I slouch down on the couch, it’d been a long day of work, and I needed a second to rest. I had plans for the rest of the evening to go out for a run, do some reading, do a little cooking, and catch up with friends. But before I started all that I needed a minute to chill. So I opened TikTok. First, a video of a family saying “give me my money”, then a clip of the latest niners games, then… who knows I can’t actually remember any of the videos I watched. But before I knew it 2 hours had passed. My evening was screwed, without even realizing it, I’d just lost 2 hours and felt just as tired as I had when I got home.
I had entered screensaver mode. You know the mode on your computer where it shows an image when you’ve been idle for a while - but in real life. I was idle, a complete couch potato, for 2 hours. My brain was turned off, I wasn’t actively thinking about anything. And at the same time, my battery stayed the same. I was just as tired as when I started watching. I had entered “human” screensaver mode - not actively thinking, not restoring energy levels - a time period where you do nothing of substance.
Screensaver mode is really easy to enter - scrolling on Insta, watching Netflix, trolling on Reddit, etc. Often times you can be in screensaver mode and not even realize it. A few hours will go by and you’ll realize you did nothing of substance the last few hours. Or, even worse, you’ll come to and not even realize that you were unproductive the last few hours, you may even trick yourself into thinking you were productive. This is especially easy to do at work.
At my last job, I used to spend the first hour of the day catching up on Slack - being on the East Coast there were typically a lot of unread messages in the morning. So I’d sit down, a hot cup of coffee in one hand, the trackpad in the other, ready to scroll through every unread message. I’d go through every channel, it didn’t matter if it was directly related to me or not, but I’d read it. Why? Well, it was the morning. I was getting the day rolling, and wanted to take it “slow”.
It’s so easy to slip into screensaver mode because it doesn’t always seem detrimental. If every night you went drinking for two hours by yourself, you’d probably view it as detrimental to your well-being. But if you spent two hours every night on TikTok, that doesn't seem detrimental. You’re not poisoning your liver or messing up your health so how could it be that bad for you? Well, you’re slowing down your brain and wasting two hours. It’s not as bad as drinking every night, but it’s still bad. You’re losing time without meaning to.
My solution: be intentional about how I spend my time. Seems simple enough. But ohh is it hard. It requires having the willpower every day, hour, minute… not to enter the easy, comfortable, screensaver mode.
-Ajay