A good way to get started (for me) was to quantify how much time I was actually wasting. I started using RescueTime[0] and realized how many hours I was wasting on sites like Reddit and HN. Just being able to see that was a good motivator - but it wasn't enough on its own. I then started using StayFocusd[1] to limit my time on sites that don't contribute to my happyness/etc.

After a couple weeks of StayFocusd, I was very rarely spending more than my allotted one hour from 8am-7pm on those sites. And I realized. I'm not missing out on anything. I have spent 10 hours less browsing those sites in the last week and I don't feel like I've missed out on anything. Instead, I had 10 more hours of my life to do things like read books, exercise, and get things done.

[0] https://www.rescuetime.com/

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankej...