How I Managed to Have a Healthier Digital Life
Some time ago, I realized that I was struggling with information overload. Every time I had a bit of “idle” time, I felt the need to grab my phone, or if I was at home, my laptop, and look up what was happening, to absorb some new information. But I had barely finished processing the last piece of information before I was already wanting more and more. By the end of the day, during my reflection on the day, I felt that something was off. In moments when I should have been idle or resting, I was instead agitated.
When I stopped to analyze my list of interests, I realized it was huge: Brazilian and global politics, combat sports (MMA, boxing, and jiu-jitsu), healthy eating, psychology, technology, movies and series, RPG, board games, card games (Magic: The Gathering[1]), comics, literature, and other information that appeared on X, Instagram, LinkedIn, Telegram and WhatsApp groups, news feeds from certain websites, and private conversations with friends. On top of that, there was also work and family-related information.
The first step was taken automatically, without much thought, but then I started to reflect more deeply on what could actually be useful for me.
Social Media
This was something I did “on autopilot.” I remember being on a social media platform, seeing a post from someone, and wondering why I was even looking at it. I accessed the person’s profile and saw that their most recent posts didn’t interest me. There was nothing there that could add anything useful to my life. I immediately unfollowed the person and began cleaning up other accounts. I remember removing over 100 people at once.
After that, I created some rules for my social media use:
- I don’t have any social media apps on my phone.
- I don’t follow companies.
- I don’t follow news websites.
- I use social media on my computer, without saving my session/password, and never enable notifications.
Feeds and YouTube
The use of feeds was the key factor in organizing the chaos of information. With them, I can consolidate almost all of this information in one place, and it’s interesting to think that the use of feeds has been around since the mid-2000s.
To ensure that this wouldn’t be an area where I lost control over the information, I created a category called “quarantine,” which is not displayed on the main page. Any new “site” I discover initially goes into this category, and after some undefined amount of time, it is moved to the correct category. I do this to avoid the “fomo” (fear of missing out) with new sites.
Another benefit of using feeds was adding the YouTube channels I follow. This way, I don’t need to browse the platform itself.
In the mornings, I have the habit of watching the daily review from the Sexto Round channel and, after that, I read my emails and check my feeds. But I realized that sometimes I would waste time browsing YouTube’s homepage, looking for other information, and often end up losing time doing that. Then, after a tip from Rodrigo Ghedin from Manual do Usuário, showing how he configured channel filters in Miniflux, I realized that YouTube pages actually have a feed enabled. This completely changed my life because, from that day on, I only open my feeds and watch my daily MMA review. Not only that, I added the main channels I follow to the feed, so I can access information from those channels without enabling notifications and even without being subscribed to the channel.
- This is on pause because, after the third child, it’s impossible to play. ↩︎