Disconnect To Connect : How I’m Fixing My Addiction To Internet

“This is a story of my last 2 weeks when I’m mostly away or not using Internet, and I realised things I was missing and I was doing wrong.”

When I was a child, my mother used to tell me ” Don’t over do it” ” Don’t over eat sweets” or in short; don’t over do anything. I was an infant then and never understood the meaning of it, and now at the age of 27, I’m understanding every single meaning behind it. In my 5 and half year of blogging life, I was constantly connected to internet. Be it on my laptop or on iPhone or on iPad, I was constantly connected to the world. I never realised when happiness of meeting people in real life turned into those quick and meaningless Facebook or whats app chit-chat. I completely missed out to draw a line between my professional and personal life, for internet use. Here are some of them;

• I started skipping meeting people in real-life and started video calls on Skype or Facetime to interact.
• I stopped myself from saying what I truly felt, and started writing status updates for being acknowledged.
• I started listening to valuable comments and opinion from others and started focusing only on likes and ignoring dislikes.
• I read a lot about life hacks thinking I have learnt something new; without implementing them in real-life.
• I started ignoring advice from experience people around me (Real-life) , and used google to find an answer for my queries. I forgot that those answer was written by someone like you and me, and it could be best or couldn’t be the best advice.

This was just the beginning and it took me 5 and half years to realize I was becoming anInternet addict.  Before you judge me too fast, It didn’t happened over night, but this change happened in small and gradual manner.

How I used internet in wrong way?

As a blogger by profession, being online is a part of my daily job and routine. 8 hour is the minimum time I used to stay online, and rest of the time I was online for non-work reasons. I started replacing my regular and healthier habits with online counter-part. I have already mentioned some of them above, and it all happened in this due course of 5 and half year.

I didn’t realize that “Slowly, instead of me; Internet was consuming me“. Something which should be used only for work and learning purpose, become a part of my daily non-work routine. Internet Become a part of my entertainment, mode of communication and a way to stay in my comfort zone at any where and everywhere. One of the biggest challenge which I faced was “Distraction“. With the urge of consuming too much information in little time, I wad reading too much but learning nothing.

My day used to start with checking Emails and Facebook notifications and ends up with reading articles online and checking mails. Occasionally I used to get so stressed with information overload, I started using sleep apps on my phone to put my mind into rest.

I was so close to any information which  I needed that I stopped learning. Over the time, I didn’t see all this as a problem; since I was living a life of an internet addict.

How I realised my internet addiction and How I fixed it?

I will be lying if I say I’m not addicted to internet at this moment, because I’m practicing what I have discovered in my last 2 week of “Disconnect to connect!” period, and making sure I don’t get into all Internet zone again in my life. From past 2 week, I was completely away from internet and I was living a life of 27 year old person with no job, and living in real-world.

I was occasionally checking my emails or occasional whatsapp use (5 minutes a day), rest I was completely off from internet. Even I was not publishing anything on my blog or writing anything.

This all happened unintentional but the finding and self-realisation was scary. When I was away from internet, I realised I was missing a lot of things in my life. I was seeing world as “like or dislike” and informations which I have consumed online was half cooked. Without practice, those information were as good as nothing. I also developed a weird issue of “distraction”, as I was finding it hard to concentrate on one thing at a time. My attention span was very low in real-life and it was uncool!.

Well, I had no issues making conversations with people who work online or are online, but the problem was making conversation with people who are never online. Imagine yourself not looking into your mobile screen or laptop the whole day, and having a conversation with someone who don’t know anything about online. Well, this may sound funny to those who never faced these issues, but if you can relate yourself to any of the above things, I’m sure you can relate yourself to every word of this article.  This is my first write up in last 2-3 weeks and I’m making a note for myself for future reference. Here are few things that I’m doing and will be doing to ensure I make most out of my online and offline life, and don’t get back to my addiction of staying online.

Minimize Social Networking:

Social networking comes with it’s own taste of good and bad. For me, staying online on social-network is not only important but mandatory. Being a public person, It’s important for me to stay online and one thing which I worked upon is; using social networking for the practical use rather than hypothetical use. I have made friends online but they are more like you just connected with 0 sense of knowledge about each other. Well, I have started using my personal profile on social networking sites for my personal documentation or not using it anymore. Specially Facebook is something where I’m being the most careful. Using Facebook too much not only affect your self-esteem but it also bring out the narcissist personality disorder. This could be avoided if you focus on having meaningful interaction with others via comments and completely ignoring likes. More over, limiting your personal Facebook profile to your close group of offline network (Friends and family) is a wise thing to do.

Stop Multi-tasking:

I have read a lot of stuff online on benefits and downside of multi-tasking, and one thing which I learned from my experience. Online Multi-tasking is good for tasks which doesn’t require much brain-work, and things which doesn’t require your brain work, should not deserve your time. Such works should be outsourced. So I’m sticking to one task at a time, and will refrain myself completely from doing multiple things at one time. My complete attention should be on one thing at a time till it completes.

Read and watch to learn something new:

Another bad habit which I formed was reading a lot without actually learning anything new. In this era of information overload, It’s hard to filter good information from too many informations. I was bombarded with news, articles and updates everywhere (Fb, Twitter, G+) and I started first filtering useful information from all information and later on reading them as fast as possible. Half of the time I was busy adding useful information to read and add it to Pocket app to read it later. I still have over 40+ great articles on Pocket to consume. I was missing out the most important part about digital media and that is I can control what I should see on my social media feeds. I don’t need quantity rather I need quality stuff with dedicated time.

So I started going back to old school day, and started taking notes in old school style (Pen and paper) so that I also remember it. More over, when reading something, I started reading it loud, to read it slowly and in a way that my brain  process every piece of information. I also started  thinking about stuff which I read-learned at the later part of the day. The whole goal turned into processing the information that I have learned online, and putting them in daily-life use. I’m not talking about all those internet marking skills, but talking about life hacks or self-improvement tips which we learn online.

There are few more things which I’m still working on:

• Use my smartphone as minimum as I can. That includes just having only very important apps and no Facebook or candy crush on my phone.
• Unlike all pages and brands pages on Facebook and use it for seeing updates from real friends and people in my network. I can always consume news and updates via other medium like Zite and Google alerts. In short using Social media for talking to real people and not to become an advocate of brand pages. I’m still subscribe to few websites pages whose informations and updates are crucial for me. Same goes for all other social-network.
• Switching off Wi-fi router after my work hours, and live an internet free life.

There are few more things which I’m doing and I will keep sharing in coming days. Do remember the only rehab for internet addict is world away from online gadgets. If you also faced the problem of internet addiction and found your way out to this addiction, I wold love to hear your suggestion.