I stopped using social media before 12:00pm for 30 days

I thought social media would have the answer to my problems.

I hoped it would be there in a tweet or a YouTube video. Experts on business or personal development would have the answer waiting for me.

I never found it.

I also watched videos of people going on an adventure, or watching their busy and productive day doing fun things.

August was approaching and I realized I had wasted seven months and I was worse off than when the year started.

I had been digging a hole for myself all year.

I was tired of hearing myself complain all the time.

I hated how I felt every day. I hated the thoughts I always had.

I felt so exhausted from it. So I decided to stop digging.

August 1st would be a good time to try something new. See what I could do to at least make some progress out of this hole. Look up for once instead of always looking down.

Without needing to do a deep analysis of what was wasting my time and hurting me, I knew it was social media.

Personal development is an experiment. You take what you learn and you apply it to your life and see if helps or not.

I wanted to see what would happen.

Do different things and get different results.

I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I believe how you start your day is important. My days started with social media.

I’m more productive earlier in the day so I wanted to protect that time.

Some people are night owls. I’m not. By the evening, my willpower has drained and it’s not good for creative or deep work.

Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram are the three apps I use the most in that order. I don’t spend much time on TikTok, Threads, or Facebook so they aren’t a problem for me.

I didn’t delete apps from my phone. I know that’s a common strategy but I wanted to be in control.

If the apps weren’t on my phone and I was tempted, I’d just open the browser and log in.

So all the apps stayed on my phone, but a question I asked myself helped me stay committed.

If I didn’t have a strong reason why, then it’d be hard for me to be committed.

If I only wanted to quit social media because that’s the trendy thing to do these days, then that’s not a strong reason why.

It’s like making a goal to lose weight starting January 1. We’d love for that to happen, but why?

Those without a strong reason why quit by February.

Finding my why helped me:

• I wanted to improve my life.

• I wanted to remove things that didn’t make me feel good about myself.

• I wanted to make time for things that would help me.

• I wanted to have more time to read, think and write.

• I wanted to calm down my mind.

• I wanted life to be better on the outside and I knew I had to change on the inside first.

• I wanted to not feel terrible every day.

A strong why will push you through those times when motivation is low and you feel like wanting to give up.

Another helpful question I asked myself.

Nothing was there that couldn’t wait till later in the day. Nothing needed my immediate attention.

• I didn’t need to know what other people were doing.

• I didn’t need more life or business advice.

• I didn’t need tips on writing better.

• I didn’t need to know what was going viral.

• I didn’t need to know where strangers were vacationing.

• I didn’t need to keep checking in case a great idea or life-changing advice was waiting for me.

We will not be on our deathbed thinking, “I wish I had spent more time on social media.”

It’ll be the opposite.

We wish we had started a side hustle, written more, started a new hobby, pursued a personal goal, exercised for better health, or spent more time with people who mattered to us.

We will wish we spent more time doing things that bring us joy.

Removing a bad habit isn’t enough. It has to be filled with something positive otherwise there’s all this free time with nothing to do.

Imagine our brains are a glass bowl. Every morning it’s empty.

What we fill it up with will determine our thoughts, our feelings, and what we do.

If we fill it with dirty nasty water, then that is the type of thoughts, feelings, and actions we take.

What’s the source of dirty water? Social media, the news, being around people who drain our energy, and negative self-talk.

Instead, we can fill it up with clean water and that’s what I did.

• Reading

• Writing

• Visualizing

• Gratitude

• Exercise

I began to read non-fiction books first thing in the morning for 30-45 minutes.

Best books I read:

• The Mountain is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery by Brianna Wiest

• The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy (as of now it’s free for Kindle)

I could have made a simple goal to read five minutes to ensure I achieved it, but knowing myself I would get to ten minutes and feel that since I doubled my goal I was okay to stop.

I didn’t want that.

I wanted to train my brain to focus longer. I wanted to feed my mind with lots of clean water every morning.

After reading, I would write. If I had a topic I wanted to get out of my head I’d write that. If not, I would journal.

Then I spend 10 minutes lying on the floor and doing a visualization and affirmation exercise.

After the timer goes off, I end it by thinking of three people or things in my life I’m grateful for. I express how grateful I am through my feelings.

Then I change and go to the gym or go on a run in my neighborhood.

I did this every single day in August. No mornings off.

Mentally I feel so much better. I’m more hopeful about my future. I’m thinking better. I feel more calm despite the big questions in my life still unanswered.

It feels good to spend time for myself before I open myself to distractions that aren’t urgent.

I cringe at the version of myself before I began.

I would not want to be around him now. He constantly drained my energy.

Looking overall at the month, I’ve made progress.

Day to day it’s been good days and bad days. That’s to be expected. Change is never easy.

I journaled daily to track my thoughts and feelings.

This is what I wrote in the morning on day seven.

(I’ve used the Day One journaling app for many years.)

This doesn’t mean this good feeling has become permanent.

The next morning I wrote about my old feelings coming back. I woke up with a sense of worry for no reason except that it’s how I’ve felt for so long.

There were many days when I wrote that I didn’t feel like I was making progress.

I could feel my brain wanting to go back to my old identity where it’s been so comfortable.

There is more reprogramming that still needs to be done.

But if I cringe at my old self, then I know I’m making progress.

On the outside, everything looks the same, but on the inside, I’m much more at peace with the journey I’m on.

There’s more faith that everything will work out. That’s the complete opposite of how felt during my darkest times this year.

If I didn’t cut out social media before noon, I would not have the time and mental space to allow for changes.

As for what else I’ve achieved for August:

• Finished five non-fiction books. I read more last month than I have the previous 12 months combined.

• Published five stories on Substack. In January and February, I published four stories in total.

Had a great question from Katherine Libonate in the comments section from Mika ‘s Substack.

I had to think about it and don’t recall any strong emotions when I did check.

There was no sense of relief.

There wasn’t a single time when I was staring at the clock counting the seconds before it was noon.

(Unlike when I do 36-48 hour fasts I’ll count down the seconds before I can eat.)

I often wouldn’t check till late afternoon because I hadn’t even thought of checking.

I still use social media, but my usage is way down. When I do use it, I will still often feel like I spent too much time on it.

But I’m glad that happens much later instead of the first part of my day.

I’m not going to pretend I was perfect the last 30 days. I slipped up but it wasn’t the end of the world.

One morning on my phone I found someone’s Substack profile through their notes. Their profile had a link to their Instagram account.

I clicked on it, viewed their profile, and then clicked to go to my main feed and started scrolling.

After five seconds, I realized what I was doing.

I was on Instagram and scrolling!

I quickly closed the app.

It’s crazy how we go on autopilot. We grab our phones and use social media without even thinking.

If I hadn’t snapped out of it, I would have kept scrolling.

I didn’t beat myself up over it. I didn’t tell myself I might as well quit cause I wasn’t perfect.

I just continued with my reading.

It was a great lesson in how programmed we’ve become to using our phones and social media.

It’s been going so well that I’m going to continue it.

I didn’t know what benefits I would get from it except having more free time. I’m happy I decided to experiment.

If you’ve always wanted to try cutting back on social media and haven’t yet, take this as a sign to finally give it a try.

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