Put your phone in a draw. My phone is in a draw right now as I write this. I can’t see the

8 min readDec 1, 2020

It is really easy to lay blame on yourself and others. This serves little purpose other than to prolong the pain and to put off healing. You may have made mistakes or taken on too much, but it is more likely that something out of your control was a factor. Someone else was building the same thing but better, or sooner, or maybe ten people were doing that. It’s a big world and a lot of people are chasing the same ideas and markets.

The social media phenomenon is here to stay. Yes, these companies make money off advertising. Advertising isn’t going anywhere either. Ads aren’t bad or evil; they’re just part of our economy. There are worse ways to make money as a business than selling ads.

If the worst-case scenario does happen and social media companies are breaking laws and acting evil, the solution is obvious: users will delete their social media accounts. The social media companies know this.

don’t give in to the fear! you say
but i’m not trying to
scare you
i’m not trying to
destroy your life
i’m not trying to do…anything really.
i am ceaseless. there are things i can live on
and things i cannot

i think you’re confusing me with 9/11
the same stubbornness you felt
the national pride
the dedication to
a “way of life.”
i think you’re confusing me with 9/11
the resistance against
an enemy that looks like a person, an enemy with
a face
i think you’re confusing me with 9/11
but i’m not a single, intentional event

Track your screen time. This feature is available on a lot of phones. It’s easy to see how much time you’re spending on social media and decide if you need to be more disciplined and reduce your investment. You can track calories to lose weight and fight food addiction, and you can track screen time to avoid social media addiction.

It is a deeply sinking feeling of being out of control when you realize your dream is not going to make it. You’ve exhausted your opportunities and energy or you’ve simply realized it was not viable. Maybe a partner went south on you or you realized this thing was not something you want to spend your life working on. In every case two things can happen: an existential sense of gloom and weakness, and a period of evaluation. It is during that evaluation that you learn what you learned. And it is incredibly powerful.

Aaron Newman has founded at least four companies (I’ve lost track, it may be five). I worked for his third one, a software startup called Techrigy. He sold his first company pretty early in the game and immediately started a new one. It grew to over 100 employees and stalled and he wanted out because he had lost his passion for it. He handed off management and some equity and immediately started Techrigy. I was his first paid employee. After two years an unexpected offer came in and he took the money. In the mid seven figures for two years of work. He is a pragmatist. And he started his next company, which is now worth hundreds of millions.

Specifically for colon cancer, people must know their family history for colon cancer and polyps and family clustering of other cancers, such as uterine, ovarian, stomach, pancreas, urinary tract, and breast cancer. For people with a family history of cancer, they should speak to their health care professionals about genetic testing, which is less expensive than it had been even just a few years ago. Finally, in this time of Covid-19, people must still address their medical needs. Now with increased testing and a better understanding of how to prevent the spread of the virus, seeking medical attention is safe and important. Too many people have been putting their routine medical care on hold for months now. Please don’t ignore your health because of this pandemic.
You can schedule time away from your phone screen. I don’t use my phone on Sundays or during dinner time. My phone is on airplane mode while I sleep. There are practical ways to decrease your social media time.
i am a wave, i am a disease
i cannot be
ignored, wished away
i am a wave, i am a disease
i do not tire, i do not rest
i am a wave, i am a disease
i am not your enemy, in fact
i want very much
to be your friend.

you’re trying to
keep everything running, on schedule
denial laced with anger
knocking over
masks in stores — You deserve your
American life, unchanged
forward is the way through

Your grandparents were warned of the dangers of television. They were told people would lock themselves up in their homes and shackle themselves to the television. TV changed humanity but it didn’t ruin us. We found a way to live with TV and still talk to one another. Holidays didn’t die. Nature didn’t stop being explored. Cafes full of people having conversations didn’t become extinct.

The generations before you were told newspapers would harm society. They were told that society would spend far too much time looking down at a newspaper rather than talking to each other. The newspaper didn’t end up killing social interaction.

The idea portrayed in The Social Dilemma documentary is that the tech giants are purposely trying to manipulate us. The movie depicts three men standing in a dark room and trying to manipulate a user for profit.
We’ve seen people abandon Uber and Facebook in the past when they’ve fallen out of love with the company’s mission — the same can happen again. It hasn’t happened because there’s no hard evidence social media companies are evil.
The lesson from the movie is we need to learn how to live with social media, not switch it off for good. Using the internet to be social was always going to happen. The internet is designed to connect humanity, and too much connection can obviously be addictive. So can ice cream.i am a wave, i am a disease
i cannot be
ignored, wished away
i am a wave, i am a disease
i do not tire, i do not rest
i am a wave, i am a disease
i am not your enemy, in fact
i want very much
to be your friend.Books were also supposed to steal our attention away. We were supposed to become zombies that hid away in bedrooms, isolated from the world, and did nothing other than read books.
The rise of dumbphones is another trend. I predict we will have more people choosing to have two phones: a smartphone for everyday use, and a dumb phone that can only make phone calls and receive text messages. You have clothes for different seasons and you could have phones for different occasions.
The first cars we drove were unsafe. It was only until years later when cars became safer and reached mass adoption. Social media is the same — it’s not perfect and there is a lot of improvements that need to occur to make it more useful to society. Blaming social media for our problems is silly, though.

Put your phone in a draw. My phone is in a draw right now as I write this. I can’t see the

Written by experm09