After long being skeptical of approaches that just cut out social media I'm giving it a serious consideration. (I know, very brave of me.) But my main reason is

After long being skeptical of approaches that just cut out social media I'm giving it a serious consideration. (I know, very brave of me.) But my main reason is that I feel, over years of consumption, that it has put me in a constantly critical perspective. I'm always wondering "is this a good take?" or "is this thing in the world good or bad?" or "am I doing the right thing?" – there's a kind of toxic self-reflection, both of myself and the world, and I have to untrain my mind. Facebook is fairly low on the list of places with this perspective. Twitter, some of Reddit (really depends on the sub), Hacker News, and a lot of regular media and podcasts are centered on this critical perspective. Yet I don't want to just cut things out. I'm getting something from this media consumption. But I'm still in the process of figuring out exactly what, and if I can figure it out then maybe it will be clearer what can replace that consumption, satisfy my healthy desires, and exclude these psychologically negative feedback cycles. Something that I am feeling right now is that self-improvement culture is in this same constellation of negative feedback cycles. The image of the Perfect Me Without Social Media is a barrier of its own... the me that quietly reads a book in the evening, that joyfully exercises each morning, that is just super present for my children, that is pondering all of life's big questions and just killing it at each of these things. It's unreasonable, it's absurd. I have a set of revealed preferences in the way I live my life, and that ain't it. I am sure I could satisfy those desires in a more healthy way, but I need to start with some basic respect for the real me. So, bringing it back to the article: "I believe that these days you should focus more on doing, not on consuming." And man, I don't know... Going deeper, I think this critical mindset is this domination of my superego, of some judging force looming over my own consciousness. That judging force is ME of course, but I've created enough stories and spectral visions of this force that it feels real. I've started consciously putting that bit of myself aside lately, and it's worked better than I would have expected... but as soon as I tell myself "I should focus more on doing and not on consuming" then I'm inviting that little fucker right back into my head.