On Break Up 💔 With Social Media Day on Valentines Day, I deleted the YouTube and Substack apps. I reinstalled the YouTube app one day, lost about 20 minutes to scrolling through Shorts, deleted it again, and have seriously kept the phone plugged in and out of sight most of the time since.
I work from home, don’t drive much, and I answer emails and Slack and Asana stuff when I’m at my computer. Sure, I use my laptop quite a bit, but cutting three hours of iPhone time from my life has felt great.
I spent so much time on the Substack app just “keeping up.” Joining in with conversations, replying, replying to replies, managing DMs, sharing articles I liked. Seriously added up to over an hour a day, easily.
Getting back 7+ hours per week means I can write more. Or repurpose a bunch of the video and audio I’m already making every week. Processing and reflecting on all the calls and interviews I do with people every day.
That’s the work I should be doing, instead of dealing with 100 little pebbles of “engagement” per day on the Substack app.
Sublte nod to Manuel Moreale, saying:
I still have not consumed content on the phone, three weeks in. That’s awesome, and I want that to stay that way.
That was the killer for me, too – video. Making coffee, put on a YouTube video. Scroll the YouTube shorts. Warming up coffee? Repeat. Eating lunch? Catch up the latest Colbert zingers.
A solid week without all that? Just under 20 minutes of screen time per day? Yeah, I wanna keep this going.