A moment that changed me: I resolved to reduce my screen time – and it was a big mistake | Life and style
I Unanimously dismissed my iPhone screen at the exact moment when my weekly screen time appearance appeared – in order to make a screenshot – and immediately broke out into an anger. I had spent a painful week not to look at my phone, part of a one -month exertion, to tear down my daily screen time from more than four hours a day to less than an hour, hoping to improve my mental well -being (and possibly get a career as an inspiring speaker). But my efforts felt in vain without being able to publish evidence of how offline I had become. I desperately googled how to get notifications (you cannot) and short-handed to create my screen time report in Photoshop.
In the past one or two decades, my efforts to improve self -improvement have accepted various forms: the year in which I have read 105 books; The time when I gave up all the forms of sugar, including misguided fruits; And a mind with shamanism, which, as I was sorry, included the interpretation dance. Some may suggest that I would be better to learn or drive or to tap more than one finger, but they cannot reach me because I no longer look at my phone.
“Project Screen Time” started after I heard a podcast in which a comedian claimed that they should not look at social media within two hours after waking up because It messes up with her dopamineor so. This is my favorite council council: uncited, from the mouth of a lay person who cannot remember how they have acquired it. But I gave up to open Instagram first in the morning and … it worked. On the problem, it improved my mood not to grind my brain with other people's pictures before I was fully aware of before I was fully aware of it. Even better, I thought that if I didn't look at my socials after lunch, I could often resist. As is usually the case when I start a new regime, this short moment of clarity quickly became frenzy.
I exchanged an obsession (looked at my phone) for another (without looking at me). In my second week I fell up to two hours of screen a day. After my third it took an hour and a half – and I was decided to get it under 60 minutes. Some of me was impressed that I could appear normal while I led quietly (noble?) With this superpower. However, I couldn't keep my gift secret. I soon started boring friends, acquaintances and servants with stories about my HerculesDiscipline.
Soon my search bothered my day in a new way. I was annoyed to open cards on my phone, so I ran to make an appointment while cycling. If I wanted to show someone a picture or a MEM, I asked to google it on his phone instead of my own. I refused to order after the excursion of nights (the tedious process of observing a taxi to my location to my location, while the minutes of the screen time were qualified) and instead offered to transfer the money (later on my laptop) to the person where it did.
I became more and more frustrated that my screen time was not lower. I would come after 2 p.m. after I had hardly taken a look at my phone, and yet the data would say that I had used it for 36 minutes. I started thinking conspiratorly. My screen time was displayed in a graphic that was divided into blue (social), turquoise (entertainment) and orange (productivity and finance). But the vast majority of the diagram consisted of unmatched gray. What was the gray?!
Finally, the screen time was added to the list of topics (including the music and the tradition of Taylor Swift and my attraction Ron Desantis) That I was forbidden to discuss at home. My lowest point came when I showed a friend of my weekly statistics what gives them a breakdown of how long they spent on each app. He asked why “Settings” were my third-determined application-and I had to admit that it was as I had compulsively checked my screen time.
My tantrum about being unable to remember my lowest screen report (51 minutes a day!)!) Was a wake -up call; The reduction of my screen time had become a separate form of telephone dependency. Instead of escaping the need to validate from strangers online, I had happened in a new way to maintain their approval. But everything was not lost. The knowledge controlled me to accept that I would probably never be a moderate person. I cannot rely on any form of self-regulation (my latest regime skin care care is about an LED mask that is automatically switched off after 10 minutes, otherwise I am afraid that I would wear it in the office like a DayGlo Hannibal Lecter).
In the end I stopped trying to regain my screen time, but the less aesthetic table in my settings to post online. DMS flooded within a few minutes of people who congratulated me on my self -control and asked how I managed to leave my phone. I answered all of them, dopamine flooded the starved reward center of my brain. On this day my screen time was three hours and 36 minutes.
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