Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Others have given good replies about how to fill the void, and I encourage you to explore those. I’ll stick to commenting on blocking.

It sounds like you went completely cold turkey, and it worked fairly well. You truly had no electronic use outside of work?

If you can manage that, and you live alone, there is a simple solution: unplug your router and modem after work. Plug it back in before work. Then put your devices in a drawer.

This has actually worked for me, where other blocking systems have failed. The physicality and totally of the unplug do it. But it is usually difficult as most people need some access at home. If you truly don’t, this total block option opens for you. You’ll prob have to temporarily give up your data plan as well.

There are other options to block in software, or at a technical level on the router.

You can track your success with this plan on paper. Maybe one piece of paper always on your desk. Write a description of why you’re doing it, then make a “don’t break the chain” calendar and mark it off for each day. You can use this as a log too of how it’s going.

The advantage this system has is you have to consciously choose to plug in, unlike digital systems where you can sort of drift into disabling it. If needed, you can also keep a physical log book on the router to write your checkins, or have a friend try calling you to see if it’s working. (You can keep a voice plan on your phone. Without data or wifi the phone won’t be very addictive most likely)

I think the issue here is that it's so easy to make excuses to plug it back in, and it's so easy to walk over to the router to do so.

When I left my devices at work, whenever I had the urge to go on the internet at home, I would realize it would take me another hour commute to get there and back, and that wasn't worth it.

Right. That sounds fairly severe. Addiction level.

And yet, some people do manage to go cold turkey. And cold turkey is generally easier than a approach based on limitation.

Your one strength here is you know you don’t really need the access, as you already did it. If you want to google something or message someone you can write it down on paper, and handle it in the morning.

Perhaps this truly won’t work. In which case, would any software/hardware restriction work? They can all be circumvented, and fairly easily for someone technical. If you can find one will hard time based limits, that might work. Freedom, or Cold Turkey may be that, I’ve never looked into circumvention difficulties.

But then again, if you really want to try, could you treat yourself as an addict, say there are no real excuses, and force yourself to call someone if you desire to plug it in? Or even say you will plug it in for 10 min for a true emergency but unplug and tell them you did?

I don’t know. All of us have different psychologies. You’ll have to consider what has a chance of working for you. But I’ll end by saying that with a conscious choice it is possible to make a change, and it is often perversely easier to do this at a low point.

Edit: actually, the other commentor’s suggestion of a timer box seems extremely promising. You may want a dumb phone or a landline for emergencies if you do that though. But it has two elements: 1. Impossibility to circumvent 2. Physical separation

Edit 2: one thing that might work is Beeminder. You pay if you fail to meet the goal. And they have a weasel mode.

Cold turkey works, it worked for me dozen of times. Of course until i relapsed:)

Something that I've heard of people doing is getting a timer box. Basically what it is, is something that locks for a designated period of time.

When you're done work you can pop your stuff in it, set a timer for 16 hours or whatever is necessary then you can't access these things at all.

Here's a rough link to what I mean (https://www.amazon.com/Kitchen-Safe-Locking-Container-Height...)

Amusingly, I tried this approach. What I found is that I would make up any excuse to not lock my device in the timer box.

Seems like my addiction runs very very deep.

It sounds dumb and it's not how addiction works, but it might be worth just will powering yourself into it the first time then going with the calendar chain approach to try and not break your streak.

Even if you fail every once in a while, it'll be an improvement to what you're describing now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com