"I’ve found that I can avoid this in bursts, whether that’s keeping my phone away from me or putting in app limits, but, eventually, my resolve slides. If I’m feeling tired or low or stressed, the structures I put in place crumble and the Immediate Pleasure Device in my pocket rockets back into the centre of my life. Just like all those trillion dollar companies planned.
It’s becoming increasingly tough to handle — or even work out a strategy on how to handle."
I've been feeling this a lot lately!! I did see someone on TikTok that had a list of everything she wanted in her notes app and she was only allowed to buy stuff at the end of the month. I've started that this month and am hoping for "painful" release from the endless cycle. I also realized that the dopamine fix I'm getting from new stuff is rapidly dwindling and I think it's just because I'm buying more.
Yesss this is a good way of doing it. Something I tried for a while too (and still do a bit) is to work out how many days work it takes to buy that thing and wait that time before pulling the trigger.
I figure out my disposable income (e.g. how much money I have after I've sorted all my bills) and divide that by 30 days.
If, for ease, we imagine that's €300, that means I have €10 per day to spend. So if I then want something non-essential that's €50, I try to wait 5 days. If I still want it at that point, I pull the triggers.
OOOO I like that! That's a really smart way of doing it. When I was an hourly employee in various jobs in high school I used to do the math of how many hours of work something was.
Boy did I pass on a lot of stuff when I realized the $25 thing was 2.5 hours of work.
"I’ve found that I can avoid this in bursts, whether that’s keeping my phone away from me or putting in app limits, but, eventually, my resolve slides. If I’m feeling tired or low or stressed, the structures I put in place crumble and the Immediate Pleasure Device in my pocket rockets back into the centre of my life. Just like all those trillion dollar companies planned.
It’s becoming increasingly tough to handle — or even work out a strategy on how to handle."
I've been feeling this a lot lately!! I did see someone on TikTok that had a list of everything she wanted in her notes app and she was only allowed to buy stuff at the end of the month. I've started that this month and am hoping for "painful" release from the endless cycle. I also realized that the dopamine fix I'm getting from new stuff is rapidly dwindling and I think it's just because I'm buying more.
Yesss this is a good way of doing it. Something I tried for a while too (and still do a bit) is to work out how many days work it takes to buy that thing and wait that time before pulling the trigger.
I figure out my disposable income (e.g. how much money I have after I've sorted all my bills) and divide that by 30 days.
If, for ease, we imagine that's €300, that means I have €10 per day to spend. So if I then want something non-essential that's €50, I try to wait 5 days. If I still want it at that point, I pull the triggers.
OOOO I like that! That's a really smart way of doing it. When I was an hourly employee in various jobs in high school I used to do the math of how many hours of work something was.
Boy did I pass on a lot of stuff when I realized the $25 thing was 2.5 hours of work.