Hacker News Reader

Comment by nobrains | Hacker News Reader

But its more than that.

I might visit Reddit and Hacker News, not because the app summoned me via notifications, but because my brain summoned the app, after just a 15 minute hiatus.

The issue is that browser and certain apps are available to me on the phone instantly.

And there are no good controls to help me me MINDFUL.

What I want from the phone (I use an iPhone): - Upon every unlock, or upon every app open, I should receive a popup asking me why I want to use the app/phone. - I can enter whatever I want in that popup, but that writing exercise of a few words will help me realize if I am making a mistake of using the crack-gadget too often. - I should be able to white-list apps. - I should be able to see my logs all in one place for later review and reflection.

View on HN

Hey, I'm the author of this small post. I was surprised to see it on HN.

> The issue is that browser and certain apps are available to me on the phone instantly.

I think you are right, and it has to do with decreasing UX friction: quick unlocks, overall performance, and muscle memory. I try to add some layers of friction, such as disabling tap to wake, or forcing password unlocks, or even browsers that offer a good but less smooth experience (eInkBro on Android could be one to try.

Overall, I think it helps me to go through apps occasionally and ask myself, “Is it an infinity app? Could I use this forever without content exhausting itself, or a purpose never being fulfilled?”

It's a demanding exercise in deliberate usage, and it can't always succeed (at least for me, I'm not that strong.)

I wish there were a good AOSP eInk phone to still use all the necessary everyday apps, but slower. The new Assistive Access simplified display mode seems very interesting on iOS from a UX perspective:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/05/apple-previews-live-s...

Adding friction with time-based bandwidth choking/restrictions I included as a feature when creating SocialsDetox, albeit this was primarily intended for video-based sites/apps - to increase frustration with them (poor user experience) rather than outright blocking. If you think it would help, and are happy to be a tester for expanding the functionality to other infinity apps/sites (e.g. Reddit), drop me an email (link in profile) and I'll look to get something setup to see if it works for you/your intended use case.

Screen Time does that, minus the input box.

"Always allowed apps appear normally", others are grayed out. When tapped they present a fullscreen "time out!" screen. You can ignore the limit from that screen but it presents you options and requires two or three taps so it kind of "gets in the way". I presume your input box could fit in there, although personally I think I would end up filling it with nonsense, or it would always be the same.

There's a bunch of analytics, like first pick up app. I don't think there is about overrides.

It can sync across Apple devices so you can't cheat by using another one.

Combine that with home screens + Focus modes and you can get in control.

(also "apps" above can be websites too in Screen Time")

Two habits I have implemented in the last few months:

1. I appended "iknowwhatiamdoing" to the existing alphanumeric password to unlock my phone, and disabled fingerprint unlock. I have to type that every time I want to use the device.

2. I've started asking myself "Does my phone need to remain powered on?" The answer is usually no; then I shut it off completely. This adds a couple minutes of delay / friction next time I feel the compulsion to use it.

Now, I routinely go an entire day with my phone shut off. Sometimes entire weekends, depending what's going on. I think it's been good for me!

Edit: I also realized that it's hazardous to use my phone as a wake-up alarm, because then you start every day half-awake with the info-drug delivery device already in your hand. It's too easy to stay in bed and open up Youtube. So, I've switched (back, after 20 years!) to using a dedicated alarm clock.

One of the worst decisions I have made, in my life, was purchasing Apollo for reddit, that's how good the app is. I have scrolled about 40km with my current reddit account over 40 days. Honestly, I don't want to know how many total.

I have tried setting up screentime, but I need a hard lock mode...

Apple allows you to setup focus modes with whitelists that use location and time, that might do the trick.

I installed the “one sec” app suggested in a sibling comment. I tried opening it about 25 times in the previous 7 hours.

As the old saying goes, there is an app for that. Here you go : https://one-sec.app/

Amazing! It even has the functionality I was looking for: https://i.imgur.com/usvP6Xq.png

>> I should receive a popup asking me why I want to use the app/phone

This looks very cool, although I went to check out their browser extensions and the permissions(!)

> This app can read and change your data on any website

For the extension to handle prompting you before you go to a site, it has to know you went to a site and then show the prompt on it.

It would be nice if browser permissions were expanded on in greater detail with newer apis to handle different cases (and if Firefox and Safari could join in supporting unified standards here for privacy reasons), but for now such permission is required.

Chrome offers the ability to limit that per designated sites.

You can use Apple own shortcuts app, so you decide if you want to give permissions for the browser or not. I even think you could make your own automation for the browser if you so wanted.

Pretty much every browser extension can/must do that.

Shuffle your app icons to different locations on the the home screen. Added bonus to folders.

Because all apps are in the same locations your muscles memory kicks in. If you shift your apps regularly, you actually have to hunt for the app disrupting the psychological behaviour conditioning.

It also gives you a mini panic attack but allows you to break free of the whole close app, reopen same app syndrome.

Focus Modes let you have different Home screens at different times of day. That can give the brain different context moments that kick muscle memory in different directions.

I found that I spent more time on Reddit and Twitter than I wanted to. Scrolling on those apps was becoming a coping mechanism for avoiding unpleasant tasks. So I decided that I could only use those apps on a certain day of the week. On that day, I am free to go crazy and scroll all I want but outside of those days, I don't allow myself to open them at all. The first 2 weeks were pretty hard but once I got over the hump, I've gotten used to the new normal. There are still some days where I struggle not to fall off the wagon.

This experience has taught me that you can reset your brain to whatever normal you want. It's hard but doable. I'm not someone that has a ton of willpower but have managed to keep to this for the last couple of months.

Perhaps the "focus mode" different home screens feature could do the trick?

I've found Work and Personal focus modes on iPhone very helpful for cutting down on two of my mindless habits: checking [social media app] during work hours, and [work IM client] at evenings and weekends. The modes are scheduled to automatically kick in at the right time, and so far, so good.

It's a pretty simple setup: one set of home screens for each mode, silencing non-work notifications during Work focus, and snoozing work email during Personal focus. Although writing this, I realise I ought to look at blocking Reddit and HN websites...

I think you should try out one sec https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/one-sec-delay-apps-focus/id153...

It helped me a lot with my addiction to Instagram and the one second breathing helps put things into perspective. I end up (90%) of the time not opening up the app after my one sec.

simplest thing to do is to just put your phone away in a drawer in another room. Keep any distracting gadgets out of where you work, sleep or spend time with other people.

There's really no need for yet another app or trick, just putting distracting devices out of reach is enough of a hassle to only use it when you actually need to.

I'm prefacing this by saying I'm not affiliated in any way, but I found it very humorous that you basically described the app One Sec (iPhone only I think) to a tee. It uses uses shortcuts to put a barrier of your choice before opening specific apps, writing down the intention being one of them. The concept is pretty great (I actually tried building something similar using shortcuts before it existed) but in the end I found that it doesn't really work for me unfortunately. When my brain decides it wants to look at something, delay isn't enough to make it reconsider. So ymmv but I think it's worth to try it out.

I think you may be interested in something like this: https://www.getclearspace.com/

Awareness etc. don’t do it. Only solution I found to work (on me) is complete forced restriction of every time-sucker thing on the device-level.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com