One Way to Break Your Addiction to "Checking"
Our devices should be our servants, not our masters.
Like all technologies, our digital devices are double-edged swords. They enable us to do more, either for good or for ill. They equip us to pursue our worthy aims more abundantly and efficiently. But they also present more tempting opportunities to indulge our detrimental impulses.
For example, our computers and smartphones allow us to be always online. That means you always have the ability to “check” your various digital input feeds. You can always check your email, your texts, your DMs, your social media streams and notifications, the latest on Reddit, etc.
That can be a blessing. For example, while you’re waiting for your car in the repair shop, you might check your phone and catch a message about a genuine work emergency. Or you might see a “life milestone” announcement on social media by one of your good friends. Thanks to your phone, you can use that otherwise idle time to make a call to deal with the office crisis, or draft a heartfelt text congratulating your friend.
But the ubiquitous ability to “check” can also be a curse. That’s because checking can be addicting. Novel information can be a pleasant distraction. If we adopt a hedonistic orientation toward checking, doing it for sheer pleasure or relief, we can easily become “novelty junkies.”
That is because, seeking pleasure or relief for its own sake is self-defeating. All it does is stir an insatiable beast within you. Whatever satisfaction it accomplishes is quickly swamped by the additional craving it stimulates. Hedonistic pursuits lead us into recursive spirals of compulsive behavior and ever diminishing satisfaction.
Before you know it, you can’t focus on or truly enjoy anything—a work project, having dinner with your romantic partner, etc—because you’re constantly checking your digital feeds for one more “fix” of novelty, each one less satisfying than the last.
If this is a trap you find yourself regularly falling into, you need to change the nature of your relationship with your information inputs.
Some people do this by deleting the apps that are tempting them. But that can be throwing the baby out with the bath water. And you will always face the temptation of reinstalling. A longer-term solution is to strengthen your own discipline by reconstructing your habits.
Here’s one way that might work for you. Promise yourself to only check certain inputs in discrete “checking sessions.” And limit those sessions to certain time intervals.
If you’re severely addicted to checking, it might be enough to limit yourself to one session during every hour of the day. You could list every hour of the day in a spreadsheet, and add an “x” in the adjacent cell for whenever you’ve already done your checking session for that hour. Tracking things in this way greatly aids self-accountability.
Once you’ve reined in your compulsiveness to that degree, you can challenge yourself more by stretching out the interval. For example, your rule could be to have only one checking session between meals.
If you do this, your digital devices will once again be your servants instead of your masters.
Self-regulation can break the spell that your compulsions have over you. By mastering yourself, you liberate yourself.