Using a mild Twitter addiction to get things done

I have tried this many times in the past. The problem I have had with internet addiction is that the phone itself is the cue, craving, response, & reward. I had to resort to locking my phone in one of those timed kitchen containers to make any progress.

It's sad to admit I do this, but the only way I've found myself to make a clear barrier is by having a physical barrier. I've tried shortcuts, VPNs, mindfulness apps, etc. Nothing really sticks if it's on the phone itself.

On-top of that, having to give each device a job has worked wonders as well. My phone is my personal/entertainment device. I don't need it majority of the time if at all. My computer on the other hand is my work device where I do the things I should be doing instead of endlessly scrolling (coding, writing, etc).

Screentime on macOS can show you how many times you pick up your phone and it makes me quite sad to see the numbers before doing any of this. There are other apps that count how many times you open a specific app like https://apps.apple.com/us/app/one-sec-take-a-deep-breath/id1... which reveals the same thing on an app basis.

With the nicotine addiction the best method fighting it was Alan Carr's in which you don't rely on your willpower but on your perception. There's a monster in you that feeds on nicotine and it wants more nicotine. With each cigarette you make it happy and you depend on it more. Or you're just a fly falling down the tube of a carnivorous plant and with each cigarette you keep saying it's fine. Such analogies change your perception on how you look at nicotine addiction and helps you overcome it. Of course brain's rewarding mechanism and all the other related neurological/psychological concepts are important too but basically when you try to stop yourself from doing something (like, not smoking) then willpower kicks in and the success rate drops significantly whereas with perception you'll have a better chance.

I see a similar problem with Twitter/TikTok/etc addiction. Only with them the issue is, the more you give from yourself to the platform the more you are addicted to it. I'm not addicted to Twitter, for instance. I follow 70-80 folks and am followed as similar but every time I post something I feel the need/urgency (such as nicotine withdrawal) to follow up, either to check the likes or the replies or whatever. Our brains are so dumb and our egos are so fragile keeping the distance becomes a challenge of its own.

I don't recommend anything. Just keep your minds free.

I have never been able to use Twitter. Once I follow more than 30 people the feed is quickly overran with total nonsense and I delete the account.

I honestly can't imagine what the feed looks like if you follow 1k people plus. It has to be nonsense at the millisecond level. The signal to noise just scales so badly. There just isn't that much interesting things going on in real time.

This is a cool idea but I am going for a walk right now and listening to an audio book. I am really looking forward to the walk and the book. A tail to keep the flies away I am sure is nice but to me it is just better to delete the flies completely. My walks are the most peaceful part of the day for me. There is no motivation needed if you get rid of the overexcited storm of nonsense from Twitter.

This is really cool! Tho I've found it really hard to not just disable these self-made barriers when the urge overcomes me. I guess the trick is to create sufficient _additional_ barriers to disabling the (initial) barriers so that it becomes too costly vs. the 'hit' of the initial bad habit. I feel a more realistic blocker might be to increase the latency of these habits, so that they're in that sweet spot between accessibility and inaccessibility where usage is kind-of naturally regulated. Slowly demyelinating those quick-hit dopamine-infused pathways! :P E.g. imagine setting up an ISP level enforced latency for social media. Would that work?

On Android, you can achieve just the "scheduling" aspect of this (restricting access to certain apps to certain times of the day/week) by using the "Digital Wellbeing" area of the Settings. Enter the "Focus Mode" settings, and you can add "distracting" apps to a list, and then set the Focus Mode schedule to disable the apps on that schedule.

Yes you can get around it by tapping a button, the intent is more to make you realize that you are checking Twitter, rather than 100% preventing you from checking Twitter.

Shortcuts is my favourite new thing in ios. I only wish there was some way to get screen time data. I have never installed these endless scrolling apps in the first place, but I find myself using the mobile web version more and more. The data is there within screen time but no reliable way to read that from API or shortcuts. The app time limits are not in steps so I find them insufficient as a barrier.

There's actually worthwhile evidence on how the new internet works to keep you addicted.

I suggest reading through tiny habits by bj fogg (who's work is largely influential in this space) and turning it around to protect yourself from any addictive impulses you may have.

https://www.bjfogg.com/

There's also value in prevention.

For example, I've never used Tiktok in my life. I can't get addicted to it when I don't know what I'm missing. So I've internalized it as "silly teens dancing" and a "Chinese data grab", regardless of whether that is accurate.

This works for me. Clearly, nothing of importance happens on Tiktok, as in the real world I never hear anybody about it. So at best I would be missing out on entertainment, but I don't have a lack of that, I have too much of it.

I do use Twitter, where I also had the excuse to "stay on top of my industry". It's bullshit. Every industry has hundreds of weekly newsletters you can pick from that summarizes anything of significance.

You don't follow these experts for their insights, you're addicted to the timeliness and unpredictability of it.

Twitter is dangerous, it gets you addicted to hate and outrage. Uninstall it and never look back.

The simplest and most effective hack I’ve found to curb my Twitter usage is to just log out every time I’m done browsing and set a time once I log in on how long I want to spend scrolling. If I’m logged out, it prompts me with the login screen and I have to really decide if I want to spend time on social media at that moment.

I’ve done something similar but without tech. I used my coffee addiction to form a meditation habit. I made a rule for myself. No second coffee until I meditate. My meditation habit became very regular.

[Disclaimer: newbie here]

Wow, I had never ever opened the Shortcuts app. But I had heard about IFTT [If This Then Than] which sounds like a similar app.

Is there a website to help us find existing Shortcuts workflows? Or a tutorial to (let's say) put a new reminder in a google calendar automatically[]?

[]: my current need, that seems not to be covered by the Reminders app itself :-(

Wow, I think this is a really good solution if it works for the author. Using same cue's to trigger more useful action.

I've been fighting with bad habits all my life. Sometimes successfully.

The social media addiction is the hardest to fight.

Here is what works for me (not at all times): 1. Remove social apps and only use browser 2. Enable two factor auth and only keep two factor app on your laptop 3. Change password using password generator and don't save it.

With all the above it makes it really hard to log into the social network.

Now when you are done with the social media app, replace it with something useful: I replaced it with Google Books, and now whenever I have an urge I open a book instead and read it. Much better than meaningless scrolling. Alternative app - Google Keep. I use it for writing blog posts.

Can imagine extending this to Oura Ring (or similar) data

"Sorry, your heart rate is already too high, no social media for you"

> All this is nice, but obviously, it can be bypassed. Nothing stopping me from simply disabling the automation, then no more nagging.

That’s the problem with this solutions for me. If I don’t have the willpower to stop myself from using the phone, what’s preventing me from disabling the nag?

The only thing that’s ever worked for me, and it’s amazing, I highly recommend it and should do more often, is go somewhere where there’s no internet connection. No celular signal, no Wi-Fi. A single weekend can do wonders.

> iOS, by itself, weirdly does not have any APIs for looking for workouts in its own “Fitness” app like this, so the top block is a third-party app..

No need for third party app at all!

https://kevingrahl.de/temp/shortcuts.png

Point for me with all these blockers is the time before you access the app. You can get your mind together in these couple of seconds and decide that it's not good for you to go mad scroller mode again and instead close the app.

Love this way of thinking about mild addiction. This is the basic premise of a web extension I made.

It’s blocks addictive websites until you’ve finished your to-do list. But crucially, when you try and go on those websites it redirects you back to your to-do list.

It’s a little rough round the edges but it could be useful to anyone suffering with this problem.

https://prodtodolist.com

Obviously it’s free, no ads, no data collection etc. the Firefox version is having issues at the moment.

Personally, I save TikTok for each night when I sit on a reclining bicycle in the gym and exercise for an hour or two. I've stolen the weight routine from Flywheel so it isn't all legs either.

I do watch some Chinese lessons and electronics repair and cooking recipes and finance tips on there as well as the lighter content, though, so it isn't all pure entertainment.

Since the author prefers walking, maybe another option would be to put Twitter and TikTok just on an iPad and mount it to a treadmill.

Ah, if only my "self" would be so docile.

I used to have a few of my vice sites blocked on the "Hosts" level on windows. Unblocking this had enough friction for my self to not do on a whim, but them we came to the realization that Google Translate (with "Show Original") can be used to get Google to show me the site from the unblocked google domain...

To my shame I actually did that absent-mindedly over and over, and that was the end of that little experiment.

A restriction I put on myself early on that has served me VERY well:

No social media on the phone, period. Also, no notifications from anything that doesn't come directly from a human I know personally, to the extent possible.

Don't worry, you can still waste huge amounts of time on the computer too, like I do. :) Seriously, I'm relatively comfortable with my facebook/twitter use, though even that I need to adjust.

Uninstalled twitter off my iphone, a great way to reclaim your life and your sanity, also noticed my stress levels dropped ;)

Having similar problems. Most of us do, I suppose.

Complex solutions or these "digital well-being" things do nothing for me.

Instead, I install as few apps as possible and use the web version instead. My browser regularly flushes the cookies, so I gave to log in for most things and it resets all the recommendations.

To top it off, no charger in the bedroom.

There's no such thing as an addiction to a normal stimuli. Addiction is a medical word that should be reserved for people dealing with the problems associated with taking chemicals that directly alter wanting/desire in the brain. Even "gambling addiction" is just a relic from an uninstrumented past and really should be removed from DSM-6 at this point.

Saying that internet addiction exists (something you won't read about in credible professional journal) is done by for-profit institutes that want you to pay them to talk about and handle "internet addiction". Or by useful ignorants with unrelated incentives.

I get that this guy is just joking around about "addiction" and his approach to dealing with his own motivations seems realistic and useful. But when people start calling something "addiction" and meaning it it inevitably leads to the use of violent force by governments and restriction of freedoms. The "internet" is not addictive and even pretending it is only emboldens the ignorant and malicious.

For Android users I can recommend using the "Unlauncher" as home app. It's a simple and minimalist text only launcher that limits maximum 6 apps on the home screen and so all the shiny and addicting icons and animations are gone. You can find it on F-Droid or Github.

Focus Mode on iOS keeps getting better and better. I use it aggressively to limit all kinds of things, not just social media. It gets annoying when I need to legitimately open a locked app, but the benefits have been extremely worthwhile.

Wow, such a simple idea but I can totally see how this works (for me).

Struggling with a 'mild' scrolling addiction myself and this might be a nice middle ground between deleting apps alltogether and not having guard rails.

About a year ago I broke the Facebook doom scroll habit by setting an iOS shortcut to open a HN in a browser instead. Now I habitually doom scroll HN. Adding an element of incentive is a much better idea.

I did something similar to stop myself from constantly browsing YT and Reddit although with simpler rule:

- Opened on main page or just a subreddit? It's for mindless browsing then! Therefore `window.stop()`

It's a small thing, but turning my screen to greyscale reduced my daily screen time by 25% and didn't impact any functionality. It just makes it slightly less interesting to use.

I like this. I have really terrible willpower, to be able to set rules for what I want to do without having to consciously make the decision each time sounds great

Does anyone know how to use a moderate-to-severe HN addiction to get things done?

Side note, really like the layout of the site. Nice.

How do people do this kind of scripting on Android?

There is a much simpeler, though less flexible, way to block certain apps and websites... namely the iOS ScreenTime setting.

I think progress would be to use terms like 'mild' and 'addiction' in different sentences.

great piece. Shortcuts are pretty cool, I find the ssh function super useful.

Twitter is addicted to you.

What will it take for Twitter / TikTok to take responsibility?

I deleted my twitter account. I realize I miss out on some stuff but the wasted hours per week were really starting to add up. Its just not worth it.

Sheep