[NalNezumi]

I've seen hacks like this, and have used them myself too.

However, suggesting this to friends (and myself) I see two things that undermines the process, that the metric used here does not catch.

1. Usage over a long time span is usually not a "decline" but a "wave-like" pattern. aka rebound, or substitution. You remove one distracting app, stay productive for a week or a month, then rebound to same or another app. Repeat process.

2. Substitution through other media. As this one said, "use laptop/PC for mindfully using Social Media", this sounds really good, but in practise usually given time, returns to mindless browsing. That's how we work, our brain constantly tries to push things we have to do mindfully to an automated "mindless" process. The tricky thing with this is that, we usually don't consider the process "mindless" until long after it have become an mindless process.

It would be interesting, if you can observe your usage pattern over longer time-span. Not just Smartphone but also your PC/Laptop and observe if you truly have reduced your "distraction" time.

[asicsp]

I don't use my phone much. But I have been mindlessly browsing on PC. Last week, I started an experiment of switching off internet for 5-6 hours during work days. It's been good so far. Somedays I couldn't switch off, as my work required internet.

I did observe myself trying to reach for social media sites, refreshing pages, etc even with browser closed. I was able to change that and now take breaks more often. But yeah, like you mention, the challenge is to see if I can sustain the habit for longer period. I can already see some change in behavior around switch on/off time to catch up as much as possible.

[MivLives]

I've been coding a bunch on a Pinebook Pro. Using the browser is painful. Not painful for looking up documentation/stack overflow/other sources. But on a JS heavy site it's miserable in comparison to a Chromebook, my phone, or any other computer I own. I'm much less likely to go on Mastodon/Reddit if the experience isn't enjoyable from a usage perspective.

[BlueTemplar]

Damn, I spent a week and a half on HN... again !

(Noprocrast setting, here I come !)

[runjake]

I think that the key here is persistence and self-forgiveness for setbacks.

You have a setback and return to mindless browsing. Don't drop it all. Note it mentally, review how it happened, make any necessary adjustments, forgive yourself and get back on track.

Some weeks will be total trainwrecks, but the key is to get back on the track, back onto your long-term game plan ASAP.

Gradually, your behaviors will shift with this persistence.

[NalNezumi]

self-forgiveness is definitely a key, but also analyzing the failure fairly is also tremendously helpful. Trying to remove all distraction, and going on/off on a "wave-like" rebound pattern is very common, and sure persistence might help for some.

A slightly more fool-proof approach is to try to do a introspection on "how" and what part of the distraction you are coming back for, and gradually remove these.

For example, I had problem with Facebook long time ago. I tried to delete it from phone, block news-feed on browser with extension, but still couldn't get rid of it entirely. After a bit of introspection, I realized checking facebook is actually not a problem at all, getting stuck on it was. So, I took my time to analyze what part of facebook did steal my attention. I pin-pointed it down to a couple of news pages, group & liked pages, and about 90% of my friends posts. So I blocked all the news pages, groups & linked pages, unfollowed 90% of my friends.

I still check facebook, but each time I check it, its about 20-30 sec MAX, and since the content is 99% boring or insignificant, it doesn't steal my attention at all. When facebook became this to me, deleting it (and NOT re-installing) from the phone became a very painless process.

Hacker News is my new hit though.

[theon144]

Thank you! I definitely observed a similar pattern using distraction blockers; it worked for a while, but after a while I just ended up wasting just as much time, except on different websites or on devices where the blocking wasn't enabled.

The real "cure" is just mindfully deciding not to open "unproductive" apps and sites. Otherwise, my time-wasting workflow (hah) just naturally adapts after a while.

[arkitaip]

It's amazing how quickly we adapt to get around hindrance, even if that's something we created for our own benefit.

I wonder how you could get around this? Maybe a huge blacklist and deliberately messing with sites randomly to the point it become too much of an issue, e.g. making sites load very slowly; breaking css, images randomly, etc. Something like netflix's chaos monkey?

[xuhu]

I use userstyles to browse in black and white, 11px regular font, and no images:

    https://userstyles.org/styles/137906/s-somesites-black-white
    https://userstyles.org/styles/107911/o-small-text-hide-images

Less colorful websites -> less time browsing.

[zentiggr]

That would actually make browsing far more pleasant for me. MMMV.

[theon144]

I've tried delays too, but it ends up being almost the same, because I just associate opening reddit/hn/youtube on my computer with the delay and discomfort - so I open it on my phone or another computer.

If there's a way to circumvent it, it just becomes muscle memory at some point later.