Leaving the Large Web Behind: The "Why" or What To Do With All The Time You Gain Back
Awakening - Realizing I Had A Problem
I had this in drafts forever and with Herman's newest blog post it was time to send this out fully cooked or not!
The average person spends 5 hours and 16 minutes1 daily on their phone. That's 1,883 hours a year or roughly 78.4 full days spent staring at a phone screen. I'm not sure most of us have a lot to show for that time spent staring into the abyss either. I certainly don't. I remember spending full weekends spent on the couch mindlessly scrolling. My personal TikTok period was a decent into absurdity. The worst offenses of time spend I would spend upwards of five hours mindlessly scrolling through videos.
I couldn't tell you anything I learned flipping through any of those quick cut videos. I realized I was unhappy with how I was spending my time. Dread would fill every Sunday evening after coming out of a fugue state that ranged from several hours to far longer and seeing the weekly screen time notification pop up upon my screen just cemented my poor decision. I would constantly complain about reduced productivity for my hobbies and also noticed almost constant generalized anxiety yet continued my exposure to these platforms.
As a data-driven person I went to pull historical screen time and was shocked that Apple only gives you a roughly four weeks of data. An improvement from the previous 7 days but still woefully inadequate for any personal data analysis. I could tell you my step count though from several years ago. So Apple wants you to walk more but doesn't want you to remember how much time you wasted on your phone.
I started the great research arc which I feel a lot of us do. It's inaction disguised as action. The most simple route would be to go and delete all the applications that were causing me to waste time on my phone but as I started to navigate not only solutions but why it was clear many people struggle with outright abandoning social media platforms. The insidious clutch they have on the average person is shocking as they actively play on the fear of missing out and lack of connection. Despite most online connections ranging from anonymous to parasocial.
The Solution - Get Brick
Which is why at the beginning of the year I decided to make a switch, or rather a switch off. It was coming for some time and I complained to my wife as I often do about any problems or puzzles I want to solve in my personal or professional life. My wife is a great gift giver due very much to her being a great listener so for the Holidays I received a Brick which is a physical app blocker. Tap the Brick to block any selected applications on your phone you don't want access to. Tap again to "un-Brick" and regain access. I tapped on Jan 1st and things quickly started to get better. I shifted to reading more using the Kindle app on my phone. I was left mainly only with Kindle, Chess, and work applications. I found myself constantly picking up the phone out of habit but with all apps blocked it quickly altered my habits. I started to sleep better and while I still maintained typical stress
In some ways quite drastically, I'm on my 37th book of the year already. With the freedom to rewire my brain, and rewire it I did, I've been a happier and less anxious person. Now as we are in the 10th month mark of reducing almost all forms of phone based social media I want to push even further to cast off the rest of the big web shackles and get back to doing things I think the web is especially great at providing.
Small Web Shines - Using the Internet to Create, Not Consume
If I was an average phone consumer I would be looking at reclaiming almost forty full days of my life back. I'm curious what I can do with the other odd forty or so as we lead into the second half of 2025. Now that I feel I've fallen into a semblance of balance without clamoring for para-social relationships or the latest non-important news that spikes in our dopamine deficient brains I'm ready to start layering on more healthy hobbies. One of those is writing and therefore the creation of this blog, but the other is the accumulation of utilizing what I'm reading. If not, my thought is I've only traded short form entertainment for longer form via reading. Which is fine to an extent but the goal here is to expand on this so looking back I can actually point to items, thoughts, and creations based upon what I did with my free time.
The shift now is that while I can passively consume the hope is that the majority of the time I'll be actively creating. I originally kick off this post in June but then it sat as this initiative frankly died on the vine a bit but let's look to see what we tackled over those roughly 3-4 months I had this thought:
- An additional 11 books read
- One full side project alpha completed - a full Discord TTRPG loot recorder with NLP capabilities
- An alpha SaaS build out with a slated Q1 launch
- Most of the way through "The Book" for Rust, still wrapping my head around this language!
- Full on solo roleplaying/worldbuilding initiative that is going great! I'm writing a ton based on this and having a blast
- 25 lbs down due to shifting focus towards a lower weight class as I shift to Master's class Strongman next year
- Countless hours focused on spending time with my family and not sucked into my phone
I don't think I could have done nearly as much or been more intentional with my time had I not made these decisions at the beginning of the year.
What's Next - A Look Forward to Fight the Big Tech Tide
I still have bad days and I think that's fine. I've found myself with two entities that still suck up some of my time on my laptop that I'd like to reduce. Mainly, YouTube and Reddit. I have these blocked or do not use them on my phone but I've found some weekends where I'm still aimlessly scrolling a bit and again if we're trying to be intentional I don't think this works out well. Herman's post linked above gave some great recommendations around YouTube so I'll be trying that out and then settign myself a limit for Reddit scrolling per week. I think with that I'll have reclaimed a good amount of time back but now for what? And that is the best questions!
Being Bored is a Great Thing
We aren't allowed to be bored anymore as big business wants to own our time in order to push more adds. I want you to take a second and actively ask yourself when was the last time you were actually bored. Boredom forces our minds to look for a solve and if we're not placing ourselves in front of short form entertainment screens then wonderful things can happen on occasion. We look to learn, to create, to find happiness through ourselves and not from an algorithm that is meant to kept us as a prisoner staring at a screen mindless for hours.
I'm hoping to be more bored throughout the next several months and I'm so excited to see where I'm directed on this journey and where my brain and I can create based on this.