How to Hack the Infinite Scroll

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💭 ONE THING WE’RE THINKING ABOUT

If you’ve ever watched someone decide to do something, and then seamlessly get up and do the thing, you might marvel at their ability to just transition from one task to another.

We certainly do — shout out to our neurotypical partners, friends, and family 🤪

Making transitions from one thing to another is not this easy for everyone — If you’ve ever been laying on the sofa scrolling TikTok and, despite your best efforts, it feels like you just can’t get up and do the dishes, you know what we mean. Here’s the thing:

Your executive functions are like the CEO of your brain — but some of us have the kind of CEO who’s somehow always on vacation????

We’ve found it really helpful to 1) be honest and accepting that transitions from one thing to another are difficult sometimes, and 2) create transitional times, spaces, and routines when the going gets tough and we can’t seem to get going at all.

Here are 3 of our favorite strategies to transition between tasks:

📍 Get Near It

This strategy is all about getting closer to the thing you want to transition to. Take the pressure off actually starting but just focus on getting near it — the kitchen sink, the bathroom, your desk. If you feel locked in the infinite scroll, once you find a long video you’re interested in, get on your feet while it’s playing and move to your next location. Ease into the transition by physically getting closer to where you want to be next.

👯‍♂️ Phone a Friend

We’re obviously big believers in community support with doing things, but one really helpful thing to get you moving is to reach out to someone who’s got your back and say, “Hey, I’m having a hard time making the transition to do ___, can you help me?” At some point in the last few years, Anna texted this to MJ about getting off the sofa in order to go the grocery store and MJ replied with “text me a pic of the oranges in the produce aisle.” For what it’s worth, that sh*t worked like a charm.

🎧 Auditory Alignment

Anna swears by this tactic as the thing that gets her to the gym on a regular basis. Find something interesting (preferably about an hour long) so you can pop in your headphones and move through the motions. Typically she finds that if she starts a podcast, the audio consistency and intellectual engagement can get her through the resistance (i.e. boredom) of putting on gym clothes, getting out to the car where you can keep listening to the same thing on the commute, and by the time she’s warmup at the gym, the podcast is winding down.

Do you have any tips you’ve learned about making transitions? Feel free to hit reply and we’d love to share with the class next week!

👀 ONE THING WE’RE OBSESSED WITH

We’re big fans of any illustration that stops us in our tracks, so here are 10 Visuals to make you think 🧠

🎧 ONE THING WE’RE LISTENING TO

Need a great playlist that has no lyrics and isn’t just basic lo-fi?

We gotchu 🤝 This playlist won’t distract you with lyrics, but it’ll make your work sesh feel a lot more fun:

🤔 ONE QUESTION FOR YOU

⭐️ ONE LAST THING

Google’s new music AI is pretty fckn cool 😮 We can’t wait to see how AI helps creative people be even MORE creative.

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