I turned off my Medium digest and why you might want to do that too
In our day-to-day lives now, we have far too many choices to take and decision to make. Far too many choices need a lot of brain processing and context switching is one of the worst things you can do to complete a particular task. One such mistake I was making was trying to get daily digest from medium. This idea came from a simple honest place, “Each day before I begin work, I will take 20–30 mins to read something about tech.” To just look for something inspirational and be motivated all day long. But this went a bit awry, with each unread email, I could not help but feel the todo list grow.
Whatever I did all day, when I opened my email after my working hours were done, I would feel a sense of doubt if I did enough to grow or am I still at the same place I start the day with. My brain instinctually went with the latter and that was not really helping.
To look at it this way, I learned that I needed to revise a decision I made a year ago as I felt it was not serving the purpose I needed it to serve. So I turned my medium digest off. The idea is to consciously go to medium and explore things there.
The results have been that I am more at peace at the start and end of my working day. Also, I actually again started liking the process of going to medium and reading articles. Enjoying the process in the meantime.
In hindsight, I have to acknowledge that this habit came from having a severe FOMO about tech learnings and being 10 steps behind in my career and not being able to fulfil my potential, whatever that might be. But I do learn each and every day. No matter how small, a win is a win and it helps build momentum. Just need to make sure to reduce friction for that momentum.
So, in a nutshell, do you need to turn off the daily digest? Depends on your individual case and what do you think would be ideal for you. Whatever decision you make/habits you build today, maybe ask yourself in 4–5 months if it is still serving the original purpose to the optimum.
