My weird little habits to protect my time and attention

Simple practices for intentional living in a world that pulls us in every direction

From 2016, almost a decade ago!

In my 20s, I was obsessed with productivity and creating an environment where I can function and work best.

I realized that everything around us is fighting for our limited time and attention. Tech companies want us to keep opening their apps, news publishers want our clicks, and even our own minds chase after shiny objects.

When we live our lives without questioning the defaults, we are letting others control us, our time, and our attention.

I prefer to take charge of my own life.

Here are some unconventional things I have been doing, some for more than a decade, to take back control of my time and attention:

1. My phone is permanently on Do Not Disturb mode. I check my phone when I want to, not when someone else or a company wants me to.

2. I only allow notifications from my wife, my son’s school, and my cofounder SK because they deserve my immediate attention.

3. I turned off almost all notifications on my phone, except for messages, calendar events, and time-sensitive financial transactions. Again, I prefer to check my email when I want to, usually once or twice a day, rather than whenever others want me to. I almost never get important and urgent messages via email.

4. When I work, I leave my phone outside my home office. If my wife or my son’s school urgently needs to reach me, their phone calls will ring my laptop.

5. I deleted all social media apps from my phone. I use them on my laptop. If I’m without my laptop and need to access something on social media, I would log in via Safari on my phone and log out once I’m done. The additional friction and terrible mobile interfaces make me less inclined to use them.

6. I put work-related apps on the last page of my phone so that I’d be less likely to see them and be tempted to check them when I’m out and about. When I was working at Buffer, a fully remote company, there were always messages to read around the clock. I checked Slack way more than I should have, even when I was off work.

7. I unsubscribed from all email notifications from social media companies, ecommerce companies, and other organizations that send useless emails. Many tech companies, such as LinkedIn, send a horrendous amount of emails to get users back to the platform. Such junk also drowns out important emails.

8. I wake up at the same time every day, even on the weekends. This saves me from having to think about what time to wake up every day, and is better for maintaining a sleep routine. I also don’t have to set a new alarm every night or worry about forgetting to set an alarm. While I try to sleep at the same time every night, I work late on some days. (I’m editing this at 10:20 p.m.)

9. I don’t read the news, except for industry news. Most news is sensationalized to get our clicks or make us share. If something is important enough, it will reach me somehow.

10. I don’t answer calls from unknown callers. 99% of the calls are from scammers, salespeople, or bank relationship managers. Those who know me and need to reach me know how to reach me.

11. I used to put my phone at the other end of my room so that I would stand up to turn off the alarm, which prevented me from snoozing. I stopped doing this because my son sleeps in our room, and I don’t want to wake him up. Thankfully I have cultivated the habit of not snoozing after about 10 years of practice.

12. I don’t keep the TV on by default. My parents’ generation has the TV on all the time, even when nobody is watching it. I didn’t even want to get a TV for my place but my mum complained about having nothing to do when she visits.

13. I bulk purchase daily essentials so that I don’t have to think about restocking them regularly. For example, I buy several months’ worth of mouthwash and retainer cleaning tablets each time. But my wife and I still go to the supermarket for fun.

14. I have been buying the same running shoes (ASICS Kayano) for at least the last eight years, since discovering it doesn’t give me knee and toe issues. I used to switch brands every year for the newness but always quickly regretted it once my legs started to hurt.

15. I generally don’t subscribe to loyalty programs. Such programs are designed to make consumers get into a frenzy of collecting points, tracking promotions, and spending more than they should, even if we think we are smart and won’t be influenced. Those cost more than the little savings here and there.

16. I journal every night before bed to reflect on the day, acknowledge both the good and bad, and clear my mind for a fresh start the next day. I also read the past entries from previous years (up to three years now) to remind myself of how far I have come.

17. I don’t spend enough time studying companies to buy the right stocks, and I struggle to buy and sell as the prices jump up and down in front of me. Monitoring the stock market affects me psychologically more than I would like. So I recently set up an automation to invest a fixed sum into the S&P 500 every month.

P.S. If reading this made you curious about my approach to daily life, you might also like my other personal essays, Life span, health span, and joy span and My 2024 Annual Review: On the Shortness of Life.