Remove Social Media Apps from Your Phone

Computer Science Professor Cal Newport has written much on digital distraction, addiction, and minimalism. For example, his recommendation to delete apps with ads on your phone helped lowered my anxiety.

Make Time author John Zeratsky gives us another guardrail: Delete apps that have feeds you pull down to buffer more information (i.e., The infinity pool). This includes the Gmail/Facebook Messenger apps.

Your focus is the priority of multi-billion dollar corporations with engineers working to keep you on their platform for the longest time possible. Because I want to control my attention, I only use social media on my laptop, at home, at a time set on my calendar.

Removing apps with ads or ones with an infinite feed will leave you bored in grocery store lines, at your parent's house, and while you're waiting for your friend to show up for lunch. That's okay. Be bored. It's an opportunity to think. Pay attention to things you don't usually have time for instead.

Your attention will cave in with social media apps and email on your phone. Don't do it. Don't be fooled. You're alive—live life in real life and not on your phone.

Owning your attention is more important than checking Facebook for the third time to see who got hacked, fired, or divorced. By removing the world's drama from the palm of your hand, you create space to experience the natural world in front of you.

(This post initially was written for Paths to Peace: 9 Short Ways to a Life of Lower Anxiety but ended up not making the cut. If you liked this post, consider downloading the free eBook now.)