Issue #127 The Life Sentence You’re Unconsciously Giving Yourself

An uncomfortable reality I have been confronted with recently is just how much time I have been handing over to my phone without even realizing it.

I recently downloaded an app called Brainrot. After my year-end reflections, I decided that constant distraction was limiting my potential and I needed to make an adjustment. Brainrot is designed to restrict the usage of certain apps on your phone (social media, messaging platforms, entertainment etc.) and time-block them to avoid over-use. It even has a little brain icon that indicates your brain health for that day depending on the time spent on your phone.

What caught me off guard was the awareness the app created during setup. As I installed it, it analyzed my current usage and projected how much of my life I was on track to spend on my device.

18 YEARS

My heart sank.

I knew I spent time on my phone, but I didn’t expect it to add up to what felt like a prison sentence. Twenty to life, maybe out in eighteen for good behaviour.

The worst part? It never even felt like that much..

History's Most Available Drug

We live in an era of unfettered access to any form of media and entertainment. History's most distracting and addictive force fits neatly in our pocket. While a powerful tool for day-to-day life, the truth is that much of what our phones provide us isn't designed for our wellbeing. Social media platforms, streaming services and the bulk of the other apps we download are designed to capture and hold our attention for as long as possible. Every scroll, every notification, every algorithmically curated video is a meticulously engineered hook for us to bite on.

I'm part of the last generation that experienced a world with and without this phenomenon. We witnessed the transition in real time, and it happened during our formative years. We are uniquely positioned to recognize what was lost in that shift, old enough to remember life before the algorithm and notifications, but young enough to be swept up in them. 

Attention spans shrank and social dynamics were rewired almost overnight. The comparison culture alone was enough to keep most of us paralyzed. Suddenly everyone's life looked more exciting, more successful and more put together than our own. There were a million things to pay attention to, and it became overwhelming.

The average person now checks their phone over 100 times a day and we've normalized interruption to the point where sitting quietly with our own thoughts for five minutes feels uncomfortable. 

In a world without boredom and free mental space, I found myself with little room for productive thinking. Instead of building habits and systems to move towards my goals and passions, I found myself reaching for my phone and chasing that fix through a screen.

A Reality Check

I’ve often found myself reading stories of people sentenced to decades in prison, shaking my head at the sheer weight of it and how much life that really represents. It’s almost incomprehensible.

So when I realized that the time I was on track to spend on my phone added up to the equivalent of a life sentence, it landed differently.

Because no one was handing it to me. I was signing up for it all on my own.

And like any good habit, I had learned how to justify it. “Everybody does it”. “This is just the world we live in now”. “I deserve a break”. “I need to stay connected”.

At my worst, I was spending four, five, sometimes even six hours a day on my phone. Social media, YouTube, and endless browsing became a steady stream of dopamine into my brain.

Those were obvious contributors, but not all of my usage was mindless entertainment. The always-on culture of emails, Slack, Teams, and constant notifications creates its own version of the same trap.

At one point, I turned off my work notifications after hours, a decision that might sound uncomfortable or even irresponsible. What I found, though, was that being constantly tethered to those channels wasn’t making me more productive.

It was spiking my anxiety, fragmenting my focus, and creating the illusion of productivity while quietly eroding my ability to be present in my own life.

Layer that on top of the numbing pull of social media, and it becomes a recipe for something far more costly than lost time.

There will always be seasons in our lives and careers where this kind of intrusion is unavoidable, especially as someone that is self employed. But it’s still worth asking how much of your time and attention you’re giving away; and whether it’s actually serving you.

I would challenge you to take a closer look at the trajectory you’re on.

Because if you haven’t done the math, the answer may be far more confronting than you expect.

The Real Cost

What really stings in hindsight is what sat on the other side of all those hours.

As the Notorious B.I.G. once said, “your brain is a terrible thing to waste,” a line that came back to me as I listened to Sky’s the Limit while writing this. Because that’s exactly what I was doing. I was wasting my attention, my energy, and my potential.

During that period, I kept putting off the things that actually mattered. Stand-up comedy. Creative projects. Building new skills. Developing my own business. Reading things that would genuinely enrich my life. Time with my new wife :)

Instead, I became a professional procrastinator, telling myself I’d get to it… and then reaching for my phone.

But if I’m honest, this wasn’t just laziness. It ran deeper than that.

A lot of my phone usage wasn’t really about what I was consuming. It was about what I was avoiding.

When something felt hard, I’d pick up my phone. When I felt restless or uncertain, I’d scroll. When I didn’t know what to do next, I’d find something to watch.

There was fear underneath it. The discomfort of being a beginner. The anxiety of reaching out to potential clients. The vulnerability of building something visible. The risk of showing up to an open mic and being judged.

Scrolling was safe; creating was not.

My phone became a kind of pressure valve, a way to release tension without ever resolving it. And in doing that, I was slowly losing my ability to sit with the very discomfort that leads to growth.

Because almost everything that matters lives on the other side of that friction.

My phone became a place to hide from the very things that mattered most to me, and over time, I grew tired of feeling powerless to it. Because when we consistently shrink from what’s hard, we slowly lose belief in what we’re capable of.

That quiet erosion is exhausting.

And eventually, it was that exhaustion that forced me to act.

The emotional toll was real. Lethargy. The brain fog. The low-grade demoralization that comes from spending hours measuring your life against everyone else’s highlight reel.

It was a slow drain I had normalized so completely, I barely noticed it happening.

And what I didn’t realize at the time was that I wasn’t just losing time, I was losing something deeper: My capacity to think, to reflect, to sit in stillness long enough for clarity to emerge.

Boredom, it turns out, isn’t the enemy. It’s often the starting point for our best ideas and our most honest self-reflection. And by eliminating every moment of it, I was quietly cutting myself off from both.

Distraction doesn’t just steal time. It steals depth, energy, and momentum.

And in a world that rewards clarity of thought and consistency of action, that’s a price most of us can’t afford to pay.

Taking Back the Sentence

Awareness is the starting point for changing any habit.

Seeing how many years I was on track to give away was enough to force a decision. Putting the phone down entirely wasn’t realistic, but I could put structure in place to keep it from taking more than it should.

Ironically, the ad for Brainrot had shown up in my feed several times before I finally acted. The very thing I was using to avoid discomfort had been pointing me toward the solution all along. At some point, I just had to choose to listen.

What this tool gave me wasn’t restriction, but structure.

I set clear boundaries around the apps I tended to lose myself in. Social media is locked during my most productive hours on weekdays, again late at night, and for large portions of the weekend. I also set a daily screen time target of one and a half to two hours.

The result has been more than just less time on my phone.

It has given me back my focus.

My best hours are now protected, and with that protection has come a renewed sense of clarity and intention about how I use them.

More importantly, it has helped me rebuild trust with myself. There’s something powerful about knowing you’re no longer drifting, that you’re actively choosing how your time is spent rather than reacting to whatever pulls at your attention.

And in the moments where the old pull is still there, the structure acts as a guardrail, redirecting that energy back toward the things that actually matter.

The goal isn’t perfection.

It’s simply tipping the balance back in your favour.

If this resonates, here are a few honest questions worth sitting with:

What am I really reaching for when I pick up my phone?

What have I been putting off that I keep telling myself I’ll get to later?

How many years am I on track to give away, and am I truly willing to pay that price?

We’re not going to reclaim our focus overnight, and no one is expecting us to throw our phones away. But we can start making more intentional choices about where our attention goes.

Because where our attention goes, our life and energy flows. 

And the good news is, the sentence isn’t final.

We can still choose differently.

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