Tsh Oxenreider, in one of her “5 Quick Things” newsletters, mentioned that she had gotten into the habit of uninstalling Instagram and reinstalling it once a week to check on things. I really liked this idea because I didn’t have to go completely without Instagram but it was (purposely) inconvenient to use, which would hopefully reduce the mindless scrolling to which I had become so addicted.

Funnily enough, it still took several weeks before I finally tried it for myself. I don’t know what I was afraid to lose. But this past week I finally uninstalled it and…nothing bad happened.

Well, I discovered that I was scrolling even more than I thought I was—and I already thought I was scrolling a lot! I kept picking up my phone, remembering I had nothing to look at (I had previously uninstalled the Facebook app), and putting it down. Then picking it up… and picking it up…again and again.

It really made me aware of all those “quick checks” that are just a few seconds here and there but that break up my focus. I also realized that I have become strangely accustomed to constantly having my focus broken, to the point where I’ll compulsively switch tasks rather than just work on one thing.

I noticed this in particular one night when I was eating dinner. Since I had nothing to scroll through, I thought I would find something to watch. Then I asked myself why. What’s wrong with just eating my meal and nothing else? It’s strange but I almost felt silly to “just” do one thing, like I was somehow a loser for not multitasking (even though multitasking is a myth anyway).

It’s like I’ve not only forgotten how to monotask but that I don’t want to do it because it’s not ~COOL.~ But I’m not interested in being cool (which is good because I never have been). I’m interested in living a little slower and creating space to get into a flow state and do deep work.

It’s frustrating because it seems like everything is set up to discourage me from doing this, even though it is demonstrably better—well, hang on, it’s better for me but worse for the apps and advertisers who need my attention. Shocker: we can’t ask the people who make money off of us for advice on how to live our lives. 🙂

I have resisted the urge (so far) to fill the time with other stuff besides taking more walks. The photos are random walk photos, except the Outer Banks ones (although technically we did walk up the lighthouse stairs). I included those because our trip inspired me to put regular walking back into my schedule—we wandered around Corolla and it reminded me how much I like just wandering around. Fortunately spring is springing so this is a lot easier to do than if it were still the middle of winter.

The only problem with not using the ‘gram is if Boomer is being very cute it’s harder to share. 🙂