As the constant buzzing of the phone jolts you up from your slumber, you flail randomly to press the snooze button. You’ve overslept. Last night, you were up till 3, working. Sort of working. You started with the intended task but clicks and scrolls later, temptation led you to YouTube and that was that.

Before you prepare yourself for the world, your phone is already prepared to bring the world to you. As you leave your bed, your phone is your loyal sidekick, informing you via its eccentric art of storytelling – who went to what party, who got inexplicably drunk, who’s ‘feeling awesome’ with 15 others, who has a factually incorrect political rant today, amidst other notifications of you being tagged in jokes and posts that are ‘OMG! So you! You can’t even!’. And that’s just Facebook. You’ve still got to go through Whatsapp, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. It used to be a chore. Now it’s so organic. You’ve mastered the art of skimming through this daily information. You even pride yourself at being able to absorb the most relevant of this daily diligence that you pay to the overlords of social media.

As you prepare your breakfast and your excuse for being late, a little electronic birdie tells you that you don’t need to go to work today. You can really make something of the day now! But before that, you put this newfound extra time to a relevant social cause. You flip back to your phone and throw in extra likes and hearts everywhere, you add two ‘ha’s to every haha you type, and you even sprinkle a ‘lmao’ here and there. Heck, you even forward some memes yourself. Who cares that you sat stone-faced as you doled out indicatives of your amusement?

Swipes, scrolls and taps later, you take a look at your laundry list of tasks that bears the mark of your sincere intentions. Your sincere efforts to fulfill those sincere intentions? Questionable. A smorgasbord of online courses, skills, blogs and books, and your independent projects stare at you. Today’s the day. You feel it inside you. You’re so motivated that you won’t even share a single Snap of you achieving things. But first, let’s check the news. Just for 5 minutes. Done. As you prioritize and organize the 10 tasks you’ve set for yourself, your phone buzzes again. It’s Amazon, tempting you to empty your wallet on their 1943th sale of the year. You wished to simply delete the email but a nice T-shirt caught your eye. Worth a peep, right? It’ll be what, 5 minutes tops? Minutes later, you’ve ordered a bunch of stuff that you now wonder if you even need. Classic shopper’s remorse. You read about it on the internet. There was a long article. You were 3 paragraphs in but then someone had sent a Donald Trump meme, so you switched the app and that was that. Anyway, where were we? Right, task scheduling!

You put the phone on silent and immediately feel a sense of control over yourself and your life. It’s peculiar how putting a gadget on mute empowers you. Even worrying. But today’s not the day for the Freudian analysis of you and your phone. And so you set out with task 1. You accomplish it effortlessly within an hour. You need a mini break for 5 minutes. OK, 10. 20 will do. And suddenly an hour slipped by as you snickered to the newest episode that just came on Netflix. It’s fine. You’ll catch up.

You start with task 2 and realize that you’re losing focus. Maybe Twitter will refresh your mind? Before you know it, you’ve read the entire exchange between two celebrities who have been taking potshots at each other. You switch to Google to delve into the cause behind this vitriolic repartee. The incident involves another social figure. So you Wikipedia that person. It’s general knowledge. It’s imperative that one be updated with the world and its happenings. You come across another article that says humans have abysmal attention spans now. You don’t buy it. You’ve sat on your bed all day and have worked on your laptop and phone. What hogwash!

A glance at the clock and you panic. You need to organize yourself. So you spend 45 minutes looking for articles on enhancing productivity. But they suggest different and contradictory approaches. Nonetheless, you try to apply one tactic to the next task at hand. You’re not convinced with the outcome. You open Facebook, Instagram, Quora simultaneously and switch between them flippantly, glancing but not reading, reading but not absorbing.

You feel as though you need another break. You’ve got dozens of tabs open in the browser. You don’t wish to close them. You don’t wish to open them. Maybe you need a break from all this technology. So you open the book you’ve been lugging around for months. Your mind keeps drifting away. There is so much to do and you’ve accomplished so little so far. You can’t figure out a sentence so you look for its explanation online. Suddenly, you have a Eureka moment. Why bother to read this bore of a book? Sure enough, you find a trite summary on Reddit. There is even intense debate over some sections. It’s enough to let you know the crux of the story to discuss in social settings. You can tick this book off the list. Job well done.

Suddenly, you come across this news of a tragedy halfway across the world. People in your own country are changing their statuses and marking themselves safe. You proceed to read Reuters’ coverage of the incident and move on to task 4. Your eyes feel dry and tired. You go to wash your face and notice dark bags under your eyes. All this nightly screentime has started taking its toll on you. It dawns on you that you haven’t exercised all day. So you flip through the neat home exercise app you had downloaded recently and do the needful.

You feel like taking a power nap but you can’t sleep. So you listen to this music online that is supposed to help you relax. You wake up to the disapproving look from your parents. They proceed to criticize your odd sleeping schedule and eating habits, your obsession with your phone and technology in general, and express concern over your health. Then they share an article on Whatsapp about circadian rhythm and healthy food, which can only be described as spurious and questionable, at best. The irony of their comment on technology doesn’t escape you and you come up with 3 versions of witty tweets to put out, highlighting this incident. You settle on one and obsessively check the response you are getting. It’s not shabby but you’re sad that your wit isn’t being given its due.

You half-heartedly barrel through another task but by now, your concentration is abysmal. So you let it be. You’re disheartened over your tragic success rate. Satisfaction is a fickle friend. Fleeting at best. The day has pretty much ended. Hindsight throws a volley of Ifs and Buts at you. Is this how life is for millennials over the world? Do they all go through this cycle of shame, guilt and disappointment? Why aren’t you capable of taking pride in what you did accomplish, little as it may be, by your estimation?

Night time is solemn. You head to bed on time, in order to make tomorrow a better day. You can’t sleep so you go through your phone one more time. You see all those pictures and videos of people laughing, dancing, enjoying, eating. Living. And you just spent a day cuddled with your gadgets. You know most of those smiles are facades. Those comments professing their love for each other are farcical. Those quotes about being themselves? Stolen from books and shows. Yet, you can’t help but be drawn to it. You love to snicker, pass snooty comments and roll your eyes. But you can’t avert your gaze. You have routinized your sarcasm, your disgust, your disapproval. It is technology that is the root of your personal discontent and envy. It’s this senseless stimulation every passing second that tells you that your life isn’t as good as the next person’s. That is what drives this relentless pursuit of a nameless purpose.

With an iron will to detach yourself from this bane, you sleep. Morning comes. You wake up to a bunch of memes, a couple of tagged pictures and some texts from friends. You won’t fall prey to this today. But it’d be rude to not respond, won’t it? So you do. And then, comes a buzz. And then another. And another. And the eternal exhaustion of the overstimulated mind prevails.