THE LIFESTYLE ENTREPRENEUR

Read time - 3 minutes

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Taming the Social Media Beast

Modern day humans are extremely distracted.

And unsurprisingly, we’re unhealthier and unhappier than ever.

I’ve lived this experience, like all of you have, in my own life and have experienced the pain of becoming entirely distracted most of the time, and the joy of learning how to rediscover focus in my life.

Some stats:

1. People average only 3 minutes on a task before switching

2. Context switching can reduce productive time by up to 80%

3. In 2023 people picked up their phones 144 times per day

Does this resonate with you? If no, congratulations.

If it does, like it did with me, we need to make some changes.

This topic could span many many editions, so to focus myself (you see what I did there?), I’m going to cover how I’ve reduced my phone and social media usage over the past few months.

Naming the problem

The first step of any addiction is to admit you have a problem.

Mine is easy to identify - I’ve cycled through it since the mid 2010s - if I let my social media usage go unchecked, it will end up looking like me mindlessly looking at my phone during any break in the action of my life.

This compulsion results in being constantly distracted, unfocused, and unpresent.

My mental health, productivity, and relationships all suffer when this is unmitigated.

Over the past year I started paying special attention to my usage, as I started creating daily content on LinkedIn, and also made a professional transition from being someone who runs operating companies, to a business coach for teams running operating companies.

The journey has been profound in many ways, and has come with plenty of ups and downs as it relates to my focus and distraction.

During this journey, I noticed I was slipping into the mindless pickup and scrolling habit I’ve experienced a few times in life.

Knowing that just trying to “reduce” wouldn’t be effective, about six months ago I went to work.

Here’s how I approached the issue:

1. Establish measurables

2. Experiment with solutions

3. Establish some new habits

4. Monitor and tweak

Establishing measurables

The measurable I came up with, that I put on my weekly scorecard - weekly phone pickups.

Mine was about at the average - which is a pretty shocking amount. How do you pick up your phone 150 times?

The other measurable, which is a little less directly related, but still very much related, is my sleep score.

I discovered there was a direct correlation between my amount of social media usage and my sleep score - so having that measurable allows me to understand things better.

Experimenting with solutions

I tried a few different tactics with my phone:

1. Screen downtime settings

2. Willpower

3. Phone location rules in different situations

4. Deleting apps

Screen downtime settings were completely ineffective for me. That’s the setting that will make it so you can’t use an app unless you add a couple extra clicks once it tells you it’s unavailable. This setting worked for about a day for me, then I ultimately just blew right through those barriers without a second thought.

Willpower was also a complete failure - as it is for most things in life. Just telling myself I’m not going to do something I’m addicted do is a complete recipe for failure. Willpower failed, like it always does.

Having phone location rules was effective. This means the phone is not near me in certain situations, like working on a project, or hanging out with my kids. Establishing rules and locations, and sticking with them, works well for me.

Deleting apps works extremely well. In fact it’s been the only thing that’s worked 100% of the time for me.

Establishing new habits

Learning what was most effective for me, setting up phone locations rules and deleting apps off the phone, has allowed for some behavior changes that have dramatically reduced my phone usage.

The other is a rule that many great content creators have, that I’ve adopted in my own life, but haven’t adopted it exclusively until this latest round of behavior modification.

That rule is - only use social media to produce content, don’t use it solely to consume.

For me that looks like set periods of time on LinkedIn. for the half hour surrounding my daily posting, I’m engaging with people in my network by commenting on their posts, replying to comments on my posts, and generally doing what I would call “rapid networking”.

For the next few hours I have one or two periods where I jump on to engage again, based on how often the algorithm refreshes.

And then I delete the app.

If I need to use LinkedIN again for messaging people the rest of the day, or doing some research or finding new people to connect with, it’s on the computer during a work session.

This means almost 100% of my time on LinkedIN is in the proactive producer of content mindset.

Am I consuming content during this time? Of course, but I’m engaging in almost 100% of the content I’m reading, and I believe it’s a more productive, and healthy way of interacting.

This rule caused me to delete Instagram permanently from my phone. I don’t post very much on Instagram, so until I start consistently posting and engaging, there’s no real healthy way for me to use it. Bye bye Instagram.

Pulling it all together

I also talk about this regularly with my kids and partner, making it clear it’s my intention for us to have healthy usage of our devices. Having rules that work for teenagers is a whole different story, but I’m confident that my work on myself allows me to model behavior to them that will serve them well.

Here’s an action you can take today, right now, if you’re like me and don’t like how social media can end up dominating your life and ruining your focus:

1. Go to settings > Screen Time > See all App & Website Data. Scroll down and start tracking your daily average pickups.

2. Audit your social media apps on your phone - Which ones are you willing to delete right now? If there are any, delete them right now.

3. Consider your usage - Do you purely consume, or do you produce content on the remaining ones. If you only consume, ask yourself is your life any better from the consumption? If the answer is a no, consider deleting that app.

4. Because you won’t likely be ready to delete the app entirely - try an engagement window - where you install the app, use it, and then have a cutoff where yo delete it each day.

If you’re not ready to do any of these actions, then consider the first step in having awareness about the problem - just naming it is a great step.

I hope you have a great weekend - my apps are deleted, and I’m ready to go forth without social media for the day.

Talk to you next week,

Mike

Thanks for reading The Lifestyle Entrepreneur

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