Really good advice. I tried blocking some sites but whenever my 'bad side' comes up again, I always find a way to get around the block and visit the site anyway. Any recommendations on blocking a site indefinitely?
Now that it was in my face it wasn't about working around myself, bit rather deciding if I actually wanted and had the will power to do what I had claimed I wanted to do.
So, if you really want to reduce mindless browsing and find you can't and little strategies end up being ineffective, perhaps the opposite might be a worthwhile strategy.
All the best.
When the object is out of common sight, you only encounter your self-defining vice moments when you're at your most vulnerable (because you willfully sought the thing out).
When you bring yourself into more frequent contact, you provide yourself with more training opportunities when your willpower is greater (because maybe you're already busy, or happy, etc).
Thus, even if you fall victim to the poor choices you're trying to avoid the same number of absolute times, you've drastically increased the number of times you make good choices. And the percentage of times you choose good choices over bad.
Counterintuitive, but I like it!
When I was 18, I worked at a produce clerk at a middling grocery store. Day after day of stocking fresh fruits and vegetables while watching the same customers (and even my co-workers!) come in and eat the same horrid prepared slop really motivated me to lose weight.
I lost 50 pounds in 2 months.
And also, speaking from experience, please, never attempt to lose 50 pounds in 2 months; my lung popped. Fortunately, I survived.
to my mind, an effective blocker is extremely important and far superior to using willpower to resist your bad side. the fact is that when gratification is impossible or really difficult, you don't need to spend any willpower at all, you can just count on your other bad side, i.e. your 'lazy' self, to kill off the social media impulse. when a little person inside you says "go check out facebook!", previously you yourself have to step in and say "no, f* off*!" but now you can just sit back and watch with quite amusement as another little person (your lazy self) steps up and say "nah man, it's too much trouble" —— and bam! the impulse is gone.
the ego depetion theory in psychology may have turned out to be less empirically well-founded than people think, but personally i found it to be very useful. avoid using willpower as much as possible. instead, cleverly design your environment and play the little bad people inside your against one another to your advantage.
Just don't look under the hood of how it works - anyone reading this and familiar with the app please don't comment saying how to circumvent it).