After gradually working my way down from one cup of coffee a day to herbal tea, I decided to snowball my willpower into quitting two apps I spend a chunk of time on.

YouTube and Instagram.

More so YouTube, but for me the two kind of go hand in hand. 

The main thing I was after was more focus, fewer distractions, and more productivity. 

In the end, I listened to more podcasts than usual and also watched a show on Netflix, but overall the month benefited my focus and brain space in a pretty impactful way.

Let’s get into it. 

Why Quit YouTube and Instagram?

The main reason for me was to increase the time and focus I was spending on my writing projects. 

Also, similar to the coffee withdrawals, I found myself slightly frustrated and off set when some of my favorite content creators took breaks at the beginning of the year. 

Those breaks in content had disrupted my routine and made me notice how it affected my attention, both passively and actively. 

Regularly wondering if anything new had been posted and actively checking the apps a few too many times was a red flag. 

I knew my screen time wasn’t where it needed to be, but with revisiting YouTube constantly looking for new bright and shiny videos to elicit that dopamine drop, I knew it was time to cut it.

Social Media Detox 

While this didn’t end up being a total social media detox, I will say that I also did not use FaceBook (which I rarely use anyway) and I don’t have Snapchat, Twitter, Reddit, or Tik Tok. 

YouTube and Instagram were the main time leaks for me that needed to go. 

The things I did use were: 

• Pinterest here and there
• Spotify for podcasts
• Netflix near the end

While picking up watching Netflix (which I never did before) felt like an exchange and not a real dedication to focus, I will say the 600 minutes–a little over 8 hours–watching the show felt compartmentalized and segregated to the couch and living space alone.

YouTube, on the other hand, was something that went everywhere with me. It was a constant part of my life that filled many of the empty spaces that are natural, or should be, in a person’s life.

Preliminary Measures 

Before this 30 day detox I had already deleted the apps off my phone. I did this more than 6 months prior after reading a thoughtful Medium article by Amardeep Parmar on productivity.

I had instead made the switch to using the clunky, annoyingly slow, and not fully optimized web versions of YouTube and Instagram. This switch unfortunately didn’t allow me to pull my specific screen time for the apps because I was simply user a web browser.

The web versions are not super user friendly and therefore less addicting. 

But turns out, the web versions weren’t annoying enough for me to stay away from using them as much as I wanted.   

The other tip I tried was making my phone screen grayscale to avoid things looking too fun and enjoyable.

It worked really well. 

My eyes hated it. 

Turning your whole phone grayscale is just a nightmare of annoyance. 

It worked so well during work hours that after work hours I would always switch it back to full color. If you’re interested in trying this out and have an Apple phone go to: 

• Settings 
• Accessibility 
• Display & Text Size 
• Color Filters
• Toggle ‘Color Filters’ to Grayscale 

Suddenly something so fun isn’t so fun anymore. I got this tip from that same Medium article.

Amardeep writes about self improvement, reimagined. He applies mindfulness and realness to an area that touts rigidity and structure to the hurt of the planner. His articles, the few I read, at least, provide balance and really sly well-researched parallels and historical nods throughout that builds credibility while also being easily digestible.  

Consider checking him out. 

Addiction or Habit? 

The first couple of days with no YouTube or Instagram were a little off-putting. 

I consciously left my phone in other rooms to avoid reaching for it and checking the applications at the regular ‘break’ times out of habit. 

The first couple of days left me feeling like I had an itch I couldn’t really scratch (that was a terrible comparison), but it also left me feeling like I had more space in my brain for other things. 

By the 4th day, the habit of reaching for my phone was over.

Shocking, I know. 

Turns out getting off of my little dopamine addiction was infinitely easier than caffeine. 

I easily moved into having more brain space for other things. 

The fear of missing out when on the cusp of a social media detox feels so much bigger than it is. The reality is, severing a largely meaningless way of interacting out of your life is easy. 

Detoxing from FOMO happens super quick. 

You are days away from not giving a care and not remembering why you cared so much in the first place. 

Today I Noticed… 

“Today I noticed…” was a writing prompt I had discovered while watching a writer’s Skillshare class on regaining inspiration.

I integrated this writing exercise into my day during the periods that I felt like I needed a break.  

The idea is to start a journal entry with ‘Today I noticed…’ and write from there.

This prompt had taken on a life of its own in the notes section of my phone and ended up providing an excellent replacement for my check out period during the work day. 

While I used to turn to brightly colored apps when taking timely breaks during the workday, I had switched to using my ‘Today I noticed’ note entries as a replacement.  

A few key results. 

First, my breaks turned into a much more introspective time. It was a quiet, more restful time disappearing into my thoughts and pondering the things I noticed compared to drinking in the external noise that I had previously been prone to consuming. 

Furthermore, it was a nice little writing exercise to describe the things I noticed, the feelings I noticed, and the thoughts I noticed. 

That ‘Today I noticed…” notes section became a holding tank for writing ideas of all kinds. 

Turns out I noticed all sorts of things and it was somewhat of a relief to put them somewhere.

The other main result from this journaling exercise was the feeling of an actual break. 

Unplugging from a busy work day to sit and write about the smallest of things–the ducks in the lake during my morning walk–and the bigger things, how people were interacting with each other and what drove the tribalism, resulted in a much more restful time. 

Compare this to looking at a bunch of colorful screens with strangers and a few friends on it. 

Time moved slower this way and my mind had a little breathing room with this exercise. 

And it was exercise too. Instead of sitting back and consuming easily scrollable social engineering, the notes ritual introduced a little mind crunch for me. 

By withdrawing and centering on some of the thoughts swirling in my head at any given moment. It almost felt relaxing to have some of those thoughts developed, deleted, or digested. 

Try the prompt yourself. 

First, consider the things you’ve considered. Now, write about them in a fun and interesting way.  

Week 2 and 3

Music

One thing I noticed as the days went on was that I very rarely listened to music anymore. I had previously listened to music mainly on YouTube. 

Little study playlists, some lofi jams, but during the weeks of no YouTube, it was basically no music. There were a few times that I enjoyed a little music through Spotify, but the fact that the ads with the free version are so frequent was enough of a deterrent. 

While I had previously used music to help myself focus, the statistics about tunes actually breaking concentration proved true for me. 

I can report that no music made me more focused. 

Netflix

By the second and third week my desire for fun colorful stories was back. 

After waking up in the mornings to write before work, writing the majority of the day for work, and then coming home to write some more after dinner, I was ready to find some sort of reprieve from all the white screens and blinking cursors. 

I was ready to get a little more colorful narratives in my life. 

So, in the spirit of balance and a true break, I started to watch a show on Netflix. It was a light hearted little show with short episodes and only two seasons. I watched this show the rest of my detox month and felt okay about it. 

Was I thrilled to be indulging in something that felt very similar to what I was detoxing? No. 

But there was a difference between always watching things on my phone that went everywhere with me (like while I ate, while I washed my face, while I walked, etc.),

to move to something that required me to consciously sit down to watch a few episodes.

I wasn’t able to distract myself as much because it was a bigger fan fare to sit down and watch Netflix on the ‘big’ screen compared to being plugged into my small screen all the time. 

Podcasts

During my commute and during the workday’s mundane tasks, I also started to listen to more podcasts than normal. 

This provided me with a few things:

• A little easy listening entertainment here and there
• An opportunity to be a fly on the wall during in-depth, long form conversations between intelligent people
• And some not so easy listening to current events and politics  

There were some days that I frankly listened to too many podcasts, so I had to watch that my desire to be distracted or entertained didn’t get out of hand.

Hitting the easy button is simply that. 

Partaking in something other than the goals that you know you have set out for yourself and you believe you should be doing comes in all forms and fashions. We just have to be cognisant of this. 

At least, this is my particular struggle. I wanted something easy and mindless instead of the difficulty of pushing my side projects forward when I didn’t feel like it after having already worked all day. 

In the end, I did push back on these two new habits of podcasting and netflixing and it ended up balancing out over the course of the 30 days.

As a fair note to anyone looking to do something similar, it may be better to cut out all streaming, social media, and podcasts. 

That would be a true content fast that could help fully reset a mindset.   

Something I will likely do at some point.  

Productivity and Focus  

The levels of productivity I enjoyed during this month was mainly a result of increased focus. 

I had more time to let my mind think about the content I wanted to create and the goals I wanted to reach. It was easier to get momentum because I wasn’t constantly thrown off by ‘just one video’ here or there.

Because we all know it isn’t just one video. It is a chain reaction of consuming videos and pictures for more time than I’d like to admit. 

Slightly Missing the Mark

I will say that I didn’t reach my goal of getting ahead with blog posts. I was maybe one or two drafts ahead, but not four like I was aiming to hit. 

It’s tough writing to get ahead and trying to make posts that are not absolutely narcissist. Research takes time, editing takes time, keywords and what little strategy I have takes time.  

My productivity with my regular work day was noticeably more efficient. I wrapped up earlier than usual during that month and fed off the momentum that increased focus created.  

Create Your Own Content 

Finally, the biggest overall pro that I noticed was having more space to focus on my own content rather than mindlessly and aggressively consuming content of others. 

It felt great to turn my attention to the things I was doing instead of being a bystander to what others were doing. 

30 days of writing more consistently, taking time to jot down the things I noticed, both big and small, and having more space to think and be bored and to brainstorm, all mounted up to leave me with a month more mindful than I had previously enjoyed. 

It was also a month that passed by slower than previous months. I’m not sure if this was solely the detox or if it was the lack of caffeine speaking, but for the first time in a long time, I felt like I actually had more time.