How many hours a day do you spend using instant messaging apps?
Could being less available to your friends and family improve your life?
What if I told you that limiting your use of messaging apps would give you enough time to do everything you’ve been wanting to do and improve your social life?
I can hear you saying:
“My social life will go down the drain!”
Well, not necessarily. I’m not suggesting you become a hermit and disappear from the face of the Earth.
What I’m inviting you to do is to disconnect from your messaging apps until after dinner.
You’ll be surprised how much your daily life, including your social life, can improve if you choose to act this way.
Let’s Imagine
And since I know you’re not too fond of the idea, let’s do a thought experiment before continuing. What does WhatsApp, or the instant messaging app you use, really bring to your life?
Imagine the following (yes, even if you have aphantasia):
After spending all morning at work, you come home, ready to live your real life.
You can finally spend time with your family, learn French, read the new novel by your favorite author, or start writing your book.
Maybe you’ll even manage to do all of these in one day.
Beep beep beep, you hear a notification, and you hurriedly grab your phone, leaving aside something you had said was so important to you.
It’s a new message from your group of friends.
They’ve shared a 5-second video of someone making a fool of themselves. You send a sticker and try to get back into what you were doing.
You notice it takes a couple of minutes to refocus, but you manage to get back to work.
Ten minutes later, the notification sound rings in your ears again.
It’s your friend Paco: “What are you up to? Coffee?”
Even though you were busy trying to spend quality time with your family, learning something, or writing your book, Paco wants to hang out.
How could you say no? You put on your shoes and head out.
By the time you return home, it’s already night. At least you had a fun afternoon with your friend.
Well, you would have if you had done something interesting, instead of just having coffee and talking about how Pepe broke up with his girlfriend… again.
You go to bed feeling like you’ve wasted a day of your life.
Now, how would your day have gone without WhatsApp? Let’s imagine again:
After spending all morning at work, you come home ready to live your real life.
You can finally spend time with your family, learn French, read the new novel by your favorite author, or start writing your book.
Maybe you’ll even manage to do all of these in one day.
You have lunch with your family, focusing on being present with them, engaging in real conversation, learning new things about the people who are supposedly the most important in your life.
You make yourself a coffee, play some instrumental music to block out background noise, and open Google Docs.
Ugh, the blank page. Where do you start? After a few seconds, you decide to begin… at the beginning.
As the minutes pass, you slip into a pleasant state of focus; the words seem to appear on the screen almost as if by magic.
Everything flows; it’s incredible, you could do this for hours.
After the hour you had set aside for writing, you see you’ve written four whole pages.
Wow, you’re a beast.
Since you still have some time left, you grab that book you were given for your birthday, seven months ago.
Yes, the one that makes you feel guilty because you still haven’t opened it every time you see it on your shelf.
You settle onto the couch with even more coffee (maybe you should drink less, but new studies say it makes you live longer, so there’s your excuse) and start reading.
By the time dinner rolls around, you’ve read 30 pages.
If you keep this up, maybe you’ll manage to complete that challenge you saw on Reddit the other day: read 52 books in 52 weeks, or in other words, a book a week for a year.
After dinner, you decide it’s time to check WhatsApp.
78 messages in the group chat, 50 of which are stickers or variations of “hahaha.”
The other 28 are links to TikTok or YouTube shorts. So, you really didn’t miss much.
You also have a few messages from Paco: “What are you up to? Coffee? Eh, let me know if you want to do something.”
You feel a little bad, but then you remember that this morning you saw a poster on your way to work.
A new Alien movie, the favorite saga of Pepe, your mutual friend.
You send a message to both of them suggesting that you watch Alien on Saturday.
They both agree, plus, Pepe has something serious to tell you — he broke up with María… again.
When you go to bed, you think, “Man, today was my day.” Could every day be “your day”?
I would like to think this story has convinced you.
Living without being constantly available to our social circle can improve our lives exponentially.
We’ll have the focus we need to concentrate on our projects and regain the time that always seemed to slip away.
You might feel selfish for not responding to every little thing your friends say.
But what will actually happen is that you’ll stop fostering superficial relationships with them.
Is being a good friend about sending animal stickers? No matter how cute they are, sending stickers back and forth it’s an interaction as deep as the social lives of starfish.
Wouldn’t it be better to leave all that behind and choose to make real plans with your friends?
Something that improves all of your lives together. You could work out together, go to a concert or a movie. Activities that create new memories for all of you.
Do you remember those times you’ve “hung out” with your friends just for the sake of hanging out?
Aren’t you tired of the same shallow conversations?
Chances are, a good part of those conversations are about shared memories.
I think it’s much better to create new ones — expand the relationship and grow together in the process.
One-Step Plan To Improve Your Life Starting Today
Turn off notifications for your messaging apps, and don’t check for new messages until after dinner.
That’s it. I really believe you’ll love it, and make it an integral part of your life.
If you’ve read this far, I greatly appreciate it.
I’m writing a series of articles exploring how to free ourselves from the addiction to being connected that so many of us struggle with, so if you’ve enjoyed this one, subscribe to read the rest.
Hasta luego!
