happy people are too busy living to post about it

Today I want to share an insight that has completely changed how I use social media.

And no, I won’t give you crap like ‘just scroll less and read more’.

I want to give you a complete 180 shift in how you look at social media, so that you can’t help but make a few changes.

Let’s begin with a pickle I ran into a few weeks ago.

The hedonic treadmill of furnishing a home

Two months ago, I moved into an unfurnished apartment.

And yes, my Instagram feed was littered with IKEA hacks, must-have decor, and within a week, I’d consumed decades of interior design history while racking up an Amazon cart.

But then, a few weeks later, something felt off.

At this point, I have all the essentials: a couch, a coffee table, a standing work desk to absolve me from my Korean chiropractor’s disappointed sighs.

Yet, whenever I came home from work, my face was still glued to Instagram’s interior design feed.

‘Next week, I should upgrade the home smart lighting.’

‘Next week, I should install curtains.’

‘Next week, I’ll…’

Hold on…

I realised that while I was fiending for more stuff to decorate my place, I lost sight of the thing these furnishings are supposed to do:

Anchor me into my home.

When I was looking for the new thing, I ignored all the nice things I already had.

It’s a simple realisation, but it applies to everything.

It applies to fiending after new clothes when your wardrobe is already solid.

It applies to wanting a better career when you’re already killing it.

It applies to lusting for more money when your income already covers everything.

When we group all these things, the problem becomes obvious:

Social media detaches us from the life that we’re already living.

And if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll realise that:

While we’re busy looking into someone else’s day through our screens, what we secretly crave is leaning deeper into our own lives.

Think about it.

After we’ve grown out of collecting toys, most things we want to buy, to experience, to eat, to own are all serving one chief desire:

The desire to live in a reality we enjoy.

Yet, there’s a point where all that shopping, travelling, scrolling and posting become ends in themselves. We no longer want to look at the lives we're already living. In the words of the iconic New Yorker, Fran Lebowitz:

‘The whole world went inside the computer’.

This is what we’re sacrificing when we rack up those hours on our screens. No, you’re not a worse person just because you spend too much time on your phone.

You’re ignoring the life you're living.

And this is something that deserves more attention and a way forward. Which brings us to:

How social media actually works (from someone who earns a living from social media)

Social media was founded on a great idea. The founding motto of Facebook was:

‘[to] give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected,’

This was a great promise, and I was so excited about the idea that I built my entire business around social media. I want to share insights around reading that change lives.

Yet, in the late 2010s to the early 2020s, I noticed a shift.

Somehow, all the content I saw on social media seemed to have one goal: to keep people on the platform for as long as possible.

This makes sense, because more attention captured = more revenue for creators and the big dogs at Meta.

But my motto for my content was and still is: learn what you can from me and go live your life to the fullest with the insights.

And without surprise, my content stopped performing during this shift towards attention farming. I had the whole thing backwards. I tried to give the most amount of value while asking for the least amount of attention.

So, I had to adapt.

I learned how to write a good email subject line to capture attention. I learned how to edit better to keep people watching my videos, and I learned how to write a landing page for my ideas bank Notion template.

It worked. I made social media into my full-time job for years.

And now, after a decade of playing with the social media machine, I’ve a clear view of what this game is all about:

Attention is the ultimate currency on social media.

If you don’t have it, you’ll starve regardless of how great your ideas are.

But if you master attention capture, you’ll be able to move worlds with your ideas.

Yet, the issue is that attention capture is a lot easier than coming up with valuable ideas.

Attention capture is a tangible skill you can learn through copywriting, video editing, paid ads, etc.

But a good idea takes years to flesh out, and decades to perfect.

This is how we end up with quacks who have very little to give, yet command massive amounts of attention on social media. They understand the game, but they’re not giving their audience value.

So, as a consumer, it’s more urgent than ever to develop a keen eye for this kind of stuff. You need to be able to tell genuine value disguised in attention-mechanisms and absolute junk with nothing but dazzle.

And the best litmus test is this:

Is this content pushing me back into reality with its value? Or is it just asking for more of my attention with no end?

The best content will not convince you to stay. In fact, it’ll inspire you to move deeper into your life.

But the bottom-of-the-barrel junk on social will just keep sucking your attention until you’re a vegged-out zombie after 4 hours of scrolling.

This is how I ended up fiending for more stuff for my apartment. The algorithm has sucked my attention into a never-ending search just to keep me on the platform.

Later that evening, I decided that enough was enough. I had to perform a hard reset so I could start to tell value from junk again.

So, I wrote down a set of digital minimalism protocols that would give me the best of social media without exposing my mind to the attention factory.  

And after using these protocols for two weeks, I couldn’t believe the results.

Immediately, I realised that my mind started drifting towards higher-quality information. When scrolling wasn’t the default, there was finally space for books, long-form articles and great podcasts. This also made me less anxious, because my brain is used to a slower pace of consuming information.

Then, I noticed that I stopped buying shit. The temptation disappeared, and I finally have space to consider every purchase.

And perhaps, the biggest difference is in the quality of my work. There was space to let good ideas swirl around in my brain, giving them time to ferment into something worth reading.

In short, I started leaning into my genuine values and started living from them. Life is no longer about reacting against the feed. It is a wonderful exploration of everything that is already in my life.

The best part? I still have an Instagram account, and I still enjoy watching YouTube videos. But now I approach them with one goal in mind:

To absorb as much value as possible from the internet without letting it take over my life.

And this is the exact protocol that changed my outlook forever:

0: You’re not a better person if you don’t use social media  

Look, let me get one thing straight before I give you the steps.

You’re not morally superior if you don’t use social media.

If you use these protocols to lord it over other people, please stop reading. I can’t stand people like you.

Even worse, by downright rejecting social media use while thinking you’re more enlightened, you’re still reacting. It’s just that this reaction will make you insufferable.

Whereas what I’m suggesting is for you to live from your own values while leaning into your own life.

And yes, that life might still have social media in it, but it’ll be on your terms.

That’s all. Guilt has no space here. We’re here to make life better, not to live up to some puritanical abstention.

If you’re still on board, let’s start with:

1: The easiest way to cut 80% of your screen time

It takes 5 minutes to set up: