tl;dr: I’m taking a six week break from social media and other attention grabbing technologies

This has been an issue on my mind for quite a while. I keep trying to pull away from the garbage that holds me. I find ways back in. I weasel my way, I find reasons and excuses. Every time I’m gone for about six hours one of my favorite YouTube accounts happens to post some outstanding video essay or an improvised Breaking Bad. I find a video game on Twitter that I can’t stop thinking about after playing. Some new method of productivty hacking arrives in the form of a short or post and suddenly it justifies sitting and pulling the tab down over and over because I finally hit the jackpot.

What really enabled me to take this actual break, besides cutting out people who would not care in the slightest if I faltered and came right back immediately, was reading Cal Newport quote Tristan Harris calling a smart phone a slot machine. That’s what did it for me. The realization that I pull a figurative handle for a literal reward. The action is exactly the same. It wasn’t enough that I knew companies are fighting for my attention. I can’t help that my favorite internet people make their entire livelyhoods off of YouTube. I want to keep up with them because I love what they do. I don’t feel any sort of parasocial crap. I’m purely a fan. And yet, they chose to take part in this toxic system because it’s what they’re good at. They post their content to the machine and it delivers it to the audience.

I’m two days in. I know that’s not much, but I’m already past the jitters. I’ve cut out nearly everything that held my time that I felt guilty about. It feels really good. Six weeks is a long time, but I can only continue to imagine what else I can get done in that time. Or how I’ll feel when my blockers release their grasp. It is fun to think that I at least have the self control to not make my computer think it’s the future so my blocker will unlock. However I have no idea how to do that on my phone so I’ll leave them both in place for the symmetry.

I’m looking forward to posting about my task tracking application and my philosophy on SAAS. On game dev ideas, collaborating. On my educational journey as someone with only a high school degree learning computer science. The path towards finally getting this awful weight off my body. I’m gonna post it all here, for myself, because I can and because it feels good.