• Premise
• 1. Break from Social Media
• How I took a break from Social Media
• Did I Experience Any Benefits?
• 2. Cleaned up my Phone
• Essentials vs. Distractions
• Did I Experience Any Benefits?
• 3. Attempted a Simpler Wardrobe
• Adopting the Minimalist Mindset
• I’m Still Working on this One
• My Current Wardrobe
• Closing

Premise

For many of us, getting distracted is not only a part of our lives but built into our day-to-day activities. We want to get distracted, and often we do whatever we forget the struggle that is “life”. Whether it’s TikTok, Reels, YouTube, Sports, TV shows, Video Games, etc., it seems inescapable.

Whether it’s TikTok, Reels, YouTube, Sports, TV shows, Video Games, etc., it seems inescapable.

I found myself getting very distracted last year. Whether it was notifications on my phone, constantly scrolling through Instagram, or pouring hours into a video game that didn’t do anything for me, I don’t want to even admit the number of hours I wasted on something that didn’t add value to my life.

I knew that there were a few things I needed to change to get myself back on track with not being distracted by day-to-day things that were “normal”. I needed to do something about the distractions in my life as they were eating up hours of my time every single week.

1. Break from Social Media

I decided to take multiple breaks from Social Media. I decided that this was too big of a distraction most of the time for me as I was spending a lot of time caring about other people’s lives and comparing myself to them.

I also noticed that I was presented SO many ads… I was always wanting to buy something I didn’t need.

How I took a break from Social Media

The first thing I did was delete Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter from my phone. I also took apps that I would often click on quickly and moved them to a separate page or to a folder I couldn’t see.

I also deleted YouTube from my phone for a week, as I did find value in YouTube, but I was spending way too much time on YouTube distracting myself.

I deleted Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter from my phone multiple times, for about a month at a time (I did reinstall Instagram recently, but then again deleted it. I still haven’t reinstalled Facebook, but I have reinstalled Twitter cuz I don’t use it).

Did I Experience Any Benefits?

Deleting the apps had a few benefits:

1. I didn’t open the apps when I was bored.
2. I didn’t get the notifications from those apps, which would often break my concentration.
3. I created a healthy balance between my time and social media.

I didn’t actually feel like I missed out on anything, but occasionally having access to these platforms was sometimes helpful for getting reached out to my clients for DJing, or getting invited to events. So this is why I occasionally use them, however, I will often just access them from the Browser when I NEED to, not when I’m bored.

2. Cleaned up my Phone

I decided to do a few things to clean up my phone. I asked myself the 2 following questions: “what are the essentials I need from my phone? And what is distracting me?”

Essentials vs. Distractions

After thinking about how to clean up my phone, I took multiple steps and did the following:

1. Deleted every app that I didn’t need
2. Muted every notification I didn’t need (and focused on only allowing the “essential notifications”)
3. Creating workflows around being at work vs. being at home.
4. Cleaned up my home screen.

Did I Experience Any Benefits?

By deleting every single app that I didn’t need, I eliminated apps that were taking space, potentially sniffing my data and all of the notifications they had. I also noticed that cleaning up my notifications helped keep me even less distracted from my day-to-day tasks.

Having fewer notifications made me look down at my phone less, which helped me focus on the work I was doing, the project I was working on, or just spending time with my family.

I created a workflow for apps that I only use for work (Outlook, Teams, my VoIP phone, etc.) to ONLY show up if I was at work. If I was at home, I wouldn’t see these apps anymore, and would instead only see my personal apps (which weren’t very many).

I even completely revamped my home screen to only one page, only keeping about 8 apps on my home screen.

These all helped me stay even less distracted.

3. Attempted a Simpler Wardrobe

Adopting the Minimalist Mindset

While I’m still working on this one, I attempted to adopt a minimalist mindset with my clothes. There were a few reasons for this:

1. I wanted to own as few clothes as possible and almost guarantee that I always look modestly fashionable.
2. I wanted to eliminate the excess of stuff in my house as I tended to hoard clothes.
3. I wanted to eliminate having to “decide” what to wear every day. It eliminated one more stressful/decision I had to make every single day.
4. I want to get better at “living with less” as it would allow me to value the few things I have and be content.

I’m Still Working on this One

I have attempted a few different clothing investments to get to the “minimalist” point with my wardrobe. I didn’t get this right at first, because I just went straight to buying clothes I thought were good minimal clothing items. The problem I ran into at first was settling for clothes that were high quality but didn’t quite fit me right.

I will write a whole post later on my journey to clothing minimalism and where I’m heading next with it. There’s a lot to the story that’s hard to share here.

My Current Wardrobe

Long story short, I have spent the whole year figuring out what clothing I like wearing the most, and looking for the least amount of clothes I could own while having the most possible outfit combinations.

This looks close to this:

• For everyday T-Shirts → Charcoal grey, black and dark navy blue T-Shirts from True Classic Tees.
• For Working Out or Exercise → a Black, Grey, and Green BYLT Basic’s Lux Tank Top and a pair of Fabletics Black shorts.
• For Summer shorts → a Black pair of All Day Comfort Shorts from WYR Wear, a pair of Khaki shorts, and a pair of Jeans shorts.
• I own 1 Swimsuit now from Vuori.
• My Shoes → A dirty white pair of Vans low tops, a clean pair of white sneakers, a pair of Adidas white shoes for the gym, and a pair of Arizona Adobe Captain boots from Thursday Boot Co. (I have others as well, but I pretty much wear these exclusively).
• Pants → I have a pair of the Black ABC pants from Lululemon, a pair of the Black Everyday pants from BYLT Basics, 2 pairs of blue American Eagle jeans (one with holes and one not), and a pair of khakis from Uniqlo.
• Socks → I get so many of these for Christmas honestly, but I did buy one pack of white hightop socks, and a pair of no-show socks for the summer.
• Underwear → get whatever makes you comfortable. I got something I found cheap on amazon.
• Winter Essentials → 2 Hoodies, one white and one charcoal grey from WYRWear, and one dark grey sweater from Lululemon. I have a flannel from American Eagle I wear often, and then a light black jacket from Calvin Klein and a large forest green coat. I also hang onto any hoodies I already have as I live in Michigan where it gets extremely cold.

I have more clothes than this (I’m still an aspiring minimalist), but these are the primary ones I wear every day, and try to focus on building around them. I continually am working to remove any clothes that are outside these parameters.

Closing

These changes may seem small on their own, but they all add up together. If I saved just one hour every day (which I easily have with each of these), over 365 days that is 365 hours… Which is 15 days! That is half a month of my life just gone with these distractions.

While this is only the start of my journey to live a more simple life, I feel like I have already started reaping the benefits of having fewer distractions with these changes. I want to continue to eliminate things that do not add value to my life so that I can pursue things that do add value to my life, and focus on more important things.

If you found this helpful, consider following me on YouTube, Social Media, or joining the emailing list. Check me out at https://www.malachicorliss.com for all kinds of articles that will help you with tech, music, productivity, and more!

Seeya tomorrow,

Malachi Corliss