Turning my smartphone into a boring productivity tool | Hacker News Reader

Turning my smartphone into a boring productivity tool

maximevaillancourt.com

I've seen hacks like this, and have used them myself too.

However, suggesting this to friends (and myself) I see two things that undermines the process, that the metric used here does not catch.

1. Usage over a long time span is usually not a "decline" but a "wave-like" pattern. aka rebound, or substitution. You remove one distracting app, stay productive for a week or a month, then rebound to same or another app. Repeat process.

2. Substitution through other media. As this one said, "use laptop/PC for mindfully using Social Media", this sounds really good, but in practise usually given time, returns to mindless browsing. That's how we work, our brain constantly tries to push things we have to do mindfully to an automated "mindless" process. The tricky thing with this is that, we usually don't consider the process "mindless" until long after it have become an mindless process.

It would be interesting, if you can observe your usage pattern over longer time-span. Not just Smartphone but also your PC/Laptop and observe if you truly have reduced your "distraction" time.

Thank you! I definitely observed a similar pattern using distraction blockers; it worked for a while, but after a while I just ended up wasting just as much time, except on different websites or on devices where the blocking wasn't enabled.

The real "cure" is just mindfully deciding not to open "unproductive" apps and sites. Otherwise, my time-wasting workflow (hah) just naturally adapts after a while.

It's amazing how quickly we adapt to get around hindrance, even if that's something we created for our own benefit.

I wonder how you could get around this? Maybe a huge blacklist and deliberately messing with sites randomly to the point it become too much of an issue, e.g. making sites load very slowly; breaking css, images randomly, etc. Something like netflix's chaos monkey?

I use userstyles to browse in black and white, 11px regular font, and no images:

    https://userstyles.org/styles/137906/s-somesites-black-white
    https://userstyles.org/styles/107911/o-small-text-hide-images

Less colorful websites -> less time browsing.

That would actually make browsing far more pleasant for me. MMMV.

I've tried delays too, but it ends up being almost the same, because I just associate opening reddit/hn/youtube on my computer with the delay and discomfort - so I open it on my phone or another computer.

If there's a way to circumvent it, it just becomes muscle memory at some point later.

I don't use my phone much. But I have been mindlessly browsing on PC. Last week, I started an experiment of switching off internet for 5-6 hours during work days. It's been good so far. Somedays I couldn't switch off, as my work required internet.

I did observe myself trying to reach for social media sites, refreshing pages, etc even with browser closed. I was able to change that and now take breaks more often. But yeah, like you mention, the challenge is to see if I can sustain the habit for longer period. I can already see some change in behavior around switch on/off time to catch up as much as possible.

I've been coding a bunch on a Pinebook Pro. Using the browser is painful. Not painful for looking up documentation/stack overflow/other sources. But on a JS heavy site it's miserable in comparison to a Chromebook, my phone, or any other computer I own. I'm much less likely to go on Mastodon/Reddit if the experience isn't enjoyable from a usage perspective.

Damn, I spent a week and a half on HN... again !

(Noprocrast setting, here I come !)

I think that the key here is persistence and self-forgiveness for setbacks.

You have a setback and return to mindless browsing. Don't drop it all. Note it mentally, review how it happened, make any necessary adjustments, forgive yourself and get back on track.

Some weeks will be total trainwrecks, but the key is to get back on the track, back onto your long-term game plan ASAP.

Gradually, your behaviors will shift with this persistence.

self-forgiveness is definitely a key, but also analyzing the failure fairly is also tremendously helpful. Trying to remove all distraction, and going on/off on a "wave-like" rebound pattern is very common, and sure persistence might help for some.

A slightly more fool-proof approach is to try to do a introspection on "how" and what part of the distraction you are coming back for, and gradually remove these.

For example, I had problem with Facebook long time ago. I tried to delete it from phone, block news-feed on browser with extension, but still couldn't get rid of it entirely. After a bit of introspection, I realized checking facebook is actually not a problem at all, getting stuck on it was. So, I took my time to analyze what part of facebook did steal my attention. I pin-pointed it down to a couple of news pages, group & liked pages, and about 90% of my friends posts. So I blocked all the news pages, groups & linked pages, unfollowed 90% of my friends.

I still check facebook, but each time I check it, its about 20-30 sec MAX, and since the content is 99% boring or insignificant, it doesn't steal my attention at all. When facebook became this to me, deleting it (and NOT re-installing) from the phone became a very painless process.

Hacker News is my new hit though.

I didn't have to put much effort into not using my phone much; it happened organically. I think there were several reasons:

- When I moved to the Iphone X, I stopped using it so much, because it is just annoyingly large. It is awkward to use, so it doesn't come out.

- I do not use anything from the "social media" surveillance outfits, so have never had that clawing at me.

- And after setting up somewhat paranoid monitoring on my home network, I became aware of just how gossipy some apps I naively trusted are, and deleted them. (If you share data with anything not needed for function, or with any of the surveillance shops, I will not use your app.) That cut almost all the time-wasters.

At home, which is where I am now almost all the time thanks to the plague, it lives on a table, like phones used to. When it begs for attention, feeding it becomes something I do when I get up to stretch or get coffee instead of being a reflex.

At that point feature phones also strike a very good balance. Personally 99.9%[1] of things I could do on a smartphone theoretically I can do 10x better/faster/more conveniently on a laptop, so I just better off postponing the action.

[1] Disregarding bad actors who force you to use a phone app

An interesting point for the upcoming apple silicon macs.

They'll be able to run iOS apps natively, so I think that may indirectly help the bad actor situation.

You'd actually easily be able to use either an old iPhone or something completely different and still be able to use an app when a company requires it.

Is there a TOTP app for KaiOS that works well? If so I might actually look into this at some point, the other day I thought about it and the only things I need on my phone are hotspot, Spotify and TOTP. And texting, I suppose.

My phone is always on completely silent mode. It doesn't even ring when someone calls me.

Instead when I've got a call the LED blinks and people know I'll call them back once I've got the time and notice it.

For messages (whatsapp, mail, whatever) I generally only catch up on them once a day.

I don't know how other people can tolerate allowing others to annoy them whenever they feel like it, or deal with the incessant notification noises.

Especially software developers, mathematicians, etc. How do they have time to think and focus when they're interrupted every few minutes?

Yeah seriously. Why isn't it obvious that the way to resist distractions is to turn ... them ... off?

For communication, async is the key. For mindless entertainment, cut off any way said entertainment has of interrupting you. Even Android allows you to turn off notifications now...

I do the same, but recently my mom asked me a question I didn't really know how to answer. She asked, how she's supposed to contact me if there's an emergency. I countered that I don't think that I should be the Single Point of Contact for an emergency, because that's the job of the Police, Ambulance etc.

I thought about this question a lot, in the end I think it's a classic "But what if the worst case happens"-situation, and that my mom and I both are right in our own ways.

What do you think, HN?

I rely on the "let call through if it rings twice within 5 minutes" feature and I let calls on selected contacts through. My family almost never calls me unless its urgent (we communicate over IM and other channels), so this solution is almost as perfect as it can be, I think.

That's a very good idea! Will probably implement this on my phone, thanks :)

On iOS, at least, there’s a setting where you can allow repeated calls from the same number to “punch through” do not disturb mode. I think it was introduced around the same time as auto-DND at night.

IIRC there's also one where you can allow favourite contacts through.

A PagerDuty family account?

Maybe I could buy a pager for every family member, haha.

>She asked, how she's supposed to contact me if there's an emergency.

Mine's got a setting where it rings normally when someone calls me 3 (or was it 2?) times in a row. So in an emergency just keep trying.

Yeah, this is probably the solution, thanks :)

"Mom emergencies" aren't always first responder type emergencies. They could be family emergencies she needs to communicate with you about, or (if my mom is any indication) her being in a time-sensitive situation where she needs to rely on your expertise for something.

Or many, many "mom emergencies" that are not emergencies at all, but that she feels are.

If you're using an iPhone, you can change the Ringtone and Vibration settings for individual contacts. The setting is called Emergency Bypass[1], and it's at the very top when you enter the ringtone/vibration selection screens when editing a contact. It'll bypass both Do Not Disturb mode as well as Silent Mode. I wouldn't recommend using it for the ringtone because then literally every text/call will always ring, but turning it on for vibration may reassure your mom that she can reach you when she's in need.

I'm notorious for putting my phone on silent temporarily and accidentally leaving it like that for days at a time, and I ended up doing that for my mother. She knows how much my phone drives me crazy, and when I let her know I did that for her, her reaction told me it was more meaningful to her than pretty much any bday or Mother's Day gift I've ever given her.

I very quickly turned it off for the ringtone, because the novelty of it made initially overwhelm me with a constant stream of random messages and calls (which subsided after a while). But left it on for vibrate. Although I haven't mentioned that update to her...

[1] https://www.imore.com/how-receive-messages-specific-contacts...

I don't know if I can set it that specifically for Android, but I know that contacts can be excluded from Do-No-Disturb mode. I'd that this could be done for a specific apps and contacts. So if my mom writes me on WhatsApp, it stays silent. But if she calls or writes an SMS, it goes through.

I actually haven't seen or touched my phone in over a week. It's plugged in hidden away in my apartment but my Apple Watch seems to last a whole day if it's on the office wifi and I can take calls/do some really light texting/look at my calendar but using it for anything long winded is too much of a chore.

I'm hoping this cures me of using the phone to fill every tiny moment of downtime.

When the LTE Apple Watch will be launched here in the Netherlands I’m hoping to try the exact same thing

Yes, we are still waiting on iWatch’es with LTE enabled...

Yep, same here. I got my very first Apple Watch last month, and it has /drastically/ decreased my phone usage. Sometimes I go out to run errands without my phone, paying for things with Apple Pay on the watch. It's liberating.

I do still bring my phone around though, mostly for the camera.

There are some things that are infuriating about the watch though, when it feels as if what I want to do is artificially constrained by the software. Why can't I copy and paste a link to send in a message? Why can't I simply read a podcast description? Why do podcasts refresh seemingly at random?

Other than a few niggling frustrations, I'm extremely happy with the watch.

The blloc.com phone was supposed to be that "human-centered" smartphone, but I think they're now building a launcher for Android instead, which isn't that bad at all, and looks like a slightly better version of "Unlauncher": https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bllocosn

This is a good list of things to try. But data from the first week isn't very telling. I'd be more interested in how its going a month from now.

I do a number of things the OP does to try to curb "wasted" time. I would add the following:

I have no social media on my phone and the only game is: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/

Really hard to get addicted to but enjoyable enough if I actually want to spend a few minutes playing a game.

I use this on my desktop: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/intention/ Anytime I notice a website that I habitually load (mindless) I add it to the list. Then I get a pop up asking me how much time I want to spend and showing how much I've already spent. Surprisingly effective.

I would also challenge the assumption that screen time is automatically "wasted". A lot of the time I spent on the phone yesterday was reading wikipedia or a book. This time was enriching. I also spent a lot of time refreshing politico. That was not enriching. Oh well.

I'm trying to recognize when I'm feeling the need to waste time and choose a healthier activity. Stepping away from the computer to stretch, take the dogs out, etc. Usually if I'm procrastinating there is a physical or emotional need that I should be addressing. Mindlessly reading HN (or whatever) is just a distraction from what my body is trying to tell me.

> I have no social media on my phone and the only game is: https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/ > > Really hard to get addicted to but enjoyable enough if I actually want to spend a few minutes playing a game.

Every morning I empty my bowels while playing Filling. Or the occasional Range or Light Up.

Flood, Untangle, Pattern(10x10), standard 15 size Fifteen, Net at 7x7 or 9x9.

So much appreciate that these got an Android build. Installed on every phone I've ever had.

One of the decisions I made a few years ago that I’m most happy about was to turn off all notifications on my phone. I kept badges for a few apps so I can check on status at a glance, but my phone hardly ever beeps or buzzes when it is just sitting there. It’s been a huge relief and helped productivity.

I added a few back in over time by using the VIP feature of mail, since I have a few colleagues whose emails I never want to miss. But overall, it is up to me when I check on things on my phone. Negative consequences have been nil and positive consequences have been many. Can’t recommend it enough.

Nice article. Inspired me a little also.

Aside: Caught the typo "step sis" towards the end of the article. Little Freudian slip. ;)

I do this for years with my phone, nowaday I mostly use it for OTP, photo sharing, and browsing reddit in between shifts. It's a dumb smartphone tbh.

I switched off all notifications a while ago, for everything but calls and direct texts/IMs. Together with keeping my phone on Do Not Disturb all the time and only allowing vibration/rings for callers in my contacts, it has absolutely reduced my notification anxiety. I have also gotten rid of social media apps and every other app where I could be using a web browser instead.

I would highly recommend it.

My issue is FireFox. I can't not have a browser on my phone, but at the same time, it's what leeches most of my time!

I guess I was fortunate to never get sucked into mobile like I did computers. For me, the phone's always been utilitarian. I use it to take pictures, text friends, make calls, and occasionally check email or search the web when a computer isn't handy. And I use it for navigation/mapping when I'm travelling, and on the rare occasions I drive, I listen to Spotify.

For comparison, in the past week, I'm just over 7 hours of use, with 5:45 in Messenger, and most of the rest split between mail and the camera. I suspect messenger is only so high because I leave it running and unlocked during conversations. Every notification (18 per day, 126 total) was a text message or a phone call.

Removing apps and using web shortcuts instead for things that are time wasters both improves your privacy and leads to less use of these apps and more productivity (that's been my experience at least).

Ideally switch go Graphene OS if your phone supports it.

I recently broke my old iPhone and already knew I wanted the smaller new one that's about to come out so I got the cheapest ATT brand (yes, they actually make their own branded phones, no they are worse than you would think) Android, the phone is a pain to use. Texting is hard, opening spotify is a chore, unlocking isn't instant, and it's made me way more mindful and apprehensive about unlucking my phone. It just being bad, has made me a better more present person and I'm honestly now going to wait to go back to a "real" phone so the habits I'm learning stick

> Enable grayscale display mode to reduce the enticing effect of the apps icons’ bright colours.

Or you could just not have any icons on the home screen at all.

Use T-UI instead:

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/ohi.andre.consolelauncher/

I actually find it much easier to use than the icons. I just type a few characters, sometimes just one, usually only two or three and T-UI finds the app for me.

I'd take a feature phone if they gave me the features I need. I use a smartphone, with almost no distracting apps. The distracting apps are ones I worked on, so I carry them as portfolio pieces. Beyond that, I spend maybe a few minutes a day interacting with my phone. All notifications are turned off. No social media apps. Almost all Google apps disabled/uninstalled. It is refreshing.

Hey I recently went through the same thing. I switched to an iPhone SE 2020 from a pixel 2 XL (I needed a new phone, wanted iOS, and wanted a finger print reader). I basically didn't allow any notifications when setting up my phone and it has been freeing.

I have strict notification settings on my iPhone.

1. All banner notifications are turned off (this might change if you can swipe up to temporarily hide them like on Android).

1. Only a couple of important messaging apps (SMS, Signal) give me real notifications: the phone vibrates and they appear (hidden) on the lock screen.

2. Other messages like Slack and get delivered to the notification center, but can't appear on the lock screen.

3. Notifications that I need to eventually respond to are set to badge only. The badge count annoys me so I eventually look at it, but notifications that I'm intentionally delaying don't busy up the notification center.

I've found that this only somewhat works and also drives a new behavior. Previously I wouldn't check my phone unless I was bored and wanted to read something like Twitter or Hacker News. Now, however, I'm grabbing my phone often to see if I had quiet notifications delivered.

In some ways this is worse than just letting the phone buzz. The mental distraction from thinking "I have have a Slack message" seems to loom more than the knowledge that something came in that I'm ignoring in order to focus.

Additional recommendation: install an ad-blocker such as Blokada and blacklist your most distracting web-sites like GoogleNews

Any recommendations for blocking YouTube ads on Safari?

1Blocker works well!

thanks a lot for this! I will try to use it! It will turn my phone less appealing, I drown too much into it. These two are awesome. Actually when I bought a new phone with no notification light my screen time decreased x2.

Disable notifications for most everything. Delete social media apps and mindfully using them on the laptop/desktop instead.

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