“Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love—is the sum of what you focus on.”
The old Rona-19 has created a flurry of social distancing measures all over the globe. Surprisingly, South Africa has been ahead of the game on this one. We were recently told by our president that the entire country will be on “lockdown.” “Lockdown” as in we can’t leave our houses for 3 weeks (one can leave only to purchase food — very NB!).
To quote Joe Rogan, we are living in strange times. COVID-19 is a ‘pleasant pandemic.’ I don’t mean pleasant as in it’s not bad — many have died and it may still get exponentially worse. But the fact is: if you’re reading this you have luxuries that no other society of earth has had the privilege of knowing. Those luxuries, however, come at a cost. The old cost was on the body — world war concentration camps and stuff like that.
The new cost is on your mind.
And because the mind and body can’t be separated — it has an antagonistic effect anyway. This is our generations “world war."
It’s a paradox this social media thing. On the one hand, it’s help spread information at a rapid rate and therefore we can prevent mass extinction of the human species. On the other hand, like a virus, it’s weapon of mass mental destruction that is taking over your mind slowly.
A few days ago — I don’t particularly remember which day — I decided to just see how it would feel to go cold turkey on social media. I’m also knee-deep in a meat-based experiment which you can read here. It would seem counterintuitive. COVID-19 is the optimal breeding ground for sloppy-back Netflix binging and simultaneous thumbing on Instagram.
I decided to conduct this random experiment for two reasons:
It’s a great compliment to my life philosophy of focusing on what’s important. The essentials. I’m no single-plying-toilet-papering minimalist that lives out of a suitcase the size of a wallet. But I do believe that what we focus on controls our life. And, while we may think that social media is essential, it really isn’t. It’s instant virtue signaling (of which I was a consistent contributor).
I wanted to answer this question in my journal: what would my life look like if I diverted all that extra mental energy that goes into social media towards the work that makes me truly happy — writing, reading, filming, pondering..? Or rather: what would it look like if I killed my baby? In this case my ‘baby’ was my 2000 or so precious followers on Instagram that I seemed to be clinging on for validation.
I decided not to kill my baby. Just lock her in the closet for a few weeks and see if she yells.
Enter Deep Work
What got me thinking about going cold turkey on social media was the book Deep Work by Cal Newport. The basic premise of the book is that Deep Work requires hours of uninterrupted focus (and that work is, in turn, both rewarding and productive).
I’m not saying that I’ve magically become this focus-phenom overnight — but what I am saying is that the focus I’ve felt over the past few days has been unmatched.
One project I’ve undertaken is learning the fundamentals of Adobe illustrator by the brilliant teacher Deke McClelland on Linked in Learning. Illustrator is no Canva.com. Rather, Illustrator is a mammoth piece of vector-based software that has more intricacies than the US government.
In order to draw objects other than 2002 Microsoft paint-looking shapes on Illustrator, you need to know what you’re doing. Or at least know the fundamentals of the software. That requires attention and focus. Both of these get diminished each time I ‘nonchalantly’ browse my social feed.
Each time you check your feed you have diverted your brains focus and therefore given it something else to ’think’ about.
If you’re not like me, and cold turkeying doesn’t appeal to you, one of the best things you can do for your mental health is Intermittent Social Media Fasting. Read more about that here.
I once heard that social media has made celebrities out of all of us. And from what I’ve seen, they are not necessarily the happiest bunch in the world. Sometimes you need a reboot in order for things to work properly again.
Like food (in my case), social media is not the devil — your relationship to it is. My life is an expression and experiment of who I am and what I love. Doing these experiments and writing about them makes fulfills me.
Becoming an ‘adult’ in the 21st century has prevented us from experiencing an age-old state of being which is intrinsic to being human: boredom.
Boredom is an art.
Boredom is something you’re bound to experience during the next couple of weeks as a South African and citizen on Earth.
When boredom arrives, I now embrace its presence. Suddenly, during my social media distancing experiment, I found myself doing things for the sake of doing them.
It' sounds silly. But something as simple as getting lost playing Call of Duty with my cousin without obsessively checking my social feed feels good.
We all should ask ourselves what we have been putting off — and, instead of being morbid about the situation, why not view it as opportunistic? COVID-19 is the perfect time to experiment.
What can you learn about yourself during the next few weeks?
Catch you in the comments.
Joshy - Kenilworth, Cape Town.
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