fingers learned to open the app without even thinking, and start scrolling down useless stuff again.
Since I actually had a job during that period, I didn’t feel so guilty for spending so long being unproductive, because during the rest of the day I was being productive already, right? But as soon as I left that job by the end of the year, and started working at home (freelancing), I felt I needed to be more productive, or at least as productive as I used to be. Otherwise it wouldn’t feel right to spend time on stupid things like social networks.
That’s when I decided to completely delete the app. Since Facebook’s (or any other app’s) mobile website experience was terrible, I wouldn’t feel like visiting the website, so I’d end up accessing the platform less often. Yes! It worked, indeed. Deleting the app highly decreased the time spent in Facebook, which made me access it about 3–5 times a week only, while the sessions wouldn’t last more than 20 minutes each. So I went from spending countless hours a week, to less than two.
That experience made me realize that our brain makes some unconscious decisions that might fulfill a momentary pleasure, and if we don’t actively want to change that, we’ll stay in a forever unproductiveness loop. And I came to learn that that has to do with our limbic system, which will always look after short-term pleasure, unless we force ourselves to think with our prefrontal cortex, actively making ourselves stick to our long-term goals.
The experience didn’t stop there, though. After a couple months without Facebook’s dedicated iPhone app installed, I ended up downloading it again, to browse its news feed while I was on vacay. Silly decision. This made me quickly recover the bad habit of visiting Facebook frequently even after the end of my vacation. This led me to become really less productive and apparently my willpower to end this loop decreased significantly, till the point that I developed the habit to visit other social networks that I barely used to visit.
To be honest I’m not really sure if these facts have a connection among them, but I’m almost certain that if I hadn’t recovered the habit of visiting Facebook (for instance), I wouldn’t have developed similar habits.
The main lesson learned here (among many) is that we are capable of acting rationally. If you don’t literally live by using social networks (e.g. you’re a social media publicist), you don’t actually need it, so don’t live like you do. Disconnect from things that pull you down, stress you out, waste your time, make you upset, or cause any other bad consequence to you. Else the stupid side of your brain (okay, not stupid but instinctive) will take over the rational one, and you will be the one to suffer the consequences.
Those changes made me access the app less often at first, because I didn’t have the notification to remind me to open the app, nor the app icon in my home screen, that had the same effect. But, after a couple weeks, I clearly noticed that my brain learned its way to the hidden folder, to open the app even when I wasn’t really looking for it. Whenever I caught myself staying still and my phone was accessible, my fingers learned to open the app without even thinking, and start scrolling down useless stuff again.
Since I actually had a job during that period, I didn’t feel so guilty for spending so long being unproductive, because during the rest of the day I was being productive already, right? But as soon as I left that job by the end of the year, and started working at home (freelancing), I felt I needed to be more productive, or at least as productive as I used to be. Otherwise it wouldn’t feel right to spend time on stupid things like social networks.
That’s when I decided to completely delete the app. Since Facebook’s (or any other app’s) mobile website experience was terrible, I wouldn’t feel like visiting the website, so I’d end up accessing the platform less often. Yes! It worked, indeed. Deleting the app highly decreased the time spent in Facebook, which made me access it about 3–5 times a week only, while the sessions wouldn’t last more than 20 minutes each. So I went from spending countless hours a week, to less than two.
That experience made me realize that our brain makes some unconscious decisions that might fulfill a momentary pleasure, and if we don’t actively want to change that, we’ll stay in a forever unproductiveness loop. And I came to learn that that has to do with our limbic system, which will always look after short-term pleasure, unless we force ourselves to think with our prefrontal cortex, actively making ourselves stick to our long-term goals.
The experience didn’t stop there, though. After a couple months without Facebook’s dedicated iPhone app installed, I ended up downloading it again, to browse its news feed while I was on vacay. Silly decision. This made me quickly recover the bad habit of visiting Facebook frequently even after the end of my vacation. This led me to become really less productive and apparently my willpower to end this loop decreased significantly, till the point that I developed the habit to visit other social networks that I barely used to visit.
To be honest I’m not really sure if these facts have a connection among them, but I’m almost certain that if I hadn’t recovered the habit of visiting Facebook (for instance), I wouldn’t have developed similar habits.
The main lesson learned here (among many) is that we are capable of acting rationally. If you don’t literally live by using social networks (e.g. you’re a social media publicist), you don’t actually need it, so don’t live like you do. Disconnect from things that pull you down, stress you out, waste your time, make you upset, or cause any other bad consequence to you. Else the stupid side of your brain (okay, not stupid but instinctive) will take over the rational one, and you will be the one to suffer the consequences.
If you think that you spend too much time, effort or money on something that provides you nothing but short-lasting good feeling, but aggregates nothing really useful to you, get rid of it. And when you succeed on doing so, don’t relapse.
Ok, I lied about the first statement of this article.
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