WHERE ARE WE GOING?

I’ve written about all the attention we’ve paid to social media platforms over the years.

I ran 1,105 miles in 2020, which took me around 200 hours. Scrolling 33 minutes daily on your phone adds up to about 200 hours a year, too.

Since May 26th, a few days after my 50th birthday, I decided to walk 10 miles a day. After a few too many months of inactiviy, I needed to get moving again. Walking this far takes me over three hours a day, so that’s three less hours of looking at my phone.

I talk about this a lot – the idea of taking the time we spend on social media and spending it on our craft. If we practiced our guitar more, wrote more poems, made more paintings, went for more walks, had more conversations, read more books – where could that lead?

Now, when I walked 10 miles that first day, nothing changed. But the hours add up, the miles add up, the movement adds up, and sometimes not in the most obvious ways. There’s no immediate prize, I just get to do it again the next day.

Walking 10 miles a day for 100 days didn’t lead to a finish line, but it reminds me of the concept of “increasing the surface area of luck.”

From James Clear (author of Atomic Habits):

“The forager who explores widely will find lots of useless terrain, but is also more likely to stumble across a bountiful berry patch than the person who stays home.

Similarly, the person who works hard, pursues opportunity, and tries more things is more likely to stumble across a lucky break than the person who waits.”

Spending three hours a day walking instead of scrolling has now led me to sign up for a “12 Hour Endurance Trail Run.” There’s a five mile trail loop, and I get to do it as many times as I can in 12 hours, with 200+ other people

It’s a new thing to go to, meet some people, have some conversations, and a whole lot of “getting out of my comfort zone” (literally and figuratively, of course). This is “surface area for luck.”

Practicing your guitar for three hours a day doesn’t guarantee you’ll play the Super Bowl Halftime show, or making pottery every day doesn’t promise a full time income, but these things can become conversation starters, or give you something interesting to talk about, maybe lead to a new friend – these things come along as a by-product of just doing a thing.

Walking 10 miles a day is not exactly aligned with the work I do in email marketing, or gathering people to talk about quitting social media, but maybe in a weird way it’s completely aligned.

Because if you want to leave social media, you need to put your time somewhere else, give your attention to something that needs your attention.

I was asked recently on a podcast “what am I running from” by seeking to escape from social media, and at the time I didn’t have a great answer, but I think I’ve come to the idea that to escape requires a destination.

We’re not seeking just how to delete an app or marketing without social media, but asking “where are we going?”