Stop. Think. Evaluate.

We often come across activities that are terrible for us and yet do it anyway. This is not only stands true for consuming dangerous drugs or alcohol but daily tasks such as mindlessly scrolling thorugh social media knowing that you will just end up feeling regretful.

Doctors and philosophers have spent considerable time & effort to understand human propensity for self-destructive behavior. However, if you struggling in the direction of addiction realted to social media, Harvard Business School professor Arthur C. Brooks has shared a trick for us to try.

One novel way he shares is to assign your downtime a monetary value.

Back in 2012, researchers at University of Toronto had volunteers calculate their hourly wage and then asked participants to keep that figure in mind while engaging in leisure activities. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the researchers found people enjoy noodling around online a whole lot less after being reminded how much they could have earned in the same amount of time.

If you consume the average amount of social media in India (about 148 minutes per day) and earn the average hourly wage (let’s say Rs. 250), you are effectively ‘spending’ about Rs.600 worth of time per day on this activity.

Goal is not to restrict yourself to think mechanically but just a nudge for us to make decisions that are in line with what one values. To pursue activities that genuinely brings us joy as how we spend our hours is how we spend our life.