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Some ideas on this topic: 1. Inconvenience based solutions don't address the problem: using apps to restrict phone use, physically hiding the phone etc. Once y

by Bakary 6y ago

Some ideas on this topic: 1. Inconvenience based solutions don't address the problem: using apps to restrict phone use, physically hiding the phone etc. Once you leave those carefully constrained conditions, you are more vulnerable than ever. Not to mention the contradiction with the core issue that it's a symptom rather than a cause. 2. Turning abstinence as an ongoing status condition (e.g. "X days since I did Y") is a trap. It sets you up for later failure by burdening you with a perpetually unfinished objective with psychological consequences that only increase as the 'highscore' increases. This could work with things that are less easily accessible like heroin, but it's not going to work with something as easily accessible as a phone or computer. 3. The solution that works with 1 and 2 is probably urge surfing as it tackles the issue directly 4. It's easier to think of it as an addiction to browsing rather than an addiction to the phone itself. You have to catch yourself during any browsing moment in any context to eventually make progress. Be intentional in almost every action instead of going on auto-pilot, although obviously resting at the end of the day is fine. It's more a general philosophy than a hard rule meant to exhaust you. 5. The eventual goal is a rich life where you no longer feel the need to distract yourself

iainctduncan 6y ago
#4 is so on the money. Well put.
- alexchantavy 6y ago
  Yeah, phone is just a way of going on browsing-autopilot-mode. Without the phone I'd be wasting time on a desktop web browser scrolling through HN/Reddit, and many years before it was Digg and Slashdot. I like the advice of being intentional about your reading but eh, I enjoy passive browsing a lot.
hooande 6y ago
to follow up on your good points, any app or device that limits phone use is like telling an alcoholic to hide liquor from themselves. It obviously won't work because addiction is very powerful. There aren't any devices or particular techniques that can guarantee beating it. You just have to be ready to do it
- sateesh 6y ago
  This has not been my experience. Utilities like "StatyFoccussd", "ColdTurkey", "LeechBlock, "SelfControl" have been extremely useful to me. On any day I spend some 10-15 mins in idle browsing, and after feeling bit jaded I set up a block for next 24hrs or so. In the interim when I make attempts to do idle browsing, I am blocked and I don't go out of my way to fight those controls I have setup. It is quite possible for me to bypass the controls that I have setup on the machine which I have full control, but that simple message telling me that I am blocked acts as nudge to restrain myself. As an additional datapoint, recent versions of Firefox doesn't support the leechblock add-on, and my phone usage increased. But when the Leechblock control was working my phone usage was minimal. May be my addiction is not strong enough, but the utilities that enforce devices limits do help.
dasudasu 6y ago
It could be argued that #5 is just another form of distraction. Any form of "rich life" is mostly keeping the death anxiety at bay.
- uoaei 6y ago
  The difference is that you are replacing the negative with something positive. If you don't see your pursuit of a "rich life" as a positive that wins out over the alternative, it may not be as rich as it seems.
- Bakary 6y ago
  By a rich life, I'm referring to something that needs no further justification. When you are in this state, the need to contextualize, criticize, or philosophize about your experiences almost disappears. Think of a young child in a state of playful flow. Even if you fully take on the anti-natalist conclusion, the experience still justifies itself on its own, as an end in itself.
  - scotty79 6y ago
    > When you are in this state, the need to contextualize, criticize, or philosophize about your experiences almost disappears. For me browsing and often gaming fulfills this description of rich life.
  - dasudasu 6y ago
    So the perfect distraction?
    - Bakary 6y ago
      A distraction implies some other thing or state beyond it that ought to be reached or contemplated. But in this case, even if you believe that life is completely unnecessary and meaningless, there is no desire to end the state or seek to poke holes into it. You could argue for solipsism, that everything is a distraction from death, and all sorts of masturbatory ideas whose only logical conclusion is immediate and collective suicide, but this all tends to be short-circuited once your state is subjectively good enough to be self-justified.
root_axis 6y ago
> The eventual goal is a rich life where you no longer feel the need to distract yourself Indeed. When you're feeling anxious in your environment or depressed about the state of your life, the phone is a very convenient artifical void filler and one that's often well attuned to an individual's pycholgocial patterns of habit.
originalvichy 6y ago
I definitely have a browsing addiction. Learning things as an information junkie is addictive. What’s funny is that when I go for trips in the mountains with little to no internet I do fine. It is less like a chemical addiction and more like a habitual craving. If I have more interesting things to do I will not browse. If I’m bored though...
- dead_neopets 6y ago
  Habits are related to our environment. Your brain is probably wired to your current living arrangements and taking a vacation- with the added caveat that you know you have no internet- means no behaviors. This is why people can easily get sober in rehab and then come home and instantly relapse.
  - _huayra_ 6y ago
    I actually used this tactic to break some habits when I moved. New living place did not trigger the same habits as the prior one, so long as I was careful to not "install" them again...
    - varrock 6y ago
      I experienced this. When I moved, my sloppiness and classiness improved tremendously. However, I've recently started to notice it getting back into its old ways now that I'm more settled. The benefit is that I'm much more aware of it, and am able to recognize it and address it instead of never noticing it to begin with.
- Sargos 6y ago
  Are you learning specific things for a passion, hobby, or job or learning random facts and TILs?
  - throwaway77_a 6y ago
    I’m not the OP, but for me it’s a mix, usually aligning more toward the latter, just like this post which was delivered to me as a notification.
maqp 6y ago
Few more ideas: 1. When I quit Facebook, I first started disabling my account but that didn't work, at all. It just brought me back. Every time. I realized it wasn't a feature for deleting account, it was a pressure relieve valve for people who need a quick break because they felt the service had taken control of too large a portion of their lives. FB didn't want people to quit and they didn't offer such feature. I started by unfollowing my friends. In the process I saw FB's algorithms get more and more desperate in giving me dopamine spikes via the notifications earth symbol. "Friend of a friend is attending an event". Really FB? I then deleted all of the chat histories, sent my phone number to peers and asked them to contact via Signal/WA in the future. I then removed the friends and finally when I got enough of the few public groups I discussed in it was easy enough to let go. I first changed the email to some 10minutemail account, and then changed the password to something I didn't know. When I then hit "disable account", it was hard for FB to guilt trip me with "X Y and Z will miss you :((" -- there were no friends to recommend. All this sounds like a lot of work, and especially deleting FB's chats histories was, because the web client was buggy or "buggy". The chats kept coming back. But that made me want to delete them even more. Quitting FB made a huge difference in the quality of my life as it removed 99% of FOMO and envy wrt. my peers' lives. 2. Add the Leechblock extension to your browser. Set the tab to close every time you type the time wasting URL. It's a nice instrumental conditioning. 3. Quit services cold turkey when you can. "Use in moderation" sets you up for failure. This is because the services learn about your habits every day and they become extremely good at guessing what content keeps you in. E.g. youtube has recently switched to a new search function that improves its search results based on your previous searches. It's scarily accurate. Many of my peers said they noticed it too but didn't think too much of it. 4. You are being actively manipulated. The companies deliberately design the applications as addicting as possible. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11dYx_rW_Ks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11dYx_rW_Ks No wonder a smartphone -- that's a collection of such apps -- is so addicting. Realizing this and the fact the dopamine spikes are artificial, helps you a long way. This also applies to games. Every "headshot +100 points" is such a tiny dopamine spike. Games didn't used to have those. Your AoE villagers didn't announce "+1 wood" when their axes hit a tree. Consider such features in a game an attempt to manipulate you. If you can't disable the them in game, think of it as the insult to your intelligence it is, and uninstall it. If necessary, once such features are disabled, it's easier to see if the content of the game is a good way to relax and balance out the day's hard work. 5. Disable notifications from every app on every device. Notifications are a massive distraction. "I'll be reachable when it's convenient for me" is a good way to think about it. You'll be surprised how much stuff you can get done when you don't hang around in group chats, reading headlines, arguing to get Reddit internet points etc. for the entire day. 6. Catch up on the big news via Wikipedia's "In the news" section, not via news sites littered with celebrity gossip, craving for your clicks. It's dry for sure, but there's no better source in catching up with e.g. the ongoing conflict in Tigray. It's also easier to avoid trivial propaganda when majority of stuff is sourced, and people are keen in adding "citation needed" when there is no proper source.
closeparen 6y ago
I use SelfControl on my Mac when I need a serious work session. It always surprises me, when I tab to HN or Reddit and get blocked, how automatic an action it was. I’m never inclined to fight it. It never represented an actual desire to be there. There’s no deep longing to say “no” to. After the first few times being thwarted, it stops for the next several hours. I still feel the push “away” from what I’m trying to focus on, but it’s not “towards” anywhere in particular. So as long as I divert to something that’s itself not too interesting, I will tire of the diversion and get back to work in short order. It’s only debilitating when the diversion captures me for hours (looking at you, YouTube recommendation algorithm).
- boringg 6y ago
  I find the 'frequently visited pages' on safari on a blank new tab get me visiting those sites without intentionally going to them reinforcing the most frequently visited pages rank order.
- hugocbp 6y ago
  I do the same. I even used the terminal commands to change the granularity of the blocks and extend the length. And the same things happens to me. A lot of times I don't even want or think of going to HN, Reddit, Twitter. I'm just bored or frustrated and, almost unconsciously, I hit the shortcuts for Browser > New Tab > Focus Address Bar > Start typing n, r or m (for mobile.twitter.com). Some things that helped a lot with this, together with SelfControl, is to change all new tabs to a blank page and disable autocomplete in the Firefox navbar. That last one is not very good for everything, so it would be better to just delete those automatic sites from the suggestion list. I never really took the time to see how it's done of FF, though. To change the timings in SelfControl, use (sorry, it is a very very old note in Evernote so I don't have the original source anymore): defaults write org.eyebeam.SelfControl MaxBlockLength -int [maximum block length in minutes] defaults write org.eyebeam.SelfControl BlockLengthInterval -int [block length interval in minutes]
  - saltyfamiliar 6y ago
    You should try Vimium. Shift-o brings up an omnibar and opens your query in a new tab.
brushfoot 6y ago
> 1. Inconvenience based solutions don't address the problem To some degree. But they do give space for alternatives to start to fill the gap. For me, a behavior modification strategy called narrowing antecedent control has worked well: restricting my phone and Internet usage to a specific spot in my office. I found I was reaching for my devices automatically throughout the day and night and would waste hours surfing without realizing it. Obviously, removing the distraction doesn't automatically resolve whatever underlying issue caused the user to compulsively seek it out. But you find you can't just do nothing, so you start to get creative, and alternatives start to appear.
PureParadigm 6y ago
In regards to (1), sometimes using the phone is both a symptom and the cause (in a reinforcing cycle). In my case, I would use my phone in bed before falling asleep to avoid having to confront thoughts I would have while drifting off since I could stay distracted until I was seconds away from passing out. Unsurprisingly, I would have terrible quality sleep (and I suspect many of the psychological problems mentioned in the article stem from problems phone addiction causes with sleep). Once I moved the phone to another room at night, I was forced to fall asleep without being distracted. Being alone with my thoughts was extremely uncomfortable the first few nights, but it got better. Now I'm used to falling asleep without distraction and am more in touch with how I feel. So my phone was causing me to become out of touch with my thoughts/feelings which would in turn make it even more uncomfortable to confront them, so I would turn to my phone for distraction and this reinforcing cycle continued until broken. The phone was both a symptom and cause of my sleeping problem, so removing the phone removed the cause and fixed my sleep.
- laurent92 6y ago
  This. My phone usage is linked with solitude on one side, and invasive negative thoughts on the other. I used to think about suicide and revenge all the time. I used to debate endlessly in my mind with people who used to try to list my defects and put me down (I’m white male with education in a leftist city). Now I think about nothing! Memes, variety of chats, news cycle, videos about plane crashes, engineering, building things, what a progress! People who recommend me to drop the phone have no idea what a hell it was. It is like drugs, it is like living in a fantasy where I’m not being put down for a few hours... except I’m not losing my teeth, I’m just losing time. From the article, which gets cause and consequence reverse by the way as all articles on the topic: > This is a huge problem because re-connecting with people in the offline world is a solution that improves the quality of life. Yeah, no, re-connecting with people IRL is not a good experience as a white male, we have to selectively choose people who don’t think we should first apologize for existing, and it is getting quite hard nowadays.
graeme 6y ago
> The solution that works with 1 and 2 is probably urge surfing as it tackles the issue directly So: 1. Feel an urge to browse or notice you are browsing 2. Pause and breathe. Focus on the sensations and thoughts that come to mind, then return to the breathe Anything else? And is the end goal to stop browsing if you are doing it? It seems like an interesting idea, if you had some practical steps I’d appreciate it as I’m not quite sure I’ve got it in this context. Edit: after searching around, found a good summary here. However, still interested in hearing comments from OP or others on how they’ve used this. Seems like a genuinely useful technique and I had not heard of it before. https://portlandpsychotherapy.com/2011/11/riding-wave-using-mindfulness-help-cope-urges/ https://portlandpsychotherapy.com/2011/11/riding-wave-using-...
- Bakary 6y ago
  Here are some more details. I used this to treat browsing addiction. Before that, I had to come to the conclusions outlined in the OP to direct my thinking about the problem. I stumbled on the term urge surfing by accident, and tried it out.[0] This video explains essentially everything you need to know about the topic. I used a guided audio meditation sequence in the beginning as it was harder than I expected it to be. I do not have the link to this, but it should be easy to find one. It can be an uncomfortable process as you realize the full extent of your predicament and the strength of the craving. But after a while, it works exactly as intended. You then gain confidence in knowing that cravings can abate on their own no matter how strong they feel at the onset. I have used the same broad concept to attenuate OCD symptoms and related anxiety. The counter-intuitive idea behind all this is that by rewarding your anxiety with a certain behavior, you are training yourself to feel more anxiety down the line. Therefore the opposite must happen: putting yourself into situations that directly confront the anxiety and withholding any reward. This is the same exposure and response therapy that is used to treat phobias or generic social anxiety, though obviously without the careful guidance of a trained professional. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wdsJayLhnM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wdsJayLhnM
  - graeme 6y ago
    Thanks, super interesting I’ll try it. And what’s a long run goal for, say, hacker news and device use? Rich life is a good goal but what does the day to day look like of using the internet as part of that? Or is simply not doing it based on urges enough?
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
I wouldn't say I was addicted to Phone to start with as my job involved interacting with phone all the time, but after I had to shutdown my startup due to health issues I made some deliberate lifestyle changes which has reduced my phone interactions to negligible levels/day and some of which can help overcome phone addiction too. • Notifications I have a smartwatch mounted to my desk[1] which displays notifications as an when it arrives and since most of the notifications doesn't require urgent action; interaction with the phone can be avoided. Of course this can work with smartwatch on the wrist too, but having it mounted on the desk limits interaction with the watch itself. • More email My primary mode of professional communication has been email for past two years. No voice calls, No chats, No video calls just email. Avoiding real time communication has improved the quality of communication and my mental well-being in general by reducing anxiety. It does cost me several business opportunities, 'Sorry, I don't do calls, can we communicate via email' has become downright insulting especially during this era of 'Zoom'. But that's the price I'm willing to pay for better mental health. Fortunately email remains the last pillar against 'Mobile First' ecosystem and environment amidst several attempts to change it. When the availability of a smartphone is taken for granted from education[2] to COVID-Free Passport, using cellular connectivity is passively mandated (Mobile Number for unique identity, OTP[3]) I don't think it's even possible to someone to throw away their phone without some serious regulations mandating that freedom. [1]https://abishekmuthian.com/butt-pomodoro-a-butt-triggered-pomodoro-timer/#demo https://abishekmuthian.com/butt-pomodoro-a-butt-triggered-po... (A project which shows the said desk mounted smartwatch). [2]https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-underprivileged-education-poverty https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-underp... (How the availability of smartphone, taken for granted has affected education - Disclaimer: It's my problem validation platform). [3]https://twitter.com/heavyinfo/status/1343461028256833538 https://twitter.com/heavyinfo/status/1343461028256833538 (My tweet thread discussing mobile number for identity).
- jlokier 6y ago
  I did the opposite from you with emails: Stopped reading them for a couple of years as they had become too stressful. I couldn't face my inbox. It was because of a small number of overly demanding people that I worked with, I ended up in perpetual fear of overload from having to deal with yet another dreaded message, and the stress stuck after that. During that time I was still happy to talk with people face to face, phone calls, via chat, etc. It was only emails that I avoided. Eventually I returned to emails because the people stressing me had disappeared and because I'd found better tools to help filter my inbox; smart real-time filtered views essentially, to help with mental health. It turned email from something to be dreaded to something useful again. It wasn't just filtering out particular people. It was filtering by time and task with some automation. Now I don't find email stressful, but it's still secondary for me. I'd much rather have a voice call or video chat. I still don't understand people who love "async only" for work communications. Async is cool for some things, and I relate very much to the joy of not being interrupted. I will happily go for days without talking to anyone, focused on my tasks. But my email experience had people writing long and argumentative emails that seemed to require hours to reply to thoughtfully (or else consequences), and the back and forth felt like slow-motion difficult meetings where everything took much longer to be said than in a conversation. The adverse effect of those email on flow was much larger than some small interruption from a brief chat. My favourite thing now if something needs rapid iteration is scheduled voice or video calls about a single issue. I always liked them, but recently they have been rare, so they're a bit of a highlight. I keep telling myself to get back into being more involved with mailing lists, because that's where I used to be very active. E.g. on linux-kernel a long time ago, I scanned about 1000 mails a day, which was a little tiring but it was ok. But nowadays when I look at new projects, a lot of them have moved to various chat-like media, which doesn't stress me but seems to require an annoyingly large number of different tools to interact with, and have effectively more limited UI that lacks functionality because it's harder to make custom tooling to handle them. I like text chats when working with someone on a technical issue, for example debugging some code or a running system with them. Voice chat on headphones is pretty good too, as I can concentrate on things on screen at the same time, like pairing with someone. I don't like text chats when there's nothing else to do except the conversation itself though, as the timestamps show they go very slowly for what's covered compared with voice, yet just fast enough that it's not possible to pay proper attention while doing something else. I prefer faster conversations that cover more ground. For those, my favourite is voice, via headphones while going for a long walk.
jariel 6y ago
Do you remember life before the Internet? Because it reads as though maybe you don't remember. It's not that big of a deal, just put it away. You need your phone far less than you think you do, just put it away for some occasions, maybe don't take to lunch (or to work). Being 'homebound' is a great excuse to get rid of it: other than SMS, everything else can be had via the web, and the notebook form factor is not nearly so mobile. The 'problem' is real but the intensity I think is overblown. We haven't had phones for the last 10 000 years of civil evolution and 50% of people alive today remember quite clearly a time when we didn't have them and it was just fine. Finally: "The eventual goal is a rich life" it never was that, that rich. Reading, practising music, walking, watching TV, listening to music - it's not necessarily very 'rich' it's just different for the most part. The romanticized notion of what a 'rich life' is might be a little bit of the problem.
- d3nj4l 6y ago
  You’re missing GP’s point. The idea isn’t that you can’t live without phones - it’s that going cold turkey abstinence isn’t a good way to kick a compulsion.
  - jariel 6y ago
    I understood his point, I believe that he's way overstating the situation. I don't think he spoke specifically to the hyper-specific compulsion, but frankly I was: 'just don't take it with you' - or - 'put it away' and that will certainly deny the compulsion. You'll use it quite a bit less without thinking about it. It's not nicotene.
    - Bakary 6y ago
      I framed my thoughts based on my own struggles. As far as I can tell, I am not alone in this situation. Ironically, I would instinctively use the same arguments for nicotine that you are using for browsing addiction. On an emotional level, I don't understand why people won't just stop buying cigarettes because I can't directly relate to the addiction. But I know better than to dismiss it or look down on smokers since I have parallel experiences. Just like some generations grew up with the internet, other generations grew up with smoking being far more commonplace than today.
ehnto 6y ago
The trouble with Urge Surfing for browsing is my urges to browse are so quickly acted upon that there is never actually a feeling of urge to tip me off. It takes milliseconds for me to spin up a new tab and get onto reddit, and the vast majority of time that means I'm already subconsciously browsing and I won't notice. For me it took banning the sites entirely, so that when I am met with the "could not connect" screen I realise what's happened and I need to go be mindful so that I can get into an intentional mindset again.
diebeforei485 6y ago
How about just the using a small phone? The small text size would make it hard to use for too long.
cryptograthor 6y ago
Hard to disagree that no longer needing to distract onesself is the goal, but the difference between "be intentional in almost every action" and "be more mindful of actions, including picking up one's phone" is large. Intentionality in every action is not a useful framing for most people.
akavel 6y ago
Thank you for mentioning urge surfing! Googled it up, sounds interesting, never heard of it before; assuming it helps others maybe it will help me too! Certainly worth trying.
layer8 6y ago
Re urge surfing, I wonder if there’s something like aversion surfing. For me the urge is often triggered by an aversion to what I should really be doing at the given time. Thus not acting on the urge isn’t a complete solution, because it still leaves me with the aversion and has me seek some other avoidance behavior. Unlike the urge, which goes away by itself by “surfing” it, the aversion tends to subsist much longer, because you can’t sidestep the object of the aversion (unlike the object of the urge).
- Bakary 6y ago
  This exists, it tends to be the stereotypical advice of committing to just five minutes spent on the task, or the very first actionable goal. Both are connected to an underlying psychological mechanism of rewards perpetuating a dysfunctional behavior

by Bakary 6y ago

iainctduncan 6y ago

#4 is so on the money. Well put.

alexchantavy 6y ago
Yeah, phone is just a way of going on browsing-autopilot-mode. Without the phone I'd be wasting time on a desktop web browser scrolling through HN/Reddit, and many years before it was Digg and Slashdot. I like the advice of being intentional about your reading but eh, I enjoy passive browsing a lot.

hooande 6y ago

to follow up on your good points, any app or device that limits phone use is like telling an alcoholic to hide liquor from themselves. It obviously won't work because addiction is very powerful. There aren't any devices or particular techniques that can guarantee beating it. You just have to be ready to do it

sateesh 6y ago
This has not been my experience. Utilities like "StatyFoccussd", "ColdTurkey", "LeechBlock, "SelfControl" have been extremely useful to me. On any day I spend some 10-15 mins in idle browsing, and after feeling bit jaded I set up a block for next 24hrs or so. In the interim when I make attempts to do idle browsing, I am blocked and I don't go out of my way to fight those controls I have setup. It is quite possible for me to bypass the controls that I have setup on the machine which I have full control, but that simple message telling me that I am blocked acts as nudge to restrain myself. As an additional datapoint, recent versions of Firefox doesn't support the leechblock add-on, and my phone usage increased. But when the Leechblock control was working my phone usage was minimal. May be my addiction is not strong enough, but the utilities that enforce devices limits do help.

dasudasu 6y ago

It could be argued that #5 is just another form of distraction. Any form of "rich life" is mostly keeping the death anxiety at bay.

uoaei 6y ago
The difference is that you are replacing the negative with something positive. If you don't see your pursuit of a "rich life" as a positive that wins out over the alternative, it may not be as rich as it seems.
Bakary 6y ago
By a rich life, I'm referring to something that needs no further justification. When you are in this state, the need to contextualize, criticize, or philosophize about your experiences almost disappears. Think of a young child in a state of playful flow. Even if you fully take on the anti-natalist conclusion, the experience still justifies itself on its own, as an end in itself.
- scotty79 6y ago
  > When you are in this state, the need to contextualize, criticize, or philosophize about your experiences almost disappears. For me browsing and often gaming fulfills this description of rich life.
- dasudasu 6y ago
  So the perfect distraction?
  - Bakary 6y ago
    A distraction implies some other thing or state beyond it that ought to be reached or contemplated. But in this case, even if you believe that life is completely unnecessary and meaningless, there is no desire to end the state or seek to poke holes into it. You could argue for solipsism, that everything is a distraction from death, and all sorts of masturbatory ideas whose only logical conclusion is immediate and collective suicide, but this all tends to be short-circuited once your state is subjectively good enough to be self-justified.

root_axis 6y ago

> The eventual goal is a rich life where you no longer feel the need to distract yourself Indeed. When you're feeling anxious in your environment or depressed about the state of your life, the phone is a very convenient artifical void filler and one that's often well attuned to an individual's pycholgocial patterns of habit.

originalvichy 6y ago

I definitely have a browsing addiction. Learning things as an information junkie is addictive. What’s funny is that when I go for trips in the mountains with little to no internet I do fine. It is less like a chemical addiction and more like a habitual craving. If I have more interesting things to do I will not browse. If I’m bored though...

dead_neopets 6y ago
Habits are related to our environment. Your brain is probably wired to your current living arrangements and taking a vacation- with the added caveat that you know you have no internet- means no behaviors. This is why people can easily get sober in rehab and then come home and instantly relapse.
- _huayra_ 6y ago
  I actually used this tactic to break some habits when I moved. New living place did not trigger the same habits as the prior one, so long as I was careful to not "install" them again...
  - varrock 6y ago
    I experienced this. When I moved, my sloppiness and classiness improved tremendously. However, I've recently started to notice it getting back into its old ways now that I'm more settled. The benefit is that I'm much more aware of it, and am able to recognize it and address it instead of never noticing it to begin with.
Sargos 6y ago
Are you learning specific things for a passion, hobby, or job or learning random facts and TILs?
- throwaway77_a 6y ago
  I’m not the OP, but for me it’s a mix, usually aligning more toward the latter, just like this post which was delivered to me as a notification.

maqp 6y ago

Few more ideas: 1. When I quit Facebook, I first started disabling my account but that didn't work, at all. It just brought me back. Every time. I realized it wasn't a feature for deleting account, it was a pressure relieve valve for people who need a quick break because they felt the service had taken control of too large a portion of their lives. FB didn't want people to quit and they didn't offer such feature. I started by unfollowing my friends. In the process I saw FB's algorithms get more and more desperate in giving me dopamine spikes via the notifications earth symbol. "Friend of a friend is attending an event". Really FB? I then deleted all of the chat histories, sent my phone number to peers and asked them to contact via Signal/WA in the future. I then removed the friends and finally when I got enough of the few public groups I discussed in it was easy enough to let go. I first changed the email to some 10minutemail account, and then changed the password to something I didn't know. When I then hit "disable account", it was hard for FB to guilt trip me with "X Y and Z will miss you :((" -- there were no friends to recommend. All this sounds like a lot of work, and especially deleting FB's chats histories was, because the web client was buggy or "buggy". The chats kept coming back. But that made me want to delete them even more. Quitting FB made a huge difference in the quality of my life as it removed 99% of FOMO and envy wrt. my peers' lives. 2. Add the Leechblock extension to your browser. Set the tab to close every time you type the time wasting URL. It's a nice instrumental conditioning. 3. Quit services cold turkey when you can. "Use in moderation" sets you up for failure. This is because the services learn about your habits every day and they become extremely good at guessing what content keeps you in. E.g. youtube has recently switched to a new search function that improves its search results based on your previous searches. It's scarily accurate. Many of my peers said they noticed it too but didn't think too much of it. 4. You are being actively manipulated. The companies deliberately design the applications as addicting as possible. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11dYx_rW_Ks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11dYx_rW_Ks No wonder a smartphone -- that's a collection of such apps -- is so addicting. Realizing this and the fact the dopamine spikes are artificial, helps you a long way. This also applies to games. Every "headshot +100 points" is such a tiny dopamine spike. Games didn't used to have those. Your AoE villagers didn't announce "+1 wood" when their axes hit a tree. Consider such features in a game an attempt to manipulate you. If you can't disable the them in game, think of it as the insult to your intelligence it is, and uninstall it. If necessary, once such features are disabled, it's easier to see if the content of the game is a good way to relax and balance out the day's hard work. 5. Disable notifications from every app on every device. Notifications are a massive distraction. "I'll be reachable when it's convenient for me" is a good way to think about it. You'll be surprised how much stuff you can get done when you don't hang around in group chats, reading headlines, arguing to get Reddit internet points etc. for the entire day. 6. Catch up on the big news via Wikipedia's "In the news" section, not via news sites littered with celebrity gossip, craving for your clicks. It's dry for sure, but there's no better source in catching up with e.g. the ongoing conflict in Tigray. It's also easier to avoid trivial propaganda when majority of stuff is sourced, and people are keen in adding "citation needed" when there is no proper source.

closeparen 6y ago

I use SelfControl on my Mac when I need a serious work session. It always surprises me, when I tab to HN or Reddit and get blocked, how automatic an action it was. I’m never inclined to fight it. It never represented an actual desire to be there. There’s no deep longing to say “no” to. After the first few times being thwarted, it stops for the next several hours. I still feel the push “away” from what I’m trying to focus on, but it’s not “towards” anywhere in particular. So as long as I divert to something that’s itself not too interesting, I will tire of the diversion and get back to work in short order. It’s only debilitating when the diversion captures me for hours (looking at you, YouTube recommendation algorithm).

boringg 6y ago
I find the 'frequently visited pages' on safari on a blank new tab get me visiting those sites without intentionally going to them reinforcing the most frequently visited pages rank order.
hugocbp 6y ago
I do the same. I even used the terminal commands to change the granularity of the blocks and extend the length. And the same things happens to me. A lot of times I don't even want or think of going to HN, Reddit, Twitter. I'm just bored or frustrated and, almost unconsciously, I hit the shortcuts for Browser > New Tab > Focus Address Bar > Start typing n, r or m (for mobile.twitter.com). Some things that helped a lot with this, together with SelfControl, is to change all new tabs to a blank page and disable autocomplete in the Firefox navbar. That last one is not very good for everything, so it would be better to just delete those automatic sites from the suggestion list. I never really took the time to see how it's done of FF, though. To change the timings in SelfControl, use (sorry, it is a very very old note in Evernote so I don't have the original source anymore): defaults write org.eyebeam.SelfControl MaxBlockLength -int [maximum block length in minutes] defaults write org.eyebeam.SelfControl BlockLengthInterval -int [block length interval in minutes]
- saltyfamiliar 6y ago
  You should try Vimium. Shift-o brings up an omnibar and opens your query in a new tab.

brushfoot 6y ago

> 1. Inconvenience based solutions don't address the problem To some degree. But they do give space for alternatives to start to fill the gap. For me, a behavior modification strategy called narrowing antecedent control has worked well: restricting my phone and Internet usage to a specific spot in my office. I found I was reaching for my devices automatically throughout the day and night and would waste hours surfing without realizing it. Obviously, removing the distraction doesn't automatically resolve whatever underlying issue caused the user to compulsively seek it out. But you find you can't just do nothing, so you start to get creative, and alternatives start to appear.

PureParadigm 6y ago

In regards to (1), sometimes using the phone is both a symptom and the cause (in a reinforcing cycle). In my case, I would use my phone in bed before falling asleep to avoid having to confront thoughts I would have while drifting off since I could stay distracted until I was seconds away from passing out. Unsurprisingly, I would have terrible quality sleep (and I suspect many of the psychological problems mentioned in the article stem from problems phone addiction causes with sleep). Once I moved the phone to another room at night, I was forced to fall asleep without being distracted. Being alone with my thoughts was extremely uncomfortable the first few nights, but it got better. Now I'm used to falling asleep without distraction and am more in touch with how I feel. So my phone was causing me to become out of touch with my thoughts/feelings which would in turn make it even more uncomfortable to confront them, so I would turn to my phone for distraction and this reinforcing cycle continued until broken. The phone was both a symptom and cause of my sleeping problem, so removing the phone removed the cause and fixed my sleep.

laurent92 6y ago
This. My phone usage is linked with solitude on one side, and invasive negative thoughts on the other. I used to think about suicide and revenge all the time. I used to debate endlessly in my mind with people who used to try to list my defects and put me down (I’m white male with education in a leftist city). Now I think about nothing! Memes, variety of chats, news cycle, videos about plane crashes, engineering, building things, what a progress! People who recommend me to drop the phone have no idea what a hell it was. It is like drugs, it is like living in a fantasy where I’m not being put down for a few hours... except I’m not losing my teeth, I’m just losing time. From the article, which gets cause and consequence reverse by the way as all articles on the topic: > This is a huge problem because re-connecting with people in the offline world is a solution that improves the quality of life. Yeah, no, re-connecting with people IRL is not a good experience as a white male, we have to selectively choose people who don’t think we should first apologize for existing, and it is getting quite hard nowadays.

graeme 6y ago

> The solution that works with 1 and 2 is probably urge surfing as it tackles the issue directly So: 1. Feel an urge to browse or notice you are browsing 2. Pause and breathe. Focus on the sensations and thoughts that come to mind, then return to the breathe Anything else? And is the end goal to stop browsing if you are doing it? It seems like an interesting idea, if you had some practical steps I’d appreciate it as I’m not quite sure I’ve got it in this context. Edit: after searching around, found a good summary here. However, still interested in hearing comments from OP or others on how they’ve used this. Seems like a genuinely useful technique and I had not heard of it before. https://portlandpsychotherapy.com/2011/11/riding-wave-using-mindfulness-help-cope-urges/ https://portlandpsychotherapy.com/2011/11/riding-wave-using-...

Bakary 6y ago
Here are some more details. I used this to treat browsing addiction. Before that, I had to come to the conclusions outlined in the OP to direct my thinking about the problem. I stumbled on the term urge surfing by accident, and tried it out.[0] This video explains essentially everything you need to know about the topic. I used a guided audio meditation sequence in the beginning as it was harder than I expected it to be. I do not have the link to this, but it should be easy to find one. It can be an uncomfortable process as you realize the full extent of your predicament and the strength of the craving. But after a while, it works exactly as intended. You then gain confidence in knowing that cravings can abate on their own no matter how strong they feel at the onset. I have used the same broad concept to attenuate OCD symptoms and related anxiety. The counter-intuitive idea behind all this is that by rewarding your anxiety with a certain behavior, you are training yourself to feel more anxiety down the line. Therefore the opposite must happen: putting yourself into situations that directly confront the anxiety and withholding any reward. This is the same exposure and response therapy that is used to treat phobias or generic social anxiety, though obviously without the careful guidance of a trained professional. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wdsJayLhnM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wdsJayLhnM
- graeme 6y ago
  Thanks, super interesting I’ll try it. And what’s a long run goal for, say, hacker news and device use? Rich life is a good goal but what does the day to day look like of using the internet as part of that? Or is simply not doing it based on urges enough?

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

I wouldn't say I was addicted to Phone to start with as my job involved interacting with phone all the time, but after I had to shutdown my startup due to health issues I made some deliberate lifestyle changes which has reduced my phone interactions to negligible levels/day and some of which can help overcome phone addiction too. • Notifications I have a smartwatch mounted to my desk[1] which displays notifications as an when it arrives and since most of the notifications doesn't require urgent action; interaction with the phone can be avoided. Of course this can work with smartwatch on the wrist too, but having it mounted on the desk limits interaction with the watch itself. • More email My primary mode of professional communication has been email for past two years. No voice calls, No chats, No video calls just email. Avoiding real time communication has improved the quality of communication and my mental well-being in general by reducing anxiety. It does cost me several business opportunities, 'Sorry, I don't do calls, can we communicate via email' has become downright insulting especially during this era of 'Zoom'. But that's the price I'm willing to pay for better mental health. Fortunately email remains the last pillar against 'Mobile First' ecosystem and environment amidst several attempts to change it. When the availability of a smartphone is taken for granted from education[2] to COVID-Free Passport, using cellular connectivity is passively mandated (Mobile Number for unique identity, OTP[3]) I don't think it's even possible to someone to throw away their phone without some serious regulations mandating that freedom. [1]https://abishekmuthian.com/butt-pomodoro-a-butt-triggered-pomodoro-timer/#demo https://abishekmuthian.com/butt-pomodoro-a-butt-triggered-po... (A project which shows the said desk mounted smartwatch). [2]https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-underprivileged-education-poverty https://needgap.com/problems/149-remote-education-for-underp... (How the availability of smartphone, taken for granted has affected education - Disclaimer: It's my problem validation platform). [3]https://twitter.com/heavyinfo/status/1343461028256833538 https://twitter.com/heavyinfo/status/1343461028256833538 (My tweet thread discussing mobile number for identity).

jlokier 6y ago
I did the opposite from you with emails: Stopped reading them for a couple of years as they had become too stressful. I couldn't face my inbox. It was because of a small number of overly demanding people that I worked with, I ended up in perpetual fear of overload from having to deal with yet another dreaded message, and the stress stuck after that. During that time I was still happy to talk with people face to face, phone calls, via chat, etc. It was only emails that I avoided. Eventually I returned to emails because the people stressing me had disappeared and because I'd found better tools to help filter my inbox; smart real-time filtered views essentially, to help with mental health. It turned email from something to be dreaded to something useful again. It wasn't just filtering out particular people. It was filtering by time and task with some automation. Now I don't find email stressful, but it's still secondary for me. I'd much rather have a voice call or video chat. I still don't understand people who love "async only" for work communications. Async is cool for some things, and I relate very much to the joy of not being interrupted. I will happily go for days without talking to anyone, focused on my tasks. But my email experience had people writing long and argumentative emails that seemed to require hours to reply to thoughtfully (or else consequences), and the back and forth felt like slow-motion difficult meetings where everything took much longer to be said than in a conversation. The adverse effect of those email on flow was much larger than some small interruption from a brief chat. My favourite thing now if something needs rapid iteration is scheduled voice or video calls about a single issue. I always liked them, but recently they have been rare, so they're a bit of a highlight. I keep telling myself to get back into being more involved with mailing lists, because that's where I used to be very active. E.g. on linux-kernel a long time ago, I scanned about 1000 mails a day, which was a little tiring but it was ok. But nowadays when I look at new projects, a lot of them have moved to various chat-like media, which doesn't stress me but seems to require an annoyingly large number of different tools to interact with, and have effectively more limited UI that lacks functionality because it's harder to make custom tooling to handle them. I like text chats when working with someone on a technical issue, for example debugging some code or a running system with them. Voice chat on headphones is pretty good too, as I can concentrate on things on screen at the same time, like pairing with someone. I don't like text chats when there's nothing else to do except the conversation itself though, as the timestamps show they go very slowly for what's covered compared with voice, yet just fast enough that it's not possible to pay proper attention while doing something else. I prefer faster conversations that cover more ground. For those, my favourite is voice, via headphones while going for a long walk.

jariel 6y ago

Do you remember life before the Internet? Because it reads as though maybe you don't remember. It's not that big of a deal, just put it away. You need your phone far less than you think you do, just put it away for some occasions, maybe don't take to lunch (or to work). Being 'homebound' is a great excuse to get rid of it: other than SMS, everything else can be had via the web, and the notebook form factor is not nearly so mobile. The 'problem' is real but the intensity I think is overblown. We haven't had phones for the last 10 000 years of civil evolution and 50% of people alive today remember quite clearly a time when we didn't have them and it was just fine. Finally: "The eventual goal is a rich life" it never was that, that rich. Reading, practising music, walking, watching TV, listening to music - it's not necessarily very 'rich' it's just different for the most part. The romanticized notion of what a 'rich life' is might be a little bit of the problem.

d3nj4l 6y ago
You’re missing GP’s point. The idea isn’t that you can’t live without phones - it’s that going cold turkey abstinence isn’t a good way to kick a compulsion.
- jariel 6y ago
  I understood his point, I believe that he's way overstating the situation. I don't think he spoke specifically to the hyper-specific compulsion, but frankly I was: 'just don't take it with you' - or - 'put it away' and that will certainly deny the compulsion. You'll use it quite a bit less without thinking about it. It's not nicotene.
  - Bakary 6y ago
    I framed my thoughts based on my own struggles. As far as I can tell, I am not alone in this situation. Ironically, I would instinctively use the same arguments for nicotine that you are using for browsing addiction. On an emotional level, I don't understand why people won't just stop buying cigarettes because I can't directly relate to the addiction. But I know better than to dismiss it or look down on smokers since I have parallel experiences. Just like some generations grew up with the internet, other generations grew up with smoking being far more commonplace than today.

ehnto 6y ago

The trouble with Urge Surfing for browsing is my urges to browse are so quickly acted upon that there is never actually a feeling of urge to tip me off. It takes milliseconds for me to spin up a new tab and get onto reddit, and the vast majority of time that means I'm already subconsciously browsing and I won't notice. For me it took banning the sites entirely, so that when I am met with the "could not connect" screen I realise what's happened and I need to go be mindful so that I can get into an intentional mindset again.

diebeforei485 6y ago

How about just the using a small phone? The small text size would make it hard to use for too long.

cryptograthor 6y ago

Hard to disagree that no longer needing to distract onesself is the goal, but the difference between "be intentional in almost every action" and "be more mindful of actions, including picking up one's phone" is large. Intentionality in every action is not a useful framing for most people.

akavel 6y ago

Thank you for mentioning urge surfing! Googled it up, sounds interesting, never heard of it before; assuming it helps others maybe it will help me too! Certainly worth trying.

layer8 6y ago

Re urge surfing, I wonder if there’s something like aversion surfing. For me the urge is often triggered by an aversion to what I should really be doing at the given time. Thus not acting on the urge isn’t a complete solution, because it still leaves me with the aversion and has me seek some other avoidance behavior. Unlike the urge, which goes away by itself by “surfing” it, the aversion tends to subsist much longer, because you can’t sidestep the object of the aversion (unlike the object of the urge).

Bakary 6y ago
This exists, it tends to be the stereotypical advice of committing to just five minutes spent on the task, or the very first actionable goal. Both are connected to an underlying psychological mechanism of rewards perpetuating a dysfunctional behavior