Before weight loss, before going to the gym, before dieting, the greatest way that you can improve your health is to cut on noise. Create a Focus mode on your phone that silences most notifications on weekends, as well as in the hours before and after work.
Use your phone’s screen-time features to limit how much time you spend on your apps each day, or at least block them late in the evening to reclaim a few hours for yourself. You may not be aware of how much time you’re spending on them; it can get ridiculous.
Generation Z has induced a neurosis in itself through noise alone. Bad news has always existed, and the state of the world has always been in the gutter, but our forebears were rarely exposed to it in such amounts. Like radiation, it takes a toll.
When your phone beams all of the world’s tragedies into your mind, it makes you feel perhaps too much. This is why it’s important to cut down. Even if you feel a sense of responsibility to keep yourself informed about the suffering of others, it is unhealthy for anyone to have that reality surface at every waking hour of the day. Even those in war zones, suffering from hunger and the loss of their homes and loved ones, will pull out the guitar and sing around the fire.