Time is the one thing we can’t always account for, even though we agree it’s one of the most important things in life. If you work a 9-5, you can account for how your official work hours are spent, but if I ask you, 

“How do you spend the remaining 16 hours, minus sleep time?”

Most people wouldn’t come up with a quick answer or any tangible answer at all. Lemme give you a personal example. I rarely watch movies. And I consider myself an averagely disciplined person in some areas of my life. I wrote “some”, because I’ve found it hard to be disciplined about mindlessly scrolling on social media.

Now my little brother, says he’s practicing stoicism and we rarely see him online. Some days, when he’s feeling generous, he comes online and humors us for a little bit. Then, he leaves. On other days, he writes an epistle on his WhatsApp status about what he’s recently discovered

It runs in the family 😂😂😂

On one of his WhatsApp status days, he writes about time management. He lists some of the things he’s been cutting down on (social media being a major one); so he can have more time to do the things he’s always wanted to do, to become a better version of himself now and for his future.

Of course, I’m curious to know more because I’m battling a social media addiction. I quickly dive into his DM before I lose him to the abyss of the offline world. We live in different countries, by the way.

I want more tips!

Of course he shares them and adds some books, in classic stoic character. I’ve never met another stoic person. But I’m assuming they hand out books for everything.

Placing time limits on your apps

One of the tips he gave me, and honestly, I would never have thought about it on my own, was to limit app usage time on my phone. But before I did that, I checked the time I spend on my phone apps, via my phone’s digital well-being app.

If, like me, time management is your problem, the best way to start managing your time well, is by finding out what’s taking most of your time. Just like when you’re broke or starting out budgeting, the first thing you look at, is your financial statement to see what needs to be cut down, apply the same wisdom here.

If it’s redundant processes that can be optimised, optimise them.  As human beings, we’re creatures of habit. Just because you’ve been doing something a certain way, doesn’t mean there aren’t better ways to do it.

During my assessment on the digital wellbeing app, I discovered that I’ve been spending 8 hours and above on my phone. And this was before I started creating content. You can imagine the horror and my disbelief.

Where did I find the time?!

I’m a twin mom!

I’m mostly swamped and feel stressed but I manage to spend that much time on my phone?

And by the way, more than half of that time was spent on social media. Probably as a way of stress relieving, which in turn, added more stress to my stress.

Wow!

I took a moment to reflect on my life. And that wasn’t the life I saw myself moving forward with. Something had to be done.

After doing my assessments and knowing where I was falling short in managing my time. I put some limits in place, to help curtail my excesses. I started off with limiting my time on the apps that took most of my time; especially the social media ones. You can actually do this in the apps themselves as well as on your phone, directly.

I tried this out for the social media apps that take most of my time and boom! I’m suddenly more aware of the limited time I have to spend on these apps instead of using up a chunk of my day on them. My time on these apps now had to be spent judiciously. I could no longer use the excuse of researching for content to scroll indefinitely.

 I don’t know what your excuse might be, but having these limits in place lets you have it at the back of your mind that anything you’re doing there has to be done within the set time limit. Your time there becomes more precious and you tend to use it carefully. Or wisely 😊

My focus for this topic is social media because that’s what most people spend a good chunk of their time on. Plus, it’s also personal. I’m addicted.

Lemme not lie, I still struggle with keeping to the limits I’ve set for myself, especially now that social media is my “workplace”. But having these measures in place have made me more aware and I’m able to catch myself when I start backsliding.

The addiction or compulsive habits that take most of your time on things that mean very little to you, in the grand scheme of things, might not be social media. But whatever they may be, I’m sure you can find a way to put measures in place, and curtail them. Therefore, saving you time to do the more meaningful things that will help you live a more fulfilling life.

Quitting is harder than you think

Of course, as an addict, you have to start out soft so you don’t backslide quickly. Don’t quit cold turkey, you’ll relapse quickly!

Lemme write it again. Don’t stop everything entirely and hope things will go smoothly from there. It rarely ever ends well.

In my case, I reasoned that if I start with one hour, I might go back to 8 hours within a week. So, I chose 4 hours (shared among my most used apps at the time: Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube).

Then I started creating content on Instagram and TikTok, and had to increase it, because I’d never done video content on beauty and lifestyle before. I needed to research what others were doing. To kind of set my own tempo. And before I knew it, I was back to ground zero. Doom scrolling!

One day, I caught myself scrolling aimlessly on Instagram and the thing is that you’ll feel guilty when you catch yourself (at least, I do). If you don’t, that’s a problem. 

My guilt was because I knew that I could make better use of that time. I could be reading a book, finishing up an online course, doing something I promised someone, exercising, meditating, praying, anything that could give my life more meaning than aimlessly looking through the album of other people’s lives.

If you don’t choose a purpose, life will assign one to you. So, it is with these things. 

If you don’t think your time is precious enough to plan how you spend it, distracting things will help you spend it. 

Back to my trying to limit my usage of social media.

Strategise to quit once and for all

When I sat down and thought about it, I realised that my first attempt at this failed because I had not tried to build a sort of foundation or guiding principles around it. So, I went back to my stoic brother-turned-mentor for this particular problem. Thankfully, I still had the books he gave me earlier. He shared some of his tips for staying steadfast, which I’ll be sharing with you much later.

One of the books he gave me is called Digital minimalism. Don’t worry, I’ve listed everything I’ve been reading at the bottom of this post.

 The book, Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, is essentially a blueprint on how to minimise time wastage on digital devices while maximising the output we get from them. Essentially, if you’re going to spend time on your phone, laptop, tablet or whatever it is you use frequently, it has to be productive for your overall well being. The platforms and devices have to serve you, not the other way round. In today’s digital world, humans – our attention and personal data – are the raw materials, and we willingly signup for this kind of exploitation.

I’m still reading the book and I even find some of the concepts in the book extremist, especially since I work in social media, but it’s been a big boost in my digital minimalism and awareness journey. It’s a book I wish I read earlier. Maybe I wouldn’t have wasted so much time doom scrolling.

When you actually stop and manage your time well, you’ll find that you have time to do all the things that give your life meaning. Instead of being stressed and pressed for time, you’ll be well rested because that 30 minutes on TikTok has been converted to naptime. You’ll be more organised and on time with your targets because you’ve prioritised the meaningful stuff.

Like every hard thing that goes against the tide of societal trends, it’ll not be easy and backsliding is bound to happen. That makes you human. It’s more important that you catch yourself falling than not falling at all.

So, you’ve quit. Now what?

When you finally manage to free up your time, you’lll find that starting on these more meaningful tasks will not come easy. Doing the hard stuff is hard! Again, for this, you have to take steps to make it work.

For me, the reason I had to stop myself from mindlessly consuming other people’s content was to give myself more time to actually ideate, and create more content that would lead me to achieve my goal of earning money. So the goal was to have more time to pursue the things that will help me earn.

To start, I wrote down what I needed to do and the steps I’ll take to achieve them. In fact, I recently bought notebooks just to write things down. And that’s when I discovered I can barely hold a pen for too long! Because we type everything on our phone these days. Diary, journal, notes, everything! How long ago was it that I was literally a note copying machine? That’s one little skill I’ve started building back on – the ability to write with a pen. It seems so little and yet so unbelievable.

The first few weeks of working to regain your time will always be the easiest because then, the excitement of achieving so much will keep you going. But those feelings will wane over time. And if care is not taken, you’ll find yourself falling back to your old habits.

How to keep yourself accountable?

Well, remember why you started in the first place. Are you in a better place now? 

If it was making more money that motivated you, do you have more money now? If your answer is no. Why are you stopping? If yes, wouldn’t you like to earn more?

Was it to get more sleep so you can wake up feeling whole and ready to take on the world?

The course you abandoned a while ago?

Whatever it may be, I hope it keeps your drive alive.

Always remember that one day at a time is how you build habits.

I’m rooting for you!

Of course, I can’t end this post without giving a shout-out to my brother, Uchechukwu Orji, without whom I might not have found it easy to start this part of my life.

His tips are:

• Remove app notifications for distracting apps. Out of sight is out of mind.
• Using social apps on a web browser is less addictive than in app usage.
• You actually save time talking to people on the phone than texting. It also makes your connection stronger. Unless it’s for documentation purposes, calls over texts. If you check your WhatsApp usage, you’ll be amazed at how much time it takes away from your day.

And that’s a wrap on this topic.

I hope to see you living a life that is fully yours.

Bye!

Book Recommendations:

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport 

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living by Ryan Holiday 

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka