Catching My Social Media Slip

Recently I’ve noticed that I’ve been getting stuck on my phone more often than I’d like. Yes, even the guy who talks about this stuff all day struggles with it. Why do you think I talk about it?

In particular, going on YouTube on my phone has been a slippery slope. I usually turn to it when I want to put on something mindless to help me reset my mind. This can be during a meal alone or just for a midday break. There’s nothing inherently wrong with social media, the real issue is simply doing something you don’t want to be doing. 

The technology is literally designed to hold your attention, and a few days in a row I stayed on longer than I wanted to. And I knew that because every night I reflect on my social media usage in my Self Improvement Scorecard. This brought to my awareness my vulnerability for it, which helped me make some adjustments.

There was a day a few weeks ago when I wanted to take a break and watch some YouTube. But knowing that I wanted to watch on my own terms, with control, I decided to take a few steps of intervention.

First, before I started watching I set a timer on my watch for 10 minutes. That way I would know when my usage started to get into undesirable territory. I also voiced to my wife “I’m taking a quick break, if I’m not back in 20 minutes, tell me to get back to work.”

Because I implemented those two strategies, I was very intentional with my time on social media, got the mind reset I was looking for, and went back to work right on time.

And I can explain why this worked so well in one word: Environment.

Rather than entering the same environment where I’ve been struggling to control my time on my phone, I shaped it in my favor. The timer interrupted my consciousness so that I knew exactly when my time was up, and it allowed me to make an empowered choice. The accountability I established with my wife added a layer of commitment to the plan, with painful consequences of letting my wife down if I didn't follow through, which made it easy to close the app. 

When you take action to shape your environment in your behavior, what you want to happen becomes way more likely to happen. And that’s simply because you change the path of least resistance. A supportive environment takes you closer to where you want to go.  

I have endless examples of how I’ve shaped my environment for my success, but it all comes back to having critical awareness in my Self Improvement Scorecard.