This article was originally adapted from a podcast, which you can check out here.

At the beginning of the new year, in Episode #538, I introduced the practice of habit tracking and provided you with a template habit-tracking spreadsheet. Then, we had a series of Five-Minute Fridays that revolved around daily habits and we’ve been returning to this daily-habit theme periodically since.

The habits we covered in January and February were related to my morning routine. In the spring, these habit episodes have focused on productivity, and I’ve got another such productivity habit for you today.

To provide some context on the impetus behind this week’s habit, I’ve got a quote for you from the author Robert Greene, specifically from his book, Mastery: "The human that depended on focused attention for its survival now becomes the distracted scanning animal, unable to think in depth, yet unable to depend on instincts."

This suboptimal state of affairs — where our minds are endlessly flitting between stimuli — is exemplified by countless digital distractions we encounter every day, but none is quite as pernicious as the distraction brought to us by social media platforms. When using free social media platforms, you are typically the product — a product being sold to in-platform advertisers. Thus, to maximize ad revenue, these platforms are engineered to keep you seeking cheap, typically unsatisfying dopamine hits within them for as long as they can.