I was listening to Cal Newport’s podcast episode 262 and in the final segment he commented on a video by Better Ideas about overstimulation. The video discusses social media addiction, internet addiction and its relation with dopamine. Inspired by the video, Cal Newport then suggests some solutions to the problem.

In summary, his advice to combat online overstimulation is simply:

“Don’t use things that cause overstimulation!”

The reasoning behind it is to avoid giving opportunities for our brains to fire up the dopamine response. Dopamine is released when we anticipate doing something pleasurable. So if we get used to reaching out for something entertaining all the time, we will be constantly seeking that stimulation. And nowadays, there are infinite ways to get that dopamine hit at our fingertips instantly.

Cal Newport makes an analogy with smoking: to get rid of this addiction, the end goal is to quit smoking. The solution is never getting used to a regime of smoking less or controlling when and where you smoke: the solution is to actually quit.

So he suggests we remove sources of overstimulation from our lives:

• Delete all social media! Simple as that.
• Don’t scroll online news. Subscribe to one or two interesting newsletters instead, or listen to one podcast with daily events if you need to keep up to date with news.
• Videos and YouTube: YouTube can be a good source of information if used well. Install AdBlockers and Distraction Free extensions for YouTube to eliminate the automated recommendation feature. Another tip is to watch YouTube on a TV in your living room, like you would sit down to enjoy a movie.
• And the most important tip is to replace all the distractions with high quality entertainment: movies, music, books, high quality videos, documentaries. The more we consume high quality content, the less we will enjoy junk information. We will eventually lose our taste for shallow content.

From my experience, this approach works. I’ve deleted major social media accounts years ago (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter) and nowadays, I don’t miss those services. I’ve recently tried to use Mastodon as a lightweight alternative to social media. Even if Mastodon is open, decentralized and have no algorithmically generated timelines, the model still mimics Twitter, and I was feeling similar FOMO effects using it.

So, I’m keeping away from Mastodon for 30 Days. I’m not sure if I will ever be able to use it without feeling distracted. I might eventually delete my account. We’ll see.

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Post 20/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

Yesterday I was super distracted at work. Looking back, I think it’s been going on for the past couple of weeks. I’m having this twitch of reaching out for my phone every moment of a small pause. Let’s say I’m calling someone, and those seconds when I’m waiting for the other person to pick up, I look at my phone, trying to check something. It’s an unconscious behaviour. It’s kinda scary to notice it and then realize it was automatic: I had no conscious choice over it.

I’m getting better with my phone: deleting the Discord app made it way less interesting. But I still have that urge to look up things online. I feel like I’ve been conditioned to do that, even when I don’t need it.

Throughout the day I find myself opening the browser. I might be in the middle of a task and something gets unclear or fuzzy, I get frustrated and open a tab. I look at my bookmarks. I keep on switching tabs, checking my bookmarks. I keep waiting for something interesting to happen. Waiting to be entertained.

So I need some time off. One website I’ve been visiting more and more during the day is Mastodon. Similar to the Discord app on my phone, Mastodon is one of the main drivers for my behaviour. Even though Mastodon doesn’t have algorithms and I’ve curated my timeline for it to be less overwhelming, I still have this illogical urge to check it.

I think it has to do with the “Twitter-like” format. Information is too scattered, it's too noisy, too random. This format of short asynchronous messages creates the illusion of cool things happening all the time. It inherently generates FOMO. This “Always Keep Up” method of being online is extremely draining to me. So I guess these micro-blogging formats are not for me anymore.

I’m not deleting my account yet, but I will not use Mastodon for 30 days and re-evaluate. I’m logging out from all my devices and adding the address to the blocked list on all my browsers.

I’ll keep on blogging here. I will still read my RSS feed, which is highly curated and I don’t get FOMO from it.

I’ll check how I’m doing in a week and observe if other sources of distraction will replace Mastodon.

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Post 19/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

Dealing with anxiety can sometimes feel like trying to stop a runaway train. These 3 simple phrases can be like breaks for that crazy train :

💙 “Anxiety is trying to keep me safe”: reframes anxiety as a concerned companion rather than an adversary, just acknowledge and let it go.

💙 “Deep breaths, small steps”: I can do one thing at a time.

💙 “I’m here now”: it serves as anchor to the present moment.

It’s my little toolkit for dealing with anxiety. They remind me to be kind to myself, take things one step at a time, and stay in the here and now.

These phrases were inspired by a morning meditation I was doing using the Calm app.

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

It happened again. I've been picking up my phone every moment of downtime. According to my iPhone's Screen Time, my daily usage went up by 23% in the past week. I've been spending more time than usual on Discord and using the browser.

And I know why it happened, for the most part: I reinstalled the Discord app on my phone. I have book clubs groups on Discord and also the Standard Notes group. I don't really need to check these groups all the time, but at some point in the past weeks I thought it would be nice to have the app at my fingertips. You know, why not have it ready to go when I'm on my lunch break to check what was going on? It turns out I can't be moderate about it. I started checking all the groups early in the morning, during breakfast and then in the mornings and afternoons while I'm at work... and at night before bed. And since I was on the phone, why not open up my browser and check Mastodon? And check my RSS feed? And why not go into a rabbit hole searching for a recipe online? This week I finally took notice of my behaviour: what is going on?

It was a behaviour change, and I'm almost sure it was triggered by having the Discord app readily available for me to use. My willpower is limited so having a shiny tool like Discord diminishes my ability to maintain focus. And it spiralled out of control.

So I'm making my phone less interesting:

1. I've deleted the Discord app

2. I've deleted from my browser all the links/favorites to websites that would pull my attention.

3. And I'm replacing my mindless browsing on my phone with reading a book on my Kobo, or just being alone with my thoughts.

The goal here is to reject the model of my phone as my constant companion, and use it more intentionally.

“Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.” ― Cal Newport “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World”

-- Post 16/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I was very young when I saw a computer for the first time. It was 1986, I was 7 years old and my dad got a TK85 which was connected to a black and white TV. I think the TK85 was a Brazilian thing: it was a clone of a Sinclair ZX81 made by Microdigital Eletrônica (a Brazilian computer company, long ago extinct). It had an external compact cassette recorder that was used to load programs into it. It came with 16 or 48 Kb of RAM. I don't remember the RAM size of the one my dad got. It would take half an hour or more to load a game, and every time you needed to run any software you had to go though the process of playing the cassette tape to load it into the memory.

Since then I've been a tech enthusiast. I was learning the Basic programming language when I was seven years old. I played games and learned touch typing on an Apple II. I was excited when my dad got a 386 PC then a 486 PC running Windows. I saw the first Windows version. I used WordStar and Lotus 1-2-3. I remember the day I first used a mouse and saw a monitor that wasn't green monochrome or black and white. I used 8-inch, 5¼-inch, and 3½-inch floppy disks.

I connected to BBS servers with dial-up modems that took forever to connect. I loved IRC discussions and used ICQ to connect to friends. I saw the Internet when it was NOT all about views and annoying ads. I loved opening up Mosaic or Netscape and doing random searches about a nerdy topic and finding out a webpage suggesting the right reading order of Isaac Asimov books. Or a really cool blog with the complete genealogy of The Lord of the Rings characters.

I kept awake many nights playing text based RPG on a MUD (Multi User Dungeon games) server. I made lots of friends playing Realms of Despair (it seems the servers are still up and running, by the way!.

I still love computers and technology although I have not become a programmer or a software developer. I think deep inside I wanted to be a Computer Scientist, but life and circumstances threw me towards another direction. I'm happy that I still spend most of my days with a computer, they've come a long way! I love a full sized mechanical keyboard and I hate doing things on a mobile or a tablet.

I guess for some people nowadays the Internet is synonymous with computers. The Internet has its pros and cons, we all know it. I try to stay away from ads, social media and any algorithm that choose what to show me. I like to have control over what I consume.

In retrospect, my journey into the world of technology and computers began in the most humble of settings: with cassette-loaded programs and painstaking loading times. But that instilled in me a fascination that has endured to this day.

Me with computers in the 80's/90's feeling nerdy 🤓

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Post 15/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

In our weekly team meetings at work we always start with a Safety Moment. I work in construction so there is serious concern about safety. One of these days it was my turn to do the Safety Moment. I decided to talk about mental health, since it is something the company is starting to pay more attention to, and they were promoting a “Mental Health Awareness Week”.

The construction industry is a tough place and there is lots of stigma around mental health. In one of the company’s newsletters, it was mentioned that managing workload and stress were ways to support mental health. But it didn’t really explain HOW to do it! It mentioned work-life balance and balanced workload as if it was a no-brainer.

I shared 4 points that I think can help managing our workloads:

1) Focus: it’s important to manage our attention. A good strategy is to use time blocking so that we focus on one thing at a time. We can have blocks for checking emails, blocks for doing deep work (like doing quantity take-offs or reading specifications), blocks for communication (phone calls) and blocks for planning or organizing information. Multitasking is an illusion: if we keep jumping from one thing to the next back and forth, we can never actually work deeply on something. Also, take breaks!

2) Plan the day: We usually underestimate the time we will take to complete something, so take some time to plan your time blocks and what is going to be the focus of the day.

3) Capturing and organizing: it’s important to have a trusted system to capture notes, write things down and organize everything. It can be done using paper or a task manager app. The key is to record our to-do’s somewhere out of our minds (I didn’t go into the whole GTD thing, since I wouldn’t have time to expand on that).

4) Shutdown Routine: it’s beneficial to do a brain dump at the end of the workday, capturing all loose and unfinished tasks to prepare for the next day. It helps preventing overwhelm and supports a healthy transition to our personal responsibilities.

I was very nervous to talk about this topic in front of my whole team. I felt vulnerable and kept wondering if I was the only one who was worried about mental health. It was terrifying because people in construction don’t usually talk about these things.

But in the end, it was well received, and people made agreeing comments. After the meeting some colleagues came to ask me about my system and how I was implementing taking notes, organizing tasks and doing the shutdown routine.

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Post 14/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

There was this sofa bed at IKEA that was within our budget, and it would fit perfectly in our living room. I’ve been trying to purchase it for about a year now. Because of the pandemic, this item was constantly out of stock. During this time, I got a few notifications that it was back in stock, but every time I tried to purchase, it was gone. I guess some people were quicker than me!

Today, at 5am in the morning, I saw the “back in stock” notification and placed an order right away! I secured one out of the 4 available. Finally! 🤗

Since we moved to the house, we’ve been planning to get a sofa bed. We haven’t owned a sofa since 2017. We’ve been using the POÄNG armchairs from IKEA to watch movies/TV shows, and they are very comfortable, I like them. But now we have a little bit more space in the house and we wanted to be able to receive guests to sleep overnight.

This was a Project that was on my list since at least July 2022 and now I’ll finally be able to complete it! Yay!

Post 13/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

Earlier this month I took a whole week off from work and since my partner would still be working, we had no travel plans. I wanted to spend some time relaxing at home. My main goal was just to REST A LOT. I was feeling I was in the verge of work burnout and I needed to disconnect. I literally put my work phone in a drawer for the week.

I had some ideas of things I wanted to do during this week. Here they were:

- ✅Go to the Public Library to do some reading and/or a Weekly Review: I did go to a Public Library and spent some time reading. I didn't do a weekly review a the Library, tho.

- ✅Revise My Areas of Focus : I did this review in the Public Library near my house. It's something that I would look at every year or so, but I realized it's nice to look at all Areas at least bi-monthly. I'm trying to do that more.

- ✅ Do Free Writing sessions outside the house (in the Library, in a Café): I did go to a Public Library and spent some time writing there. I did not go to a Café. I don't think I'm a fan of the Café environment to do focused work, like writing. I didn't feel like trying one. Instead I went to a couple different Public libraries.

- ✅ Go for walks (or runs) in the morning: I usually go for runs and walks in the evenings. For this week I wanted to be outside early in the morning. I did go for a long walk one morning and it was glorious!

- ✅ Sit down and read for 2 hours straight: Yeah, I did have the time to do that. It took a few tries to actually be able to focus for 2 hours. It wasn't exactly 2 hours straight, as I would took a break in the middle for tea and snacks. But it was nice to know I'm capable of doing it, if I have enough space in my schedule. I was worried my ability to focus was damaged.

- ✅ Do longer sessions of free writing: I didn't do super long sessions. The greatest amount was one hour and a half at the Library. It was interesting, I usually don't have that much free time to write anymore. But I'm thinking some of those on the weekends now.

- ✅ Think about how I want to organize my blog ideas and routines: I gave this a lot of though. I created a list in Standard Notes for “Ideas”. If I want to develop an idea I start writing in Standard Notes in a folder called “drafts”. When I feel like the draft is developed enough, I copy it to Write.as and finish editing there for publication.

- ✅ Watch the GTD videos I've been wanting to watch for ages: Done! I had some webinars in my “To-Watch” list for ages, and I finally got to them.

- ✅ Do longer meditation sessions (30+min): I did some 30-40 minutes sessions. I want to do those more often.

Stepping away from the demands of work and allowing myself the freedom to explore my interests and reflect on my priorities brought me a sense of renewal I hadn't realized I was missing.

These simple moments of uninterrupted reading, writing, and meditation showed me how important it is to take time to rest. I found some solace in the stillness.

Some flowers spotted in an early morning walk.

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Post 10/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I was at the dentist the other day and one of the dental assistants was a Brazilian lady. We chatted a little bit in Portuguese. She's been in Canada for less than a year and she asked me what were the Facebook or Whatsapp groups I was part of. She was ready to pull out her phone and add more groups to her list. I quietly told her: “Hmmm, none really. I don't use Facebook and I only use Whatsapp for calls with my mom”. 

It was a weird moment, because the look in her face was of total astonishment. She made a comment about how it should have been hard for me to live all these years without having these groups. I told her that I survived all right, and I actually used a lot of the newcomers immigrant services offered by the government, so I didn't feel the need to search for a Brazilian local group, honestly. 

And she told me about an association that promotes parties and such for the Brazilian community here, and again, I felt super weird telling her that, as an introvert, I don't really enjoy parties. They are loud, and crowded, and... it's just not my thing. 

After I left the dentist I kept thinking about this encounter. I've been in Canada for 6 years now and I've adjusted to the local groceries products, I learned the quirks of using the public transport, I know where is the closest public library (and I know how to use it), I learned how to pump gas in my car (in Brazil there is an attendant who does that for you), I learned the best combination of layers for winter clothing. And all those lessons learned were made without using services like Facebook or Whatsapp groups. 

Maybe I took longer to learn those things, I don’t know. It was not until last year that I discovered the perfect combination of winter socks for my winter boots, for example. Lots of trial and error.

I guess what I'm wondering here is: Have I missed something? Should I have been in constant communication with fellow Brazilians and participating in these non-stop discussion groups? Even the lady I met at the dentist said that these groups are crazy, she receives hundreds of messages everyday. 

My gut feeling is that I don't feel I missed anything. I enjoyed my quiet days as a newcomer. There is so much information out there. And making observations and asking around has always worked for me.

It's certainly not the same for everybody. Because of my quiet nature I was okay. In the real world I always found help when I needed it. Anyway... this post was just a reflection. 

Post 08/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I got a new Daily Planner that replaced my old one. I was using Cal Newport's Time-Block Planner which is great, but I always thought it was too heavy and bulky. Mine was the first version so it didn't lay open flat on my desk.

Last month I got a simpler planner, much more compact, in spiral biding and cheaper. It has 100 non-dated pages. I have the view of an entire day in one page. There is a space for the Top 3 most important things for the day, the day schedule from 6am to 9pm, a space for to-do's, meals, water intake and notes.

I'm using the Top 3 space everyday. It's such a simple thing, but it is helping me to make the decision first thing in the morning of what is my focus for the day.

I start by putting the date at the top, then I use a ruler to add some vertical lines to the Schedule (creating an additional column if my schedule changes, inspired by Cal Newport). I think about my Top 3 things and write them down. Then I look at my digital Calendar and start blocking out all the meetings, appointments, lunch break and my end of the day shutdown routine block.

Then I look at my Top 3 and decide what will be my focus for the morning and block the times. I also look at Nirvana to see which tasks are in my Focus list. I try to block by theme or project, and use Nirvana to guide me through specific next actions. Sometimes I add a next action to the To-Do section of the planner, as a way of reminding myself I need to work on those ASAP.

I can never time block the whole day at once. I prefer to plan the morning, then after lunch I regroup and block the afternoon based on what happened throughout the day.

I’m using the Meals section of the planner to note the snacks I eat during the day. I’ve been trying to cut down on snacks as I noticed I’ve been snacking out of anxiety. Writing it down makes me aware of this behaviour.

On the left: An early morning plan – On the right: a complete day plan

I’m using this Planner as an auxiliary tool to help me plan my day. I could do that by using my digital calendar, but there’s something about writing things down that makes the plan more real, more palpable. It’s an exercise in looking ahead and facing the productivity dragon.

Post 07/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.