Detox complete. Hardly.
Last week I cut out X and YouTube, two things I have been wasting a lot of time on lately. The results were generally positive but left me realizing that there's still more to be done. Let's start with the pros.
The good
In general, YouTube and X don't serve me at all and I extract no value from them. They are just time wastes for me so cutting them out immediately reclaimed the time I was wasting. I enjoyed eating meals without a YouTube video playing, focusing more on the food and experience I felt better going to bed without a YouTube video playing in the background. I feel I got to sleep quicker. I did more. I added night journal entries, I drew, I enhanced my website, and some more. I was able to realize that I can just cut these distractions out. It's that simple.
The bad
I increased my music consumption. I feel music can leave impressions on my brain and patterns of thought. A goal of this week was to reduce those and I think the increase in music consumption was counterproductive to that. I didn't do enough. Maybe a bit too type-A but I feel like I should've done more in terms of creation. I need to start a business. I didn't do anything in that vein. I increased other distractions (Chess.com, music, texting) to fill the void. While not as much or as harmful (in my opinion) as the ones I cut out, I was still, at least partially, replacing the original distractions with new ones.
Summary
Overall, I felt I gave myself opportunities to use time in a better way and am happy that I followed through with it. My screen time was down, my output was up (marginally), and my energy was better. I will continue to limit my intake of these distractions and aim to set a more concrete plan for using the reclaimed time in a better way. We get better, every day.