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Comment by mvieira38 | Hacker News Reader

If you stop using your phone for anything other than communicating (yes, not just the loose "stop doomscrolling" advice) a lot of these will come naturally. It will lead you to using a real alarm clock and not using your phone after going to bed, which will make your sleep schedule that much more consistent, and also improve quality of sleep. These will probably give you more motivation, which you'll need because the time you used to waste on the phone now needs to be occupied by a real hobby, and here comes language learning, chess, music, etc.

(not saying you specifically are a phone addict)

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> These will probably give you more motivation, which you'll need because the time you used to waste on the phone now needs to be occupied by a real hobby, and here comes language learning, chess, music, etc.

Man, that "probably" is doing a ton of heavy lifting.

And the causality is the opposite in my experience. I view my smartphone as a maladaptive way of self-soothing. Locking away my phone just means I'm left with unchecked anxiety I can't think myself out of, and I've only deprived myself of one more method of addressing it (nonoptimally).

People without constant stress have less temptation. In times where my anxiety is the lowest due to sheer circumstance, any reason I have to doomscroll vanishes and I can then occupy my time with a hobby. But it's not because I chose to do away with my phone that I'm able to do so, it's because I didn't have to spend all my time and effort fighting stress. The less stress, the closer the "choice" gets to being a no-brainer, entirely automatic.

In econometrical terms it would be "double causality", as it forms a vicious cycle. Using your phone to self-soothe leads to not developing real hobbies, which leads to more isolation, which leads to more phone usage.

Say you decide you're now a chess person. Instead of doomscrolling before bed you find relaxation in the meditative study of chess games for an hour a day before going to bed and now you use your phone only as an alarm. You join your local chess club to play IRL during weekends and attend some classes too. What were the effects? Well, there are the proven long-term cognitive benefits of learning and practicing chess, there's the immediate cognitive and emotional benefit of a larger social circle and a community, and medium term you'll feel good about yourself for achieving milestones (getting to 1000 ELO, winning the weekly tournament, etc.)

None of that would have happened if you had stayed on your phone. You probably already invest just as much time on it as you would in chess in this scenario, but it has no ROI, it is designed to suck you in.

> Man, that "probably" is doing a ton of heavy lifting.

I think "giving you motivation" isn't the right way to frame it, but "probably" isn't doing heavy lifting. More like providing the affordance that wasn't there because the phone took it away and convinced you that you didn't need. Like a typical drug addiction or pretending you don't need to make friends because you have colleagues.

People are spending the amount of extra time on their phone every day that it takes to raise kids, so if you've never figured out how to allocate that time effectively, it's a good place to start.

Misread chess as cheese and I'm down with that as a new special interest.

> If you stop using your phone for anything other than communicating (yes, not just the loose "stop doomscrolling" advice) a lot of these will come naturally.

People before 2007 slept, exercised, ate well, socialized, reduced stress, learnt a language, played chess, meditated, avoided sugar, limited screen time, and reversed the entropy of the universe.

They 100% socialized more and slept better, I think. People used to have hobbies, too, at the very least watching TV and movies and talking to others about it... Lots of people nowadays just get home and do nothing but scroll

Are you commenting this using a phone?

Work computer. I only check news (including HN) during business hours, to protect myself from unnecessary stress

But how to do that?

At the risk of being simplistic and reductive... you just... stop.

Unless it's calling or texting, what you do via phone can almost always be done on a computer/laptop. Allot a certain time of your day/week for handling life shit via a desktop or laptop, and a certain time of the day/week for reading news. Limit it to just that timeframe, and try to keep that timeframe small. Avoid social media as much as you can within that.

Honestly, the only way I found is to go cold turkey and really focus on hating the smartphone and "always online" culture. Reading up on the dangerous effects this stuff has on us and our children really helps with motivation, too. You won't stick to it if it's just for a specific reason like improving sleep or trying to read more books or whatever

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