A Personal Experience With Procrastination

Friend,

15 days ago, I put my phone away and started a 56-day digital detox. By “putting away,” I mean I gave my phone to someone traveling out of the country with it. No social media. No gaming. Zero access for 8 weeks.

For most of us, our biggest adversaries are procrastination, impostor syndrome, distraction, and mobile phone addiction.

A week before I started this digital detox, I realized how bad it was for me.

Tom Walker (The Cutting Room) posted about the software he uses to minimize screen time. It removes the beautiful and addictive mobile app icons. All you see is a dark screen with textual links to your utility apps.

I downloaded it, and it seemed like I’d finally found a way to escape what seemed like a screen jail. I locked Twitter and Youtube for 48 hours and felt at peace. That’s when I discovered something funny and troubling.

Later that day, I checked my Digital Wellbeing tracker and discovered I spent 26 minutes using the Calculator app?

Do you know how terrible that is? Calculator! What am I computing?

It got worse the next day when I launched Chrome to browse some tips to make Pancakes (it didn’t pan out well) and mistakenly launched Twitter Web from the quick links. I spent over an hour on Twitter that day.

So I said, F it- I’m putting this phone away. No way I’ll be this distracted without my phone.

I was wrong. And I discovered something you might have noticed too.

It's not that mobile apps are addictive. It's you who's addicted.

With no official task on my calendar, I had enough time to work on my website and some portfolio pieces. Then I descended into the worst type of procrastination. The one they call productive procrastination. Here is what it looked like:

1. Reading emails: Once I turn on my PC, I will open my email inbox. Read newsletter subscriptions and take notes. Then I reply to some email messages because that's the only way most people can reach me. That's a good thing, right? Except no! I was burning time that should go into more productive stuff. Then I discovered that I often refresh my email multiple times in hopes that something fresh would pop in. The app wasn't addictive. I was addicted to time-wasting.

2. Scrolling Linkedin: Recently, I've become more comfortable writing on LinkedIn. But spending more time on the site isn't the trade-off I wanted. These days I find myself itching for a notification. When I can't find one, I enter private groups and read stuff. LinkedIn can be addictive but I was equally addicted to procrastination and useless scrolling.

Digital detox is not just about putting your phone away or reducing screen time. Its purpose is to help you quit old, unproductive habits and master new productive ones.

That’s why I chose to take my radical digital detox further with LeechBlock.

LeechBlock- One Free Tool To Escape Your Screenjail.

LeechBlock is one of those apps that deliver significant impact the first time.

Simple interface. Lots of genuinely useful features.

It does what it was made to do- block time-wasting sites- for free, with no ads, no annoying animations, or distracting on-screen motions.

With LeechBlock, I was able to block my mail and LinkedIn url during deep work hours because it allows you to block up to six sites at once. Plus, the lockdown feature allows you to immediately block sites for a specified duration, perfect for those times when you need to really buckle down and focus.

If you’d like to give it a try and find other tools like this, read my latest review of 4 effective tools to beat procrastination.