[pksebben]

Was bartender, always liked computers and wanted to work with 'em. Self-taught my way into the field (which is a gross simplification but broadly gets at the meat of it).

Disconnecting from social media was part of a larger effort to remove distractions - around the same time I also deleted steam and cancelled my netflix account. The wealth of time this left me to focus on self-development was absolutely critical to figuring out how to 'take my computer hobby pro'.

My guess as to 'why it worked' is this; in those moments when I'm sitting around with nothing to do, there are no easy outs (facebook/insta having been the easiest and lowest-drag options for spending time, they were the biggest offenders) so you sit with your discomfort at being underoccupied for a moment, get frustrated, and pick up a tutorial, technical manual, or start googling around for answers to a question you have.

By no means was it "deleted facebook and productivity gods smiled upon me, bestowing me with champion focus and a fulfilling career", but without the disconnect, I'm confident I would have failed. The times when I would be doomscrolling also turned out to be the times I had the best bursts of inspiration, besides being the entry point for more focused bouts of actual, real work.

[belthesar]

One of the things I do agree with, and personally struggle with, is that the attention economy makes it incredibly easy to fill gaps with things that spark the good brain pleasure chemicals, but do not create any positive outcomes. Removing the space to process complex information, or think about ourselves and our needs/wants/desires seems to lead to a lack of capacity to think critically, at least in my own experience.

It sounds like you made more space, and that allowed you to invest more in things that interested you, which translated to being able to make a career change. I imagine that could be swapped with "thinking about how to improve one's mental well being" or "engaging with other folks to discuss things that bother you".

[pksebben]

You hit the nail on the head, there. Facebook et al represented a large enough timesink / extreme enough "attention shelf" adjustment that removing them provided a dramatic and measurable change to what I was capable of.

Just try telling people about it, though. I can't count the number of times someone's been telling me that they're depressed b/c they can't accomplish their goals and I've tried to invite them to disconnect, only to come off sounding like a know-it-all. It's a really hard thing to communicate.