Internet browsing became important but not productive part of life. Biggest part of online time we spend on nonsense things which does not improve us. In order to change useless time spending we tell ourselves “no more watching YouTube or browsing Instagram”. But every time commitment fails. Why? Let’s take a look.

Internet browsing is addiction which hard to change. Companies made countless researches to find out how to make users spend as much time as it possible & as regular as it is possible. Apps, games, social media designed in that way to make you wait for notifications and feel happy that unknown person likes your picture. By default all notification on, constantly demanding attention.

Multi-billion dollar companies order researches to improve probability of addiction for their products. In 1958 dopamine discovered which control “pleasure” system in brain.

When you tweet message than almost instantly receive feedback in form of likes, comments, reposts. All this lead to dopamine release and pleasure. More feedbacks or notifications create addiction. Notifications unpredictable in time and stimulate higher dopamine release. In order to react on notification you have to switch attention & loose concentration on what you have been doing. How offer you wanted to check one message and was ending up after one hour checking all other notifications? Below I’ve mentioned that notifications which you should torn off:

1. Email notification. One of main disturbance factor & one of most stressful daily activity. Think twice before spending your valuable time to response on e-mails just to look good in others eyes. Use filters and unsubscribe from spam.
2. Instagram browsing is useless for you unless you made money on it. You don’t miss anything important.
3. Facebook. Why do you need to know all life details of “friends list”? Does it even matter?
4. YouTube. Almost in every video “please follow my channel and hit bell icon”. We tent to overestimate usefulness of followed accounts. Most YouTube bloggers post crap.
5. Tweeter. Only 140 characters of information which means nothing.
6. Checking games to collect special awards in form of points. Do you really need that points? All to make users log-in regularly.
7. WhatsApp. If you are busy just mute notifications for 8 hours.
8. LinkedIn. Pretty new addiction in form of staying “on top of game”.
9. Spam box check.
10. Torn off all other needless notification in settings.

Declutter your e-mail box as it consume electricity. E-mail providers store your e-mails on servers which require electricity to run smoothly. That means that you not only store junk messages buy also use electricity for it. Study done by ICF International and McAfee reveals that 1 GB of e-mails require 32.1kWh per year to store.

How would you feel if your Instagram selfie got 0 likes, 0 comments? Definitely something wrong with picture. You will think how to get more interaction from followers next time. Basically person judge self-worthiness based on response.

Craving for validation satisfied by notifications. Fake believe that someone (even some app) memorized you trick brain to release dopamine. Consuming unrelated pieces of information permanently reduce capacity for productive work.

You have control over disturbing elements. Eliminate it. Don’t let notification and useless browsing damage concentration and have negative influence on your future.

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