I spend a lot of time on my phone and on screens in general
Technology has made my life so much better like it's hard to imagine what life would be like without
you know digital technology and the internet but, you know, recently kind of in the past few months, after reading some books and some studies
I've started to kind of think about some of the negative effects that
technology might be having in my life and I've made a few videos about this
But I've also started to kind of just run experiments in my life with limiting technology in some way, and this video is about one of those experiments,
but before I get too much into it,
I'd just like to thank the sponsor of this video-Audible.
So I used to use my phone as an alarm clock and you know, a lot of people do this
it's really convenient if you have to plug your phone in anyway
So you might as well just have it on as an alarm clock, but the problem with this at least for me,
is that every morning when I woke up and I turned off my alarm,
I'll see a bunch of notifications,
and those notifications would immediately draw me in and I just then spend
you know the first 10 20 30 minutes my day on my phone,
dealing with notifications,
and also just generally scrolling through social media and over time this became a habit to the point where when I woke up my first instinct was
check Instagram,check Twitter, etc
Now, I don't think that this has been bad for me in that
You know ever mean generally mentally healthy and generally happy
But what I do think spending these first 20 minutes or so of my day on my phone does is
it kind of sets a tone for the rest of my day,
which is that if I spent the first 20 minutes of my day on my phone,
I'm more likely to spend the rest of my day on my phone as well
Every time I get a little bit of free time, I'm more likely to pull out my phone and again
I don't think that spending time with my phone is bad. I do a lot of good things in my phone
I talked to a lot of friends
I stay up-to-date. Like like I said, I love technology, but I want to be in control of my relationship with technology
I don't want it to be a compulsive urge to check my phone
I want it to be an option that I have because there are other things that I want to do in my free time too
and I'm pretty sure a lot of people out there like me. So recently what I've started doing is super easy, right?
I just don't pick up my phone for half an hour after I wake up
I bought an alarm clock online for like five dollars and now I just use that and I spend the start of my mornings quietly
Now recently,
what I've started doing which I which I really like is to replace that time that I'd be spending on my phone
with a quieter activity kind of
realizing that that first 20 minutes of the day sets the tone for the rest of the day and rather than setting kind of a
chaotic noisy tone. I'm setting a quieter more relaxed one. So usually this is me reading, sometimes listening to a podcast, or an audiobook,
meditation.I've tried all these things in the morning and they all generally have the same effect.
Now, I'm not a morning person by any means right like like most teenagers
I have a very hard time getting anything of value done in the morning. I'm not a 5:00 a.m,
You know school routine type person, that's not me. I you know try to wake up as late as possible in school days
I really struggle with nine am classes. They're by far my worst classes. It takes me a few hours to get rolling
So this is not that right like this is not focused creative work. Your brain doesn't have to be on for this stuff
This is literally just like hey brain, like welcome to the real world again
Reading five ten pages and you know 10 20 minutes, whatever
It's pretty relaxed, but it does set a quieter tone
So all that I do, I wake up grab a book,
read for five ten minutes,and
then I'll go have a shower and brush my teeth have some breakfast, and then I'll grab my phone, and then I'll check my messages
But at this point the tone for the day has already been set
It's kind of a quiet calm dead
And you know at first this was uncomfortable for me, right?
but but I think part of what made it less uncomfortable is realizing that nobody really cares if I get back to them like if
someone texted me overnight
No, they won't really care if I text them
you know thirty minutes after I wake up like they don't know that I'm awake and
It's not like anything on Instagram or Twitter is going anywhere. It's not like the news is gonna change in those thirty minutes
Nothing's happening. Right? It's it's 30 minutes from you know, 8:00 to 8:30 or 9:00 to 9:30 or whatever, right?
Like nothing important in the world is happening in those moments, but by exposing yourself to these messages into these notifications,etc
It's kind of setting the tone of your day to be whatever
Instagram wants it to be instead of whatever you want it to be and so for me
Most of my days I like to be kind of quiet and calm and relaxed. I don't want this chaos all the time
And so I set the tone of my day to be like that rather than to be the chaos that Instagram provides
So if you're like me then maybe try it out. It could be good for you. It'll be uncomfortable at first
For a while. I mean it still is relatively uncomfortable for me and I've been doing it for a few weeks now
But I think if you stick with it over time, you'll definitely see some benefits
So now I'd like to thank the sponsor this video-audible
I've been using audible for almost a year now and it has been great. I love listening to audiobooks,
you know when I'm walking when I'm commuting, when I'm traveling or sometimes when I'm getting ready in the morning
Now audible has the biggest audio book library in the world and in my experience all of the
audiobooks I've listened to in the almost year that I've been on the service, have been incredibly well read and well recorded
They're all really high-quality. Now this past week, I just finished an amazing little novel called The Alchemist
It's widely considered one of the best, you know little stories about following your dreams and it's available on audible
So if you want to check it out, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial of audible by going to audible.com/johnfish
or texting code to JOHNFISH to 500-500. What this will give you is a credit for any audiobook in there super large library
so you could listen to, for example,
the alchemist plus 2 credits for
what are called audible originals which are original pieces of audio content recorded by audible
So you get three free pieces of content with your 30-day free trial if you go to audible.com/johnfish
or you text code JOHNFISH to 500-500. So thank you for watching this video
Feel free to let me know
you know what you thought about about needing to like or dislike maybe a comment below and you know
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Thanks for watching. I'll see you shortly