What did you read last week? What did you watch? Who did you speak to? What did you do?
Ever get a feeling that you don’t seem to remember much about how your days go by? Not in the amnesia sense, but in the it’s all just a blur sense.
You are not alone.
The other day, while going through my notes, I stumbled upon an idea I had jotted down in the past. I was taken aback. I had completely forgotten about it and it hadn’t been that long yet.
I don’t know if it is about me passing the seminal age of 40 or something else that’s encouraging my neurons to be lazier.
I have a hunch that it’s not my age, not yet. It’s something else, something that we all have been exposed to in the recent years. Something that has dramatically changed how we see the world, so much so that we are now coming to terms with its pitfalls and trying to make amends, albeit with great difficulty.
You’ve probably guessed it. I am pointing all fingers at our humble nemesis: The infinite scroll of text and videos.
We have trained our brain to keep hopping. It’s like our brain would go from one bar to another, savouring the drinks, liking some and hating others, eventually ending up too drunk to remember any of it.
We’re sending it on these drunken escapades every day. Its capacity to drink is certainly increasing but that’s about it. It refuses to remember the bar names or the finer details of the drinks it’s having. Why should it when it knows that the next bar hopping is just around the corner?
In the field of memory there’s a concept called spaced repetition. It says that to remember something you should expose yourself to that thing again after a gap of some time. Just doing it once won’t cut it. You need to space it out, come back and repeat the experience.
The infinite scroll doesn’t allow for such repetition. It wants to get us addicted to the new. It wants to get us used to more.
It interrupts us when we are deeply invested in a moment. It doesn’t want us to savour it and be fully in it. All it needs is one tiny millisecond of boredom during a conversation or an activity and boom, it has sucked you in. Your mind has zero idea what just happened. One moment you were talking to someone, the other moment you’re looking at a bunch of puppies dancing in the rain. It’s damn confusing.
When you do this again and again, the ability of your senses to truly take in an experience is lost. Every moment slides on the surface like spilled water on an iron table. Nothing seeps in.
What’s the Fix
There’s a reason why boredom is good for creativity. When your mind is idle, it has more bandwidth to connect the dots. If you just keep exposing your mind to new dots every day, all it will end up with is a clogged mess that’s too jumbled to be taken apart. Your mind needs a break from this exposure to make sense of the data.
So what do we do about it? Ditching the infinite scroll seems futile. Every platform — including Substack Notes — is part of the conspiracy now. Where does one go after leaving them all? Doesn’t make sense. And frankly, this detox is unlikely to last long, you are too addicted to it. If anything, you will come back to it with an insatiable hunger, ready to devour millions of pieces of short content.
What you need is some strength for the pull in this tug of war. As you get pulled in, you immediately pull back. Each time you pull back a little more with all your power until the opponent gives in and leaves your dopamine-hungry brain to decide for itself.
To gather this strength, start with time-bounding your scrolling. Give it fixed time slots each day. Start with multiple time slots. Something like 20 mins in the morning, noon and evening. Make these happen at specific times. When you get the urge to check in between, remind your brain that you will get to scroll in some time. If 3 slots sound too restrictive at first, make it 4 or 5. But fixed slots and, most importantly, at specific times. No random scrolling during lunch or in between work. Fixed slots, fixed times.
What this will do is make your mind gain a sense of control over this beast. The almost automated phone pick ups and jumping to scrolling will stop. Your brain will know exactly when you plan to do it and for how much time.
As you start pulling the rope more towards you and anticipate victory, start eliminating the slots. The goal is to eventually reduce this activity to fixed times once or twice a day. No less, no more.
This sounds easy but is going to be incredibly difficult. You don’t know how much of an auto-pilot you’re on when it comes to scrolling. It will take time and mental strength to regain the control.
Your mind will soon stop asking for the easy dopamine hits. It is now more likely to accept challenging activities like reading a book or watching a documentary or writing a journal or just contemplating and introspecting on life.
The neurons will no longer be couch potatoes. They’ll get back to working hard for the reward.
Your mind needs a break to rejuvenate. It needs to just be with itself first and then create. Right now it’s defaulting to consuming.
Having your mind step back from the hustle and bustle and letting it create is going to rewire it for the better. That’s when everyday moments will start feeling different. You will be more present and less distracted. And you will remember more because the act of remembering the past requires that you were fully present in the moment that you’re trying to recall.
Here’s to taming our minds to remember much more.
Take care,
Abhijeet
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Love your suggestion to wrangle the infinite scrolls by using time-boxing. I think being very intentional about why you're engaging with something before you open it is important.
Or in terms of your metaphor; instead of bar-hopping, I would pick one drink that I wanted to taste and specifically go to that one bar, savor it slowly, and then leave.