Decide what gets in
For years, the first thing I did each morning was pick up my phone and open the news. Ten minutes later I knew about a dozen things that had nothing to do with my life, and I had handed the first decision of my day to whoever wrote the most clickable headline.
There has never been more good information available, and that is the problem. When everything is on offer, whatever is loudest gets in, and loud is rarely what you need.
Trying harder did not fix it. I would resolve to leave the phone alone and last about three days. Willpower was the wrong tool, because the feed is built by people whose full-time job is beating it.
So I built a replacement. Every morning I get one email, and I chose everything in it. It pulls the newest videos from a short list of channels I picked on purpose: fitness, cooking, minimalist living, home improvement, and a few others. It has hard limits, too. No more than fifteen items, and no more than three from any one subject. When I reach the bottom, I am done. There is no next page.
Three things make it work:
- I chose the sources ahead of time, when I was calm, and not mid-scroll.
- It has an end.
- It shows up exactly where the old habit lived, so it replaces the habit instead of fighting it.
You do not need to build anything to do this. Write down the five or six subjects you want more of in your life. Find one or two good sources for each. Put them where you will see them before you see anything else. Then notice how little you miss of what you used to read.
Decide what gets in. Everything else you take in is somebody else’s decision.