TJ Walker argues that scrolling TikTok and Instagram during vacation is unpaid work for tech platforms, not rest. He contrasts this with his 1976 childhood spent playing outside and building forts, which created real memories. He offers a 10-thing screen-free challenge for the Fourth of July to reclaim your attention.
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Ultimize. Happy Fourth of July week. A lot of Americans are saying, I'm on vacation, but are you really, or are you just switching from your paid job to your unpaid job? If you spend every free hour staring at TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or endless news feeds, guess what? You're not really relaxing. You're working for free. Your job is to create attention so big tech executives can sell it to advertisers. Your paycheck? Zero. Next Monday, ask yourself one question: do you actually feel refreshed, or does that Monday feel exactly like last Monday? This holiday, I have one request: put the phone down. Read a real paper book, play a game, go outside. Reclaim your leisure before someone else monetizes every waking minute of your life. This week I'm actually going on vacation, or at least I'm gonna try. And that's what got me wondering, how many of you ever really go on vacation anymore? We tell our boss we're taking time off. We tell our family we're taking downtime, but then we spend 6 hours a day glued to a screen scrolling through videos that someone else desperately wants us to watch. Congratulations. You just traded one job for another. The difference is your first job paid you. The second one doesn't. If you spend your entire vacation watching Facebook videos, YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, TikTok clips, or doomscrolling the news, you are working for big tech. Your labor is your attention. Your product is your eyeballs. Your customers or advertisers, and your salary, exactly $0. That's not leisure. That's digital sharecropping. Now don't misunderstand me. I'm not suggesting you become a technology Amish person. If you're driving your family to the beach, absolutely use GPS so you don't waste the whole day riding around lost. If your airline app tells you the gate changed, fantastic. If you need to call grandma, please don't send a carrier pigeon. Technology is a wonderful servant. It's just become a terrible master. This holiday week reminded me of something. I remember the American bicentennial in 1976. I was 13 years old. Sure, we had television. I'm positive I watched a few episodes of Gilligan's Island, but that's not what defined the week. We were outside constantly, swimming, playing tennis, playing basketball, playing ping pong, riding bikes, building ridiculous forts that violated at least 6 neighborhood safety codes, playing wiffle ball until somebody's mother yelled that the dinner was ready. Notice the recurring word playing, not watching, not scrolling, not consuming, but playing. We somehow convinced ourselves that leisure means sitting perfectly still while algorithms decide what we should look at next. That isn't leisure. That's outsourced curiosity. The saddest part: by Monday morning, most people don't feel refreshed. They don't feel energized. They don't even remember what they watched. Ask yourself this: can you remember the 15th YouTube video you watched last Saturday? Probably not. Can you remember an afternoon playing basketball with friends when you were 14? Almost certainly, or some sport, whatever your sport was. Experiences stick. Scrolling evaporates from the memory. Would you like to be the sort of successful person who is dominating news, at least in your industry? Well, if so, it's time to up your skills. At ultimize.com, I've created online courses to help you do that. Now, here's the thing, no obligation. You can get a free course on communication skills, a free course on how to build better habits. All you have to do is go to ultimize.com. That's ultimize.com. No obligation. Go there now. So this 4th of July, I have a challenge. Here are 10 things you can do that don't involve staring at a screen. Read an actual paper book. You remember those? They're the things that don't need software updates. Go swimming, play basketball, tennis, pickleball, or just throw a baseball around. Have a picnic where nobody is allowed to photograph the sandwich before eating it. Fly a kite. If nothing else, you'll discover that wind is more entertaining than Twitter. Build the world's worst sandcastle and defend it like it's the Alamo. Challenge your kids or your spouse to a water balloon fight. Loser grills dinner. Sit on your porch and identify birds. If you accidentally identify a squirrel as an eagle, nobody gets hurt. Play a board game. Monopoly arguments build stronger character than internet comment sections. Lie in a hammock and do absolutely nothing for 20 minutes. Warning: this may initially cause panic because your brain will wonder why nobody is sending it notifications. Here's the irony: every tech billionaire talks about changing the world. Good for them, but don't let them accidentally change your world into one where every spare second belongs to someone else's algorithm. Leisure isn't laziness. Play isn't wasted time. Boredom isn't a disease. In fact, boredom is often where creativity begins. The founders of this country fought for liberty. One small piece of liberty is deciding how you spend your own attention. Don't give it away for free. This week, reclaim your vacation. Even if it's just for a day. Reclaim your playtime, reclaim your family, reclaim your curiosity. And if for one glorious day your phone battery dies before dinner, don't panic, celebrate. It might be the first truly free day you've had in years. Happy Fourth of July. Now get outside. The internet will still be there when you get back. And trust me, the cat videos can wait. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. I'm taking the rest of the week off. Hope you're able to get some time off. I'll see you next Monday. Ultimize.
