If you're anything like me, you probably have countless ideas and goals and
aspirations that you just can't ever really find the time for. There's so many
different things I want to create, but there's this massive invisible force
that is always trying to squash those aspirations.
Without even trying, we have the potential to be endlessly entertained
for every second of every day. I don't know how it could be possible for anyone
with a smartphone and an internet connection to ever be bored.
If you look at just YouTube specifically, there's 300 hours worth of videos being
uploaded to YouTube every minute. That's 432,000 hours of videos
every day! So you can literally decide you're only gonna watch the videos
posted today on YouTube, and it would take you the next 49 years to finish
them all. Actually, a lot of those probably really suck I'm guessing not all
those are entertaining. Doesn't matter, you get the point. There's a lot of stuff
to entertain you. So this is where my first mantra for success comes in:
Consume less. Create more.
So, for me, this absolutely has meaning in reducing my
physical consumption. I care a lot about reducing needless physical
consumption like plastic bags, to-go cups, and plastic silverware, but for this
video I'm pretty specifically focusing on digital consumption. Since we have
this ability for endless entertainment, I'm a believer that you literally have
to create sanctuaries to protect yourself from this endless stream of
content. Sometimes you're not gonna have the mental energy to just resist
scrolling Instagram or watching Netflix or YouTube, so you have to create rules
for yourself ahead of time so that when you don't have a lot of mental energy
you're still able to keep up with your goals. So I've got five quick things that
I've implemented into my life that I've seen massive benefit from already.
The first one is disabling autoplay. This is something I'm weirdly passionate
about because that feature drives me nutsm where you'll finish an episode on
Netflix and of course it's Netflix so it's a cliffhanger of an ending and it
automatically starts playing the next episode and next thing you know you've
binge-watched every single episode of the entire series. Now, if you want to binge
watch every single episode of Stranger Things in one sitting,
go for it! You should do that, but I just think I want to be the one that's
choosing the next episode every time and saying "yes, I want to watch another
episode" I don't want Netflix just showing it to
me and sucking me in to watch another one. The second tip is "downtime hours."
I don't really know, I'm sure Android has something equivalent or at least an app
or something I just am only familiar with the iOS feature, but the idea is for me
I use "down time" so that an hour before I go to bed and two hours after I wake up
my phone isn't able to get any notifications, I'm not able to open any
apps nothing. So essentially my phone is useless in those hours. That's really
important to me because I don't want to be waking up to notifications and having
my phone dictate the first thing I think about in the morning. I want my
imagination to be able to just go wild in the morning. I want to be able to just
think clearly, have creative thoughts, and get the day started without all of the
distractions and the noise. And then same thing for that hour before I go to bed, I
usually just kind of write down some thoughts or read a book, I don't
want to be scrolling social media or watching a TV show as I'm falling asleep.
Third is the "screen time" feature. again another iOS feature but I'm sure there's
equivalents. This is similar to the last one but you set up time limits for each
of your apps so you can decide, I only want to spend a half an hour a day on
Instagram, you set that up so that your phone detects once you've used 30
minutes of Instagram it shuts it down and you're not allowed to open it
anymore. This is a sweet feature because it's
like you realize that you're literally spending time on these apps.
You only have an allocated amount of time, say 30 minutes for Instagram, that
you're able to spend. So when you open Instagram you're thinking "do I actually
want to be spending my 30 minutes on this right now?" So it forces you to just
be more intentional about how and when you're using those apps. The next tip
you've probably heard before, maybe you've already done it, but it's just
disabling all notifications. Every time you get a new app, it's gonna default to
giving you all these pointless notifications that you don't need, and
for me personally, I don't want any notifications on my phone for anything
other than people calling me, texting me, and calendar notifications. So that's
all I have set up on my phone. Other than that I don't want my phone
disturbing me if I have a like or comment on Instagram or a YouTube
comment, nothing like that. And so then again, you're choosing the window that
you want to spend time on Instagram instead of your phone notifying you and
sucking you into the app. And then the last one is just choose one day a week
that's completely free of social media. It's crazy how much lighter you feel and
more creative you feel doing this, and depending how addicted you are to some of
these apps, it feels a little weird at first. But it's been so good for me to
implement that one day a week, and you just kind of feel lighter and freer and
you're not as influenced by all of these things you're seeing and you kind of
just have more natural creative thoughts when you do that. So I know I'm focusing
a lot on the "consume less" part of this mantra, but that's because that's the hard part!
I think that we're all naturally creative and we're driven by wanting to
make things and build things and be productive. I think that's our natural
state, but we have to give our brain the space to be creative and to be
productive. If we're always filling it with digital content, it's not gonna have
the time or the capacity to just wander and come up with creative thoughts and
new ideas and motivation. When I implement all of these tips in my life
and I'm giving my my mind that time to think in the morning and the evening, I
literally can't help but come up with ideas. I get so many ideas of things
I want to make and it gives me the time to actually start making those things.
In the end, consumption gets in the way of creativity. Consumption is literally the
opposite of creation! So for me, I care about creating things, I care about
making things, so I have to consume less to do that. So those are just some ideas
and some things that I've implemented into my life to consume less digital
content and to free up room in my brain for creativity and productivity. So let
me know if you have any other ideas of ways that you've found to reduce your
digital consumption and to free up room for creativity, I'd love to hear your
thoughts as always! Maybe just turn off autoplay right now so that another video
doesn't play after this automatically and you can decide if you want to play
another video or not. But that's all I've got
thanks for watching, I really appreciate it, and I'll see you next time