And then I started to measure?usage

Originally published here - On Medium

Addiction is a psychological and physical inability to stop consuming a chemical, drug, activity, or substance, even though it is causing psychological and physical harm

This is how medical websites define addiction. We’ve heard several stories of prominent celebrities laying their life being addicted to drugs, alcohol etc.

These addictions are well-documented through social documentaries, pop-culture and general perception of society.

While this won’t be yet another article on substance abuse, but rather a take on something which has got several people addicted to it — Technology

Initial signs

With the quarantine period kicking in, a feeling of having all the time ushered over my mind. Unsurprisingly, I’ve list of items pending to be addressed. Few books waiting to be read, a course waiting to be completed and a side project waiting to be completed.

I believed sincerely that reading a few pages of books is decent progress and I’ve been “utilizing” my time kick-starting the above list of items along with others and balancing my work with it.

Few days and weeks passed by with no significant progress in any of the tasks mentioned. The debate to focus on one thing instead of several at once can be contested here, rather I opted for another way of breaking down and analyzing the situation — Usage of Technology.

And then I started to measure usage on Google's Digital Well Being app

Data Speaks

Activating Google’s Digital Well Being app, I generated an insight into the time spent across various apps.

This was the moment of truth!

Below is an illustration of how I spent my time across apps during a day. This depicts one of the better days with around 4 hrs 25 minutes total time spent.

The list of apps was bound to change over time, with few games adding some time and pushing it over 6 hours as well, especially on the weekends.

And the split might be different for certain people. Occasionally reading news articles and tech news pushes Chrome usage, scavenging Instagram and Facebook time.

One a good day, Kindle/Play Books find their way onto the list.

Also, this covers only mobile.

The giants like Netflix, Prime, YouTube haven’t been accounted so far.

Guess what, YouTube adds another 1hour 30 minutes or so. While some of it be songs or commentary in the background, I’m sure active consumption would be easily 1 hour.

Netflix/Prime and other OTT — Depends on if I’m in that watching phase but give it another 1 hour 30 minutes, also football matches — almost 2 hours of it at least once a weekend (Or multiple times in a single week — Thanks Champions League and Europa League? )

Reading blogs, articles across fields could be another 30 minutes or so. Spikes on days of product launches or some sporting annihilation takes place (Hey Barcelona fans)

If there’s a spike in one of the content, it scavenges the other content’s time.

Average consumption on those lines, excluding dedicated office work, across mobile and laptop, stands out easily around 7–8 hours

Classification

While I don’t want to go on a technology bashing, how it got me addicted and all, I’ve decided that yes, Technology has its cons dominated by its pros only if used appropriately.

I went ahead and started to classify further usage patterns.

Social Media — Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin — I’m personally active across these 3 platforms. Some days even twitter joins the party.

Texting apps and conversations were valuable to me to measure usage and try optimize

Once I checked the notifications, and action that notification, I’m usually done with the app. I don’t actively engage with the audience. Rest of the time goes in just scrolling and satisfying the urge to scroll almost indefinitely and falling into the abyss

YouTube — I primarily browse tech reviews, sports-related, infotainment videos and fun clips across movies and shows. I find them integral to who I’m, though I’ve to admit several videos could be skipped. It’s placing a curb on superfluous content that I find crucial

OTT — Ah! Netflix, Prime, Hotstar etc. Usually, watch an episode or two daily and a movie over the weekend. When I start a series, I do go ahead with multiple episodes at once. There’s some sort of mental timer which makes me go, “Ah! Enough of this.” after an hour or two, but that’s unreliable and requires flexible accommodation.

As you notice, most of them are driven by a mental trigger and sucked into an abyss of spending time more than what’s fine even by my standards.

I’ve set my initial goal, not to completely kill these, but to regulate them and fill time with better alternates.

Action Plan

Ever since I got my new mobile and discovered DND, I set it up right away. Life without the “Ting-ting” of notification distracting me was a humble beginning in regulating external trigger. Also disabled most notifications except texts and few apps.

Thanks to Digital well-being app, I set to restrict my social media timings to 20 minutes. That’s almost 70% reduction in usage. Post the 20 minutes, boom the app gets locked. Here’s the tricky part

It’s tougher to control yourself when you have it in your power to unlock app and use it

That’s a mental battle which can be made easier by filling in with alternates. We’ll get to that in a later section.

As I realised that beyond a certain duration all social media is basically scrolling because I can, not because I want. I didn’t even enjoy scrolling after a duration. This prompted me to reduce the time to 10 minutes. Hardly time to check notifications/DMs 2–3 times a day.

One can go a step further and delete for better, or allow only on weekends. 

As mentioned earlier, texting apps were not in my plan to measure usage and optimise — Though I did set a 30 min each limit for a while, only to see it break halfway through my day.

OTT/Youtube I’ve set it at 60 minutes each during the weekend. OTT is a bucket with 1 hour allotted to it because the platform I binge changes over time.

Now what?

Now that you might have estimated, one could potentially save around 2 hours through

I’m sure we have a number of activities which we’ve been postponing for a while, for me, it’s writing this article.

I read several books on mobile — Play Books and Kindle. Now that I’m locked out of other apps, if there is any craving to scroll through (yes, I experience that), then casual reading makes for an engaging, fruitful way to spend time on mobile.

Talking about craving, there’s always the route of logging on to social media websites on the web browsers or the day you post or put up a status, one has a tendency to spend more time interacting with all the texts/reactions. Similar to people on a strict diet, it’s time for a cheat day probably.

The target is not to reduce time spent in a short-term, unsustainable fashion but to improve utilization in a long-term, sustainable manner

So, a gradual decrease in time spent and utilizing it for a better cause and reaping rewards would make it for a satisfying, sustainable loop.

If someone is really interested in a harder challenge, try out the Desert Island app by Google.

As the screenshot depicts, your default launcher is replaced with a set of only 7 apps. Choose wisely. It’s an ultimate tool to test your limits, but I started with the simpler one.

Few similar innovative ideas are in the link in References. Do check them out.

Sometimes I do feel let’s shut all this smartphone world, get stuck with only a keypad phone which can SMS and call. If you’re lucky to have an FM receiver headset, then yes you can listen to the FM Radio.

But we need to acknowledge how much our lives are intertwined with the glass slab in our pockets. It’s all for the good, as long it’s not negatively impacting other aspects of our lives

I won't say that I've completely turned this around, but it's a continuous process.

Hope this blog motivates you to take this journey and improve self.

References:

• https://9to5google.com/2020/01/21/google-digital-wellbeing-apps-android-experiment/