Your Scrolling Is Protecting You From Choosing

Consumptive and avoidant behaviors like scrolling my phone and procrastinating and overthinking were… Oh, one second. Gotta turn that off. Were protective mechanisms that were protecting me from having to come to terms with the realization that I cannot actually accomplish all the goals, all the dreams, all the responsibilities, all the things that I wanna do in this life,

in this one life. And that, for me, was a truly… Oh, apologies for the bed makeup. My parents are here, so I’m on the couch. this might sound a bit more trivial than it is, but for me, this was actually a pretty intense realization. as an engineer and a scientist and an entrepreneur,

I studied electrical engineering. I worked as a research scientist. I have a business. I’m very curious. I’m very creative. I like to build things. I like to create things. but because that is true, I have, and you may have this as well, the double-edged sword, which is I want to do everything.

I want to build everything. I want to read every book. I want to pursue every tangent. I want to build everything that I possibly can. and what ended up happening for me is that I would overcommit myself to all these different things that I wanted to build.

And then the overwhelm or the anxiousness or just the overcommitment or whatever it was, would lead to me going to my phone. I would start to procrastinate. I would start scrolling YouTube. I would start scrolling my phone. I would start overthinking all these different things, all the different ways.

I’d start overplanning, over-researching for every single little thing. And because I would do that, I would never have enough time to actually push any of these projects across the finish line. and so I ended up with this long laundry list of unfinished projects, that I had started but never followed through on or never truly committed to the interesting thing about this was that my scrolling in this context was actually a protective mechanism.

it was protecting me from having to come to terms with the monster of prioritization, which is to have to actually look at myself in the mirror, look myself in the eyes and say, “Flint, I don’t have enough time to do everything.” and that sounds trivial, it sounds obvious, but it’s not.

for creative and curious people, that’s devastating. You’re telling me in this life I can’t have it all, I can’t do it all, I can’t read it all, I can’t research it all, I can’t build it all? but that is exactly this point,

is if I continued to engage in the overthinking and the procrastination and the doom scrolling and all this kind of stuff, I would never give myself enough actual time and effort and energy to legitimately disqualify things.

I was allowed to stay in this limbo state as if I was actually going to be able to build everything and do everything and create everything. the doom scrolling for me in this specific context, there were other contexts as well, was a protective mechanism allowing me to never have to make that realization and never have to deal with the overwhelm or the disappointment that actually I have to choose.

it was honestly a pretty sad, it’s a pretty intense realization because you have to look yourself in the mirror and be like, ” Okay, I had these big dreams. I had these big goals, all these things I wanna do. I can’t do them all.”

which also ends up being a very freeing experience. Because if you can’t do it all, and that’s just how it is, and you actually come to terms with it

and you actually start to put in significant amounts of effort onto specific things because you leave the procrastination and the doom scrolling, all that behind you start to become merciless in the way that you qualify if something is a priority or not. Because you recognize, you’re like, “All right, if that’s the case, I got one life.

I got X amount of years. I got 60 years plus or minus if I’m lucky left. Let’s fucking do it.”

for me, really coming to that place of realization of how limited time I have and how I really can only choose a handful of things gave me complete and total freedom to say fucking no. Just no. No, no, no, no, no. And obviously you still wanna say yes to cool things in life.

It’s not to say no to everything. But the part of me that wanted to say yes to everything was given permission, like confident permission, to start to say, ” Absolutely not. I will not be doing that. No.” Like, without even a glance. Because if I wanna pursue my dreams, my larger mission, and I do, then I must say no to many things

I could never have even really come to terms with how much time and energy it genuinely takes to push even medium to large size projects across the finish line had I not left those consumptive or avoided behaviors like procrastination, over-researching, overthinking, and doom scrolling behind.

I would have never had enough time, and I would have forever stayed in that limbo state as if I had enough time to do everything, and at the end of my life, I probably would look back and been like, Well, I guess I just didn’t get anything done,” because I forever stayed in that limbo state.

And if that resonates with you,

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I’m Flint from iAlign coming from my red room, and I hope you have a wonderful day or night or whatever time it is for you. Peace.