Digital detox
When I was hustling as a professional guitar player, I would spend two or three hours each day on social media. Sure, I was connecting with people and building my profile—I was also getting jobs—but I found over time that my personality was changing. I was posting only what I knew would garner likes and follows and I was suppressing aspects of my identity to please others.
“For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself?” Jesus asked his followers. It isn’t worth it to me to be known, to be able to get guitar work, but to be forced to play this character of myself, never feeling like I can be myself.
Some people are immune to the effects of social media. I wasn’t. I became a man on display. My anxiety was sky-high as I lived in constant, rigorous defense of every interest and opinion. And I was nothing more than a compiler, a feed-custodian: My profile was an aggregate for all the things I thought people would like about and around me.
Worst of all, I was spending beaucoup bucks on the toys and gadgets that generated hype. I’m now completely consumer debt-free. In order to curb credit card spending and pay down my debts, though, I had to disconnect from social media and reform my values from the ground up.
I quit cold-turkey and deleted all of my accounts. I even deleted my Instagram account, with its over 6,000 followers. It was a statement: My self-worth is not tied to the things in my garage and on my shelves, nor can it be represented by a follower count. I will no longer look to a social scoreboard for self-confidence. “I will not be mastered by anything,” the apostle Paul wrote.
I needed to quit social media fully, to reevaluate what I truly value. I think you should too. But I developed this Digital Detox plan for you to try out as a short fast. This will teach you to be more intentional with your screen-time. If you find value in the disconnect, try this detox over longer and longer periods of time.
Step 1: Log out social media
Simple enough. Log out Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, VSCO, Tik Tok, and whatever other platforms your avatar might appear on. Your avatar isn’t you, it’s the face you’ve carefully crafted for these feeds. Delete the apps from your phone. They'll still be there when you come back.
Don't allow yourself to feel the obligation to appear on any of these platforms. If it's not useful to you or if you don't enjoy it, delete your account permanently. No one will fault you. In fact, many will be jealous you were able to take steps they know they need to take themselves.
Don't announce that you're leaving. No one cares.
Step 2: Prioritize friends and family
In your Contacts app, make a 'Friends & Family' group. Turn on Do Not Disturb for all calls and texts except the ones from this group. Don't put everyone in there—this is for people you really interact with day-to-day.
Callers who don't fit your Friends & Family category can leave a message. But what about emergencies? Ask yourself, Who’s going to require me, immediately, that isn’t a friend or family member? Take time to really think about that question. Who needs you right away? That person owns you.
It’s a simple fact: If your personal phone is ‘on call’ to anyone other than a loved one, your attention has a backend vulnerability. It can be hacked. Only your closest friends and family members should have immediate access to you.
For me, the answer to this question was, credit cards. I had to keep my phone alert for credit card companies. They required my attention right away if I wanted to stay out of trouble! “The borrower is slave to the lender,” the Bible says. I call this ‘the borrower principle.’ My time will not be owned by anyone. Now that I’m debt free I can ignore callers without fear.
Another simple fact is, most emergencies aren't emergencies. I can count one instance the past decade where I’d have been truly ‘up a creek’ without my cell phone. Yet, I paid $100+ per month to own that phone all those years. What a waste!
But what if I take client calls on my cell? You need a separate phone to be used only during office hours. Or at least a separate SIM card. Or a secretary. Start charging those clients your true worth.
Step 3: Reevaluate your use of email
I receive one email worth reading in every 10,000 messages that compete for my time, my attention, and my money. It’s time we reevaluate our need for electronic mail.
Remove the mail app and your email address from your phone. Instead of checking your email throughout the day, designate a time and place to make emails a priority. Answer every email in that time. Your inbox is now a to-do list: Every email requires your attention. Reply to the real people who are emailing. Tell them to call or text instead. Take action on adverts as well. Unsubscribe from every promotional you receive. Don't just delete them, stop them from coming in the future.
Here’s a new way of thinking: Those advertisements are attacking you. That’s right—they’re an assault to your chill. Advertisers exist to make you feel inadequate, then take your money. You aren’t who they say you are and you don’t need what they’re selling.
Remember that snail-mail still exists. Handwritten letters are far more meaningful than an email.
Step 4: Purge all time-thieves
A smartphone is a tool. It can help us get to where we’re going, it can hail an Uber, it can let us know when to bring a jacket, it can snap a quick picture to create a memory. Some apps, however, are not tools. They’re time-thieves. They’re blackholes. They’re termites eating into our 24 hours.
Delete all 'casual browsing' apps: Shopping apps, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr & other blogging platforms, any app with which you might mindlessly scroll to kill time. Delete all games. You're an adult, don't play cell phone games. When you're gone, you will not be remembered for how many Pokemon you caught today or the level of candy you crushed.
Casual browsing apps only serve to tear us from the present. At best, they make us rude at the dinner table. At worst, they distract us from problems that we were meant to face. In so doing, mindless scrollers stunt our growth and pause personal development. Sure, they keep us entertained, but at what cost?
Next, delete all news apps. If something important happens, you'll hear about it. The fact is, most emergencies aren't emergencies. I’m going to keep sayin’ that in bold text.
Finally, delete any apps you haven’t used in the last 90 days, or any that you don't expect to use in the next 90 days. Turn on the 'Offload Unused Apps' setting.
Step 5: What about Netflix?
I recognize that there’s value in some forms of entertainment. It can help you unwind, destress. And Netflixing isn’t entirely unproductive; I’ve learned a lot from documentary series like Abstract: The Art of Design. So do this: Place all video, TV, and movie apps (YouTube, HBO, Netflix, Hulu, etc.) in a single folder on your phone. You can access this folder once per day to watch one video per day.
You choose. You can watch one 5-minute viral video, a single episode of that TV show you'd otherwise binge, or an entire movie—it doesn't matter. But you have to exercise discipline here. You open that folder once per day, and you view one video per day. Period. This rule teaches you to make it count, to be intentional about the content you view.
Viewership isn’t meant to be a passive exercise, it’s an agreement; you are giving your attention away. This is ‘the borrower principle’ I outlined above: Again, your time and attention should be prized and protected. Don’t just give it away. This is teaching you the value of your time. If you’re binging television shows on the reg, Netflix owns you.
You get one video per day on this digital detox. Some people might opt for the quick-fix of a YouTube video. Others might open this folder at a scheduled time to sit down and watch a movie. In either case, restricting access to the TV apps will help prevent binging, you'll gain back lost sleep and you’ll begin to seek out videos that actually add value to your life.
Step 6: Trick the mind
This step is my favorite: Identify your most used app and find something else to put in its place. If your fingers instinctively go to Instagram the moment you open your phone, put the Kindle app there. You'll be stunned each time you tap that space to find a book. Read a couple of pages as punishment and continue with your day.
I did this when I first left Instagram. I placed the Bible app right where Instagram had been on my home screen. I was shocked at just how many times my fingers went to Instagram habitually, passively, instantly as I lifted my phone. Every single time the Bible app opened instead of Instagram—for at least a week or two—I was jarred awake from utter mindlessness.
Here’s another trick: Go grayscale. Set your phone’s display settings to Black & White (on iPhone, that’s in Accessibility > Display Accommodations > Color Filters). Try it! After a couple of days, the allure of a technicolor real world will overpower your need to check your now bland phone. Wildly, when you go back to full color, your phone will seem so much brighter and newer. It’s an odd trick.
Step 7: Enforce new rules
A little discipline never hurt anyone. In fact, in this case, it could save a life! New rule #1: Your phone doesn’t exist while you’re driving. Never text and drive. Try memorizing the directions instead of using turn-by-turn navigation. You'll learn the city and you'll be able to exercise intuition with regard to alternate routes or hazards.
Rule #2: Never use phone in bed. The bed is made for two things, neither of which are enhanced by a smartphone in your face. I could go on and on too about the effect of blue-light on our sleep. Read Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, or watch his interview with Joe Rogan. It’s eye-opening.
Rule #3: Never use your phone at the table. Be in the moment, be with your partner or your friends, invest in people, look them square in the eye, and listen. Make conversation. You might learn something.
Conclusion
Smartphones are a necessity nowadays. I would never deny that, they’re an invaluable tool. I can't get around my hometown of 20 years without mine! But that doesn't mean I have to surrender my conscious self to it. Nor does it mean that I've got to consent to all that comes with owning the device. My time and attention are valuable, and I give them actively—by choice—not passively, by default.
Taking frequent, extended breaks from your smartphone will allow you to reclaim what you've lost: human intuition, attention span, sleep, short-term memory, and free time. Here are a few articles about the effects of social media and smartphone addiction:
How to Turn Off and Drop Out of The Attention Economy by Siempo; The Binge Breaker by Bianca Bosker; Want To Hook Your Users? Drive Them Crazy, by Nir Eyal; How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds by Tristan Harris; Why We Sleep, by Matthew Walker; The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr.