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My year with a distraction-free iPhone

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Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#11

Post by Gracana »

As someone who owns a dumb flip phone, it's funny to read someone's enthusiastic account of their life-changing experience of... living exactly the way I do.

But on the other hand, I get it. This sort of thing (facebook, hacker news, freaking imgur) sucks up so much of my time (albeit on the desktop), and for what? Occasional interesting tidbits, and frequent annoyance and frustration? Some of it is straight-up bad for me, no way around it, but the amusing little bits keep pulling me back. imgur is the worst one for me... the community is unmoderated and uncoordinated, it's a pile of least-common-denominator bs that's as bad as anything on reddit ever was, and yet the only way I've been able to break away from it is to block myself from viewing it.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#12

Post by blutoot »

corv wrote: post #5

I think going so far as to disable Safari outright and deleting email accounts is too extreme but I definitely agree that most Apps are counterproductive. It's important to moderate use of addictive services that provide a stream of instant gratification like facebook, twitter, reddit, 9gag, pinterest, etc. The first step is being conscious of excessive use.

Instead of disabling the browser completely it would probably be more prudent to use a white-list of websites which the iPhone allows as well:

Restriction -> Websites -> Specific Websites Only

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#13

Post by Gracana »

blutoot wrote: post #7

You know what would make my life really distraction-free? Ban Hacker News on every device I have access to for a prolonged period :)

HN does have the cryptic 'noprocrast/minaway/maxaway' settings in your profile that can help with this. I haven't tried them yet, though maybe I should.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#14

Post by ljosa »

corv wrote: post #10
blutoot wrote: post #7

You know what would make my life really distraction-free? Ban Hacker News on every device I have access to for a prolonged period :)

I haven't found HN to be a particularly bad offender. The front page doesn't change quickly enough to require excessive attention.

That doesn't mean that you can't switch to it between every line of code and hit reload, just in case there is something new.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#15

Post by [deleted] »

Gracana wrote: post #11

As someone who owns a dumb flip phone, it's funny to read someone's enthusiastic account of their life-changing experience of... living exactly the way I do. But on the other hand, I get it. This sort of thing (facebook, hacker news, freaking imgur ) sucks up so much of my time (albeit on the desktop), and for what? Occasional interesting tidbits, and frequent annoyance and frustration? Some of it is straight-up bad…

[deleted]

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#16

Post by corv »

blutoot wrote: post #12
corv wrote: post #5

I think going so far as to disable Safari outright and deleting email accounts is too extreme but I definitely agree that most Apps are counterproductive. It's important to moderate use of addictive services that provide a stream of instant gratification like facebook, twitter, reddit, 9gag, pinterest, etc. The first step is being conscious of excessive use.

Instead of disabling the browser completely it would probably be more prudent to use a white-list of websites which the iPhone allows as well: Restriction -> Websites -> Specific Websites Only

That's useful, didn't know about that.

I would rather be able to change the hosts file tho and while I'm blacklisting sites I'd also get rid of ads.

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#19

Post by [deleted] »

fjk wrote: post #6

In a similar vein, I almost always have my phone set to silent without vibrate. This small change has made a huge difference in my interaction with my phone. I reach for it less and just generally think about it less. The downside is people are sometimes annoyed at me not reacting to calls/messages immediately. I should probably experiment with the iOS Do Not Disturb feature, but it hasn't been too big of an issue so…

[deleted]

Re: My year with a distraction-free iPhone

#20

Post by hnriot »

blutoot wrote: post #12
corv wrote: post #5

I think going so far as to disable Safari outright and deleting email accounts is too extreme but I definitely agree that most Apps are counterproductive. It's important to moderate use of addictive services that provide a stream of instant gratification like facebook, twitter, reddit, 9gag, pinterest, etc. The first step is being conscious of excessive use.

Instead of disabling the browser completely it would probably be more prudent to use a white-list of websites which the iPhone allows as well: Restriction -> Websites -> Specific Websites Only

or just exercise some self control! I don't have to hide the kitchen knives in case I stab guests... It's not that's hard to ignore an icon.
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