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Comment by eradicatethots | Hacker News Reader

While this may work, I think you should try to work on your self control instead of these absurd mechanisms- or perhaps Facebook isn’t as bad for you as you live decided it is? If you like it so much, perhaps it’s doing something good for you, right? Cavemen didn’t have much to go by but feelings, and they did ok for themselves.

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Some people have weaknesses. Alcoholics should avoid bars instead of constantly testing their self-control.

There are times to focus on self-improvement, but in the meantime, we can’t halt our lives to do so. Appropriate time and place.

Ok, but that doesn’t mean it’s ok to say something like this and then completely neglect the underlying issues. Even if they’re not urgent, if you’re not working on them you should expect they will never get better on their own. That’s why you shouldn’t just ignore these things. Plus, I’d bet on them becoming bigger problems if neglected not smaller ones. It’s tough stuff but running from it seems like bad advice to me.

If you leave something really long enough, you will stop needing it. Of course you may have relapse, but, never stop trying.

I did something similar with gaming. It works.

I had the problem of needing Facebook. I found I was checking it every few minutes, sometimes as often as twice a minute, so I decided that I was going to demonstrate some self-control: I closed my account.

You're absolutely right - after the first few days, I stopped thinking about checking it all the time. After a couple of months, I stopped thinking about it at all. A few years later, I don't even think about it most weeks. Every now and then, I do find myself thinking that I should open another account and that it will be different this time, but deep down I know it won't be.

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