How To Stop Doomscrolling
During Liz Truss sudden yet unsurprising resignation I found myself being utterly distracted from the tasks I needed to get on with that day. No matter what I did I felt compelled to open up Twitter to read people’s takes on Liz Truss, her leadership and who is in the running to replace her. Will it be Rishi Sunak? Will Boris make a return? Mordaunt or maybe another outsider? WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger were exploding with memes and hot takes on the Conservative Party.
Were in the midst of an energy crisis. Living costs spiralling out of control. Government in tatters. Climate disasters. The war in Ukraine. Anxiety inducing.
I felt angry, I felt tired.
Later on in the day I reflected on how I felt having absorbed all of that information. While a lot of it was interesting, I was also aware of how little of it made a material difference to my life in the here and now. The resignation of a prime minister to be replaced with yet another makes little to no difference to my life, yet I allowed this breaking news story to completely derail my working day and my state of mind. The 24 hour news cycle is addictive, especially to someone like myself who does have an active interest in politics and current affairs. yet I shouldn’t allow it to hold such a spell over my ability to be productive or my general mood.
A few years back I made a conscious effort to rethink what type of content I wanted to see on my newsfeeds. I consciously unfollowed pundits, muted keywords, unsubscribed from newsletters and tailored my feeds to be more focused on things that would lead to personal growth. Over time, especially since the pandemic gripped us all, I’ve allowed those things to creep back into my feed. Slowly but surely they have taken over and driven out all the things I actually want to see.
I want to see cool and interesting things. I want to see my friends and family doing cool and interesting things. I don’t want or need to see the Westminster noise or the latest updates on global events. While interesting, they don’t materially make my life a better place.
Therefore I am going to take a step back and re-evaluate my relationship with social media. In particular Twitter, but also Reddit, YouTube and Instagram.
Taking Back Control
If you’re systematic about this, it’s actually pretty easy to reconfigure your feeds to show content you actually want to see.
My approach is as follows:
- Open up my following list.
- Start at the top of the list and check out the first account you’re following
- Does this account tweet or post things that are relating to topics I no longer want to see?
- If Yes, unfollow.
- Am I actually interested in this account any more?
- If No, unfollow.
If you’re not sure on whether to follow or unfollow, my suggestion is always to unfollow. I like to invoke the Hell Yeah or No principle when it comes to this. Hell Yeah or No was popularised by Derek Sivers who said if an opportunity doesn’t make you want to say ‘Hell Yeah’ then it’s a no. By saying no to almost everything, you leave space and time in your life to throw yourself completely into the few things that matter most.
This applies just as much to social media as it does to other things. Saying yes to certain opportunities means spending our time on those opportunities, you don’t have time for everything. When it comes to social media, you want to ensure you’re getting the most joy and value out of it in as little time as possible. So if their content doesn’t make you want to say hell yes I want to see that in my newsfeed, then it’s time to say goodbye and unfollow.
It’s only by taking a step back and re-evaluating how we use these platforms that we will be able to break free from wasting so much of our time doomscrolling. The best bit is it’s surprisingly easy to take back control, the most difficult step is actually just becoming aware of what’s happening to you in the first place.
Tom