Every New Years, there is at least a big chunk of people that come up with these amazing goals that should be achieved before the ending of the year. However, most of these goals get forgotten, or are given up on within the first month of the year. Many people have decided not to make New Year’s Resolutions anymore.
Well this year, I decided not to make any New Year’s resolutions. Instead, I created a challenge for myself that will put me in an environment where procrastinating would be super boring.
This challenge either requires immense will power or the usage of many productivity apps consistently. In this article, I will describe the challenge I am participating in, as well as my personal rules for the challenge. In the next article, I will list a few of them - as well as forum posts that discuss the strict restriction of websites on both mobile and desktop devices.
Additionally, this challenge has to be completly tailored to you, and requires lots of self-awareness and honesty with yourself.
Acknowledge the Problem#
You need to reflect back on your actions over the past year or month. Ask some questions:
- What do you do when you are bored that does not require much mind power?
- What do you do to procrastinate that also does not get anything else meaningful done?
- What is a bad habit that stops you from doing the things you want to do in life, or makes you waist hours of your day on accident?
- What is something you do that is rarely teaching you anything, or just makes you passively do an action without much thought?
- What is something you do to just distract yourself from your own thoughts?
Generally, these things for the modern person would be “use phone”, “watch YouTube”, “watch shows”, “read comics”, “play videogames”, “go on social media” or even just obsessively checking your phone for text messages, or updates in any kind of chats (like discord, for example).
By deleting social media over the past year, I have been able to effectively decrease the amount of time I am on my phone, however, I would still reach for my phone or get on sites like YouTube and Reddit during “dull” or “boring” moments to distract myself.
During the months of November and December, I had dove deep into the topic of mindfulness, and started meditating. The impact has been immense, and drove me to make an even bigger challenge for myself to officially get rid of all distractions for one month. This will allow me to go deep within my own mind and learn the most about myself, my interactions, and even the people around me in a short amount of time.
I had often still found ways to procrastinate on tasks and even aspirations. I identified the problem being that these distracting activities were just simply too readily available and easy to access. The solution is simple, make these activities less accessible and I will be less likely to try to distract myself from the present moment.
Establish Your Rules#
For this month, I created some rules that I believe wholeheartedly that I have the willpower to abide to.
- No YouTube unless it is for school/educational purposes. This does not mean I can binge history videos that seem interesting - only videos in relation to my bachelor’s degree.
- No Discord. Discord is one of the most used applications on my phone - and it often served as a distraction during down time when I would look at my phone for no reason at all. This is a habit that has to go.
- No Reddit. Although it is different from many other social medias, it is still addictive. It is easy to spend an hour looking at different posts in a subreddit and reading every single comment. Other people’s opinions are interesting, but wouldn’t it be better to form your own opinion and think about the topic without the injection of other people’s thoughts?
- No mindless surfing of the internet. The internet is a big place, and it is easy to get lost in the sauce - spending hours diving into a topic that has nothing to do with my current goals in life.
- No shows. I usually will wind down with anime, kdrama, or read webtoons and manga while I am eating. However, I want to train myself in many instances to stay in the present moment. I want to eat without feeling the need to get on my phone to read webtoon. I also want to be able to wind down without spending time on someone else’s art. This is an attempt to bring back hobbies that had been long replaced with enjoying the products of those same hobbies by other hands - drawing, video editing, story writing - the whole shebang.
- This is a given, since I already have not used social media in a year. But I am also reiterating the rule of no social media and/or forum like sites. No instagram, twitter, reddit, quora, pinterest, facebook, online shopping, whatever it is that keeps your eyes away from your work and away from yourself.
Document your Accomplishments#
It is a good idea journal your day to day life as you go through this challenge to keep track how your habits, work ethic, and self-understanding improves throughout the weeks.
I like to read back and realize how my mindset, perspective, and thought processes change through these days of of digital fasting. It helps me feel more motivated to continue reducing my phone usage and stay in the present moment even after the challenge.
It also helps me keep track of just how much my mental health improves every week of the challenge.
Journaling about your day does not even have to take that long. I suggest just 5 sentences to talk about the day and how you feel - then choosing one of these journal prompts to respond to for self-discovery.
Reflect#
A week after the challenge is over, think about how much your life has changed within the past month. How do you feel? How often do you reach for your phone now? What do you do during dull and boring moments? Do you feel a little closer to your goals?
When the months end, I will reflect and write about my experiences with a month being off the grid. Each week I will give a short snippet about what I observe in myself and others - for I think it will be quite interesting. In the meantime - I hope everyone has a beautiful start to the new year.
Happy New Year!
