time spent on the computer

I’d like to write about a very question to me that I may or may not have solved: how should we humans use our time? To put it bluntly, how should one live? What should one spend their time on? Should one spend all their time on hobbies, or building/maintaining relationships, or perhaps in some hedonistic fashion? The question of how one should spend their time, and by extension the remainder of their life, is something that has plagued me for a few months. Okay, maybe longer than a few months. Maybe two years. I remember first questioning about the value of my time when I embraced digital minimalism back in 2024. So yes, this question really did begin taking up my mental space roughly two years ago.

As someone restricted to an indoor life only due to geographic circumstances, I used to spend all my time on the internet. Even after accepting digital minimalism, I still do spend a good portion of my day on the internet and thus behind a screen. Sure, I might have turned my computer into the most boring thing ever, but I have a phone which as everyone else has realized by now is very distracting. I’d love to stop having such a distracting machine in my left pocket all the time, but such a wish is not within my capabilities. I need to have a phone because of my family, because of my career, because of my studies and everything else that is so important to me.

Having a phone is like a disease that everyone has to suffer from. To not have a phone is to be left behind by the world and therefore to miss on a wide array of opportunities. I’ve tried for the longest ever to stay away from social media, but sometime ago I relented. I had to have LinkedIn. I wasn’t a child anymore. I had to swallow the pill, and hope everything would turn out all okay by the end. Since I’ve allowed my phone to be as distracting as it need be, I went on a technological journey to remove everything interesting on my computer. As of this date, my computer running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS has only 18 listed applications. I kind of wanted to remove the only browser on my computer (Firefox) but couldn’t because a computer without a browser is literally pointless. What are you even going to do with it? Do you know how annoying it’d be to pull out my phone for every internet search despite having the computer right on front of me? It’d be a pain in the ass alright!

So, yes let me rant about all the apps I’ve on my computer. They include: Firefox (aforementioned; three bookmarked websites; utilizing the DuckDuckGo search engine for added privacy), the LibreOffice suite (counts as seven apps; I’ve all the available apps installed because I don’t want to miss out on any functionality), Terminal (cannot remove under any circumstances), Language Support (couldn’t remove), Files (couldn’t remove), Settings (couldn’t remove), Document Viewer (use is self-explanatory), Image Viewer (need to open images), VLC media player (need to open audio files), Software Updater (my human brain is too forgettable to not to rely on this), Vim (praise the lord!), and Help (couldn’t remove).

Not a lot, you see. Everything else that is important is on my phone. My YouTube account, email, messenger profiles, LinkedIn. Yep, all on my phone. Is this a good setup? Because we have frequent power outages in this poor decrypt nation and that my computer’s battery is dead and is more like a desktop personal computer these days, I’ve decided to have such important functions on my phone instead. I just hope Apple won’t monitor me all the time. Nah, they probably do anyways. Not much I can do about that. Ha!

Is there anything else I can remove from my computer? No, I’m sure I’ve reached the limit. I thought o f removing Vim and using Ubuntu’s built-in GNU nano text editor, but nano is too weak for my needs. I don’t mind spending a few years learning Vim on my own. Can’t remove the browser, still. If I try to remove any system components like Help or Settings or Files or Language Support, I’ll be in some serious trouble later down the road. I mean some serious trouble. And I need apps to open the basic file types. So, yes, all of this I’ve done to ensure I don’t waste time on my computer. I’d rather waste it on my phone because that’s what everyone else does too! I’ve done all this so I can spend my time wisely, and in pursuit of things that will make me happy.