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Comment by msgodel | Hacker News Reader

I think you'd be surprised how a little bit of difficulty can be enough to break binge cycles. I killed both my hackernews and reddit addictions years ago by just adding them to /etc/hosts. It was easy to change and sometimes I did but that was enough that I didn't dwell on those sites anymore.

Recently I've written a chrome extension that does this much better. Hopefully it gets approved today or tomorrow. Maybe I'll post it to show HN.

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Convenience is the biggest drug of them all, if you can break that then you can go a long way to breaking a habit. Even just putting up minor inconvenience can help slow the habit formed behavior.

If you have a food addiction, remove all the pre-packed easy stuff. If you have to cook a meal to get the calories, you now have a step speed bump to the habit. It doesn't mean you cannot eat, it just stops that grab and go mentality. Same thing with the fridges of the internet (social media).

Similarly, convenience (reducing resistance) is the biggest factor in sticking to positive habits. Here’s an article on applying this to strength training: https://matt.might.net/articles/hacking-strength/

> I killed both my hackernews and reddit addictions

You can quit your Reddit addiction by commenting on Reddit. Reddits is a hellscape... I'd rather be browsing 4Chan.

Reddit is so dependant on the subs you're in. Some are pretty pleasant, some promote argument, some are just silly, some offer valuable advice. Any sub with too many people tends to deteriorate but there's loads of fun niche subs still.

Your comment is on HN, you want to talk about HN, on HN.

How can we be sure you aren’t just an average guy when it comes to self reflection?

/etc/hosts works great. A dedicated device for browsing such content is useful too.

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