Reclaiming my time and my life—how I triumphed over time thieves
I tidied my mind and gained peace in the process
However old you are, wherever you are in your life, chances are good that you’ve experienced the feeling of being overwhelmed at some point. I’m not talking about work or family obligations. I’m referring to the onslaught of content, consumption, digital conversation threads, and competition for your attention.
Especially right now, we live in a time of más. Of fanciful excess, of all-you-can-eat chaos, of junk entertainment, of devices that notify, remind, and interrupt us, and of clever marketing, interspersed with bites of entertainment, that compete for our attention.
Everyone is different, and everyone accepts different levels of chaos, cacophony, and noise in their lives. It’s up to each of us to decide how much is too much.
I’m of the Marie Kondo camp, which means I deeply crave and appreciate efficiency and minimalism—to consume only what I value and minimize the waste I create. I love peace and quiet, nature, and yet am also drawn to the energy and vitality of urban life.
I also fall into bouts of burnout when all I want is for everything around me to stop so I can catch up.
A secret stairway in Silver Lake (Silverwood-Easterly North Stairs)
Perhaps not everyone feels this way, but I believe everyone can benefit from periodic audits of where their money is going, how they allot their time, and how certain behaviors and habits affect their sense of happiness and fulfillment.
Lately, from a deep desire for more satisfaction and less longing, I’ve been auditing my life.
Here’s how:
Examining unhealthy, codependent, chaotic, or distracting relationships. All relationships between two people are an energy exchange, and it has taken me years to understand what I give and what I get in certain dynamics, and if they feel lopsided, how to address the imbalance. I think honesty and openness, along with compassion for both parties, helps to ease the friction of a difficult conversation between friends, but sometimes a clean break is necessary and mutually-beneficial.
Moderating or detoxing from substance crutches like alcohol, drugs, sugar, etc. I recently opted to take a 100-day abstention from cannabis, a substance I leaned into heavily during COVID. I realized that I was stuck in a cycle of pleasure and pain, anxiety and inspiration that was mostly chemical, not a true reflection of who I am or my circumstances. I’m only on day 26, but I feel more motivated, more able to be realistic with myself, less like a pleasure fiend.
“Fall Dance Party”
Limiting or removing social media apps. I’ve touched on this in previous posts, but it’s my firm belief that only a small fraction of all the apps at our disposal are truly delivering value. Most social media apps are in the business of advertising, and are actively capitalizing from our data. For the sake of tidiness, I remove any that I haven’t used recently because I can always re-download them later. If I’m not ready to delete completely, I set healthy daily time limits (half an hour is plenty for Instagram, for example).
Unfollowing, blocking, or deleting as appropriate. I feel silly to admit that certain profiles on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. produce envy in me. I realized at some point that that process of social comparison and envy served no other purpose than to create stress and egotistical tendencies in me…so I adopted a policy of unfollowing an account anytime those sensations arise.
Unsubscribing from marketing. In a slightly different way, the same framework can be applied to the mountain of marketing emails that land in my Gmail each day. I ask myself: do they deliver useful, interesting, or valuable information? Or are they noise? The vast majority of them are noise, and for my own sanity and sense of satisfaction, it feels good to unsubscribe from useless marketing that only makes finding more important messages harder.
I never regret walking past the fire station
Canceling subscriptions. Unless of course they are providing utility to you. The truth is that auto-renewal subscriptions are the new model of separating you from your money without your even realizing. I was spending $50 each month on a probiotic subscription that was elegantly packaged, but I never noticed a huge difference in my health. Canceled! I was also spending $275/mo on a membership to a gym that was hard to access (I had to drive or get on a bus) and where few truly enjoyable social interactions took place. CANCELED! And it feels so good.
Making time for reflection, stillness, in order to listen for your inner voice—and trusting it. So many of us are disconnected from our individual soulful guidance. We let our ego run wild, worry about our appearances and hierarchies relative to those around us, but we miss the messages nudging us toward what will actually allow us to find peace. Maybe peace isn’t your goal, but it’s mine, and making time to meditate, walk, or otherwise be present wherever I am has been wholly satisfying.
(If you’re like me) limiting opportunities for envy, looking at others’ lives, feeling lack. Perhaps you feel it’s unreasonable to unfollow people you want to maintain ties with, or can’t realistically delete your Facebook, delete your LinkedIn…etc. These things are, unfortunately, an integral part of modern life. Instead of total removal, maybe it’s only checking these social sites once or twice per week, and removing their apps and notifications from your connected devices. The Light Phone is a new device aimed at removing all peripheral junk from your connected device, leaving only the basics like calling, texting, and listening to podcasts.
Giving my attention intentionally, deliberately, and prioritizing apps and creators that provide value rather than take it. This is my personal mantra when it comes to anything I give my attention to—be it other people, digital content, books, etc. When you spend hours falling down a virtual rabbit hole, are you gaining knowledge and wisdom, or are you simply being entertained and groomed as a consumer? Think about it. The new economy is the attention economy.
More stairs, these are the Cicero-Redcliff Stairs in Silver Lake
Considering how many hit tv series I’ve watched vs. books I’ve read recently. I don’t mean to shame TV aficionados. For some people the allure of a Real Housewives brawl or the salacious storyline on Succession is too juicy to ignore. Personally I find most streaming content to be complete garbage that only reinforces the tropes that underscore our broken economic and political system—of individualism, hierarchy, heroes and villains, competition, and ego.
Stepping out of trance. Where are you experiencing trance in your life? Tara Brach, a meditation teacher, psychologist and author of several books, uses the word trance to describe the state of being disconnected from our bodies. Once I began to identify the areas of my life (see above about substances and crutches) that felt like muscle memory—reaching for my phone, lighting a joint, overeating, just to name a few—it became much easier to choose something different, something more fulfilling. It’s a work in progress, of course.
Breaking free from the matrix. If you’ve never seen the late 1990s film The Matrix, I highly suggest it because its core message still rings true. It depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside “the Matrix”, a simulated reality that intelligent machines have created to distract humans while using their bodies as an energy source. After all, we do create heat and electricity! In order to avoid this, we must each remember to keep the algorithms guessing. To become so predictable, so much in trance that we lose all agency is to lose what makes you human and gives your life meaning, color, and lasting satisfaction.
Plumeria, a.k.a. Frangipani bush near my home
The change occurring in the world right now is immense, and it will be interesting to see how the next 30 years unfold socio-politically, environmentally, and with regard to the slowly dying epoch of capitalism. Among the thousands of years of recorded human history, unchecked capitalism has been the predominant economic model only in the last hundred or so—and its faults are clear.
If you value your own peace and serenity, and wish to develop a stronger relationship to your inner self, a key first step is to step out of the digital time thieves and into the wide open brain space.
Many thanks as always to my great editor Susan and great network of friends and supporters. Until next time!
Always so articulate and filled with thought provoking ideas.