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My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

allthatjazz.me

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Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#201

Post by yapyap »

yagyu wrote: post #142
brushfoot wrote: post #123

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 la…

Second this. 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…

Replacing that monitor with an e-ink device could be interesting

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#202

Post by jscomino »

gman83 wrote: post #45

It's really too bad that you can't disable YouTube shorts. I like watching YouTube videos on my phone, but the shorts is too tempting and I find myself wasting so much time with totally useless content. I'll probably have to remove YouTube entirely.

If you're on desktop, download the Chrome Extension called "Unhook". It lets you hide stuff like Youtube Shorts and makes Youtube less impulsive. Very helpful for focus.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#203

Post by DamnInteresting »

brushfoot wrote: post #123

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 la…

> It really makes me want a 1980s-style cellphone with no screen and big physical buttons.

If you're using an iPhone, you can use Assistive Access to disable a lot of stuff, making it functionally simiilar to a flip phone:

https://support.apple.com/guide/assistive-access-iphone/set-...

There's probably an Android equivalent, but I can't speak to that.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#204

Post by hammock »

yagyu wrote: post #142
brushfoot wrote: post #123

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 la…

Second this. 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…

What alarm clock did you get? Curious

And great insight about the calendar. That's the #1 reason why I keep my phone near me (thereby facilitating all the unwanted behaviors)

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#205

Post by l3w3 »

The Lightphone is all about making the phone a tool, minus infinite feeds. I've preordered a v3 and am very much looking forward to its arrival. My Android can live on my desk for 2fa apps, etc. If I want to consume the internet, I'll do it using nice screens and a real keyboard. Doing anything via a mobile is less good generally, just more convenient perhaps.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#207

Post by weast »

brushfoot wrote: post #123

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 la…

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.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#208

Post by j3s »

l3w3 wrote: post #205

The Lightphone is all about making the phone a tool, minus infinite feeds. I've preordered a v3 and am very much looking forward to its arrival. My Android can live on my desk for 2fa apps, etc. If I want to consume the internet, I'll do it using nice screens and a real keyboard. Doing anything via a mobile is less good generally, just more convenient perhaps.

remember - the light phone is a product. they’re selling you the idea of simplicity, not the reality. if you don’t fundamentally change your life or behavior, i guarantee it’ll be sitting in a box collecting dust within 6 months.

as soon as you’re out & about and need an uber, or maps-based navigation to another location, or to transfer money from one bank, or even to look up an important tidbit of information - the phone number of a local business, for example - you’ll yearn for the power of a normal phone.

the answer is not buying things - it’s changing your behavior. put your phone in another room. stop using it at night. purge harmful apps one by one. focus on changing your _behavior_ instead.

the lightphone is a heavy , worse supported, worse integrated, less featureful wrapper around android - do you really want to pay hundreds of dollars for that?

i have firsthand experience - i fell for the lightphone, and it’s sitting in a box next to me.

what actually worked for me was:

- setting my phone to greyscale

- disabling ALL notifications except phone calls

- charging my phone in a different room at night

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#209

Post by in9 »

hahnchen wrote: post #190

deleting instagram isn't feasible for me. I like to use it to connect with most of my friends, but then also get distracted by their short form content scrolling

just use it on pc. It gets most of the benefits for contact maintenance. You can still watch the reels you are sent. But no reels, and the feed scroll gets very boring suddenly.

Re: My Struggle with Doom Scrolling

#210

Post by anothertroll456 »

brushfoot wrote: post #123

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 la…

Also what I do. Or try to do.
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