Doom scrolling and building habits
You know what kills productivity for me? Oddly enough, watching someone else’s content. Wether it be a show, a youtube video, shorts, reels, or scrolling through heaps of content on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. When I feel like I need to “fill my day” - it sometimes goes into this spiral of trying to live vicariously through someone or something else - and in most cases for me, it’s through other people’s content.
I turn to social media a lot, for both work and personal use, but while on there, I tend to find something that sparks immediate interest and I find myself doom scrolling. What I thought would just be 10 minutes worth of my time becomes hours on end. The content I find myself getting so distracted with can be absolutely ridiculous. I can doom scroll just reading memes, or watching reels about workspace setups, or even just pet videos! I lose a lot of my time on the internet doing unproductive things.
There are moments when I try to talk myself into not feeling guilty for it - and a very common “go to” reason for me is that I don’t have any other outlet to “relax” or “me time”, and this is it. Because, it’s true that at the moment, my life is just my family and work. I haven’t had a day to myself since becoming mom, and that’s a choice I make everyday, but because of that, I fall into these need of wanting my own time and the internet is the fastest and most convenient place to go.
I’m trying to change how I start my day to set the tone for how productive I can be. Since I’ve been waking up and starting my day early now, I’ve been intentionally questioning myself every time I decide to do something and if the answer to my self leads to either : getting the house clean, personal work/craft in progress, my kids happier, puts me in a better mood, then I’d go for it. I truly see how consistency leads to building habits and habits that become reflex. At times, I think about how much of a productive machine I was back in college and some years after that. I couldn’t not be busy because I’d always try and fill up my schedule with something to just keep me busy. However, it wasn’t the healthiest neither. I was just getting busy for the sake of being busy and I wasn’t growing in any aspect. I was just doing and not learning or thriving but since making the shift to working remotely (back in 2015), I’ve had more time for myself and it’s that era of my life that I miss.
I had no kids, living in my own home, and had time to do and pursue the things I liked to do at the time. It was a time when I did the most self reflection. The peace and tranquility I had allowed me to expand myself and I explored to my capabilities. Now, with kids, it’s been a challenge to even want to explore. I’m so comfortable with not doing anything and mainly because I’m always tired and drained. Though, I do believe that this too shall pass because I still have little ones (3 kids with 2 below 3 years old). So, right now, I try to manage majority of my time and energy towards them. What makes it challenging for me is because I often get this jolt of energy to want to do something productive but I can’t get to it right away. It’s not easy to just drop what I’m doing and go do what I want to do and by the time I might have time for it, the jolt of energy is gone and I just want to lounge about - but because I still want to do something, but have no real energy to do anything, I head for my phone or computer and start draining my eyes with content.
I’m very selective of what I watch or read so I’m really only looking at things I enjoy, which makes it even harder to pull out from! Again, it can be the most ridiculous things but if I like it, I like it, and I’ll keep on it. This is what’s tricky about finding interests on the internet too, because you can really go down a rabbit hole of viewing things because it doesn’t take up that much energy - but it’s oddly draining when you realize how long you’ve been at it!
So I’m trying to a better job at catching myself at the moment and telling myself to just stop. If I feel the need to do something in the moment, perhaps I’ll read a book, or try to sleep, or maybe eat. I’m trying to build the habit of consuming less content and creating more content. I’m thinking of swapping my phone for something that makes me want to use it less so I’m not as easily tempted to go for my phone and scroll through it as much.
Have you ever found yourself in a similar phase in life as me? If you have and have dug yourself out of it, I’d love to hear what you did to build better productive habits :)
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