How to Stop Wasting Time on the Internet

“Most information is time-consuming, negative, irrelevant to your goals, and outside of your influence.”
— Tim Ferriss
How to stop wasting time on the internet.

How to stop wasting time on the internet

You waste too much time online. I don’t mean just on your computer. I mean all the streaming services, Twitter feeds, Instagram stories, Snapchat conversations, WhatsApp group messages, TikTok videos, and Facebook posts you’re plugged into for 4, 5, or 6 hours a day.

There is just so much stuff vying for our attention. And the sickest part is that the smartest people in the world are working on how to make each of these apps and devices as addictive as possible. It’s a race for eyeballs. A race for mindless consumption.

But you don’t have to fall for it. You can take back your time. I know because I did it.

All you need to do is internalize a few simple concepts.

It sounds too easy, but there is genius in simplicity. Simple mental models are Antifragile (a concept from Nassim Nicholas Taleb). They gain from disorder and feed on chaos.

Stick with me and you’ll find yourself leveraging your time more effectively than anyone else around you. You’ll stop wasting time on the internet and start building the life you want.

Ok, so here’s the first simple insight to stop wasting time on the internet:

1. Learn that You are what you expose yourself to.

Wealest - you are what you expose yourself to.gif

Over the very long term, you are what you expose yourself to. Most people underestimate the impact of what they consume. This means that the quality of your thoughts is influenced by what you watch, read, and listen to.

One reason for this is the power of social proof. You think and act like the people around you. Why would it be any different with the content you expose yourself to? So much of our communication and interaction with the world happens over the internet and through the television. Social proof is just as powerful through these mediums as it is in person.

I used to watch CNN every day. It was partly for nostalgia (it was always on in the house I grew up in), and partly because I liked the drama. It took me some time to realize that all I felt after watching CNN was irritation and anger.

If you expose yourself to angry, vindictive, and outraged content, your thoughts will become angry, vindictive, and outraged.

But, if you expose yourself to thoughtful, measured, and well-reasoned content, you will become thoughtful, measured, and well-reasoned.

Start taking note of how certain pieces of content make you feel.

Does your Twitter feed leave you feeling agitated? Does exposure to the daily news cycle make you irritable? What about the videos you watch and the articles you read? How do they impact your thoughts and emotional life?

From there, you can start to curate your content…which leads us into the second insight.

The second simple insight to stop wasting time on the internet is:

2. Learn that Desire is suffering.

You suffer over what you desire. Whether you want money, status, deeper friendships, a significant other, a better job - whatever it is - each desire causes suffering.

It turns out that there’s a very practical way to deal with this. Naval Ravikant explains how to handle this universal truth in an interview with Joe Rogan. Here’s what Naval says:

Desire is suffering… every desire you have is an axis where you will suffer. So just don’t focus on more than one desire at a time. The universe is rigged in such a way that if you just want one thing, and you focus on that, you’ll get it, but everything else you gotta let go.

If desire is suffering, you have to find your single, most powerful desire and suffer only over that desire until you get it. Let go of everything else for the time being.

Naval Ravikant Twitter post

I wake up every morning with a single, overarching desire. I know exactly what I’m suffering over because I’ve defined it clearly for myself. I’ve read about it. I’ve written about it. I’ve even built a website about it. It’s the desire for freedom of my time.

The third thing you need to do to stop wasting time on the internet is to:

3. Curate content through the lens of your desire.

Once you’ve established your one, overarching desire, you can curate the content you consume through the lens of that desire.

It will likely happen automatically! All of your previously wasted time on the internet will transform into a productive stream of curated content about achieving your desire. Once you internalize this, you’ll stop creeping through your friends’ Instagram stories, and start seeking out the content created by those who have achieved the thing you want.

You’ll create a web of people, ideas, websites, videos, articles, Twitter feeds, and podcasts about how to achieve your goal. And you’ll start to move in that direction by default because you are what you expose yourself to.

It is my desire for freedom of my time that has led me to the words and writings of great thinkers and doers. I’ve learned from Naval Ravikant, Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Shane Parrish, Mohnish Pabrai, Felix Dennis, and many others who have achieved this goal before me.

This is the most effective way to stop you from wasting your time on the internet:

Identify the single desire worth suffering over, and then curate your content to achieve that desire.

You’ll be astonished at how quickly you can move towards your goal once the content you consume becomes an ally and not an adversary.

You are what you expose yourself to.

Start now.

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Here’s the link to the Joe Rogan Experience episode with Naval Ravikant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHkcs3kG44

To read up on social proof, click here.

Photo by Avi Richards on Unsplash

ProductivityThomas Waschenfelderhow to stop wasting time on the internet, wasting time online, how not to waste time onlineComment