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Comments (42)

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  CommenterPerson
  Here are some things I try: Turn off location services except when navigating or calling the taxi. Use browser, uninstall as many apps as possible. Use adblocking anti tracking browser (I use Duck, alt suggestions welcome). Report unknown / unwanted senders as spam.That said, I am a NEWS ADDICT. There are four world leaders whose downfall I eagerly await, and frequently check the news for this ;-) .. you might be able to guess three but not the fourth.
• bix6
  I use triple click accessibility on my phone to enable grayscale since I need colors sometime.
• academic_84572
  For me, adaptive friction has been very helpful - allow access to distracting apps/sites, but make them progressively harder to use.For phones, ScreenZen is great at this. Makes you pause before visiting an app or site, and you can configure the pause to grow each time you use it. You can also set a timeout on the app. Very flexible settings.For desktop, I recently built a free browser extension called MooBlock - it's similar to ScreenZen in that it adds a forced pause before you reach a distracting site. But once you reach the site, a herd of cows start walking all over your screen to make the website less appealing.It's available in both the Chrome and Firefox extension stores. Hoping to make an Android version later this year too.Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/mooblock/eanbagjehd...Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mooblock/?utm...
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  rglover
  Putting in blockers and the like helps, but what I've found worked best was to consider this quote by Anthony DeMello:"When you fight something, you're tied to it forever. As long as you're fighting it, you’re giving it power."When I learned to stop feeling bad/guilty/thinking this was a problem to solve and just let my mind drift, I found that my mind naturally learned when it was disciplined work time vs. browse the internet time. Personally, I noticed that when I didn't have any artificial restriction, I was less inclined to waste time on those things.In practice: "oh, my mind doesn't want to do that other thing right now but it does want to go look at this thing; let it." The more I've loosened my grip, the less distractions have affected my productivity.
• specproc
  None of this has ever worked for me. I still struggle.What does help is understanding that the problem is often me. Not that the internet isn't a hellscape of addicting design, or that I've not been flex to screens of some sort or another since childhood, but that my level of engagement with it scales with my general wellbeing.In the recovery world, they talk about HALT: hungry, angry, lonely, tired. I'm worst on my devices when I'm one of those. Oh, or hungover.Content blockers and greyscale and whatnot are all fine, but I've had most success looking away from technology to help.I still suck at this, I bet a lot of us do, but knowing myself has been most helpful. Being able to understand why I'm doing it helps me break the circuit and engage more with other things.It's an ongoing battle though, I hate it.
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  _ink_
  I also need a solution for my addiction. I was thinking of blocking all addictive apps in my main (phone) account and set up a kids account for myself where all the drugs are installed. Then I need to ask myself for screen time. I hope this is annoying enough to not switch accounts constantly. If that doesn't work, I need to give another person the control over the screen time.
• krupan
  Using newpipe instead of YouTube helps a lot. It makes YouTube pretty boring. Plus you can just download the few useful videos that you use for reference over and over and only browse through those
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  ViktorRay
  Some more good advice:Turn off your YouTube watch history. This disables video suggestions when you open the website or the app.
• hankbond
  Related, I just did an experiment to see if I could do away with color for syntax highlighting and I was pleasantly surprised that it was not a total failure! For grayscale-on-the-computer this may help if you enable that for focused work sessions.https://hank.bond/posts/highlighting-my-code-based-on-how-mu...
• hemmert
  I made a browser for this: https://leash.ax/ – it cut my own screentime to two hours per day. Boring, in a good way!
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  Gecko4072
  YouTube's only goal is to make more money. Most YouTubers' only goal is to get more views. Sure it can be useful but that's a perfect excuse to live on forever. People were fine before YouTube, and you can learn anything from words an images.I recommend taking a page out of the FSF's book and just straight up not using it, because it doesn't respect its users.
• ikesau
  Blocking recommendations is the one thing I'd add to this list. You can easily do so with uBlock Origin, and it's made the biggest difference for me.Water still finds cracks, but it's about reducing the likelihood and increasing the time between binges (so that they mentally register as necessarily intentional and abnormal)
• sheepcow
  I configured uBlock to hide comments and suggested videos from YouTube. Couldn't recommend it enough. I don't miss either of them and now (usually) only go to YouTube to do something useful.Edit: Forgot to mention I also blocked Shorts. In fact, I forgot they even existed. I guess the medium is the message. Short and forgettable.
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  owisd
  If you've got an iPhone/Mac I recommend Apple's free Apple Configurator tool to lock down your phone to only the set of apps you whitelist and/or route all traffic through a VPN/Proxy that whitelists only certain IPs. You can only change the whitelist when you're physically back at your Mac so prevents me impulsively relaxing the restrictions in any moments of boredom.
• surya_waters
  Internet is so much noisier these days. Even hackernews has become much noisier in the past year or so. These days i only visit hackernews every couple of days or so towards the end of the day, and use youtube occasionally after work and on weekends. I have shifted to more analogue media like paper books and vinyl.Self Plug : If someone is interested, I built a plugin for youtube called Flowtube - Distraction free youtube on chromestore http://tiny.cc/w4s9101. It blocks all comments, recommendations, sidebar and homepage.
• Sha1rholder
  I uninstalled some of my additive apps and enabled gray scale after reading this... Hope it helps- from a phone addict
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  MarkusQ
  You might want to try coding in monochrome as well occasionally. Syntax highlighting can be useful, but it has hidden mental costs.
• reckoner99
  [flagged]
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  colincowardly
  The internet is a rich tapestry of human knowledge and experience. When I scroll Instagram, I often discover incredible new artists who present in human form. Once you start tapping like on things, the journey of discovery is almost biblical.The secret is learning to use your tools to bring joyful moments of surrender into your otherwise mundane existence.