Digital Dilemma: Changing Habits and Making Time

New tech, old habits and things I learned in 2023

It’s the end of December. Another year done. These post-Christmas days, when life is slow, allow me time, space and opportunity to reflect. The chance to write things down. To think. To wonder. To plan but also consolidate. What did I learn in 2023? What will I do differently in 2024?

This is the first of a couple of pieces that will explore reflection and the learning that emerges when we revisit the past to inform our future. You can think of this process as a series of feedback loops that develop from our experience to create a rich fabric of growth, understanding and change. I like to call it ‘test and learn’ but you only learn when you take the time to pause and review.

In 2023 I’ve been running a series of ‘test and learn’ self-experiments to understand and refine my relationship with social media and the digital world.

I’ve had a long and mostly happy involvement with technology and the Internet for 30 years. Going back to the mid-1990s, I undertook a postgrad University placement with the Telstra Research Laboratories in Clayton, Melbourne. I was working with the team developing the world’s first online White Pages platform - yes, we put the telephone book on the internet in 1995.

This month-long internship secured me a graduate job as a Cognitive Engineer with a multimedia group. I don’t think multimedia is a thing anymore. Not in the way that it was meant back then. “Cognitive Engineer’ was the source of much mirth amongst my family and friends too. Essentially my job was to test whether people could use these new website things we were building. Watch this from 4:30 to get a true sense of just how rudimentary the web was back then.

Fast forward to 2007 and I wrote an online travel blog - a wonderful memory of five weeks in Eastern Europe and France that still exists on travelblog.org. A Wordpress site followed, I joined Facebook in 2007 (it opened to the public in 2006), then Instagram in 2012.

10 years ago I launched the first Potential Psychology website and blog.

Almost six years ago I launched the Potential Psychology Podcast.

As an introverted yet curious person, the digital world and online connection suits me. I can ‘people’ at my own pace, within comfortable boundaries. I have made friends, been entertained, learned, listened and shared. I have relationships that exist solely in the online realm. My world is so much bigger thanks to technology and social media platforms.

Over time social media also became a business tool - a mechanism for promoting my business and my work. When I started podcasting I employed others to create content and post on my behalf. I had branding and a social media schedule. Online had moved from the periphery to the main stage.

This year I noticed a change. While I’m still a tech fan, social media and life online wasn’t fun anymore. It was work. Updates from friends and colleagues had dwindled, replaced by ads and influencers. I felt obliged to post on social media in the name of marketing and promotion but it was a struggle. None of what I scrolled was adding value to my life yet I scrolled and scrolled. A dopamine-reinforced habit of many years that was hard to break.

In May 2023 I went to France on holiday. I spent two glorious weeks following my curiosity. I connected with the world, with people. with art, with landscapes and with thoughts and ideas. I began to notice that my social media scrolling was wasting precious moments, that it numbed my mind and that it was controlling me more than I was controlling it.

I came home and deleted the Instagram app from my phone, followed by Facebook. Six months passed and I didn’t think about posting. I checked Instagram maybe once a day, through a browser to make it that little bit harder. I watched comedy and dog videos - for shorter periods. Enough to reset the algorithm. I didn’t miss the dopamine and I got more done.

I reframed my business promotion. Is my target audience really on Instagram? Or am I posting there because I feel I should. Is that the best use of my time, energy and focus?

I had no ultimate goal in mind. I wasn’t trying to ‘detox.’ I didn’t lose my love for life online. Nothing conscious happened to trigger the change. I just felt a niggle - a sense that social media was offering me less of what I needed and asking more than I was prepared to give.

Now, as I reflect, I can see that I was moving through the psychological process of change. The image above explains it. It’s Prochaska and DiClemente’s Transtheoretical Model - a model of behaviour change that suggests that people do not change their behaviour quickly and decisively. Rather our behaviour change, especially habitual behaviour, occurs continuously through a cyclical process.

I shifted from content in my social media use (Precontemplation) to mildly uncomfortable but ambivalent (Contemplation). I still felt social media was serving me professionally and personally, but I was reluctant to inspect those feelings too closely. What if I learned that the online world I loved was making life worse? How would I deal with that dissonance? I was comfortable looking away.

My trip to France was the Preparation stage. Days spent in a life less ordinary drew a sharp contrast with mindless scrolling through lives lived by strangers, interspersed with ads for items I didn’t need.

By my return to Australia I was in the ‘Action’ stage. Time to delete those apps, although still without conscious intent. It just felt like the best thing to do. A whim that I couldn’t fully explain at the time.

Six months of sustained behaviour change followed (Maintenance). I noticed the difference. Less time wasted. Fewer distractions. I got to bed earlier. I got more done. It felt good.

Then things got interesting. By December I had reinstalled the apps. I found ways to justify the decision. ‘I’m still checking Instagram and Facebook anyway, if I reinstall the apps I’ll do it more efficiently - a quick check and I’m out of there,” I told myself. I discovered and installed the Minimalist Phone app to create some extra friction (just outed myself as an Android user, didn’t I?)

The phone app works but I find ways around it. When it asks if I want more time while I’m scrolling Instagram I invariably hit ‘5 more minutes’ until my brain regains control and I hit ‘Take me out of here.’

I can see and feel myself on the cusp of ‘Relapse;’ the phase in which we fall back into old habits. It’s a very valid stage of the behaviour change process and it’s important to view it as such. It’s not failure. It’s not the end of the cycle. It’s the beginning of the next one. The one in which we take the learning from our experience so far and integrate it into the next attempt.

By reflecting on my experience this year - from blissful ignorance to the ups and downs of changing a habit - and viewing it through a well researched behaviour model to understand what’s going on, I’m better prepared for this next attempt. I will continue to tweak my habits, trying new tools, tricks and approaches, while also getting clearer on my goals and intent.

This is how behaviour change works. It’s why New Year’s Resolutions often fail.

Change is rarely a swift, ‘I’ll just do things differently’ decision.

It’s a process of trial and error, test and learn, tweak and revise until the new habit takes hold. Occasionally that’s days, often it’s months, sometimes it’s years. The trick is to pause, reflect and review while remembering that you’re always somewhere on that upward spiral of learning - even when it feels like you’re falling backwards.

I’ll keep muddling through my thoughts, feelings and actions about the online world in 2024. My word for the new year is ‘Renewal.’ My focus will be on Systems Thinking and how it can help us create positive change in communities, workplaces and our lives. This theme will pervade my work as a consultant and coach, with Committee for Ballarat and community leadership, my writing here on Substack and on the Potential Psychology Podcast which I’m excited to announce returns to the airwaves from February 1.

But enough about me. I’m curious about you…

Do you have a word for 2024?

Do you have habits you’re hoping to change?

Have you noticed the stages of change in your life and behaviour in 2023?

And have you subscribed to my podcast? ;-)

Onwards and upwards,

P.S. Here’s the fun stuff….

I’ve been listening to: Australian Christmas classics - Paul Kelly’s 'How to Make Gravy’ and my favourite, Tim Minchin’s ‘White Wine in the Sun’

I’m reading - Mike Sowden’s Five Weird Ways to Survive Witching Week. I didn’t know that the period between Christmas and New Year is seen by some in the Northern Hemisphere as an ‘anticlimactic end of the year, all boredom and twiddled thumbs’ because here in the Great Southern Land these few days mark the beginning summer vacation. The languid ‘on ramp’, if you like, to life lived outdoors under the sun. See exhibit A: my present situation.

I’m watching - FISK. So funny.

I’ve been exploring - Canberra, mostly in search of coffee.

See you in 2024!