Your time is the furthest thing from free (reimagining the way we look at FOMO)

While I generally support anything that advocates for less social media addiction, it's worth noting that self-improvement is an exhausting affair which can lead to its own brand of FOMO. There's no shame in occasional indolence or "wasting time"; just spend it on something marginally higher quality than endless MMO grinds or scrolling through the 700th page of Reddit.

Point well taken, but could people please stop advocating deathbed regret as a guide to living a good life? I'll probably spend my last days unconscious, or high on painkillers or something, not likely in deep reflection about the things I have and haven't done in my life. I don't care that much what an old, broken, drugged up version of myself has to say about how I chose to spend my time. I'm a big fan of using time well, but the line "Has anyone ever regretted not having done more of xyz on their last day?" doesn't motivate me one bit not to do xyz. Speaking of which, it's beer o'clock, and I'd love to see what youtube and Netflix have to offer.

FOMO is another way in which shirt-term impulses towards novelty or comfort short-circuit more long-term aspirations that are more cerebral and abstract.

Unfortunately, this emotional appel for one to seek self-actualization doesn’t do anything to halt short-term thinking. It’s just more preaching without concrete means to achieve it.

I offer two modest solutions towards the goal advocated by this link:

1. Productive procrastination: swapping the most junk food of short-term leisure with pursuits that are still fun but slightly more constructive towards meeting one’s long-term goals.

2. Progressive overload. Rather than this all or nothing anti-FOMO approach advocated by this link of mindset transformation (all of your time spent on short-term gratification is to be regarded as wasting your life; you WILL regret it one day), just chip away at the time wasted a little bit, each day. Sub in more productive leisures as in 1). Grow at your own pace. Don’t guilt yourself about it.

Self-help tends to be more successful when it emphasizes with the reader and comes up with actionable steps, not ask them to suddenly change their worldview.

Stressing about how “wasteful” social media is, is NOT a practical method of reducing social media usage. Guilt is often a trigger for more addiction.

I think it’s nice one in a while to have a perspective of how you spend your time, but monitoring it and calculating how many days a year you spend on each thing is not useful and not healthy either.

Why is learning an instrument considered objective better use of your time than scrolling for information/entertainment? That information/entertainment can gain you lots of things that improve your life, some of which can eclipse the acquired skill of making pleasing sounds with some object.

Counterpoint: people tend to regret the things they didn't do or missed, not the things they did.