One Month

I turned 40 last year and have started thinking more about how I spend my time, my life. The first 40 years went incredibly fast. I can only imagine how quickly my remaining years will go. I want to have a meaningful impact on the world and participate in activities that are satisfying. This desire is slowly making me more aware of how I spend my time and consider how I want to spend my time.

The other night, I was watching videos on YouTube before bed.

In one of the videos, a woman said that if you watch just 2-hours of YouTube videos each day, that over the course of a year, you will spend one month watching YouTube.

This didn’t seem possible, so I did the math:

2 hours x 365 days = 730 hours

730 hours/24 hours = 30.417 days

She was absolutely correct.

It is amazing how something so seemingly small can build into a large amount of time.

This made me think – is there really that much on YouTube worth watching that I would give up a month of my life each year for it? While there is good content on YouTube, is everything I watch worth my time? Do I really find satisfaction from this activity?

This idea can be applied to anything we spend a fair amount of time doing each day.

Do I find (Insert activity here) so satisfying that I want to spend one month of the year doing it?

This activity could be anything. Playing a video game, listening to music, running, watching TV, or scrolling through social media.

I jumped onto Screen Time on my iphone and ipad to see what I had been doing with my time. Here is what I found:

15.75 hours on YouTube

19 hours playing games (granted, a good chunk of this was walking while Pokemon Go was open in my pocket, tracking my steps, but 10.5 hours this time was spent playing Two Dots).

4.25 hours on social media

I had no idea how my screen time had added up. It impacted my ability to focus, be still, and participate in activities that matter to me, like reading, cycling, and spending time with my partner. I had spent nearly 40 hours the previous week participating in activities that The Eisenhower Matrix classifies as Not Urgent and Not Important.

This did not sit well with me.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not one of these people that feels I have to spend every minute of every day doing something productive. I understand the need for rest, hobbies, and space in the day and have worked to incorporate these activities into my life. Recreation is a very good thing; however, I wondered if this is the recreation I need? This self-analysis is about being intentional in the use of my time and not about labeling anything as “good” or “bad.” There is nothing inherently bad with watching YouTube videos, using social media, or playing video games. I just don’t want to do them mindlessly or overuse it.

I decided to track what I watch on YouTube and generally how much time in general on screens and what activities I do during that time for a week. I didn’t include work-related activities, just those done outside of my work responsibilities. I also decided that I would spend all my recreational screen time on my phone and tablet since I can track my time/usage easier on those devices.

Just being aware of how much time I spent watching videos on YouTube, scrolling through Facebook, or playing games changed my habits. By the end of week 5, my use of YouTube dropped by nearly half and I had removed two games from my devices, dropping my time spent gaming by 84%. I just didn’t find it as fulfilling anymore. My social media use stayed roughly the same the whole time. My screen time spent on social media, games, and YouTube dropped in total by half.

I also started paying attention to what I watched on YouTube and why I was watching it. Was I looking for creative ideas, entertainment, education, or simply a cute dog/cat video to lift my mood.

The time I found by changing my habits allowed me to write more blogs (like this one), binge an entire audiobook in a weekend (I highly recommend Lincoln in the Bardo. SUCH a good book!), and spend more time with the people I love.

I am not done with this experiment yet. I plan to keep going with this awareness and see where it takes me. I don’t want to stare at a screen to become a mindless habit.

I feel I have taken a good step forward on this intention.