while I was lying in bed last night, I made the mistake of clicking on a notification from Twitter/X. Can’t remember what it was, but it was intriguing and I clicked on it. And then without realising it, I found myself scrolling the feed for over an hour. And it wasn’t just that I was scrolling for over an hour – it was that I found myself feeling a sense of “falling behind” while doing it.
My Instagram feed these days is quite wholesome: relationship content, baby content, some desk setups, some music stuff, some health stuff. Ie: broadly wholesome things I’m interested in. So even though I try not to make a habit of it, I don’t feel too bad when I scroll through Instagram.
But…my Twitter feed has none of that. Instead, it’s almost 100% AI + tech startup stuff, with every other post talking about how you’re falling behind if you’re not using Claude Code, or Google’s new Antigravity, or this-or-that new app or model. And how you’re falling behind if you’re not using these hot new marketing tactics that so-and-so app used to get to $100m in revenue in just 6 months! Or how if you’re an entrepreneur and you haven’t yet replaced your entire team with AI agents, wtf are you even doing. And so on.
I started seeing some of these while scrolling and initially, I was like: “ooh maybe I DO need to try out this specific Claude Code workflow to boost my productivity”. But then I saw another. And another. And more. And before I knew it – instead of seeing any individual post as a source of inspiration, I fell into the “doom scroll” of continuing to scroll, not getting any inspiration or motivation from it, and instead feeling a sense of dread that I was truly falling behind and that my business is going to crumble around me.
Now, I like to think of myself as more enlightened than to fall into this trap. It’s just… so basic. I’m supposed to be a productivity expert for goodness sake. It’s such basic-ass advice to (a) not have your phone next to you in bed, (b) to block social media apps after 9pm, and (c) even if you do feel like scrolling, make sure you’re being intentional about it and actually getting value that’s improving your life.
For many years, I didn’t have my phone next to my bedside. For many years, I had app blocking active after 9pm. But then… one of the apps stopped working a few months ago, and I didn’t bother figuring out why. I thought: “meh I can totally control myself, I don’t need this stuff”. And then, I left my extra phone charger behind somewhere while travelling, and thought: “you know what, I don’t need to charge my phone in a different room, I can totally charge it on my bedside table, I’m not one of those degenerates that needs to put these systems in place to NOT use my phone for goodness sake”.
And so thanks to my hubris of thinking that me as a sole individual can reliably beat the thousands of well-paid engineers working for social media companies, who’s literal job it is to hijack my brain into continuing to scroll… thanks to me thinking I was above it all, I ended up wasting time and energy, and also feeling bad about my life, at midnight last night.
So consider this email a (semi) public commitment that:
- I’m setting up app blocking again (on Superfocus) so that from 10pm to 8am, I can’t access Twitter, Instagram, Reddit or YouTube.
- My phone will charge on my desk in a separate room overnight, rather than on my bedside table. I’m going back to having the only device on my nightstand be my Kindle.
If you’d like to join me in doing these sorts of drastic actions, you’re very welcome to.
