A few months back, if there were an Olympic sport for doomscrolling all day and staying up at night regretting it, I would have been the undefeated champion! Of course, with stiff competition from my fellow millennials. It came to a point when the amount of time I spent on unwanted reels became so unhealthy that my brain screamed for a digital cleanse, and for once, I listened to this tiny whisper.
The first thought that came to mind was to ‘uninstall all social apps’ and disconnect from the world of trending songs, viral videos, and random people’s daily routines. But that was clearly a bad idea. I do social media marketing and content writing as a profession, so I can’t stay away from all the buzz and be good at my job.
I needed a plan to stay in the middle of it all and still protect my sanity. So I took out my notebook (yeah, I am old-fashioned that way) and started researching the perfect digital diet for a content writer. The only condition I had while designing this diet was that it should be uncomplicated and sustainable over time.
I downloaded the OG app to stay on top of the latest news, Flipboard, and an additional SmartNews app and customized it to my taste. One tip for curating your daily feed is to keep it a little broad because you never know where the inspiration for your next piece of content can come from.
The first piece of advice I got when I became a content writer was to read a lot. It was never a problem till a couple of years back as I used to average at least 3-4 books a month, but now I have to restart this routine, and I didn’t know how. My attention span was laughable. So, I started with a 25-page goal and hit it every night. This also made sure that I didn’t have any screen time before bed, which I hear is recommended as much as sunscreen nowadays. But there are books I want to sprint through, especially if I’m sure I’d take months to finish; I use Blinkist.
My new addiction is playing games that improve my English. From grammar quizzes to crosswords to scrabble to vocabulary flashcards, I play anything that I can lay my hands on. Initially, it seemed elementary, but as I tested my knowledge, I realized how much of our command over the language we lost to autocorrects and autogenerates.
Moving from the general to the professional part of the diet (the protein), I take small courses on digital marketing through Udemy, edX, Hubspot, Coursera, or Grow with Google. To learn on the go, I use the Digital Marketing app that has micro courses with certificates. These courses are a lot of fun, and they keep you in touch with the areas of marketing that you are not directly handling.
And what about social media? I created a profile just to get inspiration for the brands I work on! It mildly satisfies my social media cravings and also improves my marketing game. With Instagram’s ‘scarily personalized’ feeds, I don’t get distracted with unnecessary content, either.
With my limited memory space, no matter how much good content I consume, I tend to forget it almost immediately. So, I use note-taking apps like Evernote and ZOHO Notes to write down catchy phrases, news bits that I can casually insert in conversations and look smart, creative ideas, trending topics, and just anything under the sun I think can be used in my writing.
Through all this effort of maintaining a healthy digital diet in the past three months, I am happy to announce that my brain fog has substantially cleared (which I seriously worried was the young onset dementia), my writing style has become versatile, and the speed with which I grasp my research material has also improved. So, are the withdrawal symptoms from doomscrolling and the growing pains from becoming lesser of an idiot worth it? Absolutely! (But I also absolutely recommend drowning the initial blues with occasional tubs of ice cream and Netflix binge-watches).
