Lies I Tell Myself - Part 1

I think this might end up becoming a regular series. It's very useful to me, and may be useful to someone else. There's also quite a lot of these that need examining, so there's plenty to write.

I'd like to examine something that I tell myself that I don't think is actually true. It's something along the lines of, 'I require a certain number of hours of low quality leisure time on the internet each evening in order to properly unwind.'

There's some implications that come with that statement that are worth noting. Firstly, there's the idea that low quality leisure time is the ONLY way through which I can fully unwind. Secondly, when this belief is acted out, it seems to imply that the consequence of failing to get these hours are severe enough that sleep should be postponed and all my routines abandoned so that I can "catch up" on this low quality leisure.

Is there actually any truth in this at all?
The most obvious thing to criticise is that it's the only way I can unwind. There are plenty of other things that I can choose to do. I just tend to gravitate towards it out of habit rather than any intention or meaning. I even have direct evidence to the contrary. When I had the brief period of time when I left all my sources of connection to the internet at work in the evenings, I had no choice but to find some other ways to wind down in the evening. During this time, I was more relaxed, better rested and had a much steadier mood than ever before! Now that I think about it this disproves both the both the "type of activity" and "duration of activity" assumptions.

Does this low quality leisure time actually relax me at all? It definitely doesn't relax me mentally. There's always plenty I end up seeing as I traverse my trail through my frequently visited sites that gets me angry and riled up. That's exactly what the algorithms want. Outraged users are engaged users. Engagement means more ad viewing time. Which means more profit for companies that I fucking hate. The only thing about it that could be in anyway conceived as mentally relaxing is that it soothes the compulsive checking habits and strong sense of FOMO tjat has been engineered into me over the years. Maybe I can get to sleep more easily without that anxiety? Still seems like a shit situation. Something else to think about.

It's definitely physically relaxing, but I don't think that's inherent to the activity of browsing the internet. It's due to how I have do it: sitting down. I know that sounds really really obvious, but it's important to realise! On a typical day I will have been on my feet for most of it while at work, and then gone to the gym for 90 odd minutes to perform a whole lot of high intensity exercise. I don't think it's unreasonable to want to just sit down for a bit after that. The insight afforded by this incredibly mundane seeming observation is that there are a lot of things I can do to unwind while sitting down! I can read a book or a newspaper, I can listen to a podcast for a while. I could even just sit there! I could close my eyes and nap for a while.

The two central components for the evening/post work winding down leisure time seem to be:

1. Sitting down for a while after being on my feet all day
2. Doing something that I choose to do

The problem with getting online during this time is that I often feel like I've been sucked into something on it rather than having chosen something to do on it. I end up feeling compelled as if I was doing something for someone else. In some sense that's exactly what ends up happening.
I started thinking about this after the day that I had on Wednesday this week. I had a very early start as I had to get to East Grinstead for 9am. I spend a good half of the day travelling, and got caught at Tunbridge Wells train station for an hour while there was a fault. After all this I went to work for a half day, which was still quite busy and intense. Finally I went to the gym after work. There was no way to put it off as it was going to be so hot the following day that there was basically no chance of postponing the session.

I was shattered by the time I had finished the training session. I'd also had no internet throughout the course of the day. So I stayed up past my Freedom schedule late into the morning. "I need to relax and unwind," I told myself. However, this method of relaxation resulted in less sleep after one of the longest and busiest days I have had for quite a while. The following day was one characterised by lethargy quite unlike anything I had felt since the trip to Motherwell for junior Nationals. That's when I started to reflect a bit more on this belief that I had about needing this to unwind.
So it's quite clear now that there is effectively no truth in the original statement. I have figured out some things that are true, which will form the basis for a new belief about the nature of my relaxation:

• Internet doesn't help me relax, it gets me riled up (as it's designed to do).
• It only helps to sooth FOMO and checking habits engineered into me
• I really want to just sit down for a while after an active day of work and training
• There are lots of other things I can do while sitting down that don't get me worked up. These include: reading a book, reading a newspaper, listening to a podcast, eating dinner, taking a nap or even just sitting there and letting my brain wander.
• Allowing web browsing time beyond the boundaries I wish to have in place is just detrimental in every possible way. There is no advantage gained from letting this happen.
• When the time I have allotted to low quality leisure time has been eaten into by other things, or that my daily rhythm has been disturbed, I should look to spend less time on screens to relax, not more.
• A significan factor in whether an activity is relaxing or not is the sense of volition; it being something that I chose to spend my time. When I fall into the traps laid by the attention engineers, that aspect of choice evaporates, so I am no longer spending the time on my terms, and so it is not relaxing and gets me wound up again.

I don't need to use the internet to relax in the evening. I relax best by sitting down for a while so that the tension of being on my feet all day dissipates, and by doing something I choose to do."