Discomfort Academy #86
We Are So Back, Disconnecting From Social Media, Why Talent Doesn't Matter, No Buy Year
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We Are So Back, Baby!
Hope you all are doing well! I’m going to be way more honest here than I’m comfortable with, so strap yourself in!
It’s been a while since my last post, and I don’t really have a great excuse for it. Life sure has become more complicated and busy than ever with a baby, a family and a house to take care of but if I’m truly honest, I’ve just been beaten by Resistance.
I’ve been using my free time to play video games, watch YouTube videos, on Social Media, and other activities of similar vein. It’s not easy to make yourself do hard things after a full day full of work, house chores and spending time with the baby. These all are fulfilling activities, don’t get me wrong, but they are eating away at the self-discipline and willpower throughout the day so it’s more difficult to make myself work on personal projects in the evenings. It’s easier to rationalize one more day of “I’m just going to play something on PS5 for a bit and go to sleep, I’m so tired already”. The longer I put off writing a post here the more awkward and difficult it gets to do it. Nothing gets done that way. Not making progress on my work (in a sense of a calling, not job) is eating away at me every day, even when all the other things are great. I always say I’m like a writer who doesn’t write.
One great thing that my wife and I did this year (from Jan 1st) was to start exercising regularly. Throughout my life I’ve always struggled with that; running worked best for me but I wasn’t consistent with it, with bursts of activity at various times of the year and nothing the rest of the time. What worked for me was joining F45 - a franchise chain of gyms that focuses on functional training in groups. The best I can describe it is: “CrossFit Light”. (more on this in the next post) It’s been a game changer and I think the habit of exercising is pushing me to change other areas of my life I’ve been having the hardest time changing.
One of the most important ones is Discomfort Academy. I have a strong long-term vision for it but Resistance was too strong to let me move forward with these plans and ideas.
No Longer! It is my promise to you that starting with this issue, I’m going to write and send one every two weeks with no more breaks. I’m also planning to finally add a blog where the topics like the one below (about Social Media) will go, as well as get back to filming YouTube videos. Stay Tuned and thank you for sticking with me.
Disconnecting From Social Media
In the past year I’ve slowly been distancing myself from Social Media. The main reasons are:
It’s a huge time suck.
As a father with a full time job and loads of other responsibilities it’s very difficult to find spare time to work on important projects and activities, but somehow I’ve still managed to waste loads of time on Instagram and Reddit.It’s a distraction, a displacement activity.
I don’t open Instagram because I’m really interested in updates from my friends (between the reels and ads IG doesn’t really show you much of your friends’ content anyways). I open it because I’m bored, not fully present in what I’m doing at the time or avoiding more important tasks. That’s not how I want to spend my time.
Some apps were really easy to give up, like TikTok (which I never really gotten into) and Facebook. I haven’t given up Twitter but have become much less active on it and removed the app from my phone.
Here’s how I cured myself of the Instagram addiction.
I’ve previously tried to have a schedule where I’d log out for the week and only check it once on the weekend, but it was too easy to slide back to using it without limitations after, and that happened multiple times despite my best intentions.
I don’t think it makes sense to delete an account entirely as I have a lot of connections there that I otherwise will lose and it also contains somewhat of a photo album of my twenties that I’ve spent in Canada. So I thought, how can I effectively limit it without completely erasing my profile?
This year (from Jan 1 as part of my yearly goals/resolutions) I’ve decided that instead of once every week, I’d only log into Instagram once every quarter to respond to any messages, do a quick catch-up of the people I know, and post a “photo dump” of 10 or so photos for the quarter as one post. I can go back to that post in the future if I want to and it will serve as an update to everyone I know so they can see what I’m generally up to and that I’m still alive haha.
To my surprise, it worked. As of this writing, I yet have to log in and post the photo dump for the 1st quarter but something always comes up and I keep postponing it. I never thought it would be as easy as it was for me to stop using IG on a daily basis, especially given my struggles to do so in the past.
So take that how you will, as they say: YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), but if you are interested in “unplugging”, experiment with something like that and see how it goes. Go with an open mind and don’t be too harsh on yourself if you get back on IG (or whatever the Social Media app is that is giving you trouble). Change takes longer than we tend to think.
On Change
What I found is, for me personally, trying to change something feels like being stuck in a loop: you try to change for a week or two, then get pulled back by the forces of inertia and the gravity of your mental “mold”. However, that’s what we see when we’re too close to the problem. There’s other forces at work that are only visible when looking from a bird’s eye view. Slowly, but surely you as a person are changing toward what you’re putting effort into. If you walk three steps forward and then two back, keep doing that and you’ll eventually get somewhere new. “It’s not a loop, it’s a spiral.” (Hey, an Alan Wake reference!)
I still struggle with Reddit. I remove it from my phone and end up re-downloading it a couple of days later. It’s easier to rationalize it compared to IG: Reddit is based on what I said I’m interested in, the subreddits on the subjects that perfectly match my interests, like say PersonalFinanceCanada. In general, the content I am reading there is way more useful, fun and educational than on other Social Media platforms. Despite that fact, I spend way too much time there; time that I am losing and never getting back. So this will be my next target for elimination (or at least, for radical reduction).
Tip: If your hangup is that Social Media is important because you need to be on top of everything that’s going on in your network, think of whether you can remember what you were looking at or reading there about a week ago. If it doesn’t stick, is it worth spending as much time on it as we do?
Another tip: What works for me is removing these apps from my phone. Even if I am logged in into them on the laptop, I find that I don’t get lost in them there - it’s easier to open up a tab, look up whatever I’m looking for and close it. Not so with the phone, the perfect slot machine. Often I open my phone to look up something specific and get lost in the apps and distractions, forgetting why I opened it up in the first place.
Get your life back from the slot machines built to steal it.
Videos
Win The WAR of ART & Unlock Your Creative Potential | Steven Pressfield & André Duqum
I’ve been holding onto this video to share here for the longest time. If you are in any creative pursuit, you absolutely must watch this interview of Steven Pressfield. One of the best videos I’ve watched last year, period. The amount of wisdom there is unmatched! If you’re stuck and can’t find a way to move forward, this video will help.
The Perks of Living Without Social Media | Cal Newport
Continuing on the topic I’ve started above, here’s Cal with more benefits of disconnecting.
My No Buy Year – Quitting Spending Money for a Year | Cinzia DuBois
One of my favourite strategies for reducing expenses is doing a what’s known as a No Buy (sometimes Low Buy). It’s a fun experiment that you yourself define the parameters of. The main idea of it is to eliminate or drastically reduce all the spending that’s not absolutely necessary. It doesn’t have to be a year, or even a month. For your first No Buy I’d recommend aiming for a week and seeing how it goes. Very illuminating.
There are many videos on this topic on YouTube, but I really liked Cinzia’s take on it for its transparency and how down to earth it is. Enjoy!
You Are Organizing Your House Wrong | Gabe Bult
Gabe shares some quick, easy to implement tips on how to organize your space so that it brings you more joy and reduces the stress of everyday life. In true Gabe’s fashion, sprinkled with a healthy dose of minimalism.
Featured Tweet
Ethos
Quotes
“Most people never pick up the phone, most people never ask. And that’s what separates, sometimes, the people that do things from the people that just dream about them. You gotta act. And you gotta be willing to fail.”
— Steve Jobs
“We are always getting ready to live, but never living.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you really think about it, hitting the snooze button in the morning doesn’t even make sense. It’s like saying “I hate getting up in the morning, so I do it over, and over, and over again.”
— Demetri Martin
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Stay discomfy,
Alex Kallaway
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