I'm trying hard to break my addiction with my phone

The untamed brained

Our brain when left alone, unstimulated for an extended period of time, is quite uncomfortable.

But not in a completely negative way. While the sudden acute awareness and observation of flooding thoughts and erratic behavior is at first unnerving, it is also, however, kind of fun.

It's like holding a toy, and you get to play with it. It's like a puzzle that you get to solve.

Like another project you get to work on and be creative and build something you're proud of. I think that's a wonderful feeling.

When left in silence and stillness, the brain is an erratic monster

Man, I thought I was on drugs or something with the speed my brain was racing through thoughts. It was overwhelming, a rapid sensation of flashing images and emotions. Now, of course, the brain isn't always like this. But when you spend months or years constantly feeding it social media content, it becomes accustomed to digesting a tremendous amount of information at rapid speeds. Now left alone for a slower life, it doesn't know how to handle itself. It still behaves in its traditional manner of bouncing between ideas faster than one can even become aware or conscious of. You are thinking of things you don't even know you are thinking of. Like wtf?

What the actual fuck is our brain and is it ours?

What's up with this dichotomy of, there's our braining thinking, then there's me thinking about how my brains thinking. What the fuck is that.

Like is that brain me? Or is it like the muscles of my body, and I just happen to have a friendly relationship with it. A cooperative survival agreement?

It doesn't entirely feel like me, it feels more like a tool, but if that is the case, then where are these thoughts coming from, the ones I am writing down right now?

Weird.

My plan to digest less notifications and to live a more peaceful, productive life

I have already put systems in place to severally limit my social media usage - as well as other odd, sporadic and unnecessary distractions.

Such examples would include:

1. greyscale mode - changes the phone color to black and white, decrease phone stimulation and wanting to use
2. one sec - an app that makes you pause and breathe for one second before being able to open an app (this gives you a moment to become mindful of what you are doing and decide whether or not you want to continue)
3. focus mode - in the morning and evening, it blocks all unessential apps from sunrise to 12pm, then in the evening 8pm to the next day (although, often times I still end up using the phone in the evening)
4. habitica - a habit tracker, I have habits written down to reinforce not using my phone so much, the streaks and heatmaps and satisfaction of checking these off as being done successful is motivating

The only thing to do now is stay disciplined and carry out with the plan that I laid out for myself. If I do that, then 99% of my life problems would be solved.

The exact plan doesn't actually matter that much, but sticking to it does

We often have a plan to change our lives, but we spend too much time optimizing the plan and not enough time actually doing it.

The truth is, until we start, we actually don't know what needs to be changed. (in the plan)

We often spend weeks or months from a position of no knowledge or experience, planning out years of our lives. Only to take the first step, and then realizing everything we thought to be true was wrong.

Now we have to rewrite the entire plan.

But the truth is, you'll never know all the details. It's better to just get started with the absolute bare minimum of information, move forward, and adjust from there.

A goal being worked on is a thousand times better than a plan being written. (because this way, you'll find out immediately what you need to learn and what you need to do, rather than pure speculation, also, sitting around doesn't move the ball forward, it doesn't accomplish anything, the only thing that matters is accomplished action.)

Wishing you all have a wonderful day everyone, I love you.

Warm Regards,

Jacob Pugmire