NEEDING MORE BANDWIDTH
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I spend my time and energy.
This season of life has been demanding:
• More at work.
• More at home.
• More as a husband and dad.
• And more from myself—digging deeper to resolve conflicts, grow, and show up differently.
And honestly? I also kind of just wanted more of myself back—more of my mental space, more of my own bandwidth.
So, I decided to step away from social media and most of the content I usually create (except for this newsletter).
I’m now about a month in. No Instagram. No TikTok. Barely any YouTube (and even then, mostly on TV—just one podcast here and there).
This isn’t the first time I’ve taken a social media break, but it’s the first time I’ve done it for reasons that felt intentional. Not because I was mad at myself for scrolling too much, but because I wanted something else more.
WHAT I NOTICED
1. My judgment slowed down
Social media kind of trains us to make quick calls: funny or not funny, good or bad, right or wrong. Without it, I noticed myself pausing before labeling things. It felt lighter, with more time to interpret.
When you’re scrolling 10–30 short videos back-to-back, you’re building the judgment muscle over and over again—liking, disliking, approving, disapproving. Without doing that an hour or more a day, I started reflecting more on my own judgments, perceptions, and awareness as a whole.
Side note: This judgment piece feels really important because it directly affects your quality of life. When you label something as bad, you’re automatically setting up the possibility for something else to be good. When one thing is beautiful, something else has to be ugly. That constant dividing—this is right, that is wrong; this is better, that is worse—it sets up a dynamic that can be exhausting to live in.
I think it’s Buddhism (or maybe Taoism) that talks about how these polarities—good vs. bad, beautiful vs. ugly—create suffering. The act of labeling itself creates tension because we try to cling to what we call “good” and resist what we call “bad.”
But I think it does something even worse—it can make us scared to live life fully. Scared to experience the “bad” things and just accept them as they are. And even when good things happen, we don’t fully allow ourselves to enjoy them, because we’re afraid they might slip away or turn into something bad later.
It puts us in this constant cycle of attachment and avoidance—holding tight to what we like, pushing away what we don’t—and that cycle takes up a lot of energy. It’s exhausting, and half the time it keeps us from actually being present for the life we’re living.
Without social media feeding me hundreds of tiny moments to judge every day, I felt that pattern start to slow down. I wasn’t in constant reaction mode. I could let things just be without deciding whether they were good or bad. And that alone felt like it gave me a little more peace.
Which has led to an overall improvement with how I cope, process, and move through pain—and even how much of that pain is of my own making.
2. My focus improved
Not just what I focused on, but how I could switch focus.
I found myself able to sit with boredom, pain, or frustration instead of instantly distracting myself. And I could redirect that energy into something more productive—even if it felt uncomfortable at first.
One big takeaway: a five- or ten-minute scroll session doesn’t just cost you those minutes—it costs you the energy of switching tasks.
If you’re going from work → scrolling → chores → scrolling → time with kids → scrolling again, you’re not just losing minutes; you’re leaking energy.
I realized that, without filling those gaps with social media, I had the chance to reflect and be more intentional with what I wanted to do. I could get things done faster. A 10-minute scroll isn’t just 10 minutes—it can easily cost you 20. It’s like running an engine that’s leaking oil or gas.
Without the leaks, my engine runs better.
3. I showed up differently at home
Quitting Instagram didn’t magically make me a better dad or husband, but I did feel more present.
Those 10-minute scroll sessions don’t just waste time or shift your mood—they satiate your dopamine levels enough to take away the desire to do the thing you actually wanted to do. That little nudge to take the kids to the park or read a chapter of a book doesn’t feel as strong once you’ve already gotten that quick hit.
Without that quick fix, the small nudges actually turned into action.
Before, I’d think about a walk, scroll instead, and by the time I was done my mood and timing were different—and I’d skip it. Now, I think about the walk and I just go walk right there because there’s nothing else to do, nothing else to quickly satiate that need to do something. The first thing that pops into my mind becomes easier to just go do.
The same thing with chores, cooking, reading—all those small moments where I’d normally reach for my phone have now become moments where I just decide to act. I know it sounds really simple, but that’s what started happening.
And when I look back on the day, I feel more fulfilled. Instead of seeing my screen time add up to a couple hours, I see a day where I went to the park with the kids, finished a chapter of a book, ate better, got in a workout, actually did my yoga, or took time to meditate.
At the end of the week, I have those things to point to—not eight or nine hours of screen time.
4. I’m Setting Boundaries
The core lesson I’m learning isn’t “AI videos are bad” or “propaganda is evil” or “celebrity gossip is meaningless.” The point is: all of it is designed to elicit an emotion.
That’s why we watch it:
• Gossip scratches an itch.
• Propaganda gives you anger or a sense of meaning.
• AI content is engineered just to keep you entertained.
It made me ask: Who benefits from this reaction I’m having?
The oversimplified (but true) answer: someone gets paid to keep me watching. Someone benefits from my attention being used in that moment.
Which is not inherently a bad thing. If I’m watching something that truly gives me value, or something I actually find entertaining that adds something to my life, that’s a great exchange. That’s one of the wonders of technology—that this transaction can even happen.
But when it’s one-sided—when I’m getting something I don’t want and giving up something I need—that’s when it becomes an issue.
That one question—who benefits, and is this a fair exchange?—has been enough to make me put the phone down and do something else, something I actually want. Because I can give someone an hour of my day… or I can give that hour to myself, my wife, or my kids.
5. My Ability to Tolerate Boredom
I saw a video a while back that said boredom is an evolutionary signal—it’s meant to push us toward meaningful action. Boredom hurts because it’s asking: What should you be doing right now?
But when we fill that boredom instantly—with scrolling or other numbing habits—we weaken that muscle. We don’t practice responding to boredom with purpose, so we lose some ability to find meaning and act on it.
That stuck with me. It’s part of what prompted this break. Here’s the link to that video for the full explanation: Why Everything is Making You Feel Bored
6. My Creativity and Critical Thinking
I’ve done a lot of work on comparison and authenticity, but this month showed me how deep comparison runs—not just in outcomes (workouts, businesses, relationships), but in thinking itself.
I noticed I was defaulting to other people’s thoughts:
• Looking up how-to videos before I even tried solving it myself.
• Scrolling for ideas before thinking through my own.
Modern tools make it so easy to outsource thinking—to let an algorithm, influencer, or AI solve problems for you. And that has value, but it can be a slippery slope where you stop relying on yourself at all.
So this month, I tried to stop doing that by default. I asked: Can I solve this myself first? Can I create my own idea before I see what others think?
That one change made daily life feel more like an adventure again. Instead of consuming solutions, I was creating them. And that brought curiosity and motivation back into things I’d been treating as routine.
AN INVITATION
I’m not trying to demonize social media (It’s help me in numerous ways). It’s about noticing what space makes possible.
If you’ve been feeling the pull to step back—even just a week or two—I’d encourage you to try it. See what happens. See what surfaces.
And if you want support while doing it, I have coaching calls open for things like:
• Comparison
• Habits and stress
• Bandwidth and energy
• Confidence and consistency
Thanks for reading and walking through this with me.
—Tyler
OPTIONAL JOURNALING PROMPTS
• What role does social media play in your day-to-day life? How is it serving you / how is draining you?
• How do you normally respond to boredom? What would happen if you sat with it instead of distracting yourself?
• Where do you notice comparison creeping in—and how might you starve it for a while?