Casual Conversation

I noticed this just last night. I wanted to watch an episode of a comforting show, and I've had it prepared to go. I only had to press play. Then I got a notification about a new video on a Youtube channel I subscribe to, so I started watching that instead. Midway through, I remember that my medicine cabinet needed replenishing, so I opened another tab to look for the medications I needed and I made a list of the things I was going to buy next time. By that time, about two hours had passed from when I prepared the comforting show, I didn't finish the Youtube video, and it felt like two hours where I did a lot but achieved nothing. It was as if my brain was slipping from my grasp and it was a scary feeling.

This is a strategy I've developed to stop myself from mindlessly scrolling. Opening my phone and opening an app is basically an automated physical response like walking at this point, I don't think about it. It even is an automatic stress response to pull out your phone to hide from the world when you get anxious.

I found it helps to make your more intrusive apps harder to get to, even something as simple as removing TikTok from your home screen so you have to do that extra step of pulling it up from your app drawer to get to.

In combination with that, I try to catch myself mindlessly scrolling and stop and think, "what am I trying to do right now?" Often the answer is nothing, it's mindless. That helps me pull myself out of automation mode to stop.