How To Consume Entertainment Positively
The battle of self-discipline and not succumbing to addictive entertainment pertains to every single individual today, working professionals and NEETs alike.
EMBRACE THE RESISTANCE:
These days, there’s no resistance to entertainment at all.
Netflix, Prime and Youtube will play the next videos without asking, they will recommend new trendy shows every hour. Music apps will play new music continuously without ads. If you don’t have a preference, they will custom make one for you. You don’t even have to get up from your bed to be entertained, your smart speaker can do that with just a holler.
To instropect: where is the resistance?
I cancelled my Youtube Premium and my app usage went down by 70%.
Every morning I used to command my Google Home to play my fav playlist while getting ready for office. After cancelling the premium, I had to connect my phone to a bluetooth speaker and then play music. I had to listen to ads too.
These actions increased the resistance of consuming entertainment. And hence I realised RESISTANCE IS GOOD.
Everything doesn’t have to be flawless and effortless (not in consumption of entertainment at least).
You can increase resistance in most of your daily activities. I have listed some:
1. Cancel Premiums (if you can use for free):
Some premiums are not worth it at all. Apps like Spotify, Youtube, etc. don’t require memberships to use them. Premium is just a way to make your experience flawless so that you are hooked. Not having premium memberships will increase the resistance of using these apps, hence keeping unlimited garbage entertainment at bay.
2. Set App Time Lockers:
You can set timer on your phone for individual apps like Instagram, Facebook, where you spend most of your time.
Set a time limit of 30 mins or 1 hour per day after which these apps will be locked. It will increase resistance and will help you develop a habit of using these apps judiciously.
Also, knowing the fact that you can use these apps only for an hour a day will make you consume their content more graciously.
3. Uninstall Huge Time Consuming Apps:
Some apps and services are not even worth spending time on. Gaming apps, gamified productivity apps, social media sites (some). They create the illusion of “learning” and “spending quality time with friends” but if you analyse the data and introspect, these apps are nothing but deterrent to your full abilities.
4. Consume Your Entertainment on Laptop Not on Phone
If you consume your entertainment on your phone, sooner or later you’ll be dragged down the rabbit hole of mindless non-stop binge consumption of garbage “entertainment”.
Use your laptop to watch movies, use social media and consume other types of entertainment. This will increase resistance and keep mindless browsing at bay.
BEWARE OF THE SHORT VIDEOS:
One of the major factors for the success of Instagram and Facebook is: infinite scroll SHORT VIDEOS.
This format was so successful, even Youtube has introduced the same. It’s not long when Prime and Netflix also follow suit.
We click on a video, then the algorithm arranges infinite short videos for us based on our likes and searches. And since our attention span has reduced drastically over the decade, we are able to watch these short videos at a stretch of 2–3 hours without stopping.
And the genius of it is, if you dislike a video, you can just skip it or jump to the next. This kind of manoeuvring is not possible on OTTs (yet) and hence Netflix is struggling to hook people even further (but don’t worry, they will eventually succeed).
With the onset of OTT platforms like Netflix, Prime videos, etc. and their “ORIGINALS”, mediocre shock-value entertainment are being produced in massive numbers not for artistic purposes but for meeting deadlines and gaining more subscriptions.
All entertainment apps now have stories, reels, fleets, snaps, zooms, zaps, etc., STAY AWAY FROM ALL OF THEM.
The reason they are detrimental is for their ability to lower our attention span. Continuous short videos give us multiple dopamine hits in a short span of time, craving our brains for same levels of hits for other activities too. But no other activity (except social media and videogames) can match this, making it harder for us to focus on and enjoy activities like studies, office work, online courses, artistic work, and even movies.
Lastly, we have to realise that we will never be able to consume all the entertainment available out there. And we have to choose our fair share.
So don’t let corporations decide your entertainment for you, do it yourself.
Watch art house cinemas, explore independent music artists, indulge in other forms of arts for entertainment, read unbiased literature/articles to form political opinions, and keep mainstream entertainment to a minimum.