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.
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Read time: 16 minutes
NOTE: This post is designed to be a reference resource, one you can both share with friends and revisit as needed. I’ve included dozens of links and photos to make it as helpful as I can.
If you only have time to skim, use the Table of Contents below.
Table of Contents
“To live in reality we must edit our streams, digital or otherwise, we must filter our mental intakes. Just like we watch carefully what we put into our bodies—few of us pick up random garbage on the sidewalk and pop it in our mouths—we must take great care with what we allow into our minds.”
You Are What You Contemplate
Last week’s post was one of my favorites. I enjoyed writing it because it felt like the message was coming from somewhere deep down. Better yet, it had to. Those convictions are at the core of who I am—I couldn’t write it otherwise.
The argument I made follows a logical sequence:
Who you are becoming is the most important thing about you
What you are contemplating determines who you are becoming
Your thoughts are driven by your mental inputs
Your mental inputs are a product of how you allocate your attention
Thus, how you allocate your attention is the most important thing about you
This line of thinking is what started my obsession with digital discipline and the attention economy. Everything about the current cultural moment began to make sense: if our attention is being hijacked, fragmented, and bought, then our very selves are being hijacked, fragmented, and bought.
This was my story. I was another statistic, floundering under the fine-tuned, dopamine-inducing algorithms that had a stranglehold on my attention. It created a ceiling on who I could be at my best and lowered the floor on who I could be at my worst.
It had to stop. And thankfully, it did.
Today, I’m sharing the most effective tools I’ve used to recover 8.5 years of my life that otherwise would have been lost to screens—a number that is almost unbelievable without doing the math yourself and having your jaw drop at its accuracy (see the “Daily Average Screen Time” section of this post).
These tools have helped me in three areas:
Reducing total screen time
Increasing the quality of my mental inputs
Improving focus through eliminating distractions
If you’re searching for progress on one or more of those three, read on.
1. Using YouTube Wisely
Algorithms are the engines powering most addictive screen use. I’ve noticed one particular platform doesn’t always feel like social media, which disguises some of its algorithmic sneakiness: YouTube.
We may not categorize YouTube as social media, but it’s exceptionally easy to lose track of time on a rabbit trail of videos.
This why I love Unhook: a browser extension that can block suggested videos, comments, and basically everything else.
The extension is very easy to use, giving you an itemized list of toggles to accommodate your preferences:
When I’m on watching a YouTube video, it looks like this:
No comments, no sidebar of algorithmically-suggested videos, not even video info. It makes for a less cluttered, more intentional watching experience.
When I navigate to the home page, this is what I see:
The goal is not to adopt my exact settings, but to be serious about not mindlessly giving time away to less-than-worthy pursuits.
Side Note #1: I’m a fan of YouTube… if used correctly. There’s useful knowledge and interesting entertainment on the platform. The danger is letting an hour or two a week turn into multiple hours every day. Unhook ensures you’re choosing what to watch, not the technocrats pulling the dopamine levers behind the scenes.
Side Note #2: Unhook does not work on the native YouTube mobile app. This is another reason why I recommend using YouTube on a computer, not your mobile device.
2. Making Your Smartphone a Dumb Phone
I knew I liked Brick after the first time I used it. Its simplicity is refreshing.
Here’s how it works:
You put a small, magnetized silicone block (see above) somewhere in your home (usually in the kitchen)
When you open the Brick App, select “Brick device” and tap your phone on the square to lock all of the apps you don’t want to use (this is fully customizable)
Tap your phone to the Brick when you’re ready to unlock them
In the past, my wife and I had alternative dumb phones for our weekly Sabbath, but they started to become unreliable and expensive (because of the additional phone plans).
Brick helps us turn our iPhones into dumb phones with a tap. I still usually keep my phone in a drawer during this 24-hour period, but it’s nice to know that even if I need to have it with me, I’m not going to be distracted by it.
I also like that Brick is tied to a physical location, rather than a purely digital solution.
We keep ours on the refrigerator.
Side Note #1: I don’t have any social media on my phone, but it’s still useful for blocking apps like GroupMe, Messages, and sometimes music and podcasts. For someone who still has social media or streaming apps on their phone, this is essential.
Side Note #2: I’ve been thinking about doing a Brick giveaway as a part of a referral program. If you’re interested, reply “I’d love a Brick!”
When I decided to completely remove newsfeeds from my life, I had a dilemma: LinkedIn is a necessary tool for my work.
I need the platform to communicate with certain people and to view specific profiles. But how could I do this without being seduced and taunted by the scrolling, likes, and comments?
News Feed Eradicator. That’s how.
It’s another simple browser extension that allows you to use social media without the newsfeed (i.e. without the algorithm).
This is what LinkedIn looks like when I log in:
Exactly how I prefer it: empty.
News Feed Eradicator works with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit. If you’re seeking to use these platforms for their benefits while avoiding their most damaging (and addicting) elements, I highly recommend it.
4. Adopting Analog Alternatives
One of the quickest ways to reduce screen time and eliminate digital distraction is to reduce the number of tasks that require a device.
Analog alternatives remove the possibility of looking at your phone for one specific specific reason and then getting distracted by push notifications, red badges, and other app icons that uproot your mind from the present and replant it somewhere other than where you feet are.
There are lots of creative ways to do this, but I’ll share my top four.
1) Physical To-Do List
Ever since I discovered the Ivy Lee Method, I’ve been a physical to-do list devotee.
Think about it this way: If you want to remember things, physical cues are a great place to start. Need to pay a bill? Leave the envelope on the counter. Keep forgetting to wear your retainer? Leave it on the vanity where it’s impossible to miss. Need to remember to take out the trash? Flip the bag up and make it obvious.
A task list is no different. When the list lives somewhere online, by definition, it can’t be a physical cue. Even with reminders, notifications, and bookmarks, things just seem to get lost in the digital ether. That won’t happen to a notecard in plain sight.
The original creator of the Analog productivity system is a guy named Jeff Sheldon—founder and designer at Ugmonk. I’ve been using their products for years.
(Here’s the link to the one in the picture.)
You can find cheaper alternatives elsewhere, but for me, something about having the durable, handcrafted, original version gives me a better feeling when I’m using it.
2) Casual Watch
This is on my wrist 90% of the day
Before buying this twenty-two dollar Casio Watch, I almost always used my phone to check the time.
Reminder: no matter how brief, every glance at your phone has the ability to hook you with a notification and drag you through an assortment of apps (which you never intended to check) that do a superb job of distracting you from whatever it is you were doing before.
So use a watch, but get a watch that you can wear all the time (Apple Watches don’t count; they pose the same threat as your phone). Over time, you’ll break the impulse reach for your phone when you need to check the time.
3) Alarm Clock
About nine out of every ten Americans sleep with their phone in their bedroom (source). For multiple reasons that I won’t elaborate on today, this is not a good idea.
Interestingly, I’ve found that most people use their phone as their morning alarm, which makes the prospect of leaving it outside the bedroom more challenging.
This was true for me, until I spent $10 on a physical alternative.
The orange-ish tint is because we use circadian light bulbs in the evening, which is an unrelated but fantastic product.
It’s been over a year since I’ve looked at my phone while laying in bed at night. I’ll never go back.
4) Pocket Notebook & Pen
I’ve been a faithful pocket notebook carrier for years. There are a number of ways that a pocket notebook can replace your phone, but I use mine for logging ideas, writing down things I don’t want to forget, and taking miscellaneous notes.
It’s hard to stay away from your phone for extended amounts of time (a healthy thing to do) when you’re consistently pulling it back out to send a quick text or jotting something down to remember later.
When you have a pocket journal, you can write it all down and keep your head clear.
Side Note: If you carry a pocket journal with you, you’ll also need a pen. You can buy an 8-pack of pocket pens for $25. I like this specific one because it’s small…
…but the cap snaps on the end to give it the feel of a regular sized pen while you’re using it:
5. Email… Minus Distractions
It might seem trivial, but one of my biggest challenges at work is writing or reading emails without being distracted by other incoming emails. I’ve never been able to find a solution to this… until recently.
Inbox When Ready lets you completely hide your inbox while your email is open. It also hides the little number icon in the tab that lets you know how many unread emails you have… which distracts me continuously.
You can click the “show inbox” button for an easy toggle.
When your inbox is hidden, you can’t see if new emails are coming through, allowing you to stay focused on the task at hand.
What Hasn’t Worked For Me
We all have different triggers and tendencies, which means our digital discipline journeys ought to look different from one another.
Here are a few things I’ve tried but ultimately didn’t stick with:
Grayscale settings - The logic is that removing the colors makes the phone less enticing. It didn’t really work for me. It mostly just bothered me every time I went to look at a picture and needed to switch it off.
Using a lockbox - Because a lockbox is usually visible, it’s a lurking reminder that’s saying “hey, don’t forget, your phone is in here if you need it.” I prefer a drawer because I forget it’s even in there.
Fully digital screen time apps - Something about Brick tying phone usage to an object in the physical world is useful to me. I prefer it over apps like Opal.
Switching to a dump phone - The logistical hurdles are high. I love the mission of products like the Light Phone and Wise Phone, but I’ve found I can keep my screen time in check without having to switch to these alternatives.
If there’s something I haven’t mentioned that you use to help reduce screen time, eliminate distractions, and increase focus, I’d love to hear about it! Reply directly to this email (or comment below if you’re reading the web version)
I’ll respond.
Thanks for reading.
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See you next week.
PW