Three Rules

One of the best jobs I ever had was working for filmmaker and YouTuber Matt D’Avella. It was my first (and only) formal writing job, and it was a total dream. Getting to work for one of my favorite creators, writing about things I cared about? A real-life miracle. Being able to tell people, “I’m a writer” when people asked me what I did? Thrilling.

If you follow his work (highly recommend), you know that lately he’s been talking about what a mistake it was to hire freelance writers—how this shift in his business caused him to lose sight of what he liked about YouTube, even taking an eight-month hiatus.

Every time he brings it up in a video, my ego, with equal parts excitement and guilt goes, “he’s talking about me”.

Sorry, Matt.

But now, he’s back in action making videos with a renewed excitement and zest for creating, with new wisdom and insights from his mistakes.

You’re welcome, Matt.

He’s also back with a new podcast called Three Rules, where he asks notable guests their three rules for living a good life. It got me thinking—if I was a guest on the show, what would my three rules be?

Is that an insane question to ask myself? Maybe. Do I spend too much time living in the fantasy world in my mind? Probably. Regardless, these are my Three Rules for living a good life:

Rule #1

Phone Rules

Nothing has changed my existence quite as much as breaking my phone addiction. I wrote an in-depth article about it here, but here are the Cliff’s Notes:

I used to be addicted to my phone. Phone addiction is insidious because it’s socially acceptable—it doesn’t feel like a problem. You get a ton of dopamine from it, but the cheap kind. It’s the junk food of dopamine—if a pasture-raised, grass-fed New York strip steak is the earned dopamine of climbing a mountain or writing and publishing a book, then scrolling on your phone is Doritos.

I would wake up and immediately scroll while lying in bed and fall asleep scrolling. I thought I needed it, but all the while it was making me remarkably unwell. It wasn’t uncommon for my screen time to hover around 7 hours—I could feel it rotting my brain, it was such a source of shame for me.

Shame is having a moment right now. As in: never feel it. But shame is a powerful motivator. It was this shame that caused me to make some serious changes. I slowly started implementing a series of rules for myself around my phone usage. Here were some of the most impactful, in no particular order:

• No social media before 8 AM and after 8 PM

  I use the Downtime function on the iPhone for this

• Put the Screen Time widget on your home screen.

  So I’m forced to confront the reality every time I open my phone

• 1-hour time limit on Instagram, my biggest offender

  This started as two hours at the beginning, now it’s an hour and I rarely hit it. I use the App limit function.

• The bedroom is a no-phone zone

  I got a super simple analog alarm clock and it was the best $30 I ever spent. Starting your day on your phone fucks you for the rest of the day, and ending it on your phone fucks your sleep.

• The One Sec App

  I paired it with Instagram—every time you try to open whatever app you link it to, it makes you take a deep breath, shows you how many times you’ve attempted to access it in the last 24 hours (which is wildly demoralizing), and asks you if you really want to open it. I take it a step further and have to submit why I want to use it. This little bit of friction, this forced pause, has been wildly effective. When I first started using it I would open IG 30+ times a day (I’m telling you, SHAME), now it’s always less than 10.

Rule #2

The things that excite you aren’t random, they’re clues

The double-edged sword of social media is that you can take anything you’re interested in, and see the people in the world that are the absolute best at it. This echo chamber of excellence can make it feel like everyone likes the same things you like, and does them better.

But your perspective is entirely unique. No one sees the world in the same way that you do. Don’t ignore the things that light you up and don’t for a second believe that your perspective is trite. Explore it. Follow it. Share it.

This is where your magic is.

Rule #3

If you don’t like the process that gets you to your goals, then you don’t actually want the goal, you want the attention you think the goal will get you

AKA: do you want it because you want it? Or do you want it because you want other people to see that you have it?

This can be a hard truth to swallow.

Sometimes we see people do, achieve, or have things and think, “I want that”. But when you set goals, you have to be careful. What are you actually after? More often than not, you want what you think that person is getting—usually attention. If you really just want other people to see that you have something, you’re going to be very disappointed when you achieve it.

Life is 99% the journey and 1% standing at the peak. If you live for the peak moments and don’t enjoy how you get there, then that’s 99% of your life wasted.

It’s important to get in the habit of questioning yourself and your motivations. It’s the only way to prevent a hollow existence.

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