Feb. 12, 2024

131 - 8 Simple Hacks to Stop Scrolling and Start Crushing Your Goals

131 - 8 Simple Hacks to Stop Scrolling and Start Crushing Your Goals

Clear goals can help motivate you to stay on track. You need to have a crystal clear why. If you don't have a crystal clear why, how in the world are you going to stick to it when the going gets tough? - Rasean Hyligar



In the pursuit of self-imp...

Clear goals can help motivate you to stay on track. You need to have a crystal clear why. If you don't have a crystal clear why, how in the world are you going to stick to it when the going gets tough? - Rasean Hyligar

In the pursuit of self-improvement, Rasean embarked on a journey that led him to a surprising twist. As he grappled with social media addiction and productivity struggles, he stumbled upon a game-changing discovery. Now, armed with powerful insights and strategies, he's ready to share his hard-earned wisdom with you. Are you ready to uncover the unexpected twist that could transform your productivity and focus?

In this episode, you will be able to:

  • Overcome social media addiction and reclaim your time and focus!

  • Master the art of setting clear, achievable goals for epic productivity.

  • Establish time limits to supercharge your efficiency and beat procrastination.

  • Track your progress like a boss and level up your productivity game.

  • Shift your focus from consuming to creating for unstoppable productivity.

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Thrive or Survive...you can't do both.

Transcript
00:00:00
Me, I'm just like, balls to the wall. Just go crazy, go crazy. Just work with it. That's just how I do it. I'm just like, just go ham at it.

00:00:08
So that way I can just break the addiction just like that. What is going on? Guys, welcome back to motivate, grind, succeed. The podcast where we empower you, yes, you. To level up your life in the areas of faith, fellowship, fitness, and finance.

00:00:20
Each episode is packed to the brim with practical tips, takeaways, all that good jazz to help you to thrive. If you guys enjoy the show, please leave us a rating and a review as it really does mean the world to us and really helps the show to go a long way. You guys want to see the show notes to this episode? Guys, I invite you. Check out this episode description.

00:00:41
It's going to be full of all the information that you need. Any resources that we recommend or that we say in the show that don't get mentioned explicitly. It's going to be in the episode description, so be sure to check that out today. Guys, we're going to be diving into some high performance habits. And I know it's a little bit of a detour from what we did before where it was the finance.

00:01:03
And I said, we're going to worry about the finance and do all that good jazz, but I'm feeling like for the new year, especially since we're kicking it off now. I know it's a little bit late, it's already February, but we're kicking it off a little bit. I figured, why not go through some high performance habits? That helped me out when I was getting started into the self improvement journey. And as I was scouring the Internet and finding scouring forums and all kinds of information, I found out you guys need a lot more help in the high performance habits and the self improvement journey than I thought.

00:01:32
I am here to deliver. And so, guys, today we're going to be talking about how to restrain yourself from social media. I know social media, it can be an absolute pain when it comes to trying to restrain yourself and be able to use. It's a pain. I know.

00:01:49
Trust me, I know. Because I used to be that guy who, when it was on social media, I was following hundreds and hundreds of people that just did not serve me. It just didn't serve me whatsoever. And it was an absolute nightmare to try to sort through all that information and sort through all the people who are trying to have this and that other kind. It was a lot.

00:02:10
It was a lot. And I just got trapped and sucked into that whole social media thing. Scroll until 03:00 a.m.. Okay, and so today we're going to be going through the top tips that I'm going to be telling you guys that I personally use. I personally used every single one of these to be able to get myself out of this social media rut of scrolling till three in the morning and all the kind of stuff we're trying to get rid of.

00:02:34
Now, disclaimer before we go ahead and go through all eight of these, it's going to take some time. Do not expect to implement all these from day one and stick to it's going to take time. It took me months to be able to break this addiction to social media, so don't expect it to take two or three days. If you really want it, you're going to have to devote some time to doing this. We're just going to get right into it.

00:02:55
Number one, and that is to set some clear goals. Start by defining why you want to reduce your social media usage. Is it to improve your productivity? Do you want to increase your mental health? Do you want to have more time for other activities?

00:03:09
What is it that you want? Define that goal. Clear goals can help motivate you to stay on track. You need to have a crystal clear why. If you don't have a crystal clear why, how in the world are you going to stick to it?

00:03:25
When the going gets tough? I guarantee you the going will get tough. And in order for you to be able to stick to it, your why has to be like cement, concrete, just rock solid, unmoving. And here's how you do it. You say, I want to quit social media because, and you put the reason there.

00:03:45
Then I want you to question that reason with five whys exercise. I want you to use the five whys exercise to question why it is that you are doing this. And here's how you do it. You're going to ask yourself the question why five times? I want to quit social media because I want to save time in my day or I want to be able to play more video games.

00:04:05
I don't care what your why is. Pick a why. I want you to question it. Why do I want to save this time? I want to get off of Instagram because I want to play more video games.

00:04:16
Why? Because my friends are always on video games and I want to be able to play with them. Why? If you can't answer the why anymore, then you found your deep seated reason. If that deep seated reason of you wanting to play video games.

00:04:27
Is that strong of a pull for you? That is your why. That's what you're going to stick to. Do not start doing the rest of these tips without following this one first because everything else is just going to crumble. Tip number two that I have for you is to establish some time limits.

00:04:41
Use your built in timer on your phone. Yes, literally the timer. Calculate how much time do you want to spend on social media. How much time do you want to spend on social media? Pick it for me.

00:04:52
My personal number was 30 minutes. That is it. 30 minutes all day. That is, it could be spread up into 310 minutes segments or one mass. 30 minutes segment doesn't matter.

00:05:03
Establish that time limit. Set a notification timer. So go into your clock app. Go into whatever. Set up a timer for however much time you set.

00:05:14
For the love of Christ, do not put it as 3 hours. Okay? Because that's not going to help you do something that's reasonably small, like 30 minutes, 45 minutes. No more than an hour in my recommendation, because that's just a lot of time. So I just went cold turkey and just said, let me just do 30 minutes.

00:05:29
It was difficult. Let me tell you, it was hard. It was difficult. But the payoff was massive. I set the timer for 30 minutes and I would use that 30 minutes, do whatever I wanted to do.

00:05:42
Answer people's dms, scroll through things like things, comment things, whatever. Save stuff. Doesn't matter. I had 30 minutes to have free rein, do whatever I want. Once that timer went off, though, get off the application.

00:05:53
That was it. Closed it closed it. From my recent apps, it's done. It's gone. No more Instagram for the rest of the day.

00:05:59
No more TikTok for the rest of the day. No more YouTube shorts, no more whatever the application was. No more of that for the rest of the day. That was it. Why do you do that?

00:06:08
Because you're trying to train yourself that this is as much as you need. That's why it's important. Because when you limit the amount of time, you'll realize that literally whatever task you need to do, it fills the amount of space you give it. If you give yourself 3 hours to go through Instagram, you're going to go through Instagram for 3 hours. But if you give yourself 30 minutes, you're going to find a way to get the most important things done in that 30 minutes.

00:06:30
And then that's that. That's why I did it. Very important, very crucial. Help me out a ton to further that. Tip number three, actually set specific times for social media.

00:06:40
So not only are you going to tell yourself, I'm only going to be on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, insert your social media of choice here. Not only am I going to be on that for only 30 minutes, let's say that for the rest of the episode, 30 minutes, that's all I'm going to be on there for. I also am going to set a literal calendar notification. Go in your Google calendar, whatever calendar app you use. I use Google Calendar.

00:07:03
Go in your Google calendar and set, I am going to be on Instagram from twelve to 1230. Put it as an event. It sounds so stupid, but I'm telling you, set it up as an event in your calendar. And when it goes off, you go on Instagram, you go on TikTok, you go on whatever social media platform that you decided that you're going to try to limit your usage of and go on it for that 30 minutes. That's it.

00:07:29
Check it only during that time. That is it. No more, no less. That is it. I promise you, the world is not going to end.

00:07:36
You're not going to die. If you really want to get off of social media that badly, telling you it's going to be tough, it's going to be hard because you're going to go from, let's say three, four, 5 hours a day down to 30 minutes. That's hard. That's tough. But if you really want it that badly, and remember from point number one, your why, if your why is strong enough, you're going to be able to persevere through it.

00:07:56
Next thing, to help you out some more, point number four is to turn off the notifications. Go into your system settings, phone settings, whatever you want to call them. Go in there, turn off the notifications. Just turn them off. Turn them off, turn them off.

00:08:11
Period. Point blank. Done. Turn them off. Turn them all off.

00:08:15
Just toggle. Allow notifications, turn them off. That way when you go onto the application, then you can say, okay, man, I have a lot of notifications. I need to just go ahead and then do these specific ones because again, I only have 30 minutes to do so. Now I have to focus on who sent me a DM, who responded to this comment, who responded to this, who sent that?

00:08:33
Respond to the most important things and everything else. It can wait. And you'll realize, oh, wait, people gave me 20 likes on something. Okay, that was cool. I don't need to check that there is 20 likes.

00:08:44
It was just a like. But three people sent me a DM that's important. Maybe two people left a comment I need to respond to that's important. Maybe I should go respond to that. That's also what you could do.

00:08:54
But after that, turn off the notifications. Let's say you're one of the people now who's I can't turn off notifications for whatever bs reason you're going to give that you can't turn off your notifications for use do not disturb. That's what I did personally. I just did do not, mainly because I was just too lazy to go through every single application. So I said, let me just set one global do not disturb.

00:09:15
And that's what I did. So I would have a focus time block from, let's say, 09:00 a.m. Until 11:00 a.m. And I would set up the time between nine and eleven. I would say put on do not disturb, do not bother me, no calls, no notifications, no sms, no alarms, no media.

00:09:31
And by media, Spotify, YouTube, music, none of that. All that stuff was blocked from coming through. It would still come through, but I wouldn't get notification until 11:00 came that time block got removed. And then I can check it for 30 minutes until my next scheduled time block from 1130 to 130 kicked in. So from eleven to 1130, all the notifications just reappeared.

00:09:51
I can solve whatever I wanted to, but the second that focus time block came back, all the notifications poofed out of existence temporarily. So now the temptation to go through and find them is no longer there. What do you do? I get back to work. Simple as that.

00:10:07
Number five, what you want to do is after you start implementing these things, you want to track your progress. Because if you're not tracking your progress, how in the world are you going to figure out if the progress that you're making is actually worth it? Think about it. Think about this. When you go to the gym, do you track the weights that you're lifting?

00:10:26
I sure hope you do, because if you don't, we have a whole nother problem. I'll make a separate episode just for you, whoever doesn't track your weights. But when you go to the gym one day, you're doing lateral raises, you're doing some lateral raises one day and you're lifting 15 pounds, you go the next day you're lifting 15 pounds, you go the next day you're lifting 20 pounds, you go the next day, you lift in 25, you go, the next day you lift than 30, but you're tracking that. Otherwise, if you just go in every day and go off of memory. I guarantee you're going to forget where you were last time, how many reps and how many sets you're going to forget.

00:10:59
So track it. Track your progress. Get something. Write it out. If you're more of a digital person, get a digital thing.

00:11:06
Write it out. Whatever it is. Write out what it is that you did for that day. I spent 30 minutes on Instagram, 45 minutes on YouTube shorts, 20 minutes on TikTok, five minutes on X, whatever, doesn't matter. Track it.

00:11:22
So eventually you get down to the number that you want. Let's say you're at 3 hours of Instagram and you want to get down to 1 hour a day. Start gradually reducing, which is my next point. Gradually reduce it. Now for me, I learned through growing up that the best way for me to be able to do something is to just cold turkey it.

00:11:41
So when I was doing 3 hours of Instagram, I just cut it down to 30 minutes and dealt with the withdrawal symptoms. That's what I did. That works for me. If that doesn't work for you, then just gradually reduce. If you're at 3 hours of Instagram per day, lower it to two and a half hours for the first week or so, then lower it to 2 hours, then to one and a half, then to one, then to 30 minutes.

00:12:02
Do it gradually so you can get accustomed to the new norm. But again, if you're not like that, just gradually reduce. No shame in gradually reducing it. 7th thing that I got for you is to focus on creation over consumption. Create content.

00:12:19
Right now I'm creating content. There's no way I can create content and consume content at the exact same time simultaneously. I cannot be recording this while scrolling on Instagram on the side and consuming while still creating if you can. You are fantastic. I applaud you.

00:12:37
I applaud you greatly. If you can do that, fantastic. But for most people, you can't do that. So you have to do one or the other. And I would err on the side of creating content.

00:12:48
That means record videos, take pictures, post pictures. I don't want to post pictures. Okay, post videos. I don't want to post videos. Okay, then make a separate Instagram account or something that no one follows and just put stuff up there.

00:13:00
And then if people ask, what do you do in your spare time? Just show them your spare Instagram account or put them on your own personal Instagram account or whatever. Or start a podcast, start a YouTube channel, start a TikTok, whatever. I really don't care what it is, but focus on creating content. Even if you never post it, I personally recommend you do post it that way.

00:13:18
It gives you a platform to be able to start doing stuff with that you can leverage later on. But if for some reason you don't want to post stuff, at least focus on filming stuff. Grab your phone and film stuff. Get on the microphone and record stuff. Start an audio journal, your own personal audio journal where you talk about your day at the end of every single day.

00:13:38
That's what I do. Do what you got to do. Create stuff. Don't just consume. But if you are going to consume, focus on the last point that I have for this episode and that is to reframe what you consume.

00:13:51
Change how you view social media instead of seeing it as a way, oh, I got to catch up. I got to catch up. I got to catch up. Treat it as a tool and a research tool. That's what I've done.

00:13:59
I stripped away all the people that I follow except for the people that I actually know or people who benefit me. That is it. Business accounts, those no name accounts and all those kind of things. Things that actually have information that help me to actually push the podcast forward, businesses forward, all those kind of things. I follow those.

00:14:19
So now my feed is nothing but just business content. Ways to improve new AI tools, this story, that story, those kind of things now that just do nothing but just help me. Now that's all my Instagram is. So now I can just hop on Instagram for about 30 minutes if I wanted to. And then now I'm also just bombarded with stuff that just helps me.

00:14:43
So you see how you went from consuming it, from what people are doing with their lives, which is cool and all, but doesn't really help you in the grand scheme of things, to now pivoting it to now I'm only on Instagram for 30 minutes a day if I want to. Doesn't have that much of a hold on me. And when I am on there, it's helping me to better myself. So you reframe your thinking from here to over here. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how I got myself personally to go from following IG models and things of that nature to not having a single IG model on my page and just having nothing but motivational content or business content that helps me to continue to push myself forward in life.

00:15:24
And so, guys, let's go back through these one more time. So that way you all have all this information that you need. Number one, set some clear goals and ask yourself, why in the world are you doing this? Why you have to have that strong? Why?

00:15:36
Number two, establish some time limits. Set a timer on your phone for how long you want to be on the application and get off the application when the time is done. Number three, schedule specific times. So not only are you going to schedule how much time, but you're going to schedule what time of the day you're going to do it. Number four, when that's all done, turn off all the notifications.

00:15:57
You don't need them. Do not disturb is going to be your best friend here. Number five, track your progress to make sure that you're actually accomplishing what you want. You're actually lowering the amount of time that you're on each application. Number six, as you're reducing the time, make sure you do a gradual reduction.

00:16:11
If you can't cold turkey it. Number seven, focus on creation over consumption. And lastly, number eight, reframe your thinking and revamp your entire pages. Guys, that's what I have for you for this week's episode. Thank you guys so much for tuning in, and I hope you found this episode valuable.

00:16:28
If you did, go ahead, let me know. Send me a DM on Instagram. Follow me on Instagram. We post kind of content like this every single week on the podcast. And if you really enjoyed it, guys, leave me a five star review.

00:16:39
Let me know much this helped you out. Share it with somebody. That always means a lot to me when you guys share this kind of information. So go ahead and do that. Whatever you guys want to do, just make sure we get this word shared out to anybody who needs it.

00:16:51
With that in mind, guys, take care of yourselves. I will see you all next time.