Transcription
I checked my screen time a while ago. 4 hours and 12 minutes per day. Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and all that small stuff, without me even noticing it. That's 32 hours per week, 128 hours per month, 1536 hours per year. That's 64 complete days that I just scroll away. And all the while, I always thought, I don't have any time, I'm so busy, and somehow I always got agitated. Normally, I'm relatively calm. And the crazy thing is, I knew it was bad. I knew it didn't do me any good, and I still did it. Every morning I said, no, come on, today I'll leave the phone completely out. Every evening, four hours were somehow gone again. The same thing every day. I just couldn't stop. And the worst part is, it didn't just cost me time, it even changed my brain, without me noticing it. Why can't we stop? Why do we scroll? Even though we know it's harmful. Because these apps exploit our primal instincts so drastically that willpower has absolutely no chance. I know people who hate sports but go to the gym for two hours because they have discipline. These same people can't last 5 minutes without some short videos. Why is that? Well, because short videos don't just steal your time, they reprogram your brain. Today you will learn what short videos really do to your brain. It's not just that the attention span gets shorter, everyone knows that, but today we're talking about the things nobody talks about. Why you have no desire for the real world after short videos, why conversations bore you now, why you meet up with friends less and less, why nothing stimulates you properly anymore. And I'll also tell you what I did about it. Your life depends on your decisions, and your decisions largely on your mind, or of course, on your subconscious, but short videos slowly and silently destroy your mind, without you noticing. Yes, who am I? I'm Sebastian. I've been building online businesses since 2014 with a focus on social media. Nowadays, I only work 12 to 15 hours a week, but that's not the topic today. I'm addressing this topic because in recent years I've noticed more and more that I'm becoming more and more dependent on social media. And the problem is that I earn my money through social media. I almost failed, and it wasn't because of my business. Not that it's not going well, but it was primarily because of me, now on Instagram. Because I could always say that I earn my main income there, I sometimes spent up to 8 hours a day there, completely addicted. And today I'll show you what I've learned in the past few months about short videos, about dopamine, and about your brain, and how you can finally regain control, without going into monk mode, without digital detox, but with a very simple system. But before we get to the solution, let me briefly show you what's actually happening in your brain. This might be a bit uncomfortable because you'll recognize yourself in one place or another, but still, I think it's important to cover. Are you ready? Good, then let's start. What we actually tell ourselves when we use our phones or just briefly go on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube. I'm just doing it for a moment, just a few minutes, just checking what's going on, and at the same time we tell ourselves, I'm not addicted, I can stop anytime. It's like a smoker who says, the cigarettes just taste good. And the reality is often that these 5 minutes you planned for, or maybe you just wanted to briefly check the news, often turn into 2, 3, or more hours. And not only that, you check it countless times a day, probably opening some social media channels up to 50 times a day. Just to see what's going on. You can't stop, you're addicted. What everyone knows and still ignores is that the attention span is getting shorter and shorter. But what also happens is that every time you open these apps, you indirectly compare yourself to others. Humans can't help it. Even when we go out into the city, we constantly compare ourselves to other people. Besides, you waste an extreme amount of time. You've probably heard all this before, but this is just what's actually happening on the surface, and what you more or less notice directly. What's really happening is something else entirely. And I'll break this down into a few problems. And Problem Number 1 is emotional blunting. When you scroll through 50 videos in a few minutes, funny memes, war news, some Ferrari kit, then a conspiracy theory, then some rage bait, you've gone through your entire human emotional spectrum within 5 minutes, and your brain will want to protect itself and become more and more blunted. It needs stronger triggers afterward. When you watch the news and hear, there was another attack, or bombs flew again, or there's war here or there, does that really affect you anymore? It's likely that you're already blunted. The same thing happens with short videos. Even if you only see funny people doing funny things, but they're standing in their perfect kitchen or living room, and you're sitting in your living room or kitchen and think, damn, mine doesn't look that great. It's just like if you have an office now, like I do, and you started comparing yourself to my office. You don't do it intentionally, it happens subconsciously. And the main problem is that in real life, there are usually no really strong triggers. Nature doesn't rage bait you. Nature is just there. It's just slow. Conversations don't shock you either. No one speaks in hooks to keep your attention. This means your normal everyday life won't stimulate you anymore. And the real world feels a bit gray, a bit boring, uninteresting, and you have a real emotional hangover. Problem Number 2 is impulsivity. Your brain is trained by all these impressions to be triggered. You know, if you gain 10, 20, 30, 50 or more impressions per session you open, and you do that every day, you'll become more and more sensitive, your emotions will become more and more unstable, and you'll react more impulsively. Maybe you've noticed this in yourself, that you sometimes react differently out of nowhere than you would have before. This happens because you can control your emotions less well. And I'll gladly give you an example from my real life. Um, before all the social media stuff, I was studying, and I could easily study for 5, 6, 7 hours straight. Really focused. I had a phone back then, but what happened? Occasionally you'd get a WhatsApp, and you'd occasionally look at your phone, like, what's happening now? But you didn't go to your phone all the time because so much was happening. Of course, there were other social media before Instagram, YouTube, etc., but they weren't used as much back then, and this went on for me until recently. And then I thought, I can't live like this anymore, because every time I go online, I have a lot of followers on all platforms, and the thing is, sometimes you say things that people don't like. That just happens. You can't do anything about it. So, every time I go online, someone annoys me. Someone always writes something bad. Someone blames me for something they decided. I get hated, my content is taken out of context. So, at some point, I really had the feeling that as soon as I go online, I'm being attacked. So, at some point, I asked myself, what is really important for me and my company, for my life? My company probably doesn't know much about this, maybe it does. I build evergreen things, meaning I try to automate my company completely with things that are timeless, so that you get more reach in the long run. But at the same time, I spent 80 to 90% of my time feeding Instagram, because that was my first platform back then. That means I made Reels every day, test Reels, carousels, and Stories, and threw everything in there. And the more important channels for me are actually the podcast and YouTube. And then at the end, I'd look at how much time I had left, or how much desire I had to continue. And then at some point, the penny dropped for me. When did the ratio change? And I actually only make about 20 to 30% of my revenue from Instagram, but I was still spending 80 to 90% of my active working time feeding that platform. Then at some point, I said, I don't want to do this anymore. Then I uploaded everything that was already automated and focused on the other platforms, and lo and behold, out of nowhere, I was no longer online on Instagram for days, and I really noticed that I was starting to be able to concentrate again, that I was working better again, on the things that really have value, like a YouTube video or a podcast that ranks in the algorithms for years, that I had more inspiration to actually do that because I said, okay, I'll just postpone it for myself. I'll do YouTube first, then podcast, and then Instagram later. This probably doesn't have much to do with your situation at first. I just wanted to briefly describe how I noticed it myself, because the first thing an addict needs is to realize why they're doing it in the first place. Of course, I thought a lot about that. I reflected a lot on why I'm on the platform all the time. That's another long story that would probably bore you now. Let's move on to Problem Number 3. Your motivation dies. And this is where it gets really interesting, because unfortunately, most people don't understand this. There's a certain dopamine myth. People always say dopamine is the happiness hormone. But that's wrong. Dopamine is released before you get a reward, not after. In the past, let's go back to the Stone Age, we hunted mammoths, and we needed dopamine for that. We started a project today, and we need dopamine for that. So, we looked forward to the reward in the future and did things because of it. So, we do things to be rewarded immediately. And today, these short videos have exploited this whole topic extremely, and especially the way the platform is built, this scrolling behavior. Yes, on Instagram, you can now set it to scroll automatically, so that you don't have to do anything anymore and the algorithm can keep feeding you, and these algorithms now work exactly like gambling. You never really know if the next video might be really good or really funny or interesting to me. It's just one swipe away, maybe 20 swipes, it doesn't matter, you can scroll through relatively quickly, and the result is actually that you have dopamine all the time while scrolling. That means it's not the video itself that makes you happy eventually, but the scrolling itself. So, this metric, that you come to the platform and are allowed to scroll, makes you happy. The only problem is that these dopamine glands eventually get exhausted if you're scrolling for hours. And this usually feels like when you get up after being on social media for a long time, you feel a bit emptier, a bit sluggish, and sometimes you even regret in retrospect that you wasted so much time. As they say, I got stuck on TikTok again. And some people even do this in the morning in bed, before the day has actually started, before they've done anything, they're already emotionally empty. And then you're supposed to motivate yourself for good work, for sports, for your important projects, but you have no motivation left, because this motivation would come from dopamine. But unfortunately, that's already used up. And I eventually realized myself that I can't really fight against it. And for me, deleting all the apps wasn't an option, because I always thought, you have to be able to muster enough willpower not to go into this app. It can't be that difficult. In reality, you have no chance against these apps with your own willpower. Instead, ideally, you create an environment that you can control. The easiest thing in my case would have been, I have a work phone with Instagram on it, and I turn it off as soon as I'm not working, and I have a private phone. I actually tried that at some point. It didn't work for me. However, what I first had to understand for myself beforehand is that the algorithms on social media platforms are now unimaginably good. You can't imagine with how many millions and billions of data they are fed every hour or every day. Every human behavior can be tracked, analyzed, patterns can be found, and the average person can be kept on these platforms. I used to be a social media expert, meaning I only gave tips for social media, and my main platform was Instagram, and it's actually the case that Instagram rewards you extremely if you manage to keep people on the platform. That means, what the algorithm can't achieve, it tries to achieve by telling creators, you just have to manage to hold your target audience's attention long enough, then you've won. Then I'll reward you with reach. That's the next problem. So, creators are chasing your attention. The algorithm is chasing your attention, and you're sitting somewhere in between, not suspecting anything. This is a billion-dollar development, if not a trillion-dollar development. All these algorithms, this is the highest economic and perhaps even political interest that currently exists. Because media has always been powerful. I don't know if you know series like Bridgerton. There's a columnist named, what's her name again? Lady Whistlebloom or Whistleblow, and the entire elite society, up to the Queen, listens to this gossip sheet written by a teenager. Spoiler alert, I won't reveal more. And nowadays, media companies, including Meta, and therefore WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, etc., are the most powerful companies in the world. Because if you control the media, you control everything. And if there's so much money behind it, you can be 100% sure that not only computer scientists are working on these algorithms, but very likely the best psychologists in the world. And the only goal of these algorithms is to steal your time. It's also explained very easily, because the longer you are on this platform, the more ads are shown to you. They don't want to make you addicted for the sake of addiction. They just want you to spend your whole day on social media so that you watch as much advertising as possible. So, they want to make you addicted for their own profit. And against something like that, believe me, your willpower has no chance. Willpower also gets depleted over the day. And even if you manage to fight against it with iron willpower all day long, not to go on social media anymore, you'll cave in on the couch at the latest in the evening. And maybe I'm the first to admit that I'm simply too weak for this. I can't do it purely out of willpower. Even though I'm very disciplined and achieve a lot in my life, I'm sometimes truly defenseless against these algorithms. And the solution is actually quite obvious. We don't fight these apps and algorithms at all, but we try to remove this possibility to some extent. To understand this a bit better, I'd like to briefly explain these algorithms in their technical aspect, the mechanics. So, what do short videos really do to you? Mechanic Number 1 is the gambling principle. I've already announced this very slowly or very softly, so to speak, teased it for you, and for that, you first need to know how gambling actually works. In gambling, the thrill is that you never know when the next win will come. Maybe it's in the next spin, maybe it will take another 1000 or 100 or whatever, you just don't know. But even small gambling algorithms know they have to give you a little kick now and then. That's why you win small amounts now and then. That means you bet €1 and win 50 cents, and eventually you're happy about it because you need that kick, and that's the confirmation. The system you've devised in your gambling works. And this gambling mechanic works exactly the same way in the algorithms for short videos. And the insidious thing is that these algorithms now know you better than you know yourself. Even if you don't want to admit it, but if you feed these algorithms with your information for hours every day, how you behave, when you behave where, then believe me, they know you pretty well. But if they know you so well, why don't they show you only the videos that interest you all the time? Why isn't every video a direct reward? Well, because then you would leave. That means algorithms are always designed to show you things you don't like in between, and then they measure the distance when you would jump off. That means, if you see something good, how many videos can I show you that don't interest you 100%, but only 10%? Do you jump off immediately, or do you stay for two or three more videos? What about 20% videos? What about 30, 40, 50? You constantly need a little more kick than most people, and that's how, just like with smoking, your addictive behavior is slowly strengthened. So, you don't start by showing you a good one, then a totally bad one, then a good one, that would be too obvious, but you mix it up algorithmically, very cleanly. So, you first see a good video, then maybe three mediocre ones, then you see an absolutely amazing video, then you see maybe 2, 3, 4 bad ones, and then you see a perfect video. You never know when the next good one will come, and there's content that's made just for that, meaning if it's shown to you, it's so that you skip it. And if you think about the fact that the algorithm favors content that is often skipped, you can also develop your own social media strategy from that. But that's back in my old world, so to speak. So, you keep scrolling further and further and further because the next perfectly fitting video is coming, right? Mechanic Number 2 is the so-called echo chamber. How does it work? Every platform tries to keep you on its platform. Therefore, it only shows you what you like and what aligns with your opinion. So, if they showed you things that go against your current worldview all the time, you'd eventually leave because the platform would annoy you, right? The problem is, you form an opinion about topic X. The platform now only shows you content that reinforces that opinion, so that you stay on the platform. Your opinion is therefore constantly reinforced because you receive this information all day long. This must be true, you haven't seen a single other video about it on the internet, and you've spent hours researching it. So, eventually, you think, everyone thinks this way. In the past, you could have conversations one-on-one and get the opinion of the other person, which could match your own or not. But if you talked to ten people, you'd definitely get ten different opinions. That's not the case anymore. Today, everyone defends their own opinion to the death, as if it's the only thing that's true. And social media is partly to blame for that. Why? It's the echo chamber. So, you only hear what you're shouting yourself. Mechanic Number 3 is fast food for the mind. Our brain receives information through multiple senses. Eyes and ears provide most of the information, and the quality of this information is all we have. The problem is, if you compare this to a good book, for example, you choose a good title, like, I don't know, how to make a three-course meal, then you'll find in it that you put together the perfect nutritional values, etc., etc. So, you constantly focus on this one topic, and that's great for your mind. It's exactly like with a podcast. You choose the topic, stick with it if it's interesting enough, and that's good for your mind. Short videos, solely due to their algorithmic presentation and this "I'm forcing content on you that I want to force on you, dear human. I am the algorithm right now." Then you have a lot of empty and meaningless junk in between, and that eventually acts like fast food. So, the only thing you gain are short dopamine boosts. The problem is, fast food occasionally is not a problem. No one has a problem if they occasionally go into an app and spend a few minutes there. But consuming fast food every day, perhaps even for several hours, is an absolute catastrophe. Your decisions depend primarily on how good the information in your head is. And if you, for example, watch a movie about a topic, say, it lasts two and a half hours, or you watch ten different Shorts that also talk about this topic, which quality of information do you think will be better, if everything is true? Yes, a few Shorts you've seen, where people try to keep you engaged for 30, 40, 50 seconds and give you as little information as possible, but only work with so-called open loops and rage baits and storytelling and hooks, or a movie that really wants to explain to you over a long period of time, sometimes several hours, that you can learn this and that and that. A simple example. You want to make an important decision, any decision, think of one now, any important decision you want to make. And now you buy one or two books about it and listen to one or two podcasts about it. That means you'll probably have good data after this research to make a decision. However, if you spend the whole day scrolling on the internet to consume your dopamine as quickly as possible, then you won't have time for that. That means people who often say their whole day is full and they have no time, check their screen time. You'll find that they would have time for such things. They just don't have the willpower to muster it. That means you've scrolled for 35 hours, you have no information for your important decision, so you'll probably make a bad decision. So, now we've talked a lot, and now I want to get specific about how I did it and how I'm still doing it, and it's not sexy, there's no dopamine in it, it's not a lifestyle hack, it's just a very simple system. Level Number 1, and I've built it up in stages, is creating awareness for it. Step Number 1 for this is first to check the necessary rational information for yourself, and to do that, please check your screen time, and also, and I used to do that too, if you think you're working on your phone all the time, dear influencers, and really look at the numbers. On iOS, it's in Settings, Screen Time, and I think on Android it's something like Digital Wellbeing or whatever it's called. And be honest with yourself now, is this still within limits? And if you're already at it, feel free to write in the comments, whether you're on Spotify or YouTube, how much screen time you actually have, and multiply this daily screen time by 30. How many days is that? A small example: 3 hours of screen time per day is 90 hours a month, and that's a whole 3.75 days that you're missing each month. That's crazy, right? And now you don't have to start beating yourself up, but the next step is to accept it first, because it is what it is, and you should accept every situation as it is, without saying it's good or bad. So, don't tell yourself, yes, I'm just weak, or start insulting yourself, but first shift to a neutral position and say, well, the apps are just well-designed. You shouldn't shift the responsibility away from yourself, but you should first understand why it's all like this. As I said, it's not a personal failure, but a billion-dollar algorithm that knows exactly how we all function. Level Number 2 is now you set limits. For example, you can set specific screen time limits, and only someone else knows the code, or you can also set limits within the apps themselves, for example, on Instagram, for using that app, and just the fact that a pop-up appears saying your limit has been reached might at least jolt you awake. My specific setup is actually that I've limited it to 15 minutes per day on Instagram, and I can also skip this limit. That means, on days when I really have to work actively, meaning I have to actively upload things to the app and schedule them, I disable the limit. But just for this daily scrolling, I have a limit of 15 minutes. I've deleted TikTok, and I still upload all my stuff to TikTok. However, my assistant does that now. I don't use TikTok, this devil app, as I like to call it, for personal use anymore, because the TikTok algorithm is actually the best algorithm in the world currently, at least when it comes to these short videos. And therefore, it's guaranteed to be the worst for you. And with YouTube, I'll be honest, I have no limit. But I don't watch Shorts there, not at all. I never click on them. And you can achieve that relatively easily if you don't watch Shorts on your phone. That means I don't have YouTube on my phone, but only on my iPad or on the TV. And watching short videos on TV is quite silly. Interestingly, even though it's the same content, you have a completely different feeling. So, you should always raise the hurdle of being able to scroll further. Ideally, if you have enough money, you would have a separate phone just for social media. And you don't always have it with you, but it's at home in a drawer, preferably on a different floor if you have a house. That means every time you want to go to Instagram, you'd have to go upstairs, turn on your phone, open the app, and then start scrolling. In 99% of cases, you wouldn't feel like it. It's like if I want to play computer games, I go online and see a 112 GB download, and then all that stuff has to be installed. I turn off the computer again and do something useful. That means we're trying to make this easy access better. And I actually still have this screenshot from back then where I had put various apps into folders, and I just named this folder. I'm showing it on camera right now, but if you can't see it, the folder is simply called "Lass es" (Let it go), and in it are my business WhatsApp, my Instagram, my emails, and my portfolio. That means this is a folder where I looked too often. So, into these individual apps, every time I notice I open an app too often, it goes into this folder. And just by the fact that it says: "Lass es" with a winking smiley, I get the feeling again at that moment: Ah yes, I didn't want that. And Level Number 3 is now controlling your environment. Every one of you, no matter where you go, probably takes your phone with you everywhere. Why? Put your phone down, for example. A very simple, banal example. When you go to bed at night, don't put it on the nightstand, but on the dresser. You'd still be reachable in an emergency. That's often the excuse. I have to have my phone with me. An emergency could happen, even if an emergency never happens, put the phone far away. Eventually, you'll notice that you might not even need it on the dresser anymore. Then take it out of the bedroom altogether. Most of you look at your phone immediately after waking up, and if the addiction is strong enough, you immediately open social media, and that's absolute poison. The first thing you see and experience in the first, I think 60 minutes of the day, shapes your entire day. That's why mental gurus always say, go out in the morning, go into your garden or go for a walk, go out for some fresh air, not just to get daylight, but also to make the first impressions of the day positive and slow. I bet you, if your phone is lying there and you turn off your alarm via your phone, you already have it in your hand and have the urge to open some apps, and if you get stuck, your dopamine is already gone before you've even had breakfast. While you're working, you can also put your phone away. I still have it here now because I wanted to show you something. Normally, my phone isn't in my immediate vicinity, and before I make this podcast, I normally don't do anything.
other. I don't check emails beforehand. I don't look at what problems customers have had, I do nothing beforehand. I first concentrate intensely on recording this podcast with my script and try to deliver the best possible result, so to speak, and afterwards, when the hard work comes, when no emotions are involved anymore, for example, during editing, then I can calmly check things again beforehand. So, now you have something for the morning, you might also have something for your work, now you would still need something for the evening and there I can recommend you to make a clear time. And for me, it was like this back then that I actually turned off my phone for a while at a certain time and that felt strange at first and then it suddenly felt liberating at some point and meanwhile I try to always stick to it, that I don't look at my phone anymore after 8 PM, so not at all. And enduring that at first is probably not so easy for most of you, because they think they would miss something. And that is again a pattern of this addictive behavior. You miss nothing. The entire humanity had no mobile phone available for 99.999 percent. We have only had mobile phones for a few decades. People still managed and survived before and nobody missed anything. And the thing is, if you then manage to have no screens at all in the last hour before going to sleep, so no iPad anymore, no YouTube, nothing at all through the other channels, so to speak, then you will also notice that you sleep better at some point. And that sounds trivial, but your brain recovers extremely during sleep. So, and the next thing, I always get um attacked, well not attacked, but ridiculed for it. You see it here below me. I am always, so for those who can't see it now, I am holding my phone up to the camera, but it's not focusing. I am always in a so-called silent mode. I created that myself via the phone. There are these pre-made focus modes and I created that myself and through this silent mode, only my wife can get through. That means if my wife writes to me or my wife calls me, then she gets through. Nobody else can call me. So, there are people who have now figured out that if they call twice quickly in a row, they bypass this silent mode. Okay, fair enough. But I don't get any notifications at all, not on any app, so neither on the phone, nor on the computer, nor anywhere. I always have all notifications off. And actually, I mention this relatively late, but that was the first thing I changed. So, I was always in some kind of focus mode during work hours. Then I noticed that it did me good, that I wasn't distracted all the time, right? So, the phone is not just an active distraction, that you always pick it up and look yourself, but it's also that you are constantly distracted by getting notifications and alerts and all that stuff. I turned all of that off. And yes, at first, I sometimes still looked at my phone confused and checked, oh, did I miss anything? At some point, you realize, you probably don't get that many messages, maybe nobody calls that often, and then you just forget your phone at some point. Every single notification is a trigger to pick up your phone again. Every trigger means reaching for your phone, and every reach for your phone can mean you lose another quarter of an hour, 30 minutes, or even worse, you get sucked into some social media platform. That means, the more notifications you have on, the more likely it is that you will be on your phone for hours again. Level number 4: Find a replacement. The problem is, now you suddenly have 2 extra hours a day. You spent that on social media nonsense before. What do you do now? If you don't establish something meaningful, something you enjoy, something you find really good, then you will relatively quickly slip back into scrolling. Example from my wife, very personally now. In winter, she spends a lot of time on her phone. In spring, summer, and autumn, hardly at all, because then she has her garden and she's out among the flowers all day and hours upon hours upon hours not on her phone, because she has something to do that is more beautiful and meaningful. my solution and I would recommend this to anyone who might want to be successful online or offline at some point. Create projects that you work on, that you have always wanted to realize. In my case, it can be an online business, but it doesn't have to be an online business. It can also simply be sports. You can learn an instrument, you can learn a language, you can write a book, you can read a book first, if you're not there yet. You can also learn chess or anything. that you enjoy. That is important because you now need something for which you get dopamine. Be it just playing computer games, but you have to replace this scrolling with something else. The nice thing is, usually, at least if you don't end up hanging around the computer for 12 hours because of it and just gaming, usually it will eventually be replaced by something that is a bit healthier, a bit more productive, instead of all this destructive social media that doesn't move you forward one millimeter. Because it is obvious that we have to bear the consequence of this addiction to some extent and that we spend 20, 30 hours a week on our phones or rather in these various social media channels, no matter where we are now, even if you hang around on Reddit all day, that's not better. That's almost an entire work week that we just scroll meaninglessly. And you always hear, we all have the same 24 hours, but we have to see what we get out of these 24 hours. And if your goal at some point is to earn a lot of money or to have a lot of money, then you won't get there if you scroll an entire work week, every week. You could also sit down and actually work on that dream. If you are interested in that, by the way, I always have a free workshop where I show my entire online business. You can find the links for that in the YouTube video description or in the Spotify show notes. So, if you are interested in something like that, the workshop is always free, I show my system there, and if you're up for something like that, you can of course also go into my programs later. But you would definitely have an idea after the workshop how I do it. So, and these 20, 30 hours per week can quickly become 1000, 1500 hours a year. That can quickly be 30, 40, 50 days every year, so one to two months of your life every year, that are simply gone due to, one has to say, often really meaningless social media content. Look, in the last 30 days on Instagram, I reached almost 1 million accounts, and the Reel that was the largest had a playback duration of 261 days, 21 hours, 15 minutes, and 35 seconds. Just so you can see these numbers here. It has 22,000 likes and 261 days of playback time. That means a Reel out of millions of other Reels has already cost humanity 261 days of time. And actually, I can identify less and less with something like that, although my content usually still has an educational character. That is always very important to me. I don't produce anything to go viral, and we don't want to extrapolate it now, but within 10 years, if you just scroll your normal time every day, you can lose almost an entire year by just scrolling. And you have your screen time now, if you have controlled that. You can calculate that for yourself again. And if you have now really lost a year within 10 years, just in time, then that is not even the worst thing you have lost, because your brain is becoming duller and duller. You lose concentration, you can no longer focus well. You become more impulsive and your emotions are more uncontrolled. In short, you are getting dumber and dumber, and this whole thing also affects your relationships, because you are no longer as present as you used to be. You don't listen properly anymore. You might be thinking about some short videos that you still need to send to someone while you're having a conversation. And believe me, people notice that. And your decisions also unfortunately become increasingly worse, because you stuff your entire brain with unnecessary information that isn't even really information, that often doesn't even stem from real knowledge, and you usually make bad decisions because of it. What happens now if you change it? So, I've been doing this for quite some time now, and the transition was actually difficult. Meanwhile, I'm at a point where I'm hardly on social media anymore. And at first, it felt strange because you have significantly more time and you realize how often you feel bored during the day, when you want to look at your phone. And it still feels a bit strange, because you still have the feeling, even though I've been doing this for many, many weeks and months, I've only been doing it so ascetically for a few weeks, but it still feels sometimes like I'm not really participating anymore. And yet I notice that I have more energy now, that the world itself is becoming a bit more colorful again, not so negative anymore, that things that I used to find boring now captivate me. For example, we have a birdhouse in the garden, for example. Sometimes I stand there with my daughter in my arms and we watch the birds for minutes on end, but also that conversations in the real world become interesting again and I want to participate in them. I have really withdrawn a lot in recent years and generally, that small things simply bring more joy again, because you probably have more dopamine-free time. And that has naturally escalated, right? That was the first week or the first two weeks, and after one or two months, I noticed that I can do certain things again, for example, I started playing chess again a few weeks ago. That is, learning, right? You never stop learning, but I can read for 2 hours straight again. I can watch a movie without looking at my phone once. That's not so obvious anymore today. My focus is back, my motivation is back, my good mood is back, and I feel more and more like myself. And what I hope for in the next six months is that I sometimes even forget to take my phone with me somewhere. That has never happened to me in my life. Or that I at least forget, I wanted to open Instagram, so that these apps are out of my head, that I simply no longer have the need to look into them and perhaps look forward to things that I used to look forward to. It used to be like this, for people who are now over 30, there was always this magical moment on the weekend. It was usually Saturday around 7 or 8 PM. You looked forward to a movie that you saw in the TV guide on Monday, that it would be on Saturday at 7:48 PM. You sometimes looked forward to that all week. So, where is that today? I don't want that back, God forbid, I'm glad there are streaming services, etc. But that feeling was just different. To summarize that again very briefly. All the apps you see today and that you have on your phone, they are all better at controlling you than you are good at controlling yourself. But you can control your environment. It's like if you want to lose weight. If you fail at the supermarket and buy all the sweets and have them at home, you probably won't lose weight. And if you get hungry in the evening for a chocolate at 9 PM and you have to get in the car, drive 2-3 km to a supermarket and buy a chocolate and drive back, you won't feel like having that chocolate anymore. But if you have it at home, you will eat it. It's the same with your apps. And maybe just for you again, the four steps that you can perhaps take today. Check your screen time, look at the numbers very carefully and really calculate it extremely high. So, how many days do you have and how many weeks and months perhaps even in your life and let yourself be shocked by that number and then think about what you could have achieved in all that time that you have long planned, like learning another language. The second thing is, after you have processed that, set limits in the apps where it is possible. I think there are also apps with which you can set limits for apps. You have to think about it. Sometimes you get a code to unlock it, so to speak. You could also give it to someone else, for example, who would have to actively give you that code, or no, I know that from children, for example, they always ask their parents for screen time for different apps. Yes, so you can, so to speak, if you now notice, okay, you are completely addicted to TikTok, then you could give your girlfriend, your wife, it doesn't have to be forever, control over this app over you, via this family sharing. You can set that up somehow, I don't know, maybe that's a way for you or like me. Delete the app. Yes, so I used to have LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc. I deleted Snapchat, I deleted LinkedIn, I deleted TikTok. I actually still need Instagram for my work. Maybe that will change someday. The second thing is, try to think about whether you can get your phone out of sight, so maybe a bit further away in the morning, so that you would have to get up to touch it, or actually in another room. at work also in another room, and in the evening, at a certain time, you can also slowly work your way back. Yes, from 10 PM, from 9 PM, from 8 PM, from 7 PM, from 6 PM. Either actively don't look at your phone anymore by putting it away, or even turning it off. That's also possible. Yes. And the next thing is really that you find a replacement, so some cool project that you want to tackle, some hobby, some sport, something that fills this time, because otherwise you won't change it, otherwise you will relapse at some point. And the reality is, of course, that it's not easy and that the first few days are hard, because it is an addiction and withdrawal is always real, but it's worth it. It's really worth it. And I'll give you a challenge now. Try to seriously implement all these four steps for a week and write down beforehand how you feel throughout the day and then do it again 7 days later. 7 days, that's no problem, that's bearable. And I am pretty sure that after 7 days you will already notice that you will think more clearly, that you will sleep better, that you will have more energy, that you will be more present, that you will have more motivation and more focus. And if you have an online business, you will also find that you are significantly more productive, that your decisions are better, and that your business is running better. What I always tell my people in my program is, the more time you give your brain to breathe, by doing nothing, for example, going for a walk or meditating or cycling, running, these monotonous activities, or you walk by the sea or whatever, but do nothing else, the better your decisions will be, because you give your brain a real break to let everything sink in. And when it sinks in, the subconscious works at full speed, and decisions also become better. That's the reason why I only have to work about 12 hours a week today, because everything I do pays into a complex system that I have built up step by step, because I was able to make good decisions. But even if you don't feel anything, I am pretty sure that you will be a little happier, because you can participate in real life more again. And my last thoughts on this. Social media itself is not evil. However, we use it in an unfavorable way. But you can still decide for yourself now whether social media should continue to control your life or not.