My Week Off Social Media:

How I Started My Undistracted Life

The title alone of this makes it sound as if taking a week off social media is the equivalent to summer vacation or some other 6th grade essay prompt. But rather than “What I Did On My Summer Break,” I’m writing “What I Did On My Instagram Break”. The ironic part is that the two - summer break and instagram break - aren’t that different from each other. They both provide respite and a slow-down. And after a whirlwind December, that was exactly what I needed.

Before we get in to what I did (or didn’t do) without social media, it’s important to understand how I used social media. Not only do I use Instagram for pleasure and to fill in the lulls of my day, I also use it for my job and an income. So I am on the app A LOT. I have been fairly good at setting boundaries with it - for instance, I put my phone away at night to just enjoy time with my husband after our kids go down for bed. At the beginning of 2021, I had gotten very good about not looking at my phone first thing in the morning, but that habit faded away seemingly unnoticed sometime in March.

It’s important to note that I don’t think social media is bad. I’m not one of those people who thinks it’s a terrible tool that the government and advertisers use to track our behavior (it very may well be, but have at it, Big Brother, while you see just how many times I purchase things from Amazon). The thing with social media, for me, is that it was my go-to distraction tool. Have five minutes before pick up? Scroll. Hate folding clothes and want to avoid the task? Scroll. Open my phone to email or text someone and see a notification? Forget what I’m doing and scroll.

The distraction of scrolling Instagram made me even me more distracted in other areas of life. It would send me down several different rabbit holes and trains of thought until by the end of my busy day, after posting links and shuttling kids, scrolling and scrolling, my brain was left fried and frazzled. I was doing less writing and opening more browser tabs. I would forget words to common items. I would look at my husband while he was talking to me, but really would be adding to the running list in my head of things to do. The constant influx of new topics, new pretty things, new accounts I followed, new DMs, new funny videos were all leaving me mentally exhausted and completely DISTRACTED.

A huge tool to my social media detox was the book Indistractable by Nir Eyal. In his book, the author explains how and why we get distracted (spoiler alert: it’s to escape pain / doing something we dislike) and tools we can use to reframe and retrain our thoughts to overcome distraction. I appreciated that he didn’t just advocate quitting social media altogether, because if you remove one distraction, you just replace it with another. He writes,

“Unless we deal with the root causes of our distraction, we’ll continue to find ways to distract ourselves. Distraction, it turns out, isn’t about the distraction itself; rather, it’s about how we respond to it.” -Nir Eyal, Indistractable

His book and my week offline have changed the way I view my habits and my will power.

As I read Mr. Eyal’s book, I realized that the main trigger for my distraction is during Liminal Moments, or transitions from one thing to the other throughout the day. As a mom with two small children, it feels like I have many, many liminal moments during my day. I have a hard time beginning tasks because I know I’ll be needed shortly so I just sit and wait for the next time to be needed thus creating a stream of liminal moments interspersed by snack times and pick up times and bed times. It’s no wonder I often felt as if I never accomplished anything during the day. I didn’t. I scrolled in between tending to other’s needs, leaving me simultaneously restless and burnt out.

So if transition times were my downfall, I needed to be more intentional with my time. It wasn’t that I was looking to not scroll at all, but I needed to scroll less when I should be doing more. Enter, Time Blocking. I’ll share more about this here in a minute - but I set my timer for one hour to write and I’m now at the end of that hour. :)

And we’re back. Day two of my time blocking (or as Mr. Eyal calls it time boxing) schedule and I am already loving it. Mr. Eyal mentions in his book, Indistractable, that,

“a blank schedule and a mile-long to-do list torment us with two many choices.” Whereas, “limitations give us structure.”

Time blocking (as I call it) is just that - blocking time for certain tasks. I’m only on day two of this experiment and I can attest that I feel more accomplished and rooted versus flying by the seat of my pants, so to speak, from one thing on my list to another.

The author suggests, “eliminating all white space in your calendar so you’re left with a template for how you intend to spend your time each day.” I have been doing this but keeping 15-30 minute windows between tasks. Yes, I realize I’m basically building in liminal moments which was my distraction downfall, but I’ve found that setting aside this time - I’ve been referring to it as “Wander Time” - allows me the freedom to let my brain wander. During Wander Time I can order that thing on Amazon that I keep remembering while in the shower, or return a phone call that I ignored because I was in the middle of a time block, or delete a bunch of junk emails, or browse through the new arrivals at H&M. When I log back into social media next week, I plan to use these small chunks of time to get my scroll-fix. By building in this time to let my brain go down the rabbit holes that it so loves, I can scratch that itch, but I know it has an end time. When the next time block begins the phone goes down, the email window is closed and I solely focus on that next task.

I realize this is not rocket science, but for me I already feel so much more intentional with my time. I have also realized I can accomplish a lot less than I expected in a day. I use to get so down on myself for not ticking more items off my list, but in actuality, when you plot it all out with how much time you can devote to each task you realize you can only fit so much into one day (important to note that you don’t have to block enough time to complete the task, but just begin or progress on it).

Finally, because I know I’m getting wordy here (if you’re new, welcome to the latest episode of Katie Can’t Be Concise), my goal going forward is to time block something from each of the three life domains - work, relationships, self. It may seem silly to block out specific time for being with family, but honestly hanging out with my kids is often when I would pick up my phone the most. Ouch, just writing that hurts me. What a terrible example I’ve been giving them. By setting aside time to just BE with my kids rather than around my kids while also trying to do five other things, I’m more present and deliberate as a parent. I am finding I enjoy them more because they’re not interrupting me trying to multi task and I notice more of their beautiful souls and unique personalities. I savor them. Which is the whole reason I wanted to be less distracted - to notice more the things that matter most.

If you came here for a more tangible list of “Things I Did on my Social Media Break”, here you go. On my week long break from social media I…

Unpacked from all of our December trips (we still hadn’t unpacked from Beverly Hills!)
Put away Christmas gifts
Set out 7,000 boxes for bulk trash (an exaggeration, but not by much)
Put away the Christmas decorations
Put back up and moved around some non-Christmas decor. (Love how fresh and clean everything feels now!)
Completed and submitted my passport renewal paperwork
Purchased this year in a glance white board calendar
Purchased this time blocking timer
Purchased and wore every other day this sweat suit
Played mah Jong with friends
Changed the art on our Frame TV (on sale right btw)
Restyled our office shelves and Deacon’s bedroom shelf
Played around with my new Dyson Air Wrap
Organized our photos with these boxes
Archived kid art with these large divided folios
Finalized details for Emilia’s birthday party this month
Made a playlist of mellow soul-filling songs that remind me of Core Memories.
Unsubscribed from every email that came in my inbox that I no longer wished to receive
Watched Don’t Look Up, The Shrink Next Door, Encanto, and Emily In Paris
Took the kids to the dentist
Organized my jewelry with my new Bow & Sprig Christmas gift
Rested
Set up the kids’ Tonies Boxes
Read 3/4 of Indistractable, 1/2 of Not All Diamond and Rose, and listened entirely to The Midnight Library. (I give 5 stars to all three. They are all so wonderful. And I think listening to The Midnight Library while also reading Indistractable - not at the same time, but during the same time period haha - really proved to be thought provoking on how I want to live my one root life.)
Browsed and cooked from The New Defined Dish Cookbook
Worked out 4 times - hot yoga sculpt and Peloton
Went to the Sauna
Thought about my word for the year - more on that soon!

TLDR (mom, that means “too long, didn’t read): taking a week off social media helped me understand my distractions (constantly scrolling) and the reason for them (boredom, to avoid “pain” i.e. tasks I don’t want to do). It helped me refocus my time and evaluate the relationship between my time and my to-dos. I learned the life changing skill of Time Blocking. And more importantly, I gave my brain a break from the constant bombardment of new topics and instead focused less on the good online and more on the good around me.

I am feeling so intentional and powerful as we enter this next year. I hope to write more, connect more, and continue to improve myself and those around me. Blessings to each of you that you take hold of your life and your time more in 2022 and make it exactly what you want. Cheers friends!