Apps to fight apps has never worked for me. When I'm bored/tired enough, it becomes a game to disable my own restrictions.
What works for me is removing the antecedent completely by charging my phone in another room at night.
Now the battle is easier: Decide once a day to put it there, and track how many days you succeed.
For me that's a lot easier than having it in my pocket, where the Internet is always a couple lazy taps away. Now I at least have to walk to it if I want it, and that often "breaks the spell."
I finish work and chores hours earlier when my phone is charging in another room, without consciously doing anything else differently.
It really makes me want a 1980s-style cellphone with no screen and big physical buttons.
I ended up building a nice charging station right near the entrance. It has storage for keys, wallet, and other things to grab when heading out. It has an abundance of wired and wireless chargers for all devices.
Then I got a dumb (but nice) alarm clock for the bedroom.
Then I noticed that a common reason to pick up the phone is to check the calendar. I ended up hanging a monitor on the wall, displaying the family month/agenda calendars. It’s read only, but it prevents a lot of device checking.
Cannot recommend enough restructuring physical reality to not have device on your person at home. It also helps the kids to put theirs away and learn good habits.
You come off as snarky, but I kind of agree. We tried this first.
It turns out digital collaborative calendars are pretty great for us in general, there is no chance in hell I could keep the analog one up to date, so it was definitely worth having a screen on the wall.
Not the GP but I use a simple wake up light alarm that was a game-changer for me in winters when a blaring alarm yanking me awake to a pitch-black room was not a great way to start the day, especially before going out into the -40° cold to scrape my car off.
A half hour before the alarm goes off, it slowly gets brighter which I find simulates the sun rising enough to be a more pleasant waking experience. Plus I set the alarm sound itself to bird chirps, starting with 1 or 2 birds and growing into a whole chorus (I'm usually up before then)
I personally use the Braun, because it does not have a snooze function. Just one big button on the top to turn it on/off. Run on a single AAA battery for months. Only problem is no backlighting, so no way to read time in the middle of the night. For me that's a feature not a bug.
https://us.braun-clocks.com/collections/clocks/products/bc12...
Not op but I just got a home-pod mini and just ask Siri “Hey Siri - set an alarm for …” or “Hey Siri - what time is it”. Added benefit of not having a glowing LED light in my room at night
great until I add something to my digital calendar when im out and I forget to update it, or my wife adds something to her calendar and doesnt use the shared calendar :/
I am currently working on a phone designed to reclaim the digital toolbox nature of the smartphone- access to maps, messages email etc, but with an e-paper display. There are some (albeit not so interface friendly) e readers with SIM cards, but I think there is great power in just having a screen that doesn't vibe with the oversaturated video and image based distractions we are so used to lugging around with us all the time.
One of the most interesting things about a hardware based restriction is that it entirely avoids the game of turning on and off apps or deinstalling them. Even if you want to respond to a message in your DMs in Instagram, it will work, but the temptation to pull up the Reels or For you page just isn't there when it's all black and white and choppy.
Mind you we are super early stages but the idea feels promising and by my own testing I have really found it to be a much more pleasant phone experience.
I'll post some links here if people are interested.
> I think there is great power in just having a screen that doesn't vibe with the oversaturated video and image based distractions we are so used to
Similarly (easier but less drastic) I’ve seen people turn their phone to grayscale mode to make the device less engaging and remind you that it’s a productivity device, not an entertainment device. On iOS you can do this through the Accessibility settings. (Settings > Display & Text Size > Color Filters > Color Filters on, Grayscale
It’s possible to create a (greyscale) color filter toggle, as well as time based or app open/close activation with the iOS “shortcuts” automation: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W32pf_97onM
didn’t open the video, but you can also set double or triple tap on back of your iphone shortcut for this. i have a red filter set up for late night doom scrolling
I tried grayscale for a few months but it changed absolutely nothing. Videos are just as good as it turns out.
I would give a try to an e-ink based smartphone if there was a good one. The only reason I got a smartphone in the first place in 2020 was access to maps/taxi/banking apps which would work with any display. But given the grayscale experience I wonder if you get used to laggy e-ink videos as well.
Android's Digital Wellbeing also has an option for Bedtime Mode to enable greyscale mode (along with do not disturb etc.). I find that really useful and it also has a sort of snooze option in the notifications if you quickly need to disable it for a short period.
Another option: a touchscreen, but with a mechanical backlight. What I mean by that is a little string you pull that spins a magneto that momentarily powers the backlight, maybe for 5-10 seconds at a time. This frees the battery from a major source of drain (hopefully comparable to e-ink) and also has a built-in limit to how much screen time you get. Eventually anyone would get tired of pulling the string. But it would be plenty for a map or sending a text or email.
>Apps to fight apps has never worked for me. When I'm bored/tired enough, it becomes a game to disable my own restrictions.
You see, I've actually had some success with using Blocksite on my phone and blackholing things on my laptop by editing /etc/hosts. Of course if you have the access to put these filters in-place then you'll have the access to remove them, but the time it takes to fire up the blocker on my phone and disable it or to pop open a shell and type "mv /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.bak" is time enough for me to go "Am I actually accessing this because I care about some particular piece of content or am I just trying to plop myself into the dopameme stream?" It's not about 100% physically preventing myself from accessing these sites. It's about interrupting the flow. I used to have a problem where I'd be doomscrolling FB or TikTok in particular, realize that I haven't had any actual fun in about half an hour, close the app and exit the loop for a second, start looking for something else to do and then compulsively open the app again and start doomscrolling. Getting rid of the apps and having the web version default to being unavailable has made it so that I can still do the social part of social media with real people who send me content that I actually like and want, but I can't do the completely antisocial part of social media where robots send me content designed to piss me off and frighten me so that I interact with them and their masters get money.
I think there's one common element between our two approaches though: intentionality. Whether it's opening up a second app and disabling it, or walking into the other room to physically pick your phone up, there's an intervening step that allows us the space in which to go "Do I actually want this?"
The big downside that keeps me from using it is that you need to whitelist the contacts you want to be able to call/text, and can’t add new contacts in assistive access mode. Sad, because it otherwise looks perfect as a distraction minimizer.
I agree with this. No computer or screens in the bedroom, read a paper book; no phone - "but my alarm!" you cry - buy a sony dream machine at the goodwill for < $10. Go for a short trip outside the house without your phone, walk a few blocks, drive somewhere without your phone or GPS, buy a paper map - whatever; it's scary and so liberating! You will feel amazing self-sufficiency.
> Apps to fight apps has never worked for me. When I'm bored/tired enough, it becomes a game to disable my own restrictions.
OneSec [1] is the only one that worked for me. It's quick enough that I'm not tempted to disable it, yet annoying enough that makes me think twice if I really want to open app X for the third time today.
Also it's just a polite nudge, rather than a full block, or condescending messages saying "you've hit your time limit for today" (that make you feel bad and make you want to immediately disable the thing in the first place).
Wish parental controls were designed with the same principles.
I do this a lot when I am around my 6 month old daughter. We can already see a very clear difference in her engagement and curiosity when she sees a colored phone versus a monochrome phone. She grabs for the phone less and quickly returns to previous activity if she notices a monochrome phone.
I like this. Testing the browser extension now and pretty happy with it (after tweaking so returning to a tab has a grace period). I was using StayFocused, which is okay, but too tempting to just disable it (and annoying if I need to access a blocked site for work purposes).
This is the only thing that worked for me as well. Installing browser extensions and distraction-blocking apps helps for a couple days, but ultimately I'd start cheating and would uninstall them.
Leaving my phone on the charger in the bedroom after 5pm completely removes the temptation. If somebody needs to reach me, they can call my wife or just leave a message for me to check in the morning. I've been doing this for several months and it's worked wonders for my attention span, my sleeping habits and my vision.
You can use lockmeout.online to ultimately lock yourself out of your phone for a given timespan (i.e. 4 hours). No cheating, no way to "disable" your own restriction once you set it active. Works by changing your unlock PIN to a random 16 digit combination and will withhold it for you during your preset time lock.
yup. it basically becomes a ulysses pact with myself to attempt to make it so i can't just undo the restrictions i set up. what good are the blocking attempts if you can disable them when you get bored? you have to set them up with the intention and foresight that you will try to disable them
> What works for me is removing the antecedent completely by charging my phone in another room at night.
A half-measure for this would be to arrange your charging-setup so that you can't use and charge the phone at the same time. For example, USB cables long enough to reach the nightstand, but not long enough to comfortably hold the phone in front of your face.
What works for me is removing the antecedent completely by charging my phone in another room at night.
Now the battle is easier: Decide once a day to put it there, and track how many days you succeed.
For me that's a lot easier than having it in my pocket, where the Internet is always a couple lazy taps away. Now I at least have to walk to it if I want it, and that often "breaks the spell."
I finish work and chores hours earlier when my phone is charging in another room, without consciously doing anything else differently.
It really makes me want a 1980s-style cellphone with no screen and big physical buttons.