Digital Fasting

Since Nir Eyal published his book Hooked explaining how smartphones and popular apps are designed to absorb our attention and make us addicted to permanent connection, the practice of digital abstinence has soared. Apple is now giving us more control and showing us our screen time on the iPhone. Nir Eyal, in the meantime, has published another book called Indistractable, explaining how to regain control over our attention.

Inspired by Naval’s most recent podcast with Joe Rogan, I have reassessed the topic and have come up with a strategy for how I can best abstain from the draining effects of smartphone triggers.

Defining What Digital Fasting Is

Elon Musk believes all of us have already become cyborgs since we are nothing more than a symbiosis between our body and phone. However, with regard to my phone usage I have identified two categories of behavior.

The first category is anything that is useful in our day-to-day lives. It makes life easier and satisfies our genuine curiosity. Among these things are navigation, learning, scheduling and messaging. Part of this category is also the process of researching things we come across in real life and want to learn more about. Furthermore, this category includes apps that help us improve our physical well-being such as fitness or nutrition apps. Even though our smartphones are distracting us with unpleasant triggers, it is useful to organize ourselves through our calendars and to be able to communicate with people that are close to us.

The second category compromises everything that is related to social media. Part of it is the desire to see the latest Tweet, to watch the stories on Instagram before they disappear and to browse through our favorite subreddits. Apart from social media, it also encompasses any behavior that is related to getting the latest news. Therefore, I also count refreshing news sites such as TechCrunch and Hacker News or checking recent market prices of the stock market in this category.

Based on my personal usage, I do not consider the usage that falls into the first category as harmful. However, in order to regain inner peace, I like to restrict my usage that falls into the second category, which is basically the latest news and social media.

All of the activities from the second category, I engage with mostly through my browser, which is Brave, and a hand full of apps that I have installed on my phone, such as Reddit and Twitter. Since I can assign my vicious phone usage to a handful of apps, it is easy to restrict my usage of them.

Realistically, it is highly unlikely that I permanently resign from using these applications. Even if I would do so, this would not be useful in the medium term since I am discovering a lot of useful content through these apps and websites. Therefore, I consider it most useful to temporarily restrict the usage of all the smartphone activities associated with the second category.

I personally believe it is most useful to engage in digital fasting in daily intervals. However, you could also practice digital fasting every morning until 10:00 am or every evening from 4:00 pm onwards. Alternatively, you may restrict your usage the whole day aside from commute and waiting times.

Essentially, the objective of digital fasting is to regain control over your phone usage and to make sure that you use your smartphone in a way that is useful to you and not to the corporations who are trying to monetize their services.

Implement Your Digital Fasting Routine

To withdraw from social media and news is not an easy endeavor. Therefore, it is best if you pick a day that makes it easier for you to implement your digital fasting routine. Picking a day with a bright lookout makes it easier to succeed at your endeavor. Such a day could be spent in nature, hiking in the mountains or chilling at a beach. Or you may spend such a day among people you appreciate. Having a positive agenda will make it much easier for you to complete your digital fasting routine. Additionally, you should not pick a day when you are on a 5 hour train ride and you will likely be bored a big chunk of the ride.

As I start the practice, I still use my phone for activities that I have classified under the first category, such as to navigate on Google Maps, to search for things on the internet that I want to know or to communicate with people through messaging services. However, I do not log into Twitter, Reddit or Instagram; I deactivated Facebook quite some time ago and have removed Google News permanently from my phone. On such days, I do not go to any news site like The Guardian or TechCrunch. Furthermore, I do not check market movements of the stock market. Also, I have disabled notifications for 95% of the apps that I have installed on my phone.

It would be great to have an easy way to restrict yourself from the apps that you want to avoid. I know that there are certain parental control modes for your phone, but so far I have not come across a convincing alternative. If you are aware of an easy set up for this purpose, please share it in the comment section.

Feel the Impact of Digital Fasting

As you start with Digital Fasting you begin to realize two things:

1. The constant exposure to your social media and news feed pollute your mind with a high number of topics that do not necessarily need to be of your concern. As you read the news, you start thinking about what you just read. However, the messages that are transmitted by social media and the news usually do not have a relevant impact on your life.
2. You may be one of those individuals who constantly feels that you have no time available. As you start practicing digital fasting, you suddenly feel that you have time available again. Your time passes more slowly. This is a wonderful feeling.

The first day I practiced digital fasting was the most staggering experience for me. The fasting feels pretty dramatic since you suddenly change your behavior compared to how you spent every single day of your life for the last couple of years. This sober kind of feeling was very liberating for me. Of course, there are several moments where you are tempted to refresh one of your preferred news sites, but then you recall it is just one day, so it is totally manageable.

The day after your digital fasting is also very intriguing. You know that now you are allowed to eat from the forbidden fruit again. Therefore, you have a strong desire to catch up with what you must have missed. This is because of all the triggers that are built into your smartphone apps to constantly refresh and connect. As you enter into your favorite news sites and social media apps again, you realize that actually nothing really important has happened.

Some suggestions that have worked out for me

● Disable all notifications on your phone other than calls. Let close people know that if they need to reach you urgently the only way is to call.

● Develop a schedule for digital fasting in which you restrict your phone usage to only productive activities. Start with fasting one day per week. If you manage to successfully fast one day per week for a decent amount of time, increase to two days per week.

● Restrict the time when you expose yourself to social media and news, e.g. during daily commute times on a bus or train.

● Switch from constantly refreshing the news to reading weekly newsletters that summarize all the important developments that have occurred in a topic or industry in which you are interested.

● Prefer news sites that deliver quality analysis and explain complex topics in a comprehensive way over those who deliver the latest news.

● Avoid news tickers, which are messy to read and unsuited to extract valuable information.

● Delete social media apps such as Instagram from your phone and access them preferably through your browser. Not having the app icon on your home screen will help you decrease your usage of the app.