You know that feeling when the day is over, you didn’t get half of what you wanted done, but your brain feels like it ran an entire marathon?

I remembered back when I used to work out, study, work, and still have daylight left. Suddenly, it felt like there was never enough time. Heavy mind, focus completely down the drain.

With AI taking over routine operational tasks, this hit twice as hard: I need to think more, architect more, and solve more complex problems. To do that, my brain has to actually be rested. Add a baby on the way, and the bar just went way up. I needed to get genuinely efficient.

I checked my screen time: almost 4 hours a day.

Even discounting music at the gym, that was way too much time wasted on the classic combo: YouTube and Instagram.

Two years of Opal

I’ve been using Opal for almost two years. For the first year, it basically just rubbed the scale of the problem in my face. But this year, I went all-in on cutting the excess for good.

What actually worked

1. Started with the basics. I blocked Instagram and YouTube on Opal during work hours, from 8 AM to 6 PM.

2. Then came the real test: I deleted Instagram from my phone entirely. If I want to check anything, I only use it through the browser on my PC. The old-school way, like back in the MSN Messenger days, when you literally had to sit down at a computer to talk to someone.

Keeping social media strictly on the PC was a total game-changer. It creates friction. Do I slip up once in a while? Of course. But adding friction solves 90% of the mindless impulses.

The result today

My screen time dropped to around 1.5 hours a day, almost entirely audio and video while working out.

Did boredom come back? Partially. I still catch myself staring into space, looking for some visual stimulation out of pure muscle memory. But after a couple of minutes, I snap back and do something useful.

It’s wild how much breathing room your brain gets back once you stop stuffing every spare second with an infinite feed.

The video that put it into words

Pedro Sobral’s video on phone addiction (in Portuguese) describes what I went through really well. Three of his ideas stuck with me:

  • Reaching for the phone on reflex. He compares picking up your phone for no reason to flipping on the light when you walk into a room: you don’t even think about it. That’s exactly what I used to do, and what I still catch myself doing when boredom shows up.
  • Comparison, not information. In his view, we’re not overloaded with information, we’re overloaded with yardsticks for comparison. The feed shows everyone’s results and never the process, and comparing yourself all the time is exhausting.
  • Letting the dust settle. Quoting Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act, he says ideas show up when there’s room in your head. When you’re on the screen all the time, everything gets murky; boredom is when the dust settles. That’s what I meant by wanting my boredom back.

Give it a shot

No guru advice and no preaching: if your mind feels overwhelmed lately, give it a shot. Set Opal to block social apps during business hours, or keep Instagram strictly in your desktop browser.

If you want to go further, Pedro proposes three steps in the video: look at your screen time, set aside 20 minutes of deliberate boredom a day (no phone, TV or podcasts), and do something from your real life before opening any social app in the morning.

You might just need it without even realizing it yet.