Categorie: Philosophical Kees

Today on my daily subway ride in NYC, something extraordinary happened. Usually it’s just everybody staring down at their screens (seriously, it takes one subway ride to see how addicted we all are to these devices), but yesterday it was different.

There was a mom, her dad, and a little kid sitting there. Usually the parents look stressed staring at their phone, and the kids have an iPad they’re watching videos on. Just blending in with the rest of all us screenwatchers.

But these parents didn’t give the child a phone. And the child sure as hell didn’t make an effort to blend in with everybody else. He was singing, he was greeting everybody that came inside the metro, playing games with his mom.

One of those moments that made me get off my screen and enjoy the moment. Children have this power to just pull people into reality and show them what being human is. And this child had this power.

It made me think, would he still have this if his parents defaulted to give him a screen on the subway? Would all those little decisions to give him a screen shape him into a different human?

I’m not here to pretend I know a single thing about parenting or raising kids. But this interaction did make me think through the effect of screen-addiction on children.

No matter how sad it might be, it takes 1 conversation with a school teacher to find out that screen-addiction has a huge effect on children.

And thinking through this makes me feel a sense of responsibility. In some way we created this screen-addicted world and we are allowing children to grow up in it. It made me feel a responsibility to do something about that.

Even though I don’t have a clue how to do something about that (yet), I am committing to start with something small: absolutely no phone usage around children.

Small change, and it might not have a big effect. But I want to contribute as little as possible to children growing up to believe screen-addiction is normal.

Have you ever noticed how screen time is lowest when you’re on an exciting trip? Your day is packed with so many exciting things, that you don’t even think about distracting yourself by scrolling social media.

Ideally, that’s my goal. Optimize for increasing connection, so that I am less likely to be captured by distraction.

The typical philosophy around excessive phone use is “Increase connection by decreasing distraction”. It makes sense. It was also my approach at the start “If I focus on reducing social media use and screen time, then the connection will follow. “

In some way this was true, but often I found myself filling that time with other distractions. I deleted social media and found other apps to distract myself with.

That’s why I started fixing the root of the problem. My focus away from “reducing distraction”, and focus on “increasing connection”.

I changed from: “How can I reduce distraction and screen time?”, to “How can I increase connection in my life?”

A way more exciting challenge to solve. And that’s what I started doing, focusing on increasing connection. Planning a day trip with friends. Committing to start a fun side project. Going to a coffee shop to sit down and write.

All things that increase connection and significantly improve the quality of life. The screentime going down is just a product of that.

Curious to hear what works for you. Focus on reducing distraction, or increasing connection? For me it’s definitely the latter.

No one ever decided they’ll spend their free evening scrolling socials for hours.

Yet everyone does it. So much of life is spent scrolling endlessly on a little device. It made me wonder:

What if we didn’t have it?

No endless entertainment. No addictive tool always in your pocket. Just nothing.

Now you suddenly have to choose what you’re going to spend your time doing. Or you stare at the wall.

Imagine that. Check your screen time, and imagine you had that time every day, being forced to just stare at the wall. Being forced to be bored.

Maybe you could do it for a day. Or 2. Maybe even an entire week.

But after a while, you would get absolutely sick of it. And you’d take action. You’d start something, find a new thing to do. Something that interests you, some new life experience. Anything to escape those horrific hours of boredom every single day.

You’d go out in the world more often. You’d meet new people. You’d build stronger relationships. Your life would start to look different.

My question to you is: What would your thing be? Do you know what you would do if you couldn’t distract yourself?

And if you don’t,

Are you ever going to find out?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had this strong drive to make my work so enjoyable that it doesn’t feel like work.

I always hated the idea of just getting an “okay” job. It was such a strong disgust that it fueled me to do everything I can to escape from that.

Taking the biggest risks and passing on so called “unmissable” career opportunities.

I am happy I passed on them, as I got to dedicate myself to finding work that would be the perfect match of the 3 goals most important to me:

1. I must enjoy and excel at it
2. I must make a positive impact
3. I must have freedom: financial freedom, location freedom, and time freedom.

Chasing these 3 goals consumed pretty much all my energy in the last 2 years, to the point where I worked 80 hour weeks trying to make it happen.

I started a non-profit, built it to a team of 12, and shut it down again. I experienced high-impact work volunteering in Ghana. I started a business to work with impact entrepreneurs. I started a podcast, twice. I made YouTube videos about impactful work.

I did everything I could.

So much just to find all those 3 things in my work: Enjoyment, impact, and freedom.

And to be honest, after 2 years of chasing all 3, I ended up doing mediocre in all of them.

My strong focus to make work not feel like work, actually ended up doing the opposite.

I had put such high expectations on myself and how work should be, that it consumed 90% of my energy and it took away from my life in general.

Recently I felt it was getting pointless, I was just running around without getting anywhere. Running around in 3 directions trying to achieve all 3 goals at the same time.

So I knew I needed to change something. This wasn’t working anymore.

So I did a complete 180, and did something I never thought I’d do:

Become 100% focused on making money. That’s it. Just making as much money as possible.

Why?

Well, because it is the only one of the three that you need to stay alive.

I want to eliminate the worry/need for money, at least for a while. Then once I have that solved, I can start thinking about the other stuff.

And money can do quite magical things for me right now. It’s the thing that allows me to take 0 responsibility.

And when I have 0 responsibility, magical things start happening.

I start asking myself different questions, I realize what’s actually important to me, I get in a state of great energy, my intuition becomes super strong. It’s just beautiful.

I had this once in my life, 3 years ago on university exchange to Calgary, Canada. It was one of the best times of my life, and it brought me incredible clarity of what I wanted to dedicate myself to (which was to start the non-profit at the time).

That state is exactly what I need right now. A break from running around all the time, to realize where I actually want to go.

I’ll write another wishy washy philosophy piece about intuition and all of that, but that’s for another day.

The point here is that I need money to buy myself that freedom.

That is why I have shifted my focus and view on money. I now see it as a tool to buy me freedom.

If I spend €3000/month, then having €36.000 saved up buys me one year of freedom.

So that is my savings goal: €36.000

Or as I prefer to say it: my savings goal is 1 year of freedom.

I have abandoned the goal of making my work as enjoyable as possible, and making a positive impact with my work. I’ll get back to those later.

For now the focus is completely on making money. That’s the only focus.

And pffffff. It’s such a relief.

The moment I switched to that goal and 1 focus, I instantly felt less stressed and way more excited about the future.

Less stressed because I don’t have the pressure on me to find the perfect work already.

More excited because I finally have a goal that’s worth working towards, 1 year of complete freedom.

How beautiful is that.

Kees (closed)

P.S. If you want to read how I’m approaching this, read this article.