3019: [Part 1] Does Anyone Actually Want This In Their Daily Routine? by Anthony Ongaro of Break the Twitch on Digital Detox

[00:00:00] It's a minimalist Monday edition of Optimal Living Daily Episode 3019. Does Anyone Actually Want This In Their Daily Routine? Part 1 by Anthony Ongaro of BreaktheTwitch.com And I'm Justin Malik.

[00:00:14] Merry Christmas if you're celebrating and welcome to one of the only podcasts in the world where articles are narrated to you for free with permission from the authors. And it's an award-winning podcast thanks to you.

[00:00:26] Today is a longer post so I'll read the first half but then finish the rest for you tomorrow. So let's get right to Part 1 and start optimizing your life. Does Anyone Actually Want This In Their Daily Routine? Part 1 by Anthony Ongaro of BreaktheTwitch.com

[00:00:46] There's a major disconnect between what we say we want in our daily routine and how we're actually spending our time. And for me, the origins of this daily routine disconnect started more than a decade ago.

[00:00:59] In the spring of 2004, I was a second semester freshman at Eastern Michigan University living in the on-campus dorms. Perhaps my first brush with minimalist living, I shared a 160 square foot room with my friend and roommate Sean while sharing a bathroom with the suite next to ours.

[00:01:18] It wasn't glamorous, but when we ran out of breakfast cereal it certainly made it easy to see if the neighbors had any. More importantly, a few months earlier a guy named Mark Zuckerberg launched this thing called The Facebook and people were pretty excited about it.

[00:01:34] When the Facebook launched, it wasn't available to anyone and everyone. It started at Harvard University then slowly expanded to the Ivy Leagues then other prestigious schools. My girlfriend at the time attended a more prestigious school than I, about 20 minutes away.

[00:01:50] I remember receiving the text message saying she had signed up and all her other friends were already on it as well. I had to wait a few weeks before my university was available for registration.

[00:02:02] When it was finally available, I created my account on The Facebook in the spring of 2007. It was exhilarating. It felt like I had finally got into what at the time felt like an exclusive club for cool kids.

[00:02:17] Exploring the network and connecting with people through the site became part of my daily routine. The profiles that people filled out were largely creative, interesting, and allowed me to find folks that I eventually ended up hanging out with throughout college.

[00:02:32] The network, for all intents and purposes, is an amazing tool for connecting people in really compelling ways. Over the following 11 years, The Facebook dropped The and grew substantially. Everyone soon had access to the network, not just college students.

[00:02:48] My peers were particularly upset at that fact but it was inevitable of course. Soon we had status updates and the witty attention grabbing updates that were always fun and interesting to read. Then the news feed came along, which everyone hated at the time,

[00:03:05] and Facebook slowly became the behemoth we know it to be today. All of this to say, I've been on Facebook and other social media sites for a very long time nearly since the beginning of Facebook itself.

[00:03:18] And I think it's nearing that time that I, at least personally, exit them. Is the social media Twitch meant to be broken? Since starting Break the Twitch in 2014, I've been exploring what it means to live intentionally.

[00:03:34] After a few years, I've come up with the framework of minimizing distractions, building habits, and creating things we care about as the way to actually accomplish this, hence the Break the Twitch core principles of minimalism, habits, and creativity.

[00:03:49] Thinking about the role social media plays in my life and where in the framework it fits, I had difficulty not putting it in the minimize distractions category, as in a distraction to be minimized. Last year I read a book called Hooked about the different psychological triggers

[00:04:08] and habit-forming techniques app creators and entrepreneurs use to get consumers hooked on their products. At the core of it, just about every aspect of the social media experience is designed from the ground up to increase engagement and incite addiction.

[00:04:25] This is part of what I went on to give my TEDx talk about. I've written about doing social media and digital detoxes, and I've done several myself throughout this time. A few for 30-day periods, two 60-day periods,

[00:04:40] and at least one 90-day experiment that involved removing all social media from my phone, my accounts, and blocking sites in my internet browser. Every time I would complete one of these social media detoxes, my life would get objectively better.

[00:04:57] The desire to twitch and check random things on my phone subdued significantly and then completely during these periods. After the first week or so, I found myself participating actively in the idle moments of everyday life. I text my friends and family more often,

[00:05:15] randomly think of people I hadn't spoken to in quite a while, and reach out to them directly. This was a stark contrast to spending most idle moments filled with browsing, engaging, and trying to come up with interesting things to share that people might like.

[00:05:30] Feeling more social wasn't the only thing that happened during these breaks I took from social media. Not only did my productivity both in work and rest skyrocket, but I found that I would generally get less overwhelmed during the day, felt more confident about myself,

[00:05:47] and did more things that actually brought me longer-term contentment. Things like reading blog articles from fellow writers, reading books, walking outside, and other things that were far more meaningful than a bunch of Instagram likes. So does anyone actually want this?

[00:06:06] Here's the thing, Amy and I did some math to figure this out. To be continued. You just listened to part one of the post-title, Does Anyone Actually Want This in Their Daily Routine? by Anthony Anguero of BreakTheTwitch.com Thank you to Anthony. We'll finish the rest tomorrow.

[00:06:28] The book he mentioned that talked about psychological triggers and habit-forming techniques is from another author that I read here frequently, that's Nir Ayal. And the book is called Hooked How to Build Habit-Forming Products. I haven't read it yet, but definitely one that I'm interested in.

[00:06:45] It has over 8000 reviews on Amazon with a 4.5 rating, so probably worth the read. And even though it sounds like it's for people building products, I would imagine this book works the other way too, like it did for Anthony. If we understand how habit-forming products are built,

[00:07:03] maybe first will be less likely to become a victim of that design. And second, maybe learn how to make our own good habits more addictive and the bad habits less appealing. Something worth looking into. And I generally don't completely eliminate something myself,

[00:07:21] unless it's really bad or actually physically addicting. I find the all-or-nothing approach can backfire. But I do think little sabbaticals or detoxes away from things like social media are worth the experiment. I know Diana from Optimal Finance Daily did something like this recently.

[00:07:39] I'll tell you more about that tomorrow. But I'll stop there for now. Thank you for being here and listening every day, including holidays, like today. Merry Christmas to you if you're celebrating. And I'll be back tomorrow to finish up this post. Where Your Optimal Life awaits.