The Anti Doom Scroll Diaries: Weekly inspiration to swap brain rot for brain food

For research purposes when I started writing this feature, I checked my screen time – 10 hours 48 minutes per day as an average this week. Wild.

In my defence I run a digital business and have been floored by Covid – but still, it’s a pretty scary reality check that I spend that much of my time staring at a phone screen. 

And whilst I’d like to delude myself into thinking most of it was productive, a high percentage of those hours were spent watching various scrambled egg recipes that I’ll save and never make, Jacob Elordi (no judgement please), and men attempting to shoehorn a trumpet solo into Olivia Dean’s Man I Need. I can literally feel my brain rotting.

The Guardian recently reported that ‘constant cognitive overload’ from digital bombardment showed worse short-term effects on IQ than cannabis use in some experimental settings. Not only that, but our memory is becoming worse as we train our brains to flick through and discard information. 

And so, the idea for the ‘Anti Doom Scroll Diaries’ was born. Each week we’ll be sharing inspiration to break the cycle; getting offline, or if we are scrolling, ways to feed our beautiful brains instead.  

This video of Tim Minchin’s UWA address cured my existential crisis in 11 minutes

We’re so used to short-form content from, let’s face it, randoms from around the world, that I’m going to make more of an effort to seek out inspirational videos from impressive people. 

This 2013 speech by witty Australian comedian Tim Minchin altered my brain chemistry instantly – changing my ‘what’s the point of all this’ mindset into ‘let’s make the most of this short life on Earth’. And that, is the positive side of the internet.