After 8 days without social media

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After my 8-days digital diet – 8 days without social media, I felt really great. I felt refreshed and most importantly free. However, the moment I started using social media again, I fell in the old circle of bad habits. While I was downloading something and waiting for it, I found myself checking my social media accounts, again! Crying face – without any particular goal, just to kill the time. I logged off all my social media accounts. But then I started checking my email constantly. Basically, I replaced the bad habit of checking my social media accounts with another bad one – checking my email constantly!

Then it dawned on me that I have to replace the bad habit with a good one. While I’m waiting, I can read aloud from my book, or I can listen to a podcast, watch a video (all of them selected in advance – in a special folder in my computer), I can even stretch, do push-ups – There are so many healthy choices. I just have to be self-disciplined. Self-discipline starts with small things. And the more self-disciplined you are, the more self-confident you feel – That’s what I found out in my daily struggle against digital distractions.

And what about you? Do you have the same problem? How do you handle it?

Being on a diet is great, but there is no point of this diet if after it, you go back to your old way of living.

For instance, if you are on a diet of losing weight and you restrict yourself to eating particular food, but after the diet is over, you go back to your old way of eating, there won’t be any positive change. As a result, you can even gain more weight.

I have to apply a new way of living on a constant basis – To have a plan and not to kill my time every day.

My new habits:

1. Checking social media and email – only 2 times a day – in the morning and in the evening (If miss it, skip it!) (You can leave an automatic message saying that “I’m checking my email only 2 times a day. I will get back to you, when I get back to my email. In case of emergency, call me on the phone)

2. Before turning on the computer – make a plan, write down on a piece of paper your goals and the time limit for them, set mobile reminders!

Self-discipline starts with small things like learning to control your digital distractions. The more self-disciplined you are, the more self-confident you feel.

Self–discipline - the ability to make yourself do things that should be done despite having the desire or not.

When you have discipline, you have self-control.