[fatbird]

Cutting yourself off from tech is part of the strategy, but simply developing a deep interest in something non-digital works great, and compliments the blockers and filters. Woodworking with hand tools; bookbinding; any creative pursuit without a digital aspect. Many, many fields have incredibly deep wells of knowledge and skill to explore.

One example: I built a workbench for myself out of 4"x6" fir beams (quite a cheap solution). I had to glue several together for the work surface, which required ensuring that beams had perfectly flat surfaces to come together under pressure. I broke my planer on the first one. I had to use my hand planes, so first I had to get good at planing, learning to sharpen them properly, tune them for fast work, and then start planing in earnest. I used winding sticks to check the parallel-ness of the surface. Then I set to work planing the perpendicular surface, constantly checking with a t-square. Many evenings, lots of sweat, lots of learning what works and doesn't, and then just suffering a lot of repetitive doing and measuring and doing and checking.

Google helped a lot at finding various messageboards and articles that hinted at how to do it, but nothing replaced the experience of doing it, nor offered the knowledge and skill gained.