Using an $8 smart outlet to avoid brainrot(neilchen.co) |
Using an $8 smart outlet to avoid brainrot(neilchen.co) |
But I would almost certainly and without any qualms put HN on the default noallow list. The SNR and potential for learning things is atrocious to nonexistent most of the time - and you can find better sources than HN. No, I’m not joking unfortunately it’s just what the site has become over the years.
It basically forces you to do a little breathing exercise before you can visit the site that you have on its block list.
It has been life changing. It adds enough friction for me to stop any impulsive visits but also is not so annoying that I would completely disable it in a weak moment.
One Sec was developed by someone with ADHD, I think and it definitely shows.
It is important to understand that not every solution will work for everyone. There can be many reasons why you struggle with social media addictions. Ultimately those corporations are spending millions and employ state of the art psychological manipulation tactics to keep you engaged so it is important to be kind to yourself. Don't give up. You might find something that works for you.
1. Jomo - you can create block lists of distracting apps. Like OneSec, when you try to open a blocked app, it makes you wait 5 seconds or more. More importantly, on that screen, you can select 5 minutes, so that it only gives you 5 minutes of unblocked access.
2. Brick - a physical device with an NFC tag you put somewhere. Block all the distracting apps on your phone. If you want to look at them, you need to physically scan the Brick with your phone to get back in.
https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/run-for-fun-screen-time-focus/...
Though it is 14,99 Euro per YEAR, so pretty fair pricing, anyway.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005729080838.html
The price varies a lot between listings, I think the cheapest I got them was $20 for 4 or so.
The Amazon Dash buttons could be hacked to do something like that.
Little programmable buttons, they're great. I've used them for similar habit formation stuff, in my case not ignoring my alarm, by making the button the only way to shut it off, and putting the button very far away from bed.
||reddit.com^$important
||ycombinator.com^$important
If your addiction/habit is stronger, you might need to invest that $8.
No, not for me personally, I'd never.
Has anyone else used simple and affordable tech that surprisingly made a big difference in managing distractions or mental fatigue?
Here in Asia they cost 5-8$ each to make depending on exact part choice (total cost including boards and components).
I open sourced the hardware / firmware if you want some: https://github.com/seanboyce/servermon
I used to use scripts etc to do it. However this tells me what I need to know in a glance, so I like it better.
So the devices with the "black" tag have a different DNS server (it's the same computer, but it has 2 IPs), and has DNS-level ad-blocking (convenient for phones) and can't access reddit, Twitter, etc. One device doesn't have blocks, in case the aggressive blocking breaks something. I guess it'd be great to use a slow laptop to browse brainrot sites to discourage me from doing so.
(1) https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22467430/dnsmasq-tags-an...
This app I assume is exactly like the more mainstream Brick app but this app lets you configure any off the shelf NFC tags which you can get under $5.
Silly question, but I don't get it. Do you have to get something onto the smart outlet?
ELIF!!!
- Macos: Install https://selfcontrolapp.com/, add every website and their alternatives you know, set it to 24 hours. Really hard to bypass this even if you know networking stuff
- iOS: Enable downtime 24/7 ask someone else to set the password.
I'm down to about 35 minutes a day of mobile usage, and laptop usage is only work related things. You really need two or three days to clear your head of news feeds. After a few days you really just crave working.
(I'm in between a 24 hour session right now)
So if you have a genuine intention not to use certain websites at particular times (e.g. work time), then having any kind of forced interruption can be useful for changing that behaviour.
If you're looking to create genuine change, then making those websites load slowly is even more effective than going cold turkey (because it minimises the dopamingeric effects.)
Maybe others have better luck
It's an interesting exercise to think about how this could be engineered to increase the friction.
It is a nice tool to have it automatically solved
I think a modified Pi-hole would serve this purpose better, as it would leave no other option than getting out of your chair and taking action (assuming you made it impossible to ssh into the device).
I can't use ublock origin for that because I want all devices in my home to take advantage of this, so I've reimplemented this with Home Assistant, Adguard Home and the Adguard Home integration into Home Assistant.
I hope you have more luck than me with sticking with the switch instead of just editing /etc/hosts.
Was a good hack for a bit, but then the children figured out they could actually use the same button to _find their mom_, since the she was usually colocated with the phone!
timed and customizable blocklists, multiple devices
I guess I can implement that on raspberry pi.
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.
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).
You can quit your Reddit addiction by commenting on Reddit. Reddits is a hellscape... I'd rather be browsing 4Chan.
How can we be sure you aren’t just an average guy when it comes to self reflection?
If something is too easy, it happens. If something is too hard/annoying to do relative to the reward, it doesn't.
When I lived in Boston, I was able to get myself to go to Tae Kwon Do classes because it was literally on my commute. When I'd work from home, I'd end up missing the class. When covid hit, same.
When I lived in Palo Alto, I rarely went to the city (and usually only when I could crash at a friend's place for the weekend) because the process of biking to caltrain, take caltrain, bike to wherever I wanna go, then reverse on my way home or catch an Uber, kinda ends up being an annoying or expensive process.
When I moved to SF, I went and partied what was probably more frequently than was healthy. Moving to Oakland brought the rate back down again, but to a level that felt a little too isolating. Getting a car seems to hit a sweet spot; driving isn't too bad, and I have a lot more options. Buuut being responsible for a car curbs the worse behaviors.
It amazes me how much work one does to lift barriers to themselves, but so little to actually not go through them.
I don't know how people can keep saying this when I have first hand experience with it not being enough
If you don't actually want to stop, then these opportunities for pause do nothing, because in that pause you reaffirm that you do want to continue the behaviour.
This ties into why addiction is so powerful, while many people know their addictions are bad, they enjoy them and don't actually want to stop. I.E. They don't value the results of cessation versus keeping the addiction.
It's entirely possible to reach for your phone, then tap an app or load a website on your computer while being semi-aware of your actions, and this is typical for people with ingrained behaviours. These people can start scrolling instagram or twitter without really thinking about it. Having a forced circuit breaker gives these people an opportunity to stop and reconsider their actions.
At the end of the day only you have full agency over yourself.
These systems are trivial to defeat, after all you turned them on, you can just as easily turn them off, but that's not the point at all. It's not meant to be an unsurmountable technical wall. The point is to provide you with a moment to actively think about your actions instead of an autopiloting behaviour that lands you on a website or app that you are trying to avoid using. People who use employ these types of "circuit breakers" do so because they find that they frequently find themselves autopiloting to these services. For these people the circuit breaker is their moment to realise "oh hang on I said I don't want to be doing this while I'm working on my project", rather than "oh this is inconvenient, I'll just disable it for the time being".
The stopping power comes from you, not from the crutch.