Not another diet ....
I was in a course at the start of the year that explained a diet to me that I had never heard about, and even though I could eat whatever I wanted it was a lot harder than most diets; it was no fad either, as I have stuck with it ever since. It is the LMD - Low Media Diet. I limit myself to 1 hour of media a day! By media I mean: television, podcasts, internet, social media and even books. I grant a few exceptions around work related research and if I want a day off it at the weekend then I am relaxed about that too.
I ghosted my phone.....
I turned off all my notifications so the only thing my phone can ever do by itself is tell me if I'm receiving a telephone call or have had a text message sent to me; every other interaction and update is on my terms, when I ask for it. My god that took some getting used too, and made me realise that I did have an addictive personality after all - I'm glad I never started smoking!
So why do I do it and Should you do it?
Firstly it frees up so much time and with a young family that's a serious commodity! I found it quite challenging at first to know where to direct my attention with the vacuum that my quitting cold turkey had presented. What do I do when my wife excuses herself at a restaurant and I am sitting all by myself and can't pick up my phone to check something - oh the agony!!! Well as with everything this passes, and soon it becomes rather nice to just enjoy the peace and quiet - another commodity that parents of young children will enjoy more of!
Secondly I began to assess which media I would consume now that I only had an hour to play with each day. This led to another interesting revelation for me; I was giving my time and attention to things that made me really bl00dy angry. I would get all riled up if I read a Facebook post that held very strong political views and had no respect for the other opposing view (even if it happened to be a view I shared). It reminds me of the bizarre scenario where people can scream blue murder at others when they are behind the wheel of a car yet would never dream of doing it face to face in the street. At this point I uncovered an amazing little button in Facebook - "see fewer posts like this". Now this is perhaps the most interesting bit for me; I hovered over it for a while before clicking, because I actually wanted the drama that this created and was reluctant to let go of it. But when you are on the LMD you can't keep stuff like that so it got clicked and credit to the algorithms, I don't see that stuff anymore. So what are you holding on to that makes you angry and maybe you could see less of.
You really get me.....
This is brilliant because by now everyone who doesn't want to see my videos or read my (first) blog has asked to see less of me. Which means YOU really love me and You REALLY get me! That's awesome!