Stolen Focus Fall Challenge
Plus a wrap up and eval of our summer focus challenge
The Stolen Focus Summer Challenge is officially over! We’ve entered autumn. How did you fare?
And congrats to all who participated in the summer challenge! I loved hearing your insights, struggles, and updates. Thank you so much to everyone who sent messages and emails sharing your progress.
For those of you new to my Lagoon, The Stolen Focus Summer Challenge’s invitation was to delete your top three most used social media apps from your phone, with the goal of regaining focus. We wanted to spend more time outside, hanging with loved ones, and engaging in meaningful pursuits.
For me, I also wanted to use my summer screen time not to doom scroll, but to finish the final touches on my new novel, Acid Christmas, which I did! Yay! The tentative release date for this book, if all goes well, is November 13th! Whoo hoo!
And while I didn’t fully nail the summer challenge, I’m sharing my approach, failings, and results below, plus an invitation to the Stolen Focus Fall Challenge.
My Compromise/Approach
First, I deleted Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter from my phone. IG was my most used and abused app. TikTok isn’t really a problem for me, so it didn’t make my cut.
I didn’t want to fully delete my accounts, as I still communicate with friends and share author updates. My plan instead was to use the desktop versions in a scheduled, sane way.
However, I found the desktop version of IG pretty hard to post from. So I reinstalled IG, yes, for ease of posting, I told myself… I hid it on my phone in a random folder off the home screen and tried to use it with greater awareness. This was a mixed bag, but at least I tried.
FB stayed deleted and is still deleted from my phone.
Twitter/X I also ended up reinstalling, mainly because I discovered that drafts from your phone don’t show up on the desktop version and vise versa. Plus, no one is perfect. I still fed my social media cravings from time to time.
In addition, I removed my cell phone from my bedroom once I started winding down for the day, about an hour before sleep. I now charge my phone in my bathroom at night and do not touch it before bed.
Discernment
Discernment really became my word of the summer, and I often repeated it in my head when engaging with social media. Off and on, I also checked my iPhone screentime reports and if they seemed outrageous for any app, I deleted that app for a day at least.
While on IG and X, I drilled down on using them with more awareness and intention. Anytime I saw anything that induced negative feelings, FOMO, insecurities, etc., I muted, unfollowed, deleted, or blocked. I also tried to use them briefly for consumption ONLY when I was posting something myself. This reduced the number of times a day/week that I consumed content.
To help me adapt to the challenge, I came up with social media alternatives for when I was itching to scroll.
Social Media Alternatives
If I felt the urge to zombie out on my phone, my choices were:
Go online and intentionally read or watch educational content about something I actually want to learn, like book marketing. AKA learn a new skill.
Read/listen on the Substack app.
Read on Kindle.
Do the Wordle.
Do the NYTimes Crossword puzzle app
And if I’m reaching for the phone, yet I’m too tired to read a book, or learn, or do the crossword? Well, that means it’s time to close my eyes and meditate, or go to sleep, or annoy my teenager, make dinner, etc.
I highly recommend these replacement options over drinking from the endless random flow of the soash meads. They made me feel better about myself!
The Results
Better sleep. Fewer bad feelings. Faster crossword processing brain power. Finished my novel. Spent more time with my daughter. Went out more. Walked more. Meditated more. Surprisingly, my social media following actually still grew; I think because I was posting with more discernment and intention, albeit less.
Initially, as part of the challenge, I also tried to write some of a new novel, attempting to do Jami Attenberg’s 1000 words of summer challenge at the same time, thinking I would replace social media with writing, but this proved too hard.
Writing uses a different part of my brain and working on finishing and editing one book, plus writing another, was too hard for me. Even with a wonderful accountability buddy from my writing group, I managed it for 2-3 weeks and then stopped. I simply cannot work on two novels at once.
Overall, however, I’d say the Stolen Focus Summer Challenge was a winning summer challenge, unlike my winter Marie Kondo money challenge (follow up on that failure coming soon.)
Not only that, but Wordle reconnected me in a meaningful way with two old college friends who I went from chatting with pretty rarely to playing Wordle with every day. This reunion made me so happy. We even met up over the summer IRL and it was glorious.
My crossword completion times are also now FIRE and I look forward to Monday just to speed through the easiest crossword of the week.
Fall Challenge?
May I suggest that we carry this spirit into fall?
For many, entering into the colder months can make it even harder to not constantly be on screens.
So, I invite you to attempt The Stolen Focus Fall Challenge. Start now and go until the first day of winter: December 21st.
Pick one or two of the following things and try them:
No social media an hour before bed.
Delete your top 3 social media apps from your phone.
Do not use any one social media app for more than 30 min a day.
Hide your apps.
Replace social media with an intentional phone activity of your choice.
Only consume social media for ten minutes after you share a post.
For more inspiration, read the book that inspired this challenge: Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again, by Johann Hari, or listen to all the research interviews he conducted for the book here.
Want to go even harder? Combine this challenge with SoberOctober and cut out all mind-altering substances and all social media during October or even all of fall.
You can make this challenge as easy or as hard as you like.
Now You
Tell me more about your summer. What was your relationship with technology like during the past few months? Did you get outside more? What would you like to improve?
Will you consider doing the Stolen Focus Fall Challenge? What will it look like for you?
And thanks for reading!
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I think I actually am doing worse now 😂 I spend way too much time on Notes, and I joined Bluesky.
Well, I'm in luck because I only get on social media for about 20 min/day, across all apps!