PaperCat

Back at the beginning of the year, I made a decision to stop my doomscrolling habits. Now at the end of the first quarter, I can say, that habit did not go away and it maybe even got worse.

I am here at the beginning of Quarter 2 to finally make and keep this promise and work on my habit of doomscrolling.

But first, my current habit:

As you can see, in a week’s time, Instagram stole (actually I gave them willingly) about 18 hours of my time. In a week.

YouTube looks bad at almost 14 hours but for that, I mainly pop headphones on and listen to videos while I accomplish other things.

Facebook wasn’t terrible at almost 2 hours in a full week but again, that’s two hours of sitting, scrolling, maybe interacting, but doing nothing.

In a week, almost a full day was used on social media apps. A full day. 21 hours and 13 minutes.

A goal needs steps. First steps:

I have deleted Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn and Facebook from my phone. I can access them on my computer as needed, and with that, I can set aside an intentional amount of time in my office for using social media apps.

Next week, I will check in with how this time compared to last time.

Second step:

If I feel like I want to scroll, I will read a book. I have nine books I am currently reading from my TBR pile. Let’s see how many of those I can finish with the 21 hours not being allocated to social media.

Have you made similar time-management decisions? How did they affect your life?