Social media & multitasking is affecting our brain 🧠
Did you ever feel that your phone is vibrating while it actually wasn’t? Or did you just hear a sound of notification when there was nothing? Do you compulsively just pick your phone and lock-unlock it in the middle of thinking something, just to discover that you are staring at your phone with a blank view? Do you feel a jibberish dizzy feeling in your head when you try to focus on something for a long time? Do you keep jumping from one app to another to discover that you don’t know what you are looking for? Then this article is for you.
Well, a bit of relief is, you are not the only one. I was in the exact same place a few months back and I tried my best to get over it myself. And I am going to tell you how I did it.
Social Media is a highlight reel
Social Media has is the easiest way to stay connected with our friends and family and keep updated on what they are up to.
I know friends and family are important. But, the real question lies in,
Do we really need to keep looking at what they are doing all the time? Also, do all your friends in your social media account is really your friend that you care about?
Social media is a highlight of the moments of hundreds of thousands of people on your list. Every one of them is in a different situation, a different place and that very happy moment that you are seeing might have ended by now. Probably someone has done something that you have been wanting for long. It might affect your feeling about yourself, but remember you didn’t see the hard work s/he has done for achieving that. Or maybe you see someone died, you just put a 😢 and move on. So this is what social media has done to us. We can’t think, we can’t feel the same emotion for an extended period of time. Because we always have new things adding up to our social media and eventually our brain. To sum up we are losing our focus.
The first step to accepting yourself is to stop comparing yourself to others.
Multitasking is the main culprit
We human beings think that we can handle multitasking really well. We can just solve a task while checking social media every 5 minutes.
Not to mention, probably you have already realized how it has downgraded your quality of work.
This infinity scroll leads to new news of varied contexts from various people every second. Switching context every second leads us to disappointment and depression. So we try switching the app and after a while, we get depressed again and the cycle continues. And by keep dealing with it, we lose focus and the power of thinking because by making a habit of switching apps and scrolling pointlessly takes our brain to autopilot 🛫 mood.
To explain it more our brain works on a concept of flow. Do you wonder how high achievers can work for 10 or more hours on a single task restlessly? What keeps them going? It’s the concept of flow. It doesn't come in a day or two. It comes with long practice. The way you will train your brain the more you will get used to doing it without even noticing. Just like if you keep scrolling, you keep scrolling more. And it goes without saying that humans always tend for the easier option. So, if you make a habit of checking your phone every now and then, your brain will automatically pick the phone when you need to actually work on finishing a difficult task.
Looking everywhere for the solution without taking any action
If you came up to this point that means you are on the same page as I was, where you are aware of all these symptoms and trying to recover. But this leads to even a more depressing state of getting lost in loads of articles and endless youtube motivational videos. We read articles, consume youtube videos, feel good about it, and then scroll to the next video.
I don’t mean to disappoint you but none of these motivational articles and youtube videos work. Because social media have made us an infinite level consumer rather than being a producer.
We feel better seeing a motivational video because we convince our brain that we are investing our time productively while we are just consuming and taking ‘0’ action.
Action conquers fear.
The Solution
The solution is pretty simple. Just make yourself clear that you cannot find a solution anywhere and no one can make your life better if you don’t do it for yourself and start taking action for yourself right now. Here is what I did:
- Promised that I won’t use your cell phone while working. So, I keep my cell phone somewhere else while I work on something.
- Turned all the notifications off. I don’t want the apps to control me. I want to see the notifications when I intend to.
- I tried the Pomodoro technique to increase focus. The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method developed by Francesco Cirillo[1] in the late 1980s. It’s basic is we will focus on a specific task for 90 minutes and then we will take a 10 mins break. Checking social media is not a break. It actually overwhelms our brains with new topics. If 90 minutes is too much for you, you can start with a 25–5 ratio.
- Taking a break has become 5–10 mins of meditation or easy yoga techniques that I can do while walking or sitting in a place or just looking far away from all the screens.
- I designated daily specific time for social media. Using social media for me now is chatting or connecting to people I intend to. Or reply to all the messages in my inbox.
These are all that I did for myself. You can use some of these or figure out what works for you the best. Just by dropping the idea of multitasking and focusing on a small task for a block of time will expand your productivity immensely.
What you can do with a sudden huge amount of time in your hand
It says that any new habit takes 21 days of time for the human brain. So if you can continue to do these for at least 21 days you will actually keep seeing results. And as a bonus, you will get a lot of time in your hand that you used to waste on social media. So what can you do with all these free times? Just start doing all those things that you have been planning to do all your life. Here is what I did:
- I made a habit of reading a book every night before sleeping instead of checking social media for that one last time. Actually I don’t feel the urge anymore.
- I started writing technical blogs that I always wanted. And this is my first ever non-technical blog 😛 .
You can find more of my blogs here: https://medium.com/@anuragbhattacharjee/ - I have started making small apps that I always wanted to make for myself other than my work. I might never publish them and I also don’t even care if someone uses them but the happiness I get every time finishing a product for myself is unexplainable.
Here is an example:
http://webpod.anuragbhattacharjee.com/
It’s a music player for myself. Which search music and plays it for me without getting distracted by all the autosuggestions. - I started doing Yoga 🧘🏼♂️ even if not everyday maybe twice or thrice a week.
- I actually started thinking about what I actually want rather than being influenced by other's opinions.
I hope this helped. Now, start your journey of awesomeness. Best of luck.
I hope you enjoyed this blog. If you want to read more of my blogs than you can follow me on here in medium.
I am Anurag. Working professionally as a Software Engineer since 2014. I often write blogs on the questions I often see people asking and find important. In my free time, I like to develop web and mobile apps that are simple and useful. You can connect with me here:
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/anuragbhattacharjee/
🕸 http://anuragbhattacharjee.com
