It is far too easy to do things that add zero value to your life.
One of the things that makes me hate myself more than anything is to waste a hour on Facebook looking at pictures of people I don’t care about. Or reading status updates from people that I have not seen in five years or care to see for that matter. I hate myself because I wasted that time, I wasted my life, I could have been doing something productive and I can never get that time back. Ever.
Why do I do it so often? Because it’s easy…
It’s easy to just tap on the Facebook app on my phone, it’s easy to surf the internet reading about some interesting thing on Wikipedia until 2am, it’s easy to watch 50 movie trailers (just a few on the things on my guilty pleasure list). It’s far too easy and it’s sucking the life out of people at an astounding rate. It’s pulling you and me away from the important things we need to be doing. Things like…
Talking to your spouse
Playing and talking to your kids
Exercising
Doing things for those in need
These things add value. These things actually fulfill us and don’t leave us feeling more depressed about our own lives, jealous of what others have, or apathetic.
They enrich our lives.
One of the biggest problems is that we have built the time wasting activities into our habits, I know I have. I install the Facebook and Instagram apps on my phone and I habitually want to post pictures of cool things right after they happen, which then lends itself to checking the number of likes and comments. It’s ridiculous. More importantly its shocking that I don’t grasp how severe the problem is. We read stats about the number of times the average person checks their phone and think “that’s not me”. It’s only after I deleted both the apps that I realized how strong the compulsion to check them was. The withdrawal was not pleasant because it was too revealing…I was one of those statistics after all. I needed to stop. Not just for my own sake but for the sake of my marriage and my kids. They are the casualties of this battle.
So what are we to do to combat this? While recognizing the problem is the first step the crucial one is changing of habits, and that does not happen overnight (at least if you want long term results).
Often the bad habit is the result of some need. The obvious one is the example of Facebook, it is attempting to satisfy our need for connection and validation. We post a picture of our amazing dinner because maybe we are feeling down about some things in our life and looking to get a boost…nothing like a couple “likes” to make those bad feelings go away. The problem is, like a drug addiction the high is only temporary and the end result is that we end up searching for the next one in greater dose. This ultimately leads to a never ending battle of trying to compare and one-up everyone else. It’s rigged game that we are doomed to lose.
So start today. Delete an app, change your routine to break a bad habit, turn your phone to “do not disturb mode”
At the very least take 5 minutes to think about what you are sacrificing for your “break” and think long and hard about what value it has given you in the past. I am betting not a whole lot.
