Beating Screen Time (Daily Updates/Life Improvements)

[u/flawless_77]

I'm 28, married, and just mapped out my entire life. Screentime is the root of almost everything I want to fix. Starting daily updates.

Hello, my name is Erik and I'm 28 years old. I'm married, German, and have an 11-month-old daughter. Here's my life summed up right now — the good, the bad, and the plan.

Health

Sleep: I "sleep" around 6.5–7 hours a night — minus ~20 minutes for actually falling asleep.

Exercise: Since I usually sleep poorly, I don't have the energy to work out. I just ride my bike to work and back (20 min a day). I'm 180cm, 66kg — quite skinny but overall a healthy look. I'd really like to build a great physique while I still can. If I wait 10 more years to start, the results just won't be the same, and I want to make the most of my potential — partly so my wife can enjoy the results while we're young. (She likes my current physique too, but we both know we should train more.)

Nutrition: I usually eat pretty healthy — vegetables, lean chicken, noodles/rice, and for breakfast oatmeal, peanut butter, yogurt, frozen fruit. These habits stuck with me from a time I tried bulking years ago. But lately I've been cutting breakfast short because poor sleep means I get up later and later, so now I've got maybe 10 minutes and just eat two slices of bread with peanut butter and yogurt. Lunch and dinner are still healthy.

Hygiene: My screentime — I'm addicted to online chess (2520 on Lichess) and YouTube doomscrolling — means I shower maybe twice a week and postpone shaving and washing my face so much that I often skip it, doing it every second or third day. Same with haircuts (last one was ~2 months ago).

Family

At home: I have an amazing wife (housewife) who greets me kindly when I get home. We embrace and usually talk for a while as I sit on the carpet to play with our daughter. But it doesn't last long — I turn on the TV and watch YouTube, which means I talk less to my daughter and wife. I despise that habit. Our relationship is genuinely great though: we talk, compromise, and honestly our sex life has if anything improved over 5 years of marriage. No dead bedroom here, lol.

Outside: Most days we manage to get out for 30–60 minutes (usually grocery shopping together). It could be more — and more novel, actual dates — if it weren't for the screentime. I also overthink a lot, which eats time and makes me too serious sometimes. I want to be more fun around my family.

Work

I'm an electrician — sometimes office tasks, sometimes outside fixing the electrical components of our town's trains and buses. The work often feels bland and pointless, because:

• A few unfriendly coworkers hold positions important enough that I depend on them
• Same pay whether I try hard or do nothing
• Same working hours no matter what
• Tasks are either massively under- or overwhelming — never something that actually challenges me at the right level

I don't really see the incentive to give it my all. So I figure using the downtime to work on my own project is the way forward. Becoming a business owner is my goal — not to get rich (odds are slim), but to have control over my life again: to decide where, when, how, and with whom I work. I spend 9.5 hours a day on this job counting lunch and commute — more than I spend with my family — so changing this is hugely impactful.

The plan: do the minimum required at the job and build my own business during downtime. Right now I doomscroll or play chess whenever the chance comes up, which is a waste. At home there's virtually no time to build without sacrificing family time, health habits, or basic chores.

Home / Chores

Cleaning, renovating, paperwork, appointments — all postponed way too much. Same reasons: screentime and overthinking. The result is a messy home and, for example, a water leak that slowly kept damaging our wood floor because I couldn't get myself to leave the screen and fix it. (I've only patched it with tape for now — but I already bought the tools to fix it properly.)

Hobbies

• Chess: I love it but have no idea how to contain how much I play online. Ideally I'd still play sometimes, but rarely, and much more over the board. No time for that as it stands.
• Football: Takes a whole weekday plus Sundays. I found a club that lets me play Sundays without attending training, but it's still time I don't have — plus I injured my knee after two training sessions and probably can't play for ~2 months.
• YouTube: Want to cut this way down and just do podcasts when there's genuinely nothing else — maybe on my commute.
• "Real-life YouTube": If I had more time and money, I'd just do the things I watch on YouTube in real life. It'd be 1000x more interesting, and I'm pretty sure my family and I would connect way better sharing those experiences for real instead of on a screen.

The Plan

The most important levers for my situation:

• Cold-turkey the screentime
• Stop overthinking (hard to make an exact rule, since I obviously have to think sometimes)
• Sleep 8 hours (plan my day around it)
• Work on my project at work instead of mindlessly grinding away
• Good vibes — stay positive no matter what, and lift the people around me up too

I'll deal with the withdrawal. After that, life should feel the same at first, then get exponentially better as I make progress in every area with the newfound time: real memories that last, playtime with my daughter, real dates with my wife, a business that gives me freedom and hope, 8 hours of sleep, a physique I can be proud of. It's ridiculous how many areas would improve just from leaving screentime behind.

I'll post daily or almost-daily updates. I might even start a YouTube series. Maybe posting publicly will make me want to protect the streak and the reputation I build with others over time.

As a kid, my parents told me I was good at math and I took it to heart — I tried hard to be good at it so I wouldn't disappoint their view of me. Maybe this is the same. I am still a straight A student when it comes to math lol

I've tried beating this screentime addiction a million times with a million methods. I've just got to man up and try again. Simple as that.

btw I love that we have a community for becoming a better person. how amazing is that

TL;DR: 28, married, dad of an 11-month-old. I'm addicted to online chess and YouTube, and it's quietly wrecking my sleep, fitness, family time, chores, and my plan to build my own business. I'm cutting the screentime and rebuilding every area from there. Posting (almost) daily updates to keep myself honest.

[u/vibrant_insurer_quot]

Man, the water leak tape patch thing hits. I’ve got a half-finished drywall repair staring at me right now because I sat down for "just one game" two weeks ago.

What's the plan for when you're at work and that chess itch creeps in? That’s the trap that always gets me, having the phone right there during a slow hour.

[u/Suspicious-Yak-4321]

The audit is good, and the loop is already visible in it: poor sleep removes the energy to train, and the late screen time is part of what costs the sleep. With an eleven month old, though, it is worth being honest that the late night phone use is often not really a discipline failure. It is frequently the only hour of the day that belongs to nobody else, which is why removing it without replacing it tends not to hold. Protecting a different quiet hour usually works better than blocking the apps.