How to fight the algorithm that plays with your attention

I reduced the time spent on social media from 2-3 hours a day to 1 hour a week. The result? I’ve never felt better!

This introduction might sound like one of those typical guru slogans where I end up trying to sell you a ground-breaking system to boost your productivity and become rich by working 13 minutes a day.

The truth is, I didn’t realize how cumbersome or addictive social media was until I tried to free myself from it. It all started with a book: Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.

Digital Decluttering

To make the reader experience the complete digital minimalism concept, Cal proposes a 30-day experiment in which you take a break from non-essential technologies. A technology is defined as superfluous if stopping using it does not harm your personal or professional life.

Despite it being only a month-long experiment, we must be honest with ourselves to do it effectively.

After the filtering, our technological break officially begins. Cal encourages us to try out activities and behaviors that we find fulfilling and meaningful. The set of these activities is highly subjective. Some people like to read, others want to study, while others prefer being more manual or creative, such as painting or photography.

The key point is to rediscover what it means to stimulate your brain, moving from a pleasant but passive activity to a concretely active one. And why not maybe even rediscover what it means to be bored?

At the end of the break, we are free to reintroduce optional technologies starting from scratch. For each technology, the goal is to identify what value it offers and how to use it to optimize that value.

Cal also emphasizes that we must reintroduce only the technologies that support things that we attribute a deep value to; some benefits are not enough. For example, if I find that YouTube helps my professional growth, then it’s good to bring it back into my digital life.

Best Practices

In addition to the experiment, which I found very useful for understanding how pervasive technologies are in our lives, Cal lists a series of best practices aimed at obtaining a less sterile approach to things and staying in control of our time.

First of all, we should leave nothing to chance. The more we organize our time, the better we can manage it. Having a plan helps us stay more focused and not waste precious hours. Even low-quality free time (such as scrolling through social media) is no exception: planning when and how much we want to dedicate to this activity is key to being in control of our time.

The most important advice, however, is to uninstall social media from your phone.

The last two tips regarding being less sterile are:

• Don’t like posts/messages, but prefer conversations instead of single bits of information
• Choose slow media from quality sources (e.g., a reliable journalism website, instead of reading news on social networks).

If we’ve done everything correctly, then we’ll be free! But is it that easy? Yes and no.

How did it go practically?

Once I finished reading the book, I immediately set to work to start the 30-day experiment. I uninstalled the technologies I deemed superfluous, and, unsurprisingly, social media were the first ones.

We need to realize that even if we feel connected with following and followers, in reality, only those truly close to us in the physical world matter. Everything else is FOMO.

In addition, I kept both WhatsApp and email as they are deeply rooted in my life: most conversations take place through these two technologies, both private (partner, family, or friend groups) and public (interfacing with the outside world).

These 30 days were incredibly fulfilling. Once the month was over, I re-installed the social apps (Instagram specifically) because I felt confident that I would have been able to manage my time in the same way as before. In no time, I returned to old habits; unfortunately, you can’t escape the algorithm that plays with our attention.

At this point, however, I had a concrete example to refer to for comparing my time during and after the (in)famous 30 days. And I liked it much more while I was experimenting with it.

Moreover, despite what I wrote about FOMO, part of the relationship with friends now develops on social networks. Sending each other videos/posts to laugh at asynchronously is quite common, so you still risk missing out on something.

I tried various strategies, including disabling notifications and setting a time limit for the app (both iOS and Android allow this). Nothing worked; muscle memory prevailed, and every time I was checking the phone for any reason, I ended up on Instagram. “Just 5 minutes”, I was telling myself, and instead, half an hour passed.

Tired of the situation, I decided to try a hybrid approach: install the app on Saturday morning and uninstall it on Sunday evening. The basic idea was to focus more during the week and allow me some leisure time during the weekend, connecting with friends in our favorite digital world.

It worked! 🎉

The positive results were immediately visible: the level of concentration was higher, both during and outside working hours. Apart from the very early days, it didn’t take long before I wasn’t interested in picking up where I left off.

Time spent outside social media is much more quality time. I rediscovered the pleasure of reading, I started following a reading club on the Feynman Lectures, I resumed playing seriously on the PlayStation, and many other things. And yes, playing Playstation can also be defined as quality time because I decided to do it and not be subjected to it!

Currently, I install Instagram only on Sundays and generally dedicate 60-90 minutes to it at most. I catch up with friends’ messages and have a look at new posts/stories. That’s it.

Conclusions

What I just described might seem exaggerated, but I assure you it wasn’t easy. We always believe we can manage the threat of social media to our time (and if you can, well done! You have my respect!), but in no time, we waste hours watching funny and silly videos.

The proposed solution works very well for me, but for someone else, it may be completely useless. Reading the book from Cal Newport is undoubtedly a great starting point.

In summary, my digital minimalism experiment allowed me to rediscover the value of time and engage in activities that enrich my life in ways that social media absolutely can’t do. I improved my concentration, found more time for hobbies and passions, and established a healthier relationship with technology.