But on a more serious note, distraction and focus are difficult topics. When I'm highly motivated, I'm utterly indistractible. When I have to do boring toil, absolutely anything & everything can distract me.
For all my progress up there both intellectually and as a person, I'm still someone who will just sit in bed for 1 hour before work and watch brainrot instead of getting up and getting ready for work. Or sit in bed reading reddit for a few hours on a weekend before making myself breakfast.
Once I get into it, it's fine, but the thought of spending ~30-45 minutes getting up and properly starting the day is enough to make me procrastinate hours away :(
Blue collar work is better in that regard; you clock in every day at the same time, do a job that doesn't involve computers, often optimized for output so you don't have many lulls of activity, take breaks when the bell goes, and clock out and shut work off completely once you're done.
Meanwhile IT white collar work, especially WFH, requires a lot more self-direction, and since for most people in IT their entertainment is also digital, the boundary blurs by a lot.
Part of me wants a blue collar job.
My research resulted in me getting an ADHD diagnosis. My brain is screwed up. It just has a weird relationship with dopamine and motivation.
Not sure if this would work for you but a low dose Adderall really helps me focus and feel good doing "slower" tasks like work. I would certainly speak to a physician if you haven't already.
I have a child, who is brilliant, and performing great at school but he is already presenting similar symptoms as myself, hopefully I can help him set healthy limits and cope without meds.
The weird thing is that this is for fun, I have no pressure but still need some time to just start. Once I started I can go for a line time.
But, don’t discount addiction in-general. Social media, internet use, and gaming are some of the things that can provide quick dopamine hits, which is the problem being addressed here.
Adding a button to turn it off for a short-time is like heating just a tiny spoon of heroin and injecting it. No AA sponsor should ever say, “Yeah, it’s ok to dip your tongue in that whiskey.” That’s nonsense.
It would appear my innuendo was appropriately stated then.
I found the article refreshingly short and to the point whilst being jolly amusing and informative. The bloke is German so English is a second language - very good skills.
That's a skilled technical writer, that is.
Bookmarked. More please!
Alas, none of it is made up - honestly. My wife and I kept finding ourselves in the garden on a beautiful day scrolling reddit and instagram for up to an hour, on several occasions. We kind of know we're wasting our time, and we kind of want to, too. It's kind of a constant struggle of uber-me against animal-me and I really hope this moderation tool works how I image it.
After I read Neils post I've completed the entire setup - including blog post - in maybe three hours. So if this keeps me from doom scrolling for an hour at least three times, I've gained some time back.
Me and the wiff (not a spelling mistake! - very silly joke) find ourselves doing a similar thing and we are probably rather older than you (50-60).
The world is changing very quickly and who knows what is "right"? I love your approach and that your missus obviously supports your mild madness. You clearly have a great relationship.
Keep an eye on what is really important and don't "sweat the small stuff" as our US mates say.
But, even AdGuard isn’t that complex, I think it’s a one time distraction with some maintenance, compared to endless ads eating away at your brain, hours after hours. Worth it I say =)
Many years ago we gave our then-toddler an old digital camera to play with. Some time later, we looked at the pictures he took. We were horrified to find out that he took pictures of the outside of the house at night. As in, our toddler would unlock and open the front door, go outside (at night!), take pictures of the house, go back in, close and lock the door, and go back into his bed. I bought some wireless door sensors and created an automation where if the sensors are triggered between 10pm and 6am, the lights in our room would turn on to wake us up.
I expanded this later and today we have sensors on all doors/windows that kids can use to leave the house (we have 4 young kids). As it happens, these are the same doors/windows that burglars can use to enter the house, so this doubles as an alarm system (that we can activate when we leave the house and will notify us remotely if the sensors are triggered).
The best part is that with Home Assistant you are not locked into an app/ecosystem. Our door/window sensors are of a different brand than our lightbulbs, and we control everything from a single app.
> our toddler would unlock and open the front door, go outside (at night!), take pictures of the house, go back in, close and lock the door, and go back into his bed.
Did you ever ask your toddler why they did this? The thought process, for a toddler, to do that, to want a photo of the outside of the house at night enough to do that. That's some high level curiosity, worth fostering.
One of mine at that age would have had that level of quirkiness, but probably would have been too scared of "the dark" (also, our house already had a security system installed when we bought it, which we still set off accidentally every now and then, so the kids would probably have known that as well).
A much younger cousin used to do that — sans the camera or photo taking part in my village. He could barely talk. When asked around that time and a bit later as well, because it continued, he said something that spooked some in the family. He let us know that she was playing with someone in the large courtyard. Some women in the family (at night after dinner they would all socialise away from work and male intervention relaxed; a very South Asian thing) would remark the way he would sometimes play away in a corner in the gigantic courtyard in the evening (evenings in the city — in a lot of villages 7-8pm is quite the night) - as if he was playing with someone. Something, at least two more toddlers in the family had attested to before him. They all were teens/adults later at that time. Even the description matched. I was a teen, who stayed in boarding schools, and had been bullied too much and sadly bullied others too much in the guise of ghosts and what not so I didn’t believe it, I don’t believe it now. But it was weird. I think it is some kind of family memory or shit. My later explanation is/was — someone scared those kids with such stories so that they won’t wander around alone at night and they kind of started living it.
Fortunately the problem door has an old security chain held in by by time and wishful thinking but good enough to keep her in for now.
The sensors are quite large and simple and the gent's windows tend to be left open more often than the other windows. One of the two gent's sit down toilets is generally preferred to the other for very minor reasons but it is preferred.
So, the battery terminals were getting slightly corroded on that window sensor because it was open more often to the outside environment.
I've rubbed a bit of silicone sealant into the crack between the two parts of the sensor and expect that it will survive better now.
1 - on an off day, with no reason to require phone use,
put your phone in a dresser drawer for the day and
do not use or look at it.
2 - on an off day, with no reason to require phone use,
put your phone in a dresser drawer for the day and
leave your residence for at least one hour.
3 - leave your phone at home when either meeting friends,
getting lunch, or going to the grocery store.
4 - leave your phone at home when going into the office
for one day.
5 - leave your phone in a dresser drawer for an entire
weekend.
6 - leave your phone at home when traveling for more
than a day (vacation, visiting family, etc.).And phones are much more than content consumption machines - I like having a little pocket camera with me in case a see a new cat in the neighbourhood or something, and looking up bus schedules, renting city bikes, calling a cab, etc. are things I all but need to be able to do when I'm out.
My trick to almost never looking at my phone has been, somewhat ironically, having a smartwatch, as well as carefully curating the notifications I get on my phone. If I know I can't miss an important notification, I'll never even look at my phone, so there's no chance I even see one of those time wasting apps. And when a notification buzzes on my wrist, I can see in a fraction of a second if it's something really important or if it can wait.
Maybe if we were talking about social media or some other non-essential service on my phone, but the phone itself is hard to do without because of its practical utility, not because of addiction.
I think it also has changed what our perception of a true emergency is. When I was a kid, if I needed to be picked up from an event, it was on me to be at the pickup point at the right time, and my parent to be there. If for whatever reason we couldnt make it, there was always an alternative plan 'wait at the meetup, wait inside the venue, go home with a friend'.
Not getting picked up and being forced to wait with some uncertainty was not an emergency, it was an inconvenience.
I think another thing to consider is having ways for people to reach you _without_ your cell phone. For instance, I have a home phone, and calling my cell also rings that home phone. You could set up something similar if you have an office phone, or using a softphone on your desktop. That leaves you with instances where you leave home or the office, which are honestly cases where I'm personally least likely to look at my phone because I'm usually doing things that occupy my full attention (unless I'm commuting where I'm often reading a book on my phone).
I took an internet-free vacation last spring, and it was lovely.
While planning the trip, I made sure my old TomTom's built-in maps seemed accurate to what I was seeing online; there wasn't a lot of road-building activity there in the last decade or two. Then I turned off my phone and locked it in the glovebox, there in case of emergency.
Then I took a deep breath, started the car, and headed north.
It was awesome just knowing there was no way a notification could ding, nobody could call me, no news headline could pop up and harsh my mellow. Even if those things didn't actually happen constantly, simply existing in a state where they could was stressful, apparently, and turning the damn thing off was remarkably cathartic.
Freedom is a gift, not from without, but found from within.
We set ourself free by our choices. And we shackle ourselves by same.
I have tried all kinds of blocking software and strategies. Blocking software, however elaborate, never seems to make a different. You find one way or another to get around the block and then after a while turning off the block just becomes part of your muscle memory. The most extreme thing I tried was cutting off the internet to my house and going back to a dumbphone for 6 months. For sure, I probably had less screen time. But I also spent many hours sitting in the station using the public wifi or watching hours and hours of pointless television.
This is a really tough nut to crack. I think there is probably no technological solution to it.
For me, I noticed I have no compulsion to surf after hanging out with friends where I have their attention and curiosity and they have mine. It is like an oxytocin surge that depletes overtime and needs recharging. Scrolling is like junk food in that it feels like a recharge but empties as soon as I stop.
I now call up a friend or arrange a hangout if I feel like I’m running low and it’s amazing how many friends are delighted to hear from me but then never reach out.
Even people older, like me, who grew up without these things for a good portion of their life. They lost the ability to be bored and need to relearn it.
I personally have always refused to get sucked into the phone. Never turned notifications on, never cared about social media, etc. I don't like video'ing the concert I'm attending. I like being present and I love being bored.
I have noticed that usually people who make it their mission to stop doing a thing are replacing that thing with the mission itself. This strategy is always bound for failure, because the moment it starts to work for them is the moment they end the mission. This is when, instead of reevaluating their strategy, they punish themselves for the failure to not do. The cycle repeats, and the person spirals into rumination about their stress.
I didn't just stop biting my nails. I started trimming them instead.
What I'm trying to say is that blocking and working on the "deeper" issues are stronger when used synergistically, it doesn't have to be an either or.
I am just some rando on the internet and only share
what I hope will help. In no way is the below a
replacement for professional counseling.
My first recommendation is to try to not beat yourself up about this. No one knows how to hurt you more than yourself.
My second recommendation is to take small steps and allow yourself time for each new habit to become entrenched. For example, keep your phone in your pocket instead of visibly near. Once that feels natural, incorporate the next habit which you feel reduces the device's prominence in daily life.
> I have tried all kinds of blocking software and strategies. Blocking software, however elaborate, never seems to make a different.
As others have mentioned and you describe, using an app on the device to alter dependency on the device likely will not work as the device remains the focal point.
> This is a really tough nut to crack. I think there is probably no technological solution to it.
It is and I believe you are entirely correct in identifying "no technological solution to it." If we pursue this hypothesis to its logical conclusion, then one or more solutions must exist outside the technical space. Which suggests a solution might be found in the behavioral space as the two actors in this scenario are a person and a device.
I'm not saying this will be easy nor simple, only that I hope you find peace in finding your solution.
This is the thing; the brain is not actually comfortable just sitting idle with the reins slack. There's got to be some stimulus. I don't think there's any real solution other than finding a displacement activity. I know somebody who weaned themselves off smoking by developing a Gameboy Tetris addiction instead.
Other than going out and trying to be social, there's a whole range of "something to do with your hands" activities. If you take up knitting then at least at the end of it you have a scarf. Myself, I'm trying to train myself to open one of the language learning apps every time I think I'm spending time scrolling.
I figure the accessibility of phones are what makes the mindless scrooling habit so dangerous.
I mean I keep my beer in the garage to not drink as much.
One thing I found very helpful was to regularly practice mindfulness meditation, as it reduces my desire for entertainment and generally seems to improve my executive function a lot. It also caused other improvements to my well-being in general.
Regarding a technological solution to blocking, I did the following (on Android, I can handle myself on non-portable devices):
1: Use adguard to block the relevant addresses on DNS level. I chose adguard specifically because it allows setting regex-like patterns on what addresses to block, eliminating loop holes.
2: Use applock (I haven't informed if applock specifically is better or worse than alternatives) to require a passcode when opening settings, when opening adguard, and when opening applock itself. Store this passcode in a way that it's cumbersome but possible to reach. Ask a friend or relative to set and store it for you if necessary.
3: Remove the icons of adguard and applock from the home screen, so that they are only reachable through settings -> apps.
This has worked well for me. It's cumbersome enough to discourage me from deactivating it. It's not so cumbersome that I can't update the block list if necessary. It's flexible enough that I can very precisely choose what to block and what not. And it's specialized for (android) smartphones, which are the worst scrolling addiction drivers.
You could also throw in Google parental controls to stop yourself from downloading apps if necessary, but I found that DNS blocks are enough for me.
If you struggle with other devices as well, like TVs, consider whether you can get away with not owning these devices at all.
All that being said, professional psychological help for addiction and executive dysfunction exists. That would have been my last resort if the methods mentioned above hadn't turned out to be sufficient for me.
Good luck, don't give up.
The confusing thing is sometimes I have days when I do manage to do work, but I can never see what I do differently on those days to other days.
At least for me this is the pattern I had before I had a good enough dose of meds.
Also, a good idea is to explain what you’re experiencing to the paychiatrist - he may recommend different meds or increasing the dosage.
I'm still "reachable", but the watch UX is annoying enough that I won't find myself scrolling X etc on it.
For people who realistically could require emergency contact (parents of minor children, family members with health risks, etc.) this is a wise recommendation.
However, for those not having these very genuine concerns, an Apple Watch with cellular connectivity (or equivalent device) could engender a placebo effect and mask withdrawal.
I have it as a wallet (those flip cases) so it is always with me. But it can stay in backpack for days without using it, except maybe for calls (to talk with parents after I don't call for weeks :D) and to pay for public transit (huge mess to charge nfc cards). I don't use social networks, chat software (sms excluded) at all, never even registered to fb, cant even remember when was the last time I installed any app.
I consider this a very sane use of phone. It is not addiction, rather satisfying addicted society that is pressuring me to use it.
Beyond not having the phone with you, I think the real measure is the number of times it's picked up and/or unlocked.
Thanks for sharing your perspective. I need to point out what I originally stated was:
... exercises to determine one's phone addiction, if any ...
You express having no phone addiction and I have no reason to think otherwise. More importantly, I am not going to adjudicate as to yourself or anyone else.
See the stipulation of:
on an off day, with no reason to require phone use
1. Get a hardware token
2. Install a TOTP desktop client
3. Only use the phone for 2FA
4. You understand the spirit of the exercise and don't get bogged down by silly rules.
Just out of curiosity, suppose you are not on-call for work and it is an observed holiday. Do you foresee the need for two factor authentication for non-work activities?
In other words, is 2fa a requirement for daily life?
I never stay logged into accounts in browsers on my personal devices. And work requires daily auto. So in general if I need to do anything with any accounts, I need 2fa access. And for the phone apps I do stay logged in to, well, they are on my phone.
Focus on the intent of the exercise. If you really mentally cannot get past 2FA, then get a hardware token, or a TOTP client on your desktop. Lots of solutions if this is really the hangup.
I think most people can easily do all the way through #6 if they put their mind to it. It’s not a physical addiction.
The real cost is when you’re not intentionally trying to deprive yourself. Do you gravitate back to unhealthy (at least the way you define it) behaviors?
I can still do the first two without the phone but my housing society has eliminated physical cards with basically zero consultation.
It is basically a losing battle.
Try it once a week. It will improve your life immeasurably.
Level 0 or 100 depending on the person: take your phone with you and just don't a) look at it every 5 minutes, b) reply to incoming messages instantly or c) check in to see what some pointless celebrity posted in the last 3 minutes.
The temptation is too great to get bored and check my phone when I'm in the house with it.
[0]: lockmeout.online
If there's every a solid reason to use a phone it's when travelling.
The only downside is that the Safari extension is granted full access to my web browsing in order to facilitate the website blocking. They say they don’t capture any data and at this point do trust them (you may feel differently). For blocking apps, no private data sharing is required.
Sometimes the simplest solution is the Luddite one; put the phone down and step away from it.
If this appears to be an insurmountable ask, or otherwise infeasible, I humbly suggest there is a greater concern to be addressed than what yet another app on the phone which cannot be distanced may remedy.
If it is important, then if wifi/ethernet out then it should still work. So my doorbell used to have a link to a mechanical chime (Doorbird), the current Reolink jobbie does not but it is PoE and all my switches have UPS. The Reolink does have a separate chime that plugs into a power socket and a way better camera.
Oh and none of my home things ever get unfettered access to the internet. I have two VLANs for IoT: things is for most devices and sewer is for those that scare me somewhat.
I treat the whole thing the same way I do corporate IT and I do point Nessus at it. I have several Home Assistants that I look after - home and work and several customer ones too.
The OP's choice of smart plug is clearly designed to be mildly inconvenient to get at but also reliable. I'll put money on there being a monitoring function too.
That's a nerd that does things "proper like".
I started using PoE to DC power adapters for most of these use-cases. It lets me centralize my UPS to the utility closet, and offer a ton of runtime that way. My router + switching setup now powers my entire house including remote switches (PoE++ powered) and access points. Security cameras (and slowly now - security floodlights) are PoE powered as well. I have probably 12-14 hours of runtime off a large stack of UPS batteries, and could add a few days to that if I wheel my "whole home" UPS I never had the time to hardwire into the house yet into the room.
Items like the fiber NIU and cable modem are powered via PoE splitters into 9/12/24V outputs they require. I still have a few random bridges and other various devices I should convert as well, but I've been lazy lately.
I went with two lower port count "core" switches vs. one so I have redundancy there, so one going out will only take out half my network and I can still operate in a degraded mode - my AP density is such that it works fine, and I can re-patch the in-wall and PoE powered switches for workstations.
The only issue is that it kind of grows with a mind of it's own... I am up to an absurd number of devices on the network now.
I have two switches in my attic above those bedrooms and most of the rest of IT.
That means I can easily run cable drops along my attic and then under the roof to the outer walls of my house. I've run four Cat 5e to my garage and four to my sitting room.
Basically, I think we are both doing it right.
The biggest criticism of IoT is insecure and unreliable. If you buy any old tat and wire it up to Alexa well that's fine if it hangs together and it mostly does these days. If you squint hard enough, you can forget about Alexa being a bit of a security ... quandry.
There is no such thing as absurd when it comes to automation.
You also have the possibility to use Node-Red for that.
This is just like when writing CI scripts for GitHub actions or Azure pipelines: the right amount of yaml (if it must be used at all) is to just invoke a program in some more expressive language than yaml.
I do use the (jinja) value templates in some places though.
But it actually has an advantage: I can plug a small lamp into it. After 14 minutes, the plug switches on and off every 2 seconds, indicating that the time runs out, adding a little drama.
Thats's the great part about home assistant though...anything that can change states, with intent/meaning, is waiting to be tied to an automation.
I think the smart plug may add a layer of inconvenience, since you have to lean down to the outlet to press it. The inconvenience is a feature in this case, though.
I've used his idea and make a home assistant automation that temporarily disables adguard home to do the same thing.
"I've leveraged my home automation system to limit my access to social media to 15 minutes at a time, no more than once an hour. Using the built-in adblock feature, my router black-holes DNS queries to social media by default—which I can now disable temporarily by pushing the button on any one of several smart outlets around my house."
Got a source for that? No phone or browser that I'm aware of uses "hardcoded DNS resolvers". They all use the OS DNS servers which the OS gets from DHCP.
By extension, any application or device could rely on DoH instead of OS-provided or network-provider DNS servers. It is controversial, since it both helps individuals combat ISP or government censorship and also helps bad actors do bad things [1].
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_over_HTTPS#Analysis_of_DNS...
Any network traffic which goes through a gateway under your control can be controlled. DNSSEC[0] can make this more difficult, true, but not impossible as content ultimately originates from an IPv4/IPv6 address and can be dropped by upstream network devices.
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System_Security_Ex...
Most apps I've tried (and browsers too) can be blocked just fine via DNS. The gli.net interface allows "Override DNS Settings of All Clients" and "DNS Rebinding Attack Protection". This way, the router itself is the only resolver actually reachable. Even if I try some manual `dig google.com @1.1.1.1`, I still get the routers result.
The only thing it can't block is DNS over Https. I think that's by design, it seems it's impossible to block that.
I quite tech at home when i started working as a software engineer over 20yrs ago. Hobbies are a great way to break free, and quitting news fullstop is another good way to avoid social media. You dont even need to delete your accounts, just turn off all notifications of every app and avoid coupling your life to them in any way.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pi-hole-remote/id1515445551
The point is that I have to walk, physically move, to the corner where the plug is, push the button and be allowed to procrastinate. That is the design hurdle, not so high as to block completely, but just high enough that I don't get sucked into the endless feed each time I'm bored.
Edit: Also I want the granularity. Ads should always - without exception - be blocked. Social media should be allowed on demand and within the rules.
We have the same technical skills but one of us is not going to stop until he wins.
My hope is that this gentle nuding towards "come on, you've had 15 minutes, now just wait another 45, please?" is enough of a hurdle. I think it's a moderation tool.
Quite easy, but doesn't help anyone but me. Though I like that it only disables blocking on my device and not my entire network.
- require third party cloud services
- use custom integrations (because they aren't natively supported by HA)
Their routers are OpenWrt compatible by design, the factory firmware is based on owrt or you can flash upstream for a "pure" image. I've used them for many years and they're great.
Shame has a better and longer track record.
Drop the idea that short form content like youtube shorts or tik toks or whatever is somehow ignoble and worthy of scorn. Recognize it's just a fun way to kill some time.
Internalized that? Cool.
Now find a comfy place to sit or lie down and binge that shit. For hours. Do it for as long as it brings you joy. Had your fill? Cool.
Keep doing this, whenever you've got some free time and there isn't something else you want to do more binge that short form "brainrot" content. Do not let the thought that you're somehow "wasting" your time enter your mind. You're having fun, and that's all that matters.
If you're anything like me once you've internalized the idea that it's just dumb short videos for fun and you've watched hours of them, you'll just get bored of it. Maybe you'll spend 20 minutes scrolling occasionally but your brain aint gonna rot.
I’m glad that you had an experience where you found the corner of your internet to be boring. I do not think this is the common experience.
And simply because you didn’t feel impacted by it, does not mean that it’s not bad. This is obviously hyperbolic, but your comment reads to me like someone saying, “I used narcotics all of the time when I was younger, and I’m fine now. So everybody chill out.” That doesn’t mean narcotics are ok.
Social media does change your brain. It doesn’t take much to find research on this, but here’s an example of a longitudinal study of US adolescents [0].
This type of online content is a form of a non-pharmacological “drug”, so to say, as it can dramatically impact reward system connectivity.
As an example, I used to watch a lot of dance videos. Recently I started taking dance classes and the videos just hit different now. The bar is so much higher for me to feel impressed because I’m digesting the content much more efficiently now and so much content is just repetition with slight variation.
I think the fact that people are scrolling through this stuff and NOT getting bored or tired is interesting, people are different to me in some way I don't understand.
I realize that my comment may have been written poorly and I'm sorry. If it was unclear, I meant that I find watching long videos to be lower effort than watching many short videos, one after the other.
Now that that's clear, I will refuse the psych eval and continue with my day.
Can we not just say different people are different and call it there?
I know a lot of people that can't stand tiktok and insta reels.
If anything, I'd say the people who enjoy absorbing entertainment in 7-second chunks have been reprogrammed and desensitized in a way that's not normal, though I wouldn't slap any psych labels on them either.
Want me to instantly lower my opinion of you? Send me a link to a Tik-Tok.
"Drop the idea that drinking alcohol like shots or beer or whatever is somehow ignoble and worthy of scorn. Recognize it's just a fun way to kill some time (and brain cells).
Internalized that? Cool.
Now find a comfy place to sit or lie down and binge that shit. For hours. Do it for as long as it brings you joy. Had your fill? Cool."
The key is moderation.
I'm not against drinking and I'm not against using Youtube, Reddit, Instagram, Hacker News. But I get sucked into it way more that I want, and this is my way of having a nice old lady ask "haven't you had enough, honey?".
Damn, I've spent days on Youtube, not even on "silly" stuff. There's a limitless supply of educational videos, PBS Space Time, Stumpy Nubs, Phil Salmony, DIY Perks.... But I still have a limited amount of hours in a day. Also I have shared responsibility of several humans and animals in this house, I can't just sit idly behind a screen all day (except for the eight hours I get paid to do it).
I used to watch memes and images for hours upon end. Until at some point I just stopped and never did it again.
Over the years people would send some links. I looked at the picture, maybe laughed, and closed the tab.
That energy can go towards other things.
1. this level of preoccupation is a new and historically significant phenomenon
2. the time not spent on scrolling would be spent on something else more productive
Both seem plausible, but they also seem like a couple of those tricky conclusions that seem naturally right but would fall apart with some research. For example, I think it would be better if we all spent time at cafes instead, but it's hard to say that that would result in better societal outcomes.