“There’s no time”

Wait! Just one more minute

Apr 22, 2025

The phrase, “there’s no time”, seems to be in our daily grammar—it can be tagged the most frequently used line because everyone acts like they are running out of time.

I have resisted the urge countless times to write about brain rot and doom-scrolling, not only because I think everything about it has been said and written, but also because I have no “time” to write these days. But guess what? I have enough time to scroll through social media rotting in bed till my eyes and brain begs for mercy.

On the bright side, sometimes I learn a lot from just scrolling but on the other hand, I don’t put what I learn to practice or try to know it better. When I see a post on TikTok about something I would love to dive deeper into, I simply bookmark it because “there’s no time” to spend on one thing when I have a lot of things to watch.

You might probably ask what’s wrong with doom-scrolling—at least, it makes you forget that life is hard and it makes you see the world without moving out of your comfort—but we all know that that is not the whole truth.

Truthfully, as a generation, we are slowly losing our attention span. It’s even more funny how people now find it difficult to build physical human connection—come to social gathering and instead of people trying to connect with one another, you would see everyone in their phones scrolling, scrolling…

When you are anxious about something and can’t relax, I know you think scrolling helps a lot but does it really? Excessively scrolling breeds anxiety, discomfort, competition, sadness…

When you want to rest and you decide to scroll as you lie down, best believe you have deprived yourself of the rest because rest requires your brain to take a break but while doom-scrolling, your brain remains active, juggling to take in new information.

Remember, there’s a huge gap between learning and assimilation. The new load of information your brain takes in within milliseconds while scrolling is excessive, which makes it heat up really fast without actually assimilating anything.

This is not a “I deleted Social Media” post, because I’m still part of the 90% that sees its merits, but what is more necessary is utilizing our time well. It’s understandable that almost everything is done with the phone today: watching movies, reading, chatting, making videos et cetera. Still, let’s go over a list on how to scroll with intentionality rather than mindlessly in order to avoid brain rot:

1. Read long form articles

Reading is in our everyday activities but sometimes, we get too busy to pick up a book and finish it. That’s alright. But since that’s the case, we should start to try out long form articles (and that’s what Substack, Medium, Wordpress and many more is about). Allow your brain to get used to staying focused on something for longer time than a minute or two.

TikTok and Instagram reels have made our brain to get used to short content, and anything longer than that feels like a waste of time.

2. Watch Long Form media

Most YouTube videos (not shorts) are long enough and it makes our brain more focused, not mindlessly moving from one scene to another.

3. Write or Talk (Whichever works for you)

When you are anxious about something, mindlessly scrolling will not solve your problem; it will serve as a drug or alcohol diffusing your problem for the time and bringing it up afterwards.

Instead of this, manage your anxiety by talking to someone—if you don’t have anyone you can talk to, you can use a voice memo (record your voice) — or better still, write about it. This will partly solve your problems than the former option.

4. Get an Offline Hobby

It’s important to find yourself out of your phone. Develop offline hobbies like; reading, going for walks, crocheting etc. Who are you outside of your phone? — this is an important question that you should consider asking yourself.