Hello Time Dorks!
Connor here.
I just got back from Barcelona where I was recording a live podcast for the Three Points Podcast by People Playbook. The conversation was around “High Performance”, and we talked about the power of doing less, taking time to recharge, and the magic of one thing at a time. I’ll share the link when it’s ready.
I’m hosting a free workshop next week on Wednesday, October 23rd exploring distraction and how to adjust your devices and apps so you can find Laser mode.
👉 Register here to join, I’d love to have you there!
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Something to Try (Together)
This past week was World Mental Health Day, and it inspired me to check in with some of my own habits and behaviors, particularly around my information consumption.
We all know our diets have a impact on our physical health, and increasingly people are understanding they have a big impact on our mental health.
But what do we consume more than anything else?
Content.
We live in the Information Age.
The average person spends 82 hours per week consuming information, which is almost 90x more than a person in 1940. 🤯
And if you feel overwhelmed or like you’ve lost your ability to focus, having a look at your information diet is a great place to start.
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When it comes to cleaning up your information diet, the best place to start is with with Infinity Pools, those always-on, effectively infinite sources of information and entertainment.
Things like:
- Pull-to-refresh apps (Instagram, Gmail, Apple News, etc)
- Video streaming services (YouTube, Netflix, HBO, etc)
- Even web browsers (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, etc), which provide on-demand access to pretty much all the information in the world
We call them “Infinity Pools” because you can dip back in at any time. There’s always more water in the pool.
I’ve been personally experimenting with moderating, blocking, and deleting these Infinity Pools for the past 8 years, often with great success.
And yet, these sneaky little distractions often wiggle their way back into my life, which is kind of embarrassing to admit, given I teach others about this stuff for a living.
But it’s true!
I install Gmail while on a work trip, and I don’t bother deleting it when I’m home.
I check a breaking news story on Safari, and then find myself refreshing and reading headlines throughout the day.
I sit down at the end of a long day to relax with a documentary on YouTube, but find myself watching video after video, well past my bedtime.
Whenever this happens, I try to avoid too much self-criticism and blame, and remind myself that thousands of extremely bright and brilliant people are designing these apps to be fun, frictionless…and a little addicting.
Then, I like to do a little reset.
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It was almost exactly a year ago when I found myself in a similar headspace, hooked to the headlines and constantly filling the silent moments of life with a podcast.
So I called my brother, and asked if he wanted to run an experiment.
We’d go 5 days without any content.
- No TV
- No news
- No articles
- No podcasts
- No social media
It would be like a mini-detox from the Information Age.
What was allowed (in terms of content)?
We’d still use email and whatever else was needed for our jobs, but when it came to our downtime, we’d be limited to books, boredom, or talking to another human.
After the experiment was complete, I felt so calm and grounded that I kept going for a couple more weeks
By the end of the experiment, I had come back to a healther, more sane relationship with my information diet.
It was such a nice reset that I want to do it again.
This time, I thought it’d be fun to extend the invite to readers of this newsletter.
Announcing “The 5-Day Digital Reset Challenge” 🎉
Here’s the deal: making these changes by yourself can be hard, so this challenge is all about having some support at your side.
We’ll start a week from today, on Monday, October 21st.
You can personalize this challenge however you see fit, but I’ve come up with a three suggestions you might try:
Level 1: Delete the most distracting app from your phone
Level 2: Only access Infinity Pools (email, news, social) on your laptop
Level 3: No digital content for the full 5 days
Sound fun?
This is the first time we’ve done something like this with our community, so let’s see how it goes…
| Click here to join the challenge |
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Something to Check Out
David Perell published a beautiful new website to celebrate great writing called Writing Examples. It’s a treat to explore for the writing and web design nerds amongst us.
Thanks for reading!
— Connor
