Some battles are eternal, for their enemy is not a thing, but a shadow of ourselves that refuses to rest.

The quote describes my fight with social media in my life the best. I have tried many times to defeat the habit, and now I'm feeling like I have found my way to win in the eternal fight.

On the chart I showed how my time on social media has changed for the last 13 weeks. There was much more time than 21 hours, but then I wasn't tracking it, and I have only the data. But I remember that during periods of time when I didn't have work, I had around 28 hours per week that's why I named the article that way.

I have a lot of work ahead. I still need to decrease the number to reach 0 hours per week and not lose control of these 4.5 hours, but I think that I can write about my intermediate results.

Step 1: Control

The first thing I did was create a specific time for the desired action. The stage needs to build self-confidence that you can control that and to make it less interesting for your dopamine system, because it becomes more expected than it was and your brain likes it because it's like a casino. I don't think that you are going to argue that our brain likes casinos. Prove of my words

So, I set aside time for social media from 19:00 to 22:00 every day. You can choose any other amount of time or time when you are going to do that, but you should choose a time that you can control.

And the main rule: you always must follow your plan even if you don't want to spend all the allocated time on social media, but it is a very important part of the process.

Step 2: Freedom

After the first step I noticed that I have some time during the day that I don't know how to spend because I was using my phone when I had free time. And the main goal of step two is avoiding the main trigger of social media, and it is boredom. All we need to do is add something to your day because you need to have something to do for the whole day. I started to study more, write this blog, run, play basketball sometimes, read, and even brainstorm. And it doesn't matter what you are going to do, you just should do something.

Step 3: Disgust

The first two steps are enough to decrease your time very much, but if you want to go farther, you can use tips from the step. And on the stage we should decrease the pleasure of social media. And I use one very simple app that blocks my app or site every 15 minutes. And you should wait 30 seconds to unlock it. It seems useless, but the app makes your time on social media less comfortable.

On my phone I use auto-blocking every 3 minutes for 30 seconds, which works very well. I really feel bored waiting 30 seconds to check if someone texted me. Apps like these are very scalable, and if you feel that you can make your rules harder, they always have a good option for you.

Aftertaste

After I had written the text, I remembered the book "Atomic Habits," which I had read two times but didn't use anything in my life. But now I understand that everything that I wrote about here (and much more), I have read in the book. Seems like I should read the book again...