Do you spend a number of time on social media and different time-wasting apps in your cellphone?
If you happen to’re sad together with your senseless scrolling behavior, you’ve seemingly tried completely different techniques to interrupt it, like deleting apps or utilizing screentime options to set cut-off dates.
Whereas these Odysseian strategies of restraint may also help break the scroll behavior, they’re not at all times efficient.
Based on researchers, if you wish to break a nasty behavior, you usually have to switch it with a greater, more healthy one.
In my interview with illustrator-filmmaker Campbell “Struthless” Walker about journaling, he provided a strong substitute for senseless scrolling: microjournaling.
I’ve accomplished microjournaling on and off for the previous few years and located it useful in breaking the scroll behavior.
Right here’s what it’s and find out how to do it.
What Is Microjournaling?
Microjournaling is precisely what it feels like. As a substitute of setting apart quarter-hour to put in writing in your journal, you’re going to shrink that to a minute or two. A microjournaling session may even final underneath 60 seconds. It’s simply sufficient time to sprint off a thought or two.
What do you write about? Something! Report what simply occurred in your day. File your temper. Write down a thought that’s been regularly popping up. Make an observation of somebody you’ve been fascinated about and why. Jot down a fear. Checklist one thing you’re grateful for. Repeatedly reiterate a objective. No matter you need.
The best way to Set Up Microjournaling on Your Cellphone to Exchange Senseless Scrolling
As a result of microjournaling solely takes a minute, it’s the proper habits to substitute for mindlessly scrolling your cellphone. At any time when you’ve that itch to test Instagram or X, you’re going to microjournal in your cellphone as an alternative.
Right here’s find out how to arrange your cellphone to make microjournaling your default behavior:
Rearrange your homescreen. Put your notes app precisely the place TikTok or your different troublesome apps used to stay. Conceal or delete the social apps.
Begin a contemporary observe every morning. Title it with the date.
Everytime you really feel the itch to test your cellphone, microjournal in your notes app. All through the day, dump one to 5 sentences at any time when your thumb itches to test reels. Once more, it may be about no matter you need. Random ideas are high quality. Don’t overthink it.
Preserve it underneath two minutes. The second you are feeling your self sprucing prose, cease. Microjournaling is about seize, not craft.
Weekly overview. Return via your notes on Sunday night time and search for patterns: triggers for dangerous moods, small joys you’d forgotten, concepts value growing.
Evaluate with AI. You need to use AI to reinforce your weekly overview and acquire deeper insights. Copy and paste your week of notes into an LLM like ChatGPT, after which pose a number of of the next questions:
What themes or patterns do you discover throughout these entries?Group these notes into classes primarily based on temper, matter, or concern.What appeared to occupy my ideas essentially the most this week?Had been there any recurring unfavorable ideas or triggers? Any recurring optimistic ones?Spotlight any entries that replicate a second of perception, readability, or development.Examine this week’s reflections with final week’s — what modified?Is there proof of enchancment in my temper, habits, or focus over the week?Are there any notes that can be utilized for a venture I’m engaged on?What motion can I take primarily based on my notes that may enhance my life?
Much less Senseless Scrolling; Extra Life-Enhancing Insights
When your thumb will get twitchy tomorrow, open Notes as an alternative of a feed. Write one line about what you ate, what your child stated, or that assembly that went south. Shut it. Get on with life.
You’re not preventing the behavior. You’re redirecting it. Like placing the veggies the place the cookies was.
The scrolling itch received’t vanish in a single day. However after a number of weeks, your muscle reminiscence may truly desire capturing your individual life as an alternative of gawking at everybody else’s.
And in contrast to the blur of tweets and posts you eat that you just’ll by no means care to recollect, these fragments of your individual experiences will create a treasury you’ll in the future wish to revisit. A file of a life — and a possible roadmap for find out how to enhance it.
Take heed to my full dialog with Campbell about another journaling practices that might change your life:
