Why am I lacking focus in my required task everyday?
Am I sick? Am I depressed?
Not really.
Am I a victim of instant gratification by a long day of tired work?
Maybe, but I have no clear answer.
Am I a lover of pleasure rather than long term sustaining happiness?
I have no idea but I felt like I am addicted to something, and it is a strange feeling when I don’t indulge on it.
In the past, I used to think alcoholism is addiction, drug or tobacco use is addiction, but later I realized I was addicted to something more unusual than that.
Now I firmly believe that addiction does not only indicate alcoholism, smoking, and drug use, it also indicates lack of focus and concentration in my quality of life.
“When you become excessive social media user without clear intent, you begin to live in the past and dream about the future because you have less time to do the real work at the present moment.”
I am re-examining my current and past life, my activities and how I am spending my time over the years.
These are some other forms of addiction that I have seen in my surroundings, in my family, in my close friend circle, and colleagues.
Many are addicted to excessive web-surfing and social media, they can’t stay even five minutes without their smartphone. Smartphones are a tonic for them to pass time.
Some are addicted to excessive texting and TikTok videos, they enjoy chat rooms and videos more than their kids, spouses, and family.
Few youngsters are addicted to driving and texting, it’s fun for them rather than to wait until they stop.
Couple of my crazy friends are on addiction of excessive sexting, let’s not go deeper, it’s self-understood.
Two of my former colleagues are addicted to excessive twitting, whoa, they love that twitter-X, how fast it moves.
I accept, probably, I’m addicted to excessive facebooking, realizing its influence in my life, I decided to invest some money in Facebook stock. Though it is too late be in, but let’s see how far can I go?
Every time I surf, Facebook makes money, so why not take a small share of profit myself?
When you become excessive social media user without clear intent, you begin to live in the past and dream about the future because you have less time to do the real work at the present moment.
I always procrastinated for my real work and wasted a lot of time.
I used to open my facebook page to warm up my work but I never noticed that how much time I wasted even before to start my real work.
In the end, I regretted, I couldn’t finish the task and I paid the price, as we all know, regret doesn’t do anything, it just make us more overwhelmed and stressful.
“Facebook also tricks us into dreaming of other people’s digital happy lives who have nothing to do in our lives. Life is far from comparison as shown in Facebook’s few most selected and edited pictures.”
Many years ago I had a couple as a family friend, who used to upload many happy moments pictures everyday on facebook.
My wife used to tell me how happy their relationship is.
I thought the same way for many years.
But three years ago we heard they divorced unexpectedly.
My wife and I both became shocked.
After reading a book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, I realized that they were too busy to upload the pictures on facebook rather than to work on their real relationship.
Well, this is only my reporting, not a judgement, maybe they became addicted to facebook and couldn’t comprehend its caustic effects in their lives.
Not only Facebooking, any kind of addiction costs us enormously.
Most of the time, Facebooking teaches us to follow the digital shiny objects rather than spending time on real objects.
With Facebook, I have a personal relationship so that, please, allow me to go a little bit deeper here.
Accept it or not, Facebook is a double-edged sword in our life.
It helps to stay connected with the lives of people we care about.
Amazingly, how far we have come due to internet technology like Facebook and e-commerce.
We must salute the people who innovated these technologies and make us more interconnected across the globe.
Kudos to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
But Facebook also tricks us into dreaming of other people’s digital happy lives who have nothing to do in our lives.
Life is far from comparison as shown in Facebook’s few most selected and edited pictures.
We rarely see negatives of people’s lives on Facebook, everybody posts only their positives and happy faces.
Life never becomes only of positive things, smiles, and happy moments, it’s a conglomeration of both positives and negatives.
Ultimately, Facebook is only a trailer in our life, not the full movie, the real life is with us as a full movie with a lot of ups and downs, pain, and sufferings.
I have another friend from India who spends a lot of time on facebook but he makes a living there, he is an advertisement optimizer. Facebook is his employer without appointment letter.
Facebook is his playground for his earning and living.
But I became only an addicted passive customer for facebook.
Anyway no regrets, I’m learning from it, and now moving ahead in life.
“Distraction is our good buddy either to fear us for future or to show little hope from past.”
Alas, I forgot the worst, I used to surf facebook during toilet break at 2 a.m.
What a shitty habit I had in the past!
Why am I having a hard time to break the addiction?
It is taking a long time to crush the addiction.
Because it requires work, hard work, mental work, a tough work.
It requires initiation where I am very lazy.
If no initiation, no beginning, and no flow, nothing moves.
When I was doing research about this article, one of my close friends shared with me about another addiction that he is suffering.
He loves frequent change of girls for love, which I found strange.
He told me “We may not think it as an addiction but it is also another form of severe addiction.”
His family life is in chaos right now.
This is the addiction to friction, a severe loss for a momentary pleasure.
When we become addicted to something, this something brings deeper attachment due to repetition of the same habit with no realization of harm.
This habit doesn’t allow us to keep track of time and focus.
When I was severely addicted to Facebook, I was also addicted to distraction, so I used to open my facebook page all the time even during time of focus reading and writing.
I was in love with distraction all the time.
When distractions come our way, we stop the task at hand and engage to talk either past events or future plannings.
Distraction is our good buddy either to fear us for future or to show little hope from past.
I wanted to finish my task but I was unwilling to turn off my facebook notification on my cell phone.
I used to respond to text messages immediately, absolutely no patience to wait.
I used to count the number of likes on my facebook upload all the time, even at midnight when I was awake.
“Simon Sinek: if you keep your smartphone in front of you on the table in an important meeting even if your phone is in silent mode or off, you are addicted to the phone. If you talk to anybody in person by holding your smartphone on hand, you are addicted.”
We love to be more reactive than proactive because we want to impress others by our comments and shallow expertise.
In the past, I was crazy like a rat between two holes, I used to check my email more than hundred times in a day, maybe every 10-15 minutes.
I used to carry my smartphone all the time with me in my pocket, in class, in meetings, while running outside, and check the phone every couple of minutes ignoring what’s happening outside.
I couldn’t make good, healthy and intimate relationships with anybody because I never paid hundred percent attention to anybody because of my smartphone.
I was pathetically poor at listening.
The person who was next to me physically and to whom I was talking always felt unimportant and insulted because in our talk I used to text to somebody else.
Simon Sinek, author of “Start With Why” says, “if you keep your smartphone in front of you on the table in an important meeting even if your phone is in silent mode or off, you are addicted to the phone. If you talk to anybody in person by holding your smartphone on hand, you are addicted.”
As Sinek said, whether it’s true or false, I lived with all of those habits.
Ultimately, I also became addicted to shallowness, superficiality, and impatience.
I hated focus and depth.
I lived the life of outer scorecard rather than inner scorecard as described by Warren Buffett.
“Remember, we are also the average of the five habits we spend the most time with.”
I know a person who is a security analyst in a brokerage firm, who has an interesting addiction.
As you know from his job title, he is not a celebrity, he is a normal person with a normal job.
When he comes out of bed, immediately, he surfs the tabloids.
Later, he confessed to me he is addicted to celebrity gossips, celebrity affairs, break ups, and divorces.
He told me “I can’t stop reading them. At one point I felt sick if I was not keeping up with Jennifer Lawrence, Kim Kardashian, and Priyanka Chopra.”
In reality, those things have no value in our lives but still my friend was addicted to reading them.
He realized it later and said to me that he wasted his precious time.
Spending time on celebrity twitter feeds, perusing the Facebook uploads excessively of the people we don’t care about is a self-sabotaging habit.
I love a quote from one of my favorite motivational speaker and author of ‘Twelve Pillars‘, Jim Rohn, “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
Remember, we are also the average of the five habits we spend the most time with.
Conclusion
Without introspection of our own activities and habits thoroughly, we can not expect something out of them.
When I was addicted to Facebook, I wasn’t aware of what was happening around my life.
Awareness comes only by knowing what we are doing in all aspects of our lives. It’s the same as peeling off each layer of onion even though we know there is nothing inside.
I was having the ripple effect of my addiction to my family, relationship, and quality of my life.
At one point I became aware of its effect when I received the email from my daughter’s teacher saying that she is weak in reading comprehension according to her grade standard. This was just one ripple effect.
As a human being, we all are able to forgive and forget. We must be able to forgive our terrible habits and addictions, and we must be able to forget these habits and addictions as well.
We don’t need any counselling, advice, courses, or any other commercial products to kill our addiction.
All we need is we have to change our mindset gradually.
To say it simply, we have to change ourselves first which is very tough.
Mental change is extremely tough.
Remember, if we don’t bring mental peace and happiness which, of course, require mental clarity, addiction will always follows us.
We must be aware of our life happenings.
We must stay away from addiction.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, the author of ‘The Great Gatsby‘ said “First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.”
Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.
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