Ever feel like your digital world is cluttered with content you no longer care about? I sure did, and that's why I took on the challenge of decluttering my digital life, starting with YouTube. Imagine cutting your subscriptions from 200 to 60, keeping only the ones that truly resonate with you. This episode is all about that journey and the lessons learned along the way. From trimming my Twitter following to taking on the Herculean task of organizing Instagram, I share the strategies and motivations that guided me through this process.
As Gary Vee puts it, attention is our most valuable asset, and it's high time we treated it that way. Join me as I share the insights and methods that helped me regain control over where my attention goes, especially online. If you're looking to create a more intentional and focused presence on your platforms, this conversation is packed with personal anecdotes and actionable advice that can help you manage your digital landscape. Let's face it, the 'doom scroll' is real, but it doesn't have to be your reality. Tune in, get inspired, and start investing your attention in the things that truly matter to you.
Ever feel like your digital world is cluttered with content you no longer care about? I sure did, and that's why I took on the challenge of decluttering my digital life, starting with YouTube. Imagine cutting your subscriptions from 200 to 60, keeping only the ones that truly resonate with you. This episode is all about that journey and the lessons learned along the way. From trimming my Twitter following to taking on the Herculean task of organizing Instagram, I share the strategies and motivations that guided me through this process.
As Gary Vee puts it, attention is our most valuable asset, and it's high time we treated it that way. Join me as I share the insights and methods that helped me regain control over where my attention goes, especially online. If you're looking to create a more intentional and focused presence on your platforms, this conversation is packed with personal anecdotes and actionable advice that can help you manage your digital landscape. Let's face it, the 'doom scroll' is real, but it doesn't have to be your reality. Tune in, get inspired, and start investing your attention in the things that truly matter to you.
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Speaker 1:
In the immortal words of Gary V, attention is the number one asset, and in today's episode, we're gonna talk about how you can call certain things out your life so that you can pay attention to the things that are relevant. Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of talk mode, and I am, as you can probably tell from all the most recent subject matters that we've been discussing, whether it's goals or habits or whatever else. I'm kind of in a transitional phase of my life at the moment, and one of the things that I'm trying to do is cut out the distractions. Yeah, there's loads and loads and loads of distractions, things that I've accumulated over time and things that try and take my attention away from what's important, and therefore I am in the middle of what I like to call the big call. Yeah, I'm just calling things out of my life. So let's talk about a couple of different things that distract us.
Speaker 1:
Right, a lot of people use this time of year to cut down on social media. Yeah, they like decide oh yeah, we're not gonna. We're not. We're gonna like delete the Twitter or delete Instagram or whatever, and I thought about doing that. Don't gonna be wrong.
Speaker 1:
It feels like sometimes I do get caught in the doom scroll. Even though I'm not overly I don't overly live on social media, I don't watch a ton of reels and stuff like that. Normally it's like what a what someone sent me is watching while watching. But occasionally I do fall into the trap of of doom scrolling. And then a similar thing happens to me with YouTube. I subscribe to a lot of channels over the years and you know, at the time, let's say, I was into a particular game, I I would subscribe to a channel that's streaming that game, let's say. And then a few months past, I'm no longer into the game and they're probably moved on to a different game and I'm no longer interested, but somehow still have them on my subscription and and therefore you see that noise right, there's a lot of noise all the time. We live in such a they live in such a fun life. There's so many things vying for our attention and our time and I feel like it's kind of important to narrow that down to the things you're actually interested in or that are actually going to benefit you in some way, shape or form, so that you don't have so many distractions when you're trying to actually focus on something that you want to do or something that you want to achieve.
Speaker 1:
So what I've been doing and this is a work in progress, man, because it's actually quite messy to deal with, but I started with YouTube. Right, I spend a lot of time on YouTube. It's where I think it's in fact, it might be my primary form of entertainment is probably YouTube. Aside from gaming, I think I spend most time streaming different things on YouTube. It's also a huge source of information and learning. So what I did first is I went through my subscriptions on YouTube and I had about 200, and I've got it down to about 60, and that's probably still too many, but I felt, like those 60 that I knocked it down to when they put stuff out, I am actually interested to watch it Nine times out of ten. Whatever videos they're putting out piqued my interest, so therefore I remain subscribed to them.
Speaker 1:
So that was the starting point, and then I decided to replicate that on Twitter, and that was a lot harder, because on Twitter I was following like 700 people. Oh, that was messy, man. Getting clear through that took a little while, but I've got it down to around 120, 130, something in that it's in the mid hundreds, so got it down from 700 at one point, so I thought I did pretty well. To be honest with you, the thing is, twitter made it very easy to do that. They had this feature. You just go on your following list and it tells you who follows you and who you follow, and then you can just click on, click on click the follow button or click on follow even, and the only annoying thing is every time you have to confirm yes, I want to unfollow, just a piste. But you know I did that, so that was okay.
Speaker 1:
And then I thought let me tackle Instagram. And you know what? I'm still working on it. It's a mess man. So I follow about 1200 people on Instagram and and I removed some of the dirt. You just go about doing it and I managed to do just.
Speaker 1:
And the interface to unfollow people is just so inconvenient that it comes up in a little box. It don't go on a full page. Again, you have to individually unfollow people. It doesn't tell you who's following you. So that's a bit of guesswork going on there. It's just messy man. I really can't be asked and therefore, with Instagram, I've just stayed away from it like I'm not going on it Not that I went on it.
Speaker 1:
That much anyway, but still, I'm dreading going on it because I really do want to clean up my feed and it's not gonna happen because it's just, it's a lot of time I have to invest in doing that whole unfollow thing, which is a mistake. But that's what I want to do, right? What I'm trying to do here is, when I go onto it, instead of just clicking on, you know you have the two sides right the for you and the people you follow and sometimes I'd go on the for you but sometimes I'd be on the people you follow, but I followed so many people that those two feeds were almost identical. But now when I go onto it, I click on the follow side and then I know this is curated content that I've decided to follow. Alright, there's some ads in there and stuff, but you know, if you block them, you block them, but the rest of the time, the rest of the information and things, I'm seeing the tweets, I'm seeing the posts, I'm seeing the old people that I actually follow and I actually want to hear what they've got to say. So it's a much better experience because I'm on there. But I'm on there for five minutes.
Speaker 1:
I'll always that's what's happening or I'll go. You know I'm not just sitting there doom, scrolling and looking after wherever, wherever, and you know it allows me to control what I see as well. So if I want to see positive things, then I just stop following all the negative things. Now, I'm not a believer in that. Like I want to see everything, I want to see the full picture, but I like to see reliable sources. So I'm unfollowed a lot, a lot of crap that I was following over the years and I've had that Twitter account for I don't know eight years now, so I had a lot of different interests over the eight years, so I followed a lot of different things. Anyway, I've cut that down, paid it down, and now that's the same with YouTube.
Speaker 1:
Right, I told you, youtube is one of my primary sources of entertainment. Now when I go on there, rather than just going on the front page where you've got algorithm telling you all these different things, I just click on my subscriptions and I know this is curated content to what I'm interested in and what I want to watch and the people I feel are either really good entertainment or are accurate with the information they provide. And then, yeah, occasionally when I'm looking for something new, I will go on the standard trending page, all of that, like the 4U page, but most of the time I spend no time in that subscription area. So I'm doing that and that kind of it does two things. One, I'm only seeing things that actually matter to me, and two, I spend less time on it because I'm not getting into that falling down a rabbit hole or just watching one video after another. I'm literally watching what I'm going to watch and there's a finite amount because I only subscribe to 60 people. So even if they all put a video once a week, I'm not going to see that many videos over a week. So it means I spend less time on the YouTube and that means I've got more time to read a book or do something I want to do, or record an episode of this or whatever it is. So, yeah, I'm trying to pare it down and I'm kind of trying to do that. So this particular part of it, this digital cull, really is talking about attention and that's the purpose of it.
Speaker 1:
But then there's also a physical cull that needs to take place and we normally refer to that as a spring clean, right? So I've been getting rid of a few things that I had. You know whether it's clothes that I never really wore and I don't really like, and you know all the stuff that I've just kept lying around because, if I'm being honest, I'm a bit of a hoarder. Yeah, I like, I attach a lot of sentiment to a lot of the things that I own and therefore I hold onto things longer than most people probably do. But more recently we had this thing at work going on where they were doing a charity drive over Christmas and I thought you know what, this is a good opportunity for me to let a few things go. So I must have taken about five black bin bags worth of stuff To the charities, and you know I'm doing a bit of a physical call. There's still a again, there's still a long way to go there.
Speaker 1:
I do want to go through my what wardrobe and and try, go for more. I'm not gonna say minimalist, because I know I'm lying to myself. I say that, but just get it down to more simple. You know, I just want it to be more simple. I, you don't. None of us need as many possession, possessions Sorry, as we have right, especially me, like I'm. I've got way too many things. So I'm in the middle of Finalist a few things on eBay and sell them. What I could sell, great, get some money out of it, put it towards something that I'm actually, you know, working on or trying to do at the moment, and then on the other side, I'm trying to just Other stuff give away to charity and just get that I don't know what you call it Good deeds out the way you know. Put more in the bank on that side, you know, cuz I believe in karma and stuff. So I think, yeah, more good deeds I can do the better. So, yeah, man, do the two things I'm calling right now.
Speaker 1:
You could also say it's the right time to call some people out your life. I, ultimately there's, there's a lot of people who want to come in and give their opinion on things, and sometimes it's nice to list to other people's opinions and get different ideas going, but sometimes just a whole lot of noise one and Ultimately you just need to tell people to fuck off. Sometimes you know people, people gonna give their opinion from their viewpoint, but ultimately you live your life and what you want or what you need, only you can know. Really, I'm that's not to say you shouldn't speak to other people and get their advice and stuff. It's always. It's a clever thing to listen to what other people think, but you need to know your own mind and you know there's definitely people out there that come and shit on your dreams or shit on your goals and ultimately make you just need to call them out your life. So tell them fuck off and Do you. Just do you, man? But yeah, I don't know, I just thought I shared this with you.
Speaker 1:
I'm sure a lot of People who are listening to this I say a lot, but whoever's listening to this, I think the reason you're listening to it is because you're already in the mindset of, yeah, I need to make improvements, I need to focus on goals, I need to do this, I need to do that, and and so I Would assume that you're already in the process of cutting out the noise in your life, whether that's Subscriptions, where that's financially, things you're spending money on you want to call that, tear it down so that your finances are more streamlined, or whether it's just people you're trying to get rid of. I assume you're doing all that, but I just wanted to share my current process and what I'm trying to work on at the moment for myself. I want to share that with you in case a spark, something gave you an idea or you know, I don't know, maybe you can give me some advice on what you're doing and how you're doing it. And if you want to do that and have that conversation, man, contact me on Instagram, of all places out while the rules, just drop me a DM and we could chat.
Speaker 1:
The reason I'm not saying Twitter anymore if anyone's been listening to this, you know I used to say Instagram answer. I'm not really saying Twitter anymore because I'm trying to stay off Twitter because there's a lot more negative Stuff happening on turns. Sometimes it's important to see, but sometimes it's just you get stuck in a rock, right? So, even though I've cleared Twitter up, I Still trying to stay off Twitter. It's just bad habits, you know. We just get into that scrolling situation. So, yeah, man, that's what I'm doing right now. I'm calling it a big call. But yeah, let me know what you're doing, what you're cutting out of your life at the moment. Give me some techniques that you're using to get more focused. Thank you very much for listening. You take care. Goodbye.
