Two Years of Social Detox as a Developer! What did I learn?
Oh boy! It feels good to be back in a good way. I’ll explain what this sentence means. But for now, let’s hop on to the two years of massive journey with social media notifications turned off, social apps deleted from the phone and so on. So, I’ll be jotting down what did I learn? What did I miss and lastly, was it worth it or not?
I’ll be highlighting the following points if you are curious to know ;p
- ❓ How did it start?
- 📝 Utilizing the free time
- 🧑🏼💻 Learning new things
- 🤯 Stuff that I missed.
- 🧐 Was it worth it?
- 🙎 Community work?
- 💪🏻 Is it a comeback?
2022
Going back in time…... 🕐
I was trying so hard get off of this social world, as this was getting way over my head. Scrolling LinkedIn for 5 mins would have disturbed your dopamine effect so much, “why my followers aren’t increasing?”, “why this post isn’t getting enough likes?”, “why people are not giving stars on my repo?” and the list goes on. Since, every picture has a positive effect so this would encourage me to do more, write more articles, publish more open-source code to help others, attend more events so on and so forth. BUT, on back of my head I didn’t know this whole route was creating a storm that would take away everything of my life.
And then, Life happened!
Those who have been following me for a while knows that I’m leading Flutter Islamabad, Pakistan. One of the official communities in the country. Feb 2022 was the last month when I hosted the event officially, publicly and “socially”.
After one month of this event, April 2022 I decided to go underground. Let’s experiment what happens if you ghost, nobody knows where you go, how are you, what are you doing nowadays and most importantly? All those followers, stars on GitHub repo, comments, likes and shares on your posts really matters. All those people you think are depending on you, the teams you have been leading, are going to collapse? Or not.
Apps deleted and Notifications Off
With that being said, I Muhammad Hamza, deleted all the social apps except a few for communication purposes and turned off notification of mostly every app in my phone including YouTube. Keeping a few numbers of people 10–15, nobody in my circle knew that I’ve changed my phone number, WhatsApp. Until I won’t login on web, I wouldn’t know someone has sent a message at LinkedIn/Instagram or not.
Cleaned online profiles
When you are in tech you understand how social app’s algos works ;p So, I removed all the major keywords from my profiles making them really poor in terms of SEO which includes my LinkedIn, Insta and GitHub.
But? What if you have to use any social app? Means for something important.
Good question, I didn’t say I blocked or deleted my accounts, I said I just deleted the apps from my phone. If I’ve to do something on facebook or instagram I’d simply login on web and get the job done and leave. Now of course I wouldn’t be roaming around with my laptop in hand and scrolling Instagram ;p
The goal was to reduce the social media consumption NOT to destroy what you’ve built with hard work :)
📝 Utilizing the free time
Since there was no scrolling involves, I was having hours to spend on something productive. At that moment I realized how many hours I’ve wasted on social apps doing nothing but scrolling and giving myself depression 😆
My screen time was reduced to 1 hour or so from 4–5 hours a day!
Although I was doing a full-time job at sastaticket.pk but I decided to start my own service-based startup with a buddy of mine from university. From here you can imagine the number of hours I was saving by just avoid social apps.
May 2022
We started Dexplat Technologies, the number of hours I saved cause of NO SOCIAL MEDIA helped me in setting up this company initially. We were doing all the HR work, technical work, non-technical work and so on. We literally started off with PKR 0 investment and now till date within 2 years we have a team of around 12–13 people and multiple products on-going.
Moral lesson: You could’ve started your own business if you wouldn’t have wasted hours watching Netflix ;p
I started learning all the aspects that involves business, not just doing more code but managing workload, time management, balance work life routine and so on. I was doing my office work in daytime and business work in evening and in nights. My phone stayed on table for hours and no message, no notification tone to go for and this was getting better and better with time.
🧑🏼💻 Learning new things
With current routine I was able to explore a lot of new stuff, not just technical but non-technical as well. I was started reading books, articles and explore other fields as well such as numerology, F1 (Formula 1 Racing) engineering and a lot more!
I started watching podcasts, started making notes and was consuming as much knowledge as possible, a glimpse looks like this:
Considering technical stuff:
- I re-designed my portfolio → https://mhmz.dev (It’s open source BTW ;p)
- Learned
dart_frog, new dart backend framework. - Learned various types of architectures.
- Learned design concepts like color theory, design principles etc.
- Learned a lot of advance concepts in flutter like flavors/environment, code sharing concepts and a lot more!
I crossed count of 50 repos within few months, where I’ve posted a lot of stuff that I didn’t share but since I was learning so I was documenting everything for future.
🤯 Stuff that I missed
When you are socially active, running few communities or at least being part of them, you can relate yourself here.
“If you gonna pray to God and ask for all these amazing things you have to understand there’s an equal opposite force and you’ll pay the price for that”.
~ Andrew Tate
Some paid the price with their health, some lost their tremendous Instagram monetized account, some lost their YouTube subscribers, and some lost their publicity.
Physical Health
So did I, starting with my health, I literally gain a LOT of weight! since I was sitting all day and night, I wasn’t able to spare a few minutes to go for a walk, or a run so my physical health was the top on the list that got disturbed cause of this.
Opportunities
I lost a lot of job opportunities along the way because I was not available on LinkedIn, lost a lot of clients cause my old phone number wasn’t in use and lost a lot of numerous opportunities of giving talks, hosting workshop, collaborations, some of the dream opportunities because I was not even replying on emails and what NOT! Just because I was busy building up my startup, doing a job and enjoying the life in a nutshell with few numbers of people who really cares about it!
Community Events
If you are part of a community there’s always an urge to host event time to time, to meet new people, to help people grow even if you are expert or not that doesn’t really matter for you. So, I lost a lot of sponsorships and collaboration irrespective of the fact I was leading an official community in capital city of the country.
Now imagine this for 2 years straight! The count is massive, and you might think of going back. Yup, I thought too.
🧐 Was it worth it?
Every picture has two sides, this one probably has 3 or 4 or 5 😂
Social Media
Lemme explain, was it worth it in terms of staying off the social media? A 100% YES! I was not comparing myself to anyone, I was not focusing on the number of like I’m getting or comments because I literally didn’t post anything in past 2 years. So, it was plain and simple:
Posting Less, Doing More.
Comparing Less, Reflecting More.
Discussing Less, Accomplishing More.
Health
A big NO! I was literally getting ill very frequently. Gained a lot of weight and honestly a person who used to be football player can’t even do jogging for 1km now 😜 So, NO it was not worth it in terms of health which shouldn’t be related here but I’m sharing the overall mixed experience.
Profession (Job/Business)
Definitely yes, although I lost some clients and opportunities, but I guess that was for good because I had focused and limited work to look for. Sometimes I got overburden so during this time I learned the most top-notch skills of time management and work management. So, I developed a little ecosystem of mine with Todo-apps, note apps, reminders etc. Hence, it was worth a shot in terms of starting a new journey.
Community & Teams
This one’s a mix, YES because I was not hosting or managing events, but I was attending a few. So, it was pretty sweet that nobody knows that you’re here, so you do your job, meet some new people and leave.
NO, because:
Translation: “There is also an occult principle that what you distribute, you will have abundance, be it wealth, knowledge, love or ease” ~ Ashfaq Ahmad
Back in days I was NOT much of an expert, we’ll I’m still NOT an expert 😜 but yeah.
So, I was literally helping people install flutter, how to setup node.js, what is an API, what could be the roadmap to learn flutter and so on. All those little things that people don’t even bother to reply, I was literally having calls and meetings for hours in resolving someone’s issue in code.
And I believe that aspect of creating “ease” was playing a vital role in my life, a lot of hurdles was getting off, a lot of challenges was there but one way or the other I would’ve found a way and it was happening in so little aspects even when I was coding and stuck at some logic, I got away easily because of this.
Moral Lesson: I was looking for answers all the way long, but when I looked back, I realized every little detail was the answer!
🙎 Community work?
For me the definition of community work is a bit different than others, I thrived to create impact with little things. That could be a comment underneath someone’s post, an inbox message, reviewing someone’s code to make them better and till writing articles, making videos or open sourcing very simple stuff that can save hours for some people who’ll be learning and exploring.
So, in terms of above definition I was still doing community work. But in terms of events, talks and workshops? I was away, saying “no” to every invitation, every collaboration and so on. But as I mentioned, I was attending events without informing someone, without posting the swags on social media and that was just next level of peace.
💪🏻 Is it a comeback?
YES! it is, but the first statement of this article “Oh boy! It feels good to be back in a good way”. In a “good way” means social media apps still remains deleted from my phone, but I’ll start checking them on web frequently. Will start commenting, sharing some important stuff I worked on during these two years. And of course, we’ll try to give talks and host events as well. But everything will be done in a limited manner.
I’ll make sure I’m available if someone needs my help, my inbox shouldn’t have any single unread message.
Key Takeaways
- Everything seems worthless when it comes to your Health!
- I’ve realized that “Offline is the new luxury” now.
- I’ve gone better at NOT giving attention to numbers.
- The greed of having more followers, likes and comments than other is gone!
- The comparison with others, competition, winning and celebration has reduced.
- I can stay away from my phone, social circle and communities for days without effecting my thought process and learning.
I hope if you’ve read till this point you have learned something. Stay tuned, as I’ll be sharing some more hidden things I’ve been at least trying to do and failed constantly 😂
Lastly, thank you to Waleed Arshad, because you were the one who reached out to me when I didn’t expect anyone else to be. I’ll be grateful to you always :)
