Are You Free or Do the Glowing Screens Direct You?

The other day I talked a bit about screens warping men's perceptions and making them think women all lust after men with giant muscles.

This is not the only way screens have been warping people's perceptions, however.

It is just the tip of the screenberg.

For some years I, like most people I suspect, had been held increasingly captive by the state of the world.

Popular revolts, widespread protests, political polarization, transnational saber-rattling, and of course, unprecedented government lockdowns resulting in a rolling back of civil liberties in a way unprecedented since the flowering of modern liberal democracy.

Not to mention masks everywhere, gym closures, nightlife closures... and a bizarre new dystopian system where the initiated gleefully compete to boast about their excellent compliance with the rules, even as they label and shun those who refuse to comply with the same facility.

In the midst of this cultural collapse/upheaval, I've talked to more and more people who've become much more apathetic about things they used to care about than they ever were before.

The decline of dating is only one example; it's a widespread one, and one I covered (along with the statistics to back it up) here.

Yet even I found myself slowly sinking into a tar pit of progressive apathy, transfixed by the state of apparent global chaos. When you wake up and check the state of affairs and it's one item of shrieking disastrous apocalyptic news after another, who has willpower enough to do anything worthwhile with the rest of his day?

But what happens when you don't wake up and check a bunch of things... but instead just live your life?

 

In Your Control vs. Not in Your Control

You read (or watch) the news, I'm sure. If you're like most people.

Here's an experiment:

Write down the five biggest news items you remember from the last week.

Now, write down what you will do to have an effect on these items.

Finally, write down what DIRECT effect these five biggest news items have on you.

I'm willing to bet that:

1. You cannot really do anything to measurably impact any of these issues

2. None of these issues really have any real, direct effect upon you

These things are external to you. You have no impact on them, and they none on you. At least not directly.

Now look at the other 'continually updated' things that suck up your time. Look at:

• Social media
• Online videos
• Political analysis
• Stock/metals/crypto prices
• Reddit/other 'discussion' sites

What from these media have you gotten that REALLY helped your life over the past week?

Was it worth the amount of TIME and EMOTION these media demanded in exchange?

Every 'constantly updated' thing takes a pound of flesh for whatever gains it delivers you.

This stuff is free... but it has a cost.

A big cost.

Because there is nothing you can do about all this stuff you're being told about that lies outside your control.

Nothing, that is, except get emotional about it, in a helpless, futile, debilitating way.

 

Things that Drain Your Lifeforce Away

If you pay attention, I think you will notice these things:

• You become sluggish and unproductive once you've started checking media like this

• It's easy to fall into habits of repeatedly checking media throughout the day (for 'updates')

• Your emotions get worse the more time you spend on these media

For years I've followed a rule of "no news in the mornings, no games in the mornings, no movies in the mornings, no anything distracting in the mornings."

Most days I won't check email in the mornings either (in case I get a bad news email that affects my mood) or see what alerts I have on Skype, Slack, Jira, or the various other sites I use to communicate with our team. Everyone always has pressing needs, and as soon as I switch into 'give guidance / answer questions' mode, my own major productivity for the day is done. I'll spend the rest of the day being the boss.

If I'm going out to socialize that day, I in particular will not look at anything that might negatively affect my mood until AFTER I've gone out. If I'm going out at night that means I may not check any of that stuff the entire day.

Once you engage in this stuff, you experience an emotion shift that persists quite a long time. For me it often persists the rest of the day, to greater or lesser extent. Not until you get a good night's sleep do you 'reset'.

The problem for me though is that if I have a rule of "you can't do X until 5 o'clock / until you've finished 3 big things that day / until you've gone out to socialize" or whatever else it might be, gradually over time that slips:

• "Well, it's 4 o'clock, it isn't going to hurt."

• "Well, I had a really productive day yesterday, I can cheat a little today."

• "Well, it went great with that girl yesterday, I should be fine today even if I read some of that stuff early."

And before you know it, the rules you've stuck to for months are blown all to hell and you've sunk into a consumption hole again, where you may be trapped, in a worse mood, less social, and less productive than ideal, for months... even years.

I'll still get things done even in a state like this, mind you. But I'll be B-game or C-game Chase instead of A-game Chase.

Take a minute and really think about this:

• How do you FEEL after 30 minutes of reading the news?

• How do you FEEL after an hour of surfing Reddit?

• How do you FEEL after two hours of social media?

• How do you FEEL after wasting the day on YouTube?

• How do you FEEL checking the prices on your favorite asset class for the 20th time today?

You may not feel horrible.

But I bet you feel a little bit bad.

I bet you feel a bit lazy.

I bet you do NOT feel especially social, optimistic, motivated, or hungry.

I bet that, when you think about doing that thing you know you should do, but that's hard to begin, you often tell yourself, "Well let me just check this one thing," and go back to that diversion, then end up never getting the hard thing done.

All these things are insidious, because they feel fun, or they feel necessary; they feel like they don't demand any kind of commitment, yet they are urgent, and update unpredictably (and unpredictable rewards are addicting rewards).

You never know when there'll be an update. There could be some exciting new content or big new change, and you never know when it will hit!

The only thing left to do is just keep checking!

All the while, you aren't working on what's right in front of you.

You're waiting for updates from other people whose job it is to keep you hooked.

 

Cutting Out the Bad

2.5 months ago, I audited every way I spent my time that I realized gave me any kind of bad feeling after it, and I cut it completely out:

• Reading the news (or any kind of political analysis) was OUT. I feel bad and get into a habit of checking for more news throughout the day when I'm reading news

• Checking asset prices was OUT. I'm not a day trader; any investment I have in anything is a long-term investment. There's pretty much zero use checking prices on things if you don't intend to sell any time soon, but I'd fallen into a habit of checking repeatedly (something Warren Buffet strictly advises against)

• Going onto Reddit was OUT. I try to avoid any board on Reddit I find aggravating (I had a friend tell me about how he keeps going onto Reddit's world news board, which is perhaps the inanest propaganda echo chamber on Earth; this friend knows it, and knows it's propaganda, but just can't help himself); but even still there are a lot of fascinating boards where people are posting their various stories, and there's basically no end to it. You don't really learn anything, but it sucks you in and just goes on forever

• Playing long, involving video games was OUT. I love strategy games (I could talk strategy all day), and a good role-playing game, but I have a long history of days getting wrecked by them. Years ago I realized that "Whenever I start playing an RTS or RPG game, I'll get nothing done the rest of the day" and could usually control myself with that awareness... I'd at least try to do whatever I wanted to do that day before playing a strategy game. But many days I'd want to play one enough I'd just tell myself, "Eh, I don't really have anything too pressing today. I can take a day off," and then the whole day would just be a lazy gaming day. Hot date? Something came up. Social engagements? Rain check. Pressing business needs? It can wait. The Empire needs tending. Well, no more of that; I don't want to keep losing days like that (even though it's fun). I still haven't played Wasteland 3, and when Wayward Realms comes out, if I'm still on this kick it'll have to wait until whenever I decide to cool it for a bit

I'm already not on social media (haven't been since 2009) and don't watch a lot of YouTube videos. I don't watch porn (never got addicted to it, personally, though I know many guys have). I don't get drunk anymore (I used to get plastered regularly), and I don't do other drugs.

Movies I'm okay with; there's only so much of those I can watch.

I'd already slashed my caloric intake a few months earlier and was down to one meal a day, so I wasn't dealing food comas anymore either (I'm down to my all-time adulthood slimmest right now, and going further... I'd like to see if I can get abs showing for the first time, just for the achievement).

One other thing I cut out was checking business stats until later in the day. No checking sales, signups, traffic, or anything like that until later in the day. I was in a habit before of checking first thing, then if we'd had a good day I'd tell myself, "Great! Things are on-track. I can take it easy today," however if we'd had a less-good-than-expected day I'd tell myself, "Darn, things aren't going so well. I need to take a breather today to recover a bit."

Good stats or bad stats, either way it derailed me, simply checking on them. I was unfocused after checking.

You can't totally cut out checking on your stats if you're running a business (what if something broke and you didn't realize it?), but you're not going to affect them directly for that specific day just by checking them, so I moved the checking until later in the day once I'd done whatever important things I had to do that day.

And when I cut all this stuff out, I reminded myself: every time I've cut this stuff way down, once it came back in, it gradually sucks up more time and energy in my life until after a year or two I finally cut it out and get my energy back again.

So I don't want to kid myself next time: next time I decide reading the news is okay, and checking prices daily is okay, and hanging out on Reddit is okay, and playing long and involving games is okay, well, that'll be my decision, but I will have to go in knowing I'm committing myself to a year or two of depressed focus and energy.

Anyway... guess what happened after I cut this stuff out?

At first, nothing.

The first two weeks, I remained at the same level of general B-game/C-game motivation I'd been at before.

I'd want to avoid doing something that felt a little hard or a little tiring, and I'd think about what I could do instead to distract myself, but everything was out.

I could watch a movie... but I didn't feel like doing that.

I could read a book... but I didn't feel like doing that.

So instead I'd just decide to stick with the plan: do my work, or go socialize, or whatever else it was I was going to do.

Gradually, I started to pile up lots of little wins here and there.

I was accomplishing more and more of what I wanted to do.

Even despite my lower motivation, I was getting a good deal more done than usual.

I was no longer frustrated at too many things on my plate. My plate was increasingly clean.

Simply because I wasn't getting my time sucked up by all these other things.

I wasn't getting my emotions and energy and attention span vacuumed up by vampiric media/distractions.

And then, as anyone who's familiar with the winner effect might expect, these accumulating wins led my testosterone to rise, and all of a sudden I was alert, sharp, motivated, effective, social, and driven to a level I hadn't been in years (not to mention waking up with morning wood everyday... usually that's more a teens / early twenties phenomenon than it is a late thirties phenomenon, at least in my experience...).

Something else curious happened, though, too.

 

Realities Diverge

Without screens to tell me what to think, I was suddenly reliant on my five senses to inform me about the world.

I saw; I heard; I felt; I smelled; I tasted.

More saw and heard than the others (can't lick a lamppost. Or you probably shouldn't).

I had no idea what was going on with 'current events'. Nor did I care.

I cared for maybe the first week. And then I stopped caring.

In my world, suddenly, things became harmonious.

The sun was shining. Birds were chirping. People were outside and smiling. The weather was pleasant.

Everything was relaxed, happy, and normal.

I ran my business, I spent time with people whose company I enjoyed, and I spent my time doing things under my control.

I was reading a lot more. Reading great, idea-generating books about business like the CRE guys' Making Websites Win. Reading gripping, philosophical, inspirational works of history like Xenophon's Anabasis. I actually got hooked on Anabasis and couldn't put it down. I haven't read a book like that in a long time (usually I just read books when I have a moment during meals or on the john).

One day after I'd lived like this a while, I started to have friends telling me about this 'coronavirus delta variant' that was in the news. Many regions that had started opening back up decided to lock back down, I heard. Everyone I talked to seemed surprised and shaken.

Most of the folks who talked to me about this stuff I'd warned over a year ago this would happen. It didn't take any special ability to foresee that. The governments and media themselves were saying there'd be additional strains and subsequent lockdowns. They made it very clear. Yet most people I guess ignored that part.

However, as they told me all this stuff they were hearing from the news, which I was totally unexposed to except via word-of-mouth, I realized this sensational, apocalyptic stuff they were relaying to me all sounded, well... increasingly insane.

I'm in a big capital city right now. I walk by 800+ people per week. No one's coughing. No one is sick.

When you're not plugged into the programming other people are, and they start telling you something you have not experienced at all in your reality, it sounds unhinged.

The longer I've spent away from screen stuff, the more bonkers sound the things I'm hearing from the 'plugged in'.

Numerous times over the past month I've had friends and contacts of various political persuasions tell me about this or that thing they're very, very alarmed about (covering a wide gamut of crises/apocalypses), and it all sounds crazy.

None of it is new, exactly; I was reading about this stuff same as they are a quarter of a year ago.

But for me, it all ended almost three months ago.

Because none of this stuff is happening in real life. At least not in my life.

None of the alarming things people are telling me about are occurring around me.

I'd never argue this with a news reader though -- because to the news reader, the news IS reality.

And this is the problem:

Media you consume will feel like reality to you.

It will feel like reality enough that you will even come to ignore your own five senses.

It's not just the news, either. It's any kind of media you're consuming.

Over the past decade there has been this flowering of men giving up on women because they say women are just too demanding. They will tell you things like women only want shredded male-model-looking guys with 8-figure bank accounts and millions of Instagram followers.

To a guy living in the real world, this sounds bizarre and unhinged. There are probably 10 guys on the planet who'd meet those criteria.

Are 3.5 billion women really that unrealistic?

None of the ones I've met, dated, and bedded are -- and I've met, dated, and bedded quite a few.

I wonder how many women the men who hold these opinions have met, dated, and bedded?

More and more I am finding that people hooked into these digital realities have this completely different conception of the world than do I or the handful of other people I know who are either partly or fully unplugged.

There is the reality of the five senses -- the one you can see and taste and touch and smell and hear. I live there.

Then there is the virtual reality of the media -- the one fashioned by content creators online:

• Journalists
• Political pundits
• Social media influencers
• Other social media denizens
• Redditers (or is it Redditors? Or maybe there's two 't's? I can't remember)
• YouTubers

Of course everyone knows this stuff thrives on sensationalism. The most outrageous stuff gets the most eyeballs, hence the most ad money -- hence avoids ending up on the floor in the budget trimming session.

Yet even though people know it's sensational, they still buy it, and treat it as if it's absolute fact.

READ MORE: Mind Control: How Media Influence Your Thoughts and Feelings

A good rule of thumb I adopted a long time ago was if you see it in the news media or social media it's at most 50% true. Often a lot less than that (sometimes -- more frequently than you might suspect -- totally fabricated).

"It's on the Internet! It must be true!" goes the old tongue-in-cheek expression.

There are a few exceptions. I've found a few content creators that put out content I trust and I assume I'm getting facts from them. I'm a big fan of Isaac Arthur's YouTube channel on space technology, and I quite enjoy the Conversion Rate Experts' site for business and conversion advice. It's almost impossible to find that in news media (for a variety of reasons), and the random people on social media, YouTube, Reddit, etc., generally speaking are not going to tend to have some kind of commitment to dispassionate factual accuracy. So you get facts mixed with opinion mixed with spin.

Yet more and more, people are getting totally, wholly, completely sucked into this alternate digital reality -- one where they believe all these things they experience solely through glowing screens, to the point of disbelieving their own lying eyes.

 

Accurate Mental Models

Just today I picked up my copy of David R. Schiller's The Analects of Confucius, which is the most comprehensive version out there. It's dense, filled with extensive historical footnotes, as well as cross-references with great Western thinkers (such as Aristotle and Descartes). But it's excellent.

I just read a section about focusing on "things near at hand." Which, it occurs to me, is exactly what this post is all about.

Look at what most people are focused on with a lot of their thoughts and emotion today:

• Big huge civilization-scale problems they have NO ability to influence, at all

• What some female stranger on the Internet is doing based on a few choice photos she shared on social media

• Constantly checking prices on stocks, bonds, cryptocurrencies, precious metals, commodities, and currencies, none of which they have any control over, meanwhile not actually doing anything with that info other than perhaps gambling on some short-term day trades (which in all likelihood they will lose money on)

You have no ability to influence any of these things. The more of your time is spent on these things far away from you, the less time you have to spend on things near at hand, which you can actually impact.

After one of the analects, Schiller references Wang Yang-ming, an early 16th Century Confucian scholar, who had the insight (while thinking about the study of things 'near at hand') that:

it was not that things outside should be studied for their own sake[...], but rather that, since the human heart-mind originates in the celestial order it must naturally participate in that order. Thus, it is the heart-mind's ability to frame accurate representations of the things of the world which should be studied and not merely staring at the things themselves.

In simpler language, your heart (intuition) and mind (logic) are a part of how you see the world. So it isn't just learning about things near at hand you need to concern yourself with. It is are you using things near at hand to form more accurate mental models of the world?

Schiller continues his discussion of Wang Yang-ming:

He soon realized that genuine knowing must be bound together with doing

And this is the rub, isn't it?

What are you doing when you're consuming all those ticking price updates, going down an interesting-yet-pointless Reddit hole, getting sucked into vapid YouTube videos, plunging through one inane social media post after another, or being hypnotized by sensationalist, fearmongering news?

While you're absorbing all this 'information' and allowing it to shape your worldviews?

Are you DOING anything?

You're not, right?

So how could you be forming more accurate mental models of the world? Just because someone else told you?

Book learning is good. But it must be combined with experiential learning.

Much of the stuff you learn from these distraction hubs on the screen aren't even giving you good learning.

What have you LEARNED from the last month of video/social media/news/price updates you've consumed? Anything? You might argue "Well that's just for leisure." Okay. Do you feel good and satisfied after you consume these leisure activities? Or do you feel irritated, angry, annoyed, and/or like you've wasted a bunch of time on something pointless and stupid, yet again?

Wang Yang-ming says

Whether the taste of food is good or bad cannot be known until the food enters the mouth. Is there anyone who knows the taste to be good or bad before the food enters his mouth?...Whether the forks of the road are rough or smooth cannot be known until he himself has gone through them. Is there anyone who knows whether the forks of the road are rough or smooth before he has gone through them? The same can be said without a doubt about the theories that one knows the soup before he drinks it and that one knows the clothes before he wears them...

Knowledge in its genuine and earnest aspect is action, and action in its intelligent and discriminating aspect is knowledge...

Sure, someone could tell you. He could tell you "This food is good. That road is bumpy. The girls in this place are not worth talking to."

But maybe your experience will be different. You might not like that food. The road might've been smoothed out since that guy told you (or maybe he thought you meant a different road). The girls in that place might be just your type.

You've gotta do stuff to learn it.

You've got to DO it.

This is an experiential learning site.

Everything the other authors and I talk about is stuff we've done.

We vet and screen the guys we bring on here to make sure they're not just pulling stuff out of the air.

We then expect that, if you like the stuff you learn about, you go out and use it.

Guys come on here and say things sometimes about how they "aren't convinced."

I'm don't care about convincing you. The field will do that. I'm just giving you stuff I've seen work well for myself and others for you to then go test out yourself. If you don't want to do that you're on the wrong site.

READ MORE: Real Empiricists Test

This is the ONLY way to develop accurate mental models.

The only way.

I usually dislike absolute generalities, but this is an exception.

You cannot 'think your way' to clarity.

You cannot read enough that you suddenly have insight.

You must combine study with practice.

(I mean, I guess in theory you could also meditate your way through the jhānas until you achieve enlightenment. So it's not technically the only way. But it's the only practical way for most people -- I assume most readers aren't actively moving through the jhānas)

If your 'study time' is being frittered away on things you have NO WAY to practice -- like pretty much anything you get from news media, social media, price tickers, or much of what's on Reddit, YouTube, and other bottomless content sites -- then I can guarantee you no matter how much programming you dump into your brain, your mental models are no closer to accurate than before you dove in.

Very likely, they've gotten farther from it.

 

Free Men vs. Strings

Far fewer than 1% of the people on the Internet are producers.

The rest are consumers.

When I've gone through these apathetic periods where I am consuming too much, and it's impacting my productivity, I remind myself of this distinction, and I remind myself I am becoming more of a consumer, and less a producer.

You don't need to only produce digital content to be a producer.

If you are out in your life, living life, doing things in life, you are producing in life.

If you are focused on what's near at hand, taking care of your own business, whether that be your studies, your career, your social life, family life, hobbies, skill-building, what have you, then you are producing.

If you're just sitting around, letting others dictate your reality to you, you are not producing.

Instead, you are feeling what others make you feel, believing what others make you believe, dancing to the tune they play, moving while they pull your strings.

The brain is a pliable vessel. It bends to fit whatever material is crammed into it.

It's become increasingly clear to me you can make most people believe anything if you get them consuming enough media and you saturate the media with the message you want them to believe.

Most people will believe whatever is set in front of them, if it's repeated enough, loudly enough, in enough different ways by enough different people in enough different places.

Just with this weird germaphobia epidemic alone, I have been shocked how many people I have seen switch from deeply skeptical of the things they're being told to do to wholeheartedly embracing those same things. The switch when it happens is sudden; one minute they're saying, "Not me, never!" and the next they're saying, "You should do it too... it's for your own good..."

(it'd be one thing if they were on-board from the beginning. Or if they were skeptical, then slowly came around to embracing it. But the flips I have seen -- and not in a few people -- have been dramatic, and sudden. It's like they just get slammed with enough media bombardment and then past a certain threshold bzzt-whirrrr, their brains reconfigure)

If you've ever seen the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I've felt a lot like I'm living through that. People I thought I knew are suddenly and inexplicably replaced with versions of themselves who have totally different opinions today than they had yesterday and have suddenly started pushing you to do something that yesterday they were telling you not to.

Can a man say he's free if the stuff in his brain all comes from somewhere else?

If he hasn't hardened it with his own experience and direct action?

Is anything real if you have not known it through the five senses?

So many people today live within realities constructed for them by glowing, talking screens.

The reality these people live is something strangely distorted from that of the physical world.

It is, put simply, an alternate, virtual reality.

In pretty much every way, it is a darker, scarier, more paranoid, dangerous, harder, less hopeful reality, too.

 

The Real World Is Full of Hope

I'm generally speaking a pretty optimistic guy.

I did my time in the fatalism dungeons from 13 to 23. It did a number on me, until I broke free.

READ MORE: How to Overcome Depression

However, I will tell you, the past few years consuming this media stuff, it was affecting me.

I've taken some smaller breaks over this period where I quit news and other distractions for some weeks at a time, or I restricted myself to these things only later in the day or only on certain days.

Even with it partially restricted, rather than totally gone, you can feel the reduced effects on you. You read the news on Sunday after not having read it all week and your first thought is, "I didn't really miss much." Your next thought is, "Man, this stuff sure is dramatic."

The more you remove these 'constantly updated, sensationalistic' things from your life:

• News media/analysis
• Stock/crypto/metals price tickers
• Reddit boards, no matter how fascinating
• Stupid YouTube videos/channels
• Social media of all kinds
• 'Clickhole' humor/etc. sites
• Pornography

... the better able you are to focus on things near at hand; on the things that really matter.

You have a limited amount of bandwidth in a day. You can focus it on big, dramatic things outside your control, or you can focus it on small, immediate things within your control.

Which focus is more likely to produce wins, progress, and rewards?

One of these is you sitting around being hypnotized, captive, helpless, getting programmed. The other is you taking action on things you can directly affect, learning skills, and building increasingly accurate mental models through direct personal experience.

This may be a big shift for you. You may feel like, "How can I NOT know what is going with XYZ really important thing?"

The things to ask yourself are:

• What makes it important?

• What will happen if you, personally, don't know what's going on with it?

• Is following this item consuming emotional energy and motivation you could use elsewhere?

• If you freed that energy and motivation up to use it elsewhere, where else might you use it instead?

When I started this latest kick, I had one thought in mind, more than any other:

From here on out I'm ignoring anything I don't directly influence or control. I want my full attention on the things I DO directly influence and control. This is the most important thing for me to do.

For what could be more important for a man than to focus fully on that which is right in front of him?

Instead of having his head off somewhere distant, emotional, out of his control?

Is there anyone who would argue any man is able to have his emotions and energy held captive by various huge, sensationalist things outside his control, while at the same time fully focusing on that which is near at hand?

I couldn't recall having heard anyone talk about this before: cut out anything you do not directly control from your focus. Free yourself to focus 100% on what YOU control. It felt like a pretty big breakthrough.

Once I'd been doing this about a month, I started re-reading Perry Marshall's wonderful book 80/20 Sales and Marketing (I mentioned this book in my 2018 recommended reading list. I first read it in 2014 or 2015).

I had a lot of great ideas from it. Then one day while eating lunch I wanted to watch a video, but I wanted something informative (I avoid inane YouTube videos to, again, avoid getting sucked into a hole).

I didn't know if Perry Marshall even had a YouTube channel, but I decided to type his name into the search bar and see. And there was a video near the top titled "99% of People in the World Are Carried Along by the Current." It was posted a year ago and only had 2800 views.

I thought, "Hmm, I thought this guy was all business. I didn't know he had stuff like this," and clicked out of curiosity.

And wouldn't you know it, right smack in the video Perry talks about cutting out of your life anything you do not directly control, to focus all your energy on that which you do, and says he's been doing that for six years and it's changed his life:

And I said to myself, "What are the odds?"

It's possible he mentioned that in the book. I only reread parts of it (it wasn't in the parts I reread, but I don't remember the rest... it's been 6 or 7 years since I read it properly). Could be it's in there, and some latent association in my brain recalled it, and that's why I started reading the book after making this change.

But man, that's some synchronicity, I'd say.

Get all this stuff eliminated that debilitates you. Put your focus squarely on what you control... the things near-at-hand, instead of things far away.

'Cause life's short, right?

What do you want on your epitaph?

Here lies Joe, he read a lot of news and watched the stock ticker like a hawk. He was always up on current events and the latest prices. RIP.

There are a lot of people who could have epitaphs like this.

What do you want to do... fret and worry about all the stuff the constantly updating sensationalist attention seekers are telling you you need to be SUPER worried about?

Or do you want the freedom to direct and control your life the way YOU want?

I will tell you my basic habits these days:

• Wake up and meditate for a few minutes to clear my mind

• Prime myself for the day by thinking about everything I want to do that day and how I want it to go (e.g., visualization)

• Write up a short-but-manageable to-do list of what I want to accomplish that day

• Start knocking items out, often with the Internet turned off (I don't check messages till later... and don't use my phone for anything other than that [never wanted to get sucked into surfing the web on my phone or using apps -- that always seemed like another terrible addiction I don't need to have])

• Only go on the web after the important stuff I don't need the web for is done

• No news. No price tickers. No Reddit. No stupid YouTube videos. No any bottomless-content-constantly-updated-inane-pointless-BS stuff at all

• At the end of the day, as I lay in bed, before I fall asleep, I spend a few minutes priming myself for the next day, thinking about what I intend to do then ('programming' myself -- I don't know why it works, but I've noticed when I think about stuff I want to do the night before, when falling asleep, I'm much more motivated to do it the next day. When I don't, I'm less focused on it the following day. Stuff you learn right before you fall asleep you have better retention of the next day, so perhaps it's related to that)

When I need a break, I:

• Read a good book
• Write a little fiction
• Take a walk outside
• Talk to someone
• Watch an educational video
• Think about what else I'd like to do that day

I try to only watch movies at the end of the day after I've done whatever I wanted to do that day, to avoid any potential energy sinks (with movies you're sitting there passively watching for 1.5-2 hours, so it's a real momentum killer. Best saved for winding down at the end of the day).

I feel about 1000% better than when I was having hours a day and a large chunk of my emotional energy sucked up by all that garbage.

You will too if you start doing this.

Yeah, I know all that stuff you're consuming right now feels really important.

You're not able to put into words just why it's important. But it feels like it is.

It feels like the most important thing. Far more important than the things you could be doing with your own life.

The thing to realize about that is it's an addiction. Like junk food, drugs, gambling, or any other kind of addiction, media addictions make you feel like you need them, even though they're bad for you.

Search your own feelings. I think you will be able to feel this stuff is an addiction.

You can keep doing it if you want to. But be honest with yourself: "I'm only doing this because I'm addicted."

If you can be honest about it, sooner or later you'll get annoyed at it enough to do something about it.

When you do, you'll discover a level of clarity, harmony, and freedom you never knew while under the yoke of the sensationalists.

You'll rediscover the world of the five senses again -- a world where the frantic horrors fretted over by people addicted to the glowing screens hold no power, and the world becomes one malleable in your fingers, able to be shaped and molded and moved about, with you free once more to carve your own path.

Wonder again comes back into the world once you free yourself to discover it.

That seems worth the trade of not being up on 'current events', 'the latest happenings', 'the latest prices', and whatnot to me. Does it not to you?

Chase

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