 So I'm turning 30 in a couple of months and I've been doing a little bit of introspection as you do and A lot of my 20s have just been a complete blur That's because over the past 10 years I've basically been addicted to the internet the entire time and the last five years especially have gone by in Basically just a huge blur and I basically feel right now like I'm waking up from a trance Now I don't want this to be some big pity party But I think a lot of people these days can relate because at least for me It almost feels like the virtual world has been realer than the real world at least for me And I just feel like I've squandered so much of my time that I'm not really where I want to be in life So I know it's not a race to the finish but so many things in my life. I feel like I'm behind in so my financials I'm not even close to being able to start a family right now And of course a lot of that is completely my fault I think a lot of it is just because of the time that I've wasted over the past decade online and Looking back I really started to regret some of the choices. I've made so over the past 10 years I have been working for myself almost the entire time Which on one hand is very good because it has afforded me a life of freedom that a lot of people don't have But at the same time if you do want to work for yourself You also have to be disciplined enough to actually make yourself do the work And so I've been freelancing for the past 10 years But I've kind of just taken the easier route every time instead of really pressing forward I would just take the path of least resistance and that's why I'm really not where I want to be in terms of my career Of course I've started this YouTube channel over the past few years and it has grown to a pretty good size and I'd like to thank all of you But looking back I had so many dreams I just didn't fulfill because it was just easier to waste time rather than do the hard work So I'm talking about things like maybe building some websites or some apps because I had so many ideas before I taught myself programming and I thought of all of these different ideas for things that I can make and maybe it can Make me some money But I haven't done any of those all I have to show for it is basically a bunch of half-finished projects in a folder somewhere on my computer A lot of my other passions my hobbies have completely fallen by the wayside Like I completely stopped reading even though I was a super avid reader as a child I would read something like 50 or 100 books basically up until I was 20 and over the past decade I really stopped reading almost entirely like these years I'm lucky to get maybe even one or two books read the entire year Because the only real hobby that I've had over the past ten years is just scrolling online And so I bounced around to various different websites. I would be addicted to YouTube one day Reddit or Twitter or 4chan. Yes, I used to be an Anon And when I started to add up all the time I spent on the internet like every day I would spend just four or five or even six hours a day just on complete nonsense Just completely wasting my time and it's just an hour here and there It doesn't really sound like that big of a deal, but over a decade over an entire life That is literally a quarter or a third of your entire life So I was spending six hours a day a lot of times look sometimes I would spend even more I'm one of the kinds of people that can spend all day on YouTube Like just getting recommended videos all day and still be entertained. I never get bored I just have a very addictive personality. I guess you could say so some days I would just completely waste and it really starts to add up so looking back I probably spent almost a third of my 20s just online doing absolute nonsense on my phone or on forums or Scrolling online and it got me thinking if I don't break this habit now Then I'm gonna be 80 years old someday looking back on my life and literally thinking about how I wasted a third of it Looking at a tiny little screen, which I really don't want now Some people might just say oh, but time you enjoy wasting isn't actually wasted time and That is true, but I wasn't actually enjoying any of the time I wasted online So when you watch a movie with your partner at least you're getting something out of that But whenever I spend time online, I would basically get nothing in return for it What I was basically doing was just numbing the pain So if I had some problems or some stress in my life Then I would just turn to the internet and scroll because it's a lot easier just scrolling through something Rather than actually thinking through your problems At least for me and I think a lot of other people can relate but it was almost like numbing the pain with some kind of drug And a lot of people including me would rationalize their time online by saying well I've learned some of the greatest lessons that I have from the internet Like maybe you watch a YouTube video that changes your life Or you find a blog that completely changes your outlook on life and those kinds of things can make a big difference But let's be honest most of the time that I was spending on these websites and various other apps All of that time was completely wasted So I'd like to think that I was trying to find the next best YouTube video that was going to change my life But really that was just a rationalization in order to keep scrolling and keep going down the recommendations And after a while you also start to realize that what you really need is not more information Because in my time spent online, I probably gathered a few lifetimes worth of knowledge So I have all the knowledge in the world, but the problem is I never actually applied it And so even if I watched a life-changing video It didn't really affect my life that much because I didn't really put it into practice as much as I could have Now I'm not saying that you should never waste a single second of your life And you should just hustle the entire time you got to be productive You got to be working 25 hours a day. You got to be getting that big Of course that's the other extreme and I think dedicating your life to that is about just as foolish as squandering your entire life I'm not going to be flexing on you guys in 10 years with my new Bugatti But without the internet addiction I could have been in such a better place right now Like financially physically intellectually spiritually basically every facet of my life Now I'm not going to end this video by telling you how I completely defeated my internet addiction And how I ascended to a higher plane of existence That would be nice, but it's not really realistic But recently I have made a lot of progress and kind of overcoming the addiction And before that I had tried just about every trick in the book So you probably heard these tips and tricks like oh, you got to turn your phone grayscale at night That's definitely going to stop you from scrolling on instagram or something like that Or you just need to download this app blocker that will block youtube and you can only access youtube for one hour a day That'll definitely get you productive But at least for me I was trying to have it both ways I basically wanted to have my cake and eat it too Because I would say that I really wanted to quit the internet. Oh, I'm so addicted I don't know what to do, but I just kept doing it every day It was like I would say one thing and then do something completely different And I don't really think that my heart was in the right place So I said I wanted to give up the internet, but I don't think I really meant it because deep down in my mind somewhere I still felt like I could get some kind of enjoyment or Entertainment out of it and at least in my experience it didn't really work What I really needed was a mindset shift. So I needed to think about the internet completely differently Like when I would think of giving up this addiction like stop checking youtube compulsively stop checking any of these social media apps compulsively I would think that it would be this Giant strain on my life like oh, I have to give up this amazing place Where you can learn so much and I just have to use enough willpower to make myself stop using this amazing thing So I would say that life outside of these social media algorithms is really not as bad as it seems Because I actually didn't have to give anything up So it sounds like you need willpower to stop yourself from being addicted to the internet But it's more like taking a weight off your mind So I wasn't really giving up anything It was more like taking a giant boulder off of my shoulders So only in that sense am I actually giving up something i'm giving up this giant weight on my shoulders And at first whenever you stop compulsively checking the internet all the time it's going to seem really boring But I think it's kind of like whenever you leave a loud party and your ears are still ringing from inside And you've been so stimulated by the music inside that just coming back down to your baseline It feels weird. It feels like you're almost missing something But after a while that sensation kind of goes away And I think that's the same sort of feeling as whenever you quit the internet Whenever you quit this addiction it almost feels like you're missing something So I would have this background boredom or listlessness. I guess you could call it And I would just compulsively pick up my phone whenever I was bored Or I wanted something to do and I would basically have to catch myself doing that And a lot of people think that if you want to quit the internet it's going to leave a giant void Inside your life that you have to fill with something So a lot of people maybe you've been on the reddit no serve community They have this giant list of hobbies that you can do in order to fill the time that you used to spend compulsively scrolling And I don't really think that's the right approach Because I think deep down inside you you know what you want to do instead of compulsively checking the internet all the time Like at least in my case what I really wanted to do was start reading again I've always been an avid reader since I was a child and I've basically rekindled that love Like over the past two weeks alone. I've finished five books. It's been great. I love it But I only found that out about myself because once you quit the internet you can kind of start to think for yourself again It's like after you leave a loud party you can finally hear yourself speak again or think again And so a lot of people think that there's going to be avoiding your life without the internet I really don't think that's the case I think the internet creates the void with all of the over stimulation you get from the internet Like everything on the internet is way more interesting than real life Like you get youtube videos with mr. Beast text at the start of the video to keep you engaged But real life is just not as entertaining as that and it's never meant to be So at first whenever you quit it life is going to seem a little bit boring But as long as you can get over that initial hump you get back to your baseline pretty quickly at least in my experience And once you can kind of hear yourself think again Then you can actually see what you want to do with your life. So for example, I want to spend more time reading I'm rediscovering some other hobbies that I left by the wayside for a long time And you really just need to listen to yourself. What do you want to do? And that is another big benefit that you get whenever you stop compulsively checking the internet You can actually think for yourself and have your own opinions because for a long time I would just be way too terminally online I guess you would say and I'll basically get all of my opinions regurgitated from somebody else online Like some youtube video or some reddit post. I would just get a lot of my opinions and thoughts from there But once you spend less time online, you can actually kind of mull over things in your own mind This is like a basic human function that we've basically lost by using the internet too much It's kind of funny, but also pretty sad at the same time I guess in meme speak you basically stop being such an npc And when I first stopped using the internet compulsively it was very boring. I will say but you kind of get over that fast One other thing that you might notice is that you have to deal with your own thoughts Which can actually be a little bit scary sometimes Because a lot of times I was using the internet because I was stressed out about something in my real life Like I was worrying about something and the best way to stop worrying about something is just to distract yourself with something else And whenever you've removed the internet and stop numbing your pain with that you actually have to deal with these issues Which can be a little bit scary, but it's basically the only way that you're going to mature And one thing that has also helped me is just to stop identifying as somebody who's constantly addicted to the internet Whenever I feel that impulse to check something online or just pull up some website whenever I'm bored I basically just tell myself that I'm not that kind of person anymore. I'm not the person who just compulsively checks the internet It's literally not who I am anymore. That's just not something I identify with And so now whenever I have the impulse to just check something online I can just redirect that into doing something else like reading a book Or you guys can probably figure out something more interesting than that. I'm boring. I like to read old books I'm sure you're not as boring as me. So let me know what you do in the comments Now go outside and touch some grass or something. I don't know You