Cutting Down Screen Time

While there may some habits I should start, one I should cut back on is wasting time on the phone. I am aware that I am addicted to the endless scroll of news, and I am constantly looking for more movies and shows to fill up my time. I used to scoff at YouTube, but now it’s part of my regular media diet. I’ve been aware this has only gotten worse over time, and I must keep this in check. I can feel my attention span fading, and brain rot settling.

For the past 4 weeks, I’ve been at a consistent 8 hours 50 minutes per day for screen time usage. That’s horrible.

My goal is for the next 4 weeks, keep that average under 7 hours per day (which I still think is ‘not good’, but I want to make progress and achievement easily reachable out of the gate).

There are times when my children were young where we’ve enacted ‘no screens’ days. Those days moved slowly. They were boring. Boredom is not a bad thing. We found time to do other things - read books, go on walks, play a board game. For the sake of Project 2040, how am I going to clear my head to think about how to stay gainfully employed for the next 15 years if I can’t put my phone away?

In setting this small goal, I hope that I will feel better and have more time to focus. As a side effect, I also hope that doing this will help me embrace sleep when it’s bedtime, and also keep me from snacking when I really don’t need to (as I tend to snack as I watch shows.).

So I’ve set a reminder to revisit this one month from now and see how I’m doing.