Each coming year I seem to be bombarded by more and more attention-preying services, every one promising the same thing: to satiate curiosity, drive away boredom, and fulfil social desires. This promise is nearly always left undelivered. My peers have repeatedly echoed this sentiment: Scrolling Instagram reels or binging YouTube or playing mobile games always feels good in the moment, but after the fact feels like nothing more than a colossal waste of time.

These activities fit into a larger class of I'll call "truly unproductive actions", defined loosely by their tendency to leave behind imperceptibly small (and sometimes outright zero) positive long-term impact on the self. Not all forms of casual unproductivity are truly unproductive. For example, most people would consider staying up late texting friends to be a poor use of one's time. However, maintaining interpersonal communication is a genuinely important part of social relationships - without regular communication, friends drift away. This of course does not speak to what point too much texting becomes too much, but that is a question of scale, not existence.

I strongly believe that truly unproductive actions should be avoided no matter what. Take for example Instagram. While posting photos for followers to see and scrolling through reels are both enjoyable actions in the present, your future self will likely only benefit from the former. I would make the case that no matter how meaningful something may seem in the present, unless your future self can look back and see it as a meaningful part of its past, it is worthless. Purpose cannot be defined with respect to the present, because as soon as one takes further action, they are no longer in that past instant, that past present.

If rooting decisions in the moment is bad, why do our brains inherently do it? Quite simply, true future-oriented decision making requires a significant level of situational understanding that our impulsive brain lacks. For this reason, much of mental discipline centers around suppressing impulsiveness. I will not pretend that this is an easy task; I too spend more time on social media than I would like.

But, as G.I. Joe so famously informs us, knowing is half the battle. Next time, instead of doomscrolling for half an hour, try to break the cycle. Give your attention-swamped brain a break. Walk around your room. Maybe even meditate. Even if you sit and do absolutely nothing for half an hour, you might end up feeling better. You certainly won't feel worse.

tags: life