- Count to 10 so that your higher self is engaged. Now ask yourself “do I need this to achieve my goals?” The answer can be yes or no, of course.
- You don’t have to avoid using the phone completely. You can answer yes at times if it’s justified. Just be able to intervene between the phone and your intuitive addictive self, and make a conscious decision.
PS: I don't know a solution. Maybe meds, people suggest visiting a doc, but since I'm a professional at distractions I've yet to try it.
At some point, it's just easier to learn to be passionate about things that matter vs trying to be too disciplined.
I was still tempted to waste time on my laptop, so I turned off every functionality (i.e. javascript) on pages I was visiting, and I added custom rules on adblock, so it's too many steps to enable everything again. On pages I wanted to visit (Linkedin due to messages from recruiters) I added restrictive custom adblock rules that only allow accepting invites and replying to messages.
I noticed I was becoming badly addicted to reading news and watching videos, also to chess. And somebody here adviced just to cut it off. It was good piece of advice.
Chess is the first step toward delinquency and madness.
Chess leading to madness - I think I get the joke here, and well, who knows, some grand masters have gone mad (although I'd guess some will dispute if there is clear link between madness and chess).. but delinquency? I'm not native English speaker so maybe I'm missing the full meaning of this word but translator tells me this word is clever way of saying 'crime', how on earth would chess lead to crime :) (other than, if played on paid time it is, well, crime of a sort, but same as browsing through social media).
https://gizmodo.com/chess-was-once-deemed-a-menace-to-societ...
Since the OP said they had to block chess because of phone addiction, the joke is just replacing drug addiction with chess. Chess (drugs addiction) leads to delinquency and madness.
To disable the extension. Do some multivariable calculus and a bit of discrete mathematics to find the nth prime of some random hash the extension gives you.
If that doesn’t stop you from powering on your device until the next day. I don’t know what will.
Also, IMO, phones aren't worse than what my parents' generation did to waste time which is watch TV.
I'd argue phones are much worse. The TV stayed in one spot in your house and you had to share it with others. You didn't put your TV in your pocket and take it to work with you then put in on your desk. You didn't take you TV with you on dates or social outings and check it when you where bored. You didn't fiddle with your television while you where driving, etc., etc., etc.
If you knew someone who watched a lot of television in the 1990's, they perhaps where in the presence of a television 8 hours a day. That's a lot. However, by contrast, if you had your phone with you 8 hours a day and locked in a drawer the rest of the day, that you put you among the lighter phone users among us.
Though there are some dark patterns used by social media to promote it, that's kinda true. In that sense it's more like social media addiction.
Of course TV also had its dark patterns. Like the cliffhanger.
Settings->Accessibility->Display&Text->Color Filters
And you can activate with triple-click of side button also
Settings->Accessibility->Accessibility Shortcut->Color Filters
I was inspired by the recent Hacker News thread that talked about decreased attention span https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31874846 (My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention span)
My hypothesis is using phone for reading books is much better since it can be done in chunks at a time and is less addictive than watching video so I'm using my smartphone for long-form book reading.
What worked was uninstalling and deactivating social media, Facebook, Reddit, anything with sexy pictures (women/food/gaming). Also the instant gratification stuff like videos of people dodging death or people doing dumb stuff then getting punched in the face.
Now I don't have to think too much about using my phone.
Having a replacement activity helps a lot.
It's interesting. It used to be that some addiction programs with the same idea but for drug addicts was to have them smoke a cigarette if they had an urge to do drugs. Yes, it helped with the drug addiction but they got hooked on cigarettes. You sort of wander if it was a solution.
The idea is it makes everything less attractive on your phone.
And of course, turn off as many notifications as you can. (Sometimes I'll even power it off, and only power it back up when I need to do something.)
Will you stop it with your “goals”?
Is calling your mom helping you achieving your goals? Is drinking with friends moving you forward in any way? Should you sing in the shower, or should you listen to the latest “how to get vc funding” podcast episode?
Yes.
> Is drinking with friends moving you forward in any way?
Possibly not.