Three months ago I wrote an article named “How I Reduced My Time on Social Media from 28h to 4.5h per Week”. Now after these short three months I understood that I have to write a second part because a lot of different things happened in my war with this addiction.
Into the Darkness
On the last post we stopped at week 12. But what the fuck happened later? So, on September first I returned to the university, and it was a very bad month for me. I wanted to keep my summer system and live the way I was living during summer days, but it was a very bad idea. I started to feel bad as soon as the sun just disappeared, and in that moment I understood that I depend on it so much. I started to feel that my energy isn’t as high as during beautiful summer days at home without anything that I don’t like to do. At the university I have to do a lot of stuff I don’t like to do (I have some ideas how to fix that and will test it later and write about my experience).
So, my brain was in the simulation when it lacked the most valuable resource: energy. I think that it is a more important resource than time. And my brain is so smart (just like yours), so it decided to take energy from alternative sources. In my case it was sugar and information consumption (YouTube, Instagram, etc.). In one week my time on social media grew to ~27h+ from my best result from the last post, where I had 4.5h. I was eating sugary things three or four times per week. I was feeling the lowest of the low.
But now I am sitting and writing it with zero in social media. So, what the fuck happened? Honestly, I can’t remember, you know, the key point, like in the films when I realized something and everything started to become awesome. I just decided to do the same things I did in my last article but changed some key things, and it was a game-changer decision. And now I have had absolutely zero for two weeks already.
Here we go again
So, how did I made the greatest comeback ever? (yeah, I know, calling it that is a bit dramatic. Let me have this moment.)
I used these 4 steps:
- Do it in concrete time
- Create alternatives
- Play with friction
- Slow down
Let me explain.
Step 1. Do it in concrete time (take control)
The first step is focused on creating concrete time when you will earn dopamine (social media in my case). I just set up time from 20:00 to 22:00 when I can use social media. It should be a time that you are sure that you can control. Why is it working?
You feel control, and you can see the real number of hours on social media even without any trackers (but if you use trackers for time on social media, your results will be even better because it will turn into a game)
When we make a habit regular and prognosticated, it just gives you less dopamine. And that is absolutely true and based on brain reward research. You can google in six seconds, and you will find hundreds of proofs of that.
Step 2. Create alternatives
That is very, very, very important to give something instead to your brain, because if you don’t give it something interesting, it will find something by itself. Through a week I understood that I can and I WANT to reduce the time. So I decided to change the Sunday block to programming my projects and started to do that. But what if you don’t feel that you are ready to reduce the time? (You will reach the point of being afraid to reduce it anyway, honestly) Then you need to use the last step.
Step 3. Play with friction
The last and probably the most powerful thing I ever used for changing my behavior. And it is very simple to understand that we just need to make bad habits less enjoyable by creating additional conditions. And the first two steps were also some options of this method. When I understand that I just can’t reduce time on social media safely, I increase friction.
I just started to use Service Points, that is my currency for cleaning at home. Putting something in its place is 1 SP, wash a glass is 2 SP, cleaning my shoes is about 15 SP, etc. And I divided my 2 hours social media block into simple 15-minute blocks using a Chrome extension to stop me when my 15-minute block ends. And the price of one block was about 10 SP.
Throughout these three months I have been playing with that friction, and now I have two 15-minute blocks and a 70 SP price for every block. And that shit actually works. You can create your own things to do right before a bad habit, the rule should be monolithic with a bad behavior and you should always do that together.
Apart from service points, I have other things.
- Counting Points—I just count in notes from 0 to N. Very good for habits I want to delete from my life because that gives me 0 benefits and takes a lot of cognitive energy from my brain.
- Sport Points—good for habits you would like to reduce but leave in your life because they give some benefits for health and create friction.
- Writing points—just write something like this article.
I had a lot of other tactics, but these are my favorite. Honestly, it’s all about playing with friction, but the first and third options are so powerful that I decided to put them out of the step. All my efforts were focused on making good things I want to do more interesting for my brain and doing just alternative things with addiction.
Step 4. Slow down
Don’t think that you can chage your life in one day, it’s a fiction.
Aftertaste
That is a very big win for me because several months ago I just couldn't believe that I would have 0.0h on social media, but that is just the beginning of my behavior design journey. Now, my main goal is maintaining the results, and I have several bad habits I want to quit, so I hope that I will win in that war. Like I always do..
