Default Mode vs. Design Mode: How are you living?

Welcome to The Purpose Memo, a newsletter where I give you ideas for wrestling your life back from digital technology and living a principled life. 

If someone forwarded you this email, join them and other readers here.

Read time: 7 minutes

“Think of yourself in a concert hall listening to the strains of the sweetest music when you suddenly remember that you forgot to lock your car. You are anxious about the car, you cannot walk out of the hall and you cannot enjoy the music. There you have a perfect image of life as it is lived by most human beings.”

Anthony de Mello

A day in the life of the modern person goes something like this.

You are awakened by your alarm (or your children) from a deep slumber that wasn’t and almost never is long enough. As you sit up in bed, you consider your to-do list. Low-level stress is added to your day before it even starts.

Out of habit, the first thing you do is check your phone, which has a barrage of notifications waiting to add their own noise to your already cluttered mind.

Then you prepare and eat breakfast, but not once do you realize how it tastes. Your mind was too busy speed-racing through a laundry list of chores and work responsibilities to pay attention to something as trivial as taste.

Physically, you’re still in your kitchen. Mentally, you’re elsewhere.

Once you arrive at work for the day, two things predictably happen:

1) You’re reminded that there is always more on your to-do list than you have time to do

2) You brace yourself for all the emails and Slack messages that await your reply

There is hardly a 10-minute stretch of work that isn’t interrupted by some form of a distraction. But you’re used to it. That’s how things have been for the last few years.

Right when you get in the car to head home, your personal to-do list shifts back into focus. And so, after a long day at work, when you are needing and craving rest, you arrive at your usual evening-fork-in-the-road...

Path #1 - Forfeit any leisure time, because leisure would mean abdicating responsibility. Do something productive (sulkily) and go to sleep.

Path #2 - Decide you need a break, sit in front of the TV or lay in bed, pull out your phone, start scrolling, and deal with the underlying guilty feeling that you should be doing something productive.

You choose path #2.

It keeps you awake longer than you should be.

Which is why, the next morning, you are awakened by your alarm (or your children) from a deep slumber that wasn’t and almost never is long enough.

Have you lived a day like this? Are most of your days like this?

This used to be my normal—I lived it on repeat for years.

Here’s the obvious yet dangerous part:

I never made a conscious decision to live this way.

I don’t recall looking in the mirror and declaring, “I think it’s time I start operating from a constant state of stress, perpetually distracted, always feeling like I’m never doing enough, and filling every quiet moment with some visual or auditory stimulant so I don’t have to face the guilt of not doing enough.”

I’d wager you haven’t either.

There’s good news: you don’t have to live this way. I don’t anymore. And I’m never going back.

In the 21st century, the default life looks something like this:

Most people don’t realize there is another way to live.

Instead of living by default, you can live by design. The designed life looks like this:

There’s only one requirement to achieve the designed life.

You have to be willing to make decisions most people are unwilling to make.

Below are three counter-cultural choices that will move your life from default mode to design mode.

Shaving a few minutes off is not enough. Doing a digital fast is helpful, but insufficient. You must completely rethink your relationship with your phone (and your TV). The unhurried, non-anxious people I know are almost never on their phones. Half-measures won’t work. You must go all in.

Read about some of my favorite screen-time-reducing strategies here.
If you’re wondering how healthy your current screen time habits are, see here.

Christopher Nolan, Brad Pitt, Scarlet Johansson, Denzel Washington, Danielle Radcliffe, Kristen Stewart, Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling. All of these people are successful. None of them have social media.

If deleting all of your accounts feels like a bridge too far, start with deleting all of the social media apps from your phone. If you’re nervous about falling behind on current events, there are plenty of non-algorithmic options to choose from (I use the 1440 Daily Digest).

The reason social media is so ubiquitous and so intrusive in our lives is because every platform is designed specifically to make you feel like the world will end if you delete your account.

It’s not true. You can delete them. You’ll survive.

You are a tremendously capable person—probably more than you realize. But you’re believing a myth. The myth is that in order to reach your full potential, you have to do as many things is possible. Not so. Early in life, when your free time is at its peak, it can be helpful to say “yes” to many things. But over time, the most successful people are the one who guard their attention like a watch dog.

Think about something you want to accomplish this year. Most likely, what’s keeping you from making it happen is not your lack of desire. It’s your unwillingness to cut out everything else out that doesn’t support the goal.

The question isn’t, “Can I accomplish this goal?”

The question is, “What am I willing to give up to accomplish this goal?”

Three decisions are available to you right now:

1) Radically reduce your screen time.

2) Get off social media.

3) Make fewer commitments.

2026 can be the year your life really changes.

The choice is yours.

Thanks for reading!

If this was post was helpful, there are two ways you can share it with someone else:

See you next week.

PW