If doomscrolling is destroying your life, wasting your time, and making your brain tired, keep reading. If you are fine with doomscrolling, get your stuff together and leave.

I am joking. But seriously, if you are fine with it, you do not need this.

Because I am about to tell you something you probably do not want to hear.

You will never stop doomscrolling. Not from a trick. Not from watching another guy on Instagram telling you to stop scrolling while you are literally watching his Reel.

How is that supposed to work? You are in the middle of a war, and the guy fighting you is telling you not to fight him.

Let me tell you my story.

When I was 16, I was the only friend in my group who deleted Instagram and TikTok. Back then there were no Reels, just TikTok.

And all that bs you hear about people thinking you are weird because you do not have social media? It is bs. Nobody cared. I still have no phone today, and nobody asks me why I did not see their story. Nobody cares that much.

The thing is, I was never really into scrolling. Even when I was making short videos, Reels, TikToks, everything.

My feed was full of other people's lives, and I hated it. I hated when I started comparing myself. I hated when I went in "just to get inspired" and came out feeling like I had seen the same video 20 times.

Sometimes I would open the app to look at other creators, just to see what style of video they were making. Then after two videos, I would leave. Because I did not need their ideas. I had my own life, my own ideas, my own brain.

And it worked. My videos got millions of views. I stopped that account now, but the point is bigger than content.

When your whole feed is other people's lives, you slowly stop seeing your own.

Now, I have been without a phone for almost two years. No Instagram scrolling, no TikTok. But at the start of last month, I found myself scrolling YouTube Shorts for maybe 15 minutes.

My feed was not even full of people I hated or lives I was comparing myself to. It was Joey Diaz, MotoGP, F1, funny stuff. Stuff I actually like.

And after a hit of realising the situation I was in, I stopped for a second.

Am I getting anything from this? No. Can I watch this as a proper video instead of 15 seconds with somebody screaming at me? Yes.

So f*** it. I would rather watch a full YouTube video.

And that was it. It has been 15 days with no Shorts since then. Not because I blocked YouTube, not because I found some secret setting. I just did not want to do it anymore. I do not see value in it.

If I want a tutorial, I search for the tutorial. If I want an F1 highlight, I watch the F1 highlight. If I want something funny, I watch a full funny video. I do not need an app to throw random things at me until I forget what I even opened it for.

That is what I mean when I say it is a mentality. You need a reason not to scroll.

For me, it was comparison. I hated it, and I did not want to keep watching people's lives and then feel weird about mine. It was also content, because I did not want to become someone who needs to copy other people to make a video.

For you, it could be different.

Maybe you are tired of wasting two hours and having nothing to show for it. Maybe you are tired of seeing bad news every five seconds. Maybe you are tired of going to sleep with your brain still running. Maybe you just want to do something with your life instead of knowing every random thing happening on the internet.

Find your reason.

Because deleting social media without a reason is hard. Someone sends you a video. Instagram sends you an email. A friend says, "did you see this?" Then one day you download it again. Maybe after a week, maybe after a month, maybe after a year. And you are back.

You can get a dumb phone, that can work. Or do what I did, break your phone and do not fix it. Don't do that, by the way.

For me it was easy because there was no fight. I could not scroll even if I wanted to.

But if you still have a phone, you need to train yourself to use it without becoming its slave. You can open Instagram to reply to a friend, post something, check a message, then leave.

I used to do that when I was posting content. Post. Reply. Leave. I did not even think about going to the Reels button, because I already knew what was waiting for me there.

And if you make content, it is the same thing. You can post, reply, and leave. You do not need the app to tell you what to create.

This is just my perspective, but I see this thing every day. My sisters. My friends. My parents. Even my grandma. Everyone is stuck in this bs habit.

And I get it. When you are alone, bored, stressed, or doing something you do not want to do, scrolling is right there. If my phone was not broken, maybe I would scroll too.

But I know myself. I would not. Not because I am better than anyone, but because scrolling means something different to me now.

It is not entertainment. It is giving my time to something I do not even care about.

And I do not want that.

Getting your time back is only half of it. You need somewhere to put that time.

That's why I built SB7, a Notion second brain to organise your ideas, projects, and the things that matter.

Ready to make better use of your time?

Explore SB7 →