Conscious Consumption

Hello Friend, Welcome Back to The Corridors of Curiosity Newsletter!

I am excited to get into this week’s topic: Conscious Consumption.

This world that we live in has a ton of distractions — we still have the autonomy of choice. We must take ownership and responsibility for what and how we consume content, information, and the quality of the sources we ingest into our mental space.

I have been frustrated with the lack of importance and attention this topic is offered by our society. So many of us have troubles with screen addiction and distracted living due to the constant source of cheap dopamine available at our fingertips. We often fall into stretches of lost time due to the pull of our favorite applications. Even the worlds best have the same issue — don’t feel bad. I’m not trying to shame you into better habits, I am here to offer the gift of awareness.

Once we have gathered the awareness of our habitual consumption habits, we can shift our behavior by implementing various strategies. The overarching goal is to get our focus and time back from the hands of the addictive pixels we all know so well. Getting our focus and time back will be useful in our pursuit of our purpose.

The first place we should start on this process is to audit our screen time on our phones. Take some time to reflect on the past couple weeks and write down the average time spent per day. Don’t be getting angry and frustrated with yourself now, that will only hinder our process into shifting our patterns.

• Check the settings on your phone and determine the hours spent. You should note down the hours spent on social media and any other distraction causing apps.

Now, if you feel like your consumption time on social media applications is okay. That’s great. You probably have a great sense of self control and ability to shift your focus away from easy pleasure. I’m trying to be like you one day! If you’re like me and sense a problem with your consumption, consider adding a time limit to your apps. I have my social media apps on my phone limited to 45 minutes a day. I have also set up reminders inside the apps themselves to give me a pop-up when I’m scrolling for longer than 10 minutes at a time. This serves as nice break of thought and gets me back to a place of awareness.

The next place to go is to audit your morning routine. I know that feeling when that alarm goes off every morning. That sense of dread followed by your mind begging for some sort of distraction. You might turn on the news, turn on your favorite music, or even start the day scrolling on Youtube or Instagram. This is the worst thing we can do early in the morning. We need to take some time to allow our body, mind, and spirit to wake up and be a human being before we dive into the world of distraction. My friend told me banned his phone from the bathroom, so when he is taking his morning bowel movement he isn’t able to scroll his time away.

• I get it — you want to check and see if you missed anything. Whatever is on your phone can wait until you brush your teeth, take a shit, maybe even meditate or move your body. This time away from distraction can serve as a solid base for increasing levels of attention throughout the day.

• Sit with the pain of boredom. It is okay to accept the morning time for what it is, we don’t always need the distraction to fuel our mind. Let the morning come to you without the devious pull of distractions.

Next, let’s move on to the actual content we consume. You need to audit your For You pages and scrub the algorithm of anything that doesn’t serve you. You need to be honest here — are those IG models really the best for your brain? Does the content you get fed from the algorithm quality and meaningful? If not, you should go through and “toggle see less like this” on the various posts that you don’t want to see anymore. When you see a post that you do enjoy and brings you quality information or entertainment, toggle the “see more like this” option.

I only see things I enjoy on my feeds. My algorithm feeds me constant insights from various innovators and intellectuals, funny videos, training and movement videos, videos about animals and nature, self-mastery and self-development style content, sports videos and reactions, shoes and hats, and highlights from the athletes I work with. Now, I have to maintain awareness and not lose myself into consuming my time away. But seeing content that is conducive to my growth instead of distractions has been a game changer.

• Audit your for you pages. Audit what you consume on your TV. Audit the sources of information in your life.

• Don’t be afraid to unfollow accounts or shift watching patterns. No one person is worth more than your focus and attention.

One experiment I am running this week is turning on “grayscale” on my phone. This will make everything black and white, eliminating the colorful triggers. Going to see if it makes any difference for me.

Don’t let this reality check ruin your opinion of yourself. We need to remember that the world’s smartest engineers, computer programmers, and psychologists are creating the code behind the addicting pixels that consume our minds.

They have programed every inch of screen to be as addicting as possible. They keep us hooked on to the apps by giving our brain the cheap dopamine and pleasure. These media companies get paid for advertising dollars, so it makes sense from a business perspective to keep us locked on the screen for as long as possible.

It is extremely easy to grab your phone and distract yourself. It happens to the most aware people. We need to let go of the anger we might feel when catch ourselves — just put the phone down and get back to doing the things you love to do.

I firmly believe the ability of focus our attention on meaningful pursuits is the most important component of the deep life. If you’re looking for a secret habit, this is the one.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic: check out these resources:

• Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anna Lembke

• Stolen Focus by Johann Hari

• Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman

Thanks for your focus and attention.

I encourage you to take some time this week and audit your patterns. What do you like and what do you want to improve on? Take 10-15 minutes to reflect and arm yourself with the Weapon of Truth as you continue to cut through the obstacles standing in your way.

Until next week,

Paril