Trying to Be More Intentional
For the first post on this blog, I'd like to talk about something that's currently taking up most of my focus.
As we all know, social media is designed to keep us in the dopamine loop. For me, I noticed that I used Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube way too much, like 10 hours a day on Instagram reels type beat. It was way too much of a time sink, so I looked into the productivity scene and got influenced.
These people have dumbphones, dedicated devices, social media blockers, and all that jazz. Now I'm not rolling in dough so I have my own ways of doing things for now, but there are a few things I would like to have. Here's my attempt at a more intentional lifestyle.
The first thing I tried was finding a dumbphone, but I didn't have the money to shell out for a Sunbeam phone. I eventually got a Nokia 2780 for free, but realized I didn't want to get a separate phone plan. So I just used my smartphone with grayscale and time limits. The time limits were kind of annoying and I kept turning off grayscale, so I gave up. The thing that eventually worked was setting up a focus mode on my iPhone that removed immediate notifications except for family/class. This decreased how much I checked my phone, so much so that I barely use it now.
Since I stopped checking my phone so often, I started using my PC for social media, which had its quirks but I figured out how to reduce my social media use to a respectable level. On Instagram, its website is set up where scrolling through regular posts is janky tbh. Before I upgraded my PC, reels were impossible to watch which worked, so I refuse to check again for obvious reasons. I mostly check Instagram to respond to DMs, view stories, and like posts now. Another thing I realized was that I would have my phone in my bedroom, scrolling reels until 5am. I pretty much solved this by getting an alarm clock so I could leave my phone at my desk instead.
For YouTube, I use the UnTrap extension with infinite scroll disabled, so I only get about 12 videos at a time. Sometimes if I really need to focus I'll turn off the recommended videos sidebar too. Most recently, I created a "secondary" YouTube account where I'm only subscribed to a handful of channels focused on productivity and my career path. So far, I've been using this account instead of the one filled with distractions, and now I have a backlog that I check on the weekends.
Reddit was tricky and I'm still trying to limit my time on it. First, I reverted to old Reddit which has that old-school HTML type vibe, so I'm less likely to click on stuff. I'm subscribed to a few productivity subreddits but I mostly use it like a shitty RSS feed for some of my favorite artists, interests, and YouTube channels to keep up with info I would probably miss otherwise. The kicker here is I also check /popular for everyday happenings and check my feeds a little too often, but I can try using Cold Turkey to set a time frame for social media to really solve this issue.
Lastly, I got a Thinkpad (P15s Gen 2) from my uni, and I have all shopping sites and social media, excluding Discord, blocked so I can get work done with minimal distractions, combined with using a Discord study server for accountability (Shoutout to kkoh!).
Setting up all these ways to use social media means I now have a lot more free time, and I'll go more into the activities/hobbies I've been trying to get into in a future blog post.
Thanks for reading!