71–80 of 347 posts
Does anyone with an Apple watch (or other smartwatch ) feel it helps them leave their smartphone behind and/or reduce their smartphone usage?
It's not a perfect solution, but I find part of the process of being less involved with my phone is acceptance of the fact that I might not be able to be able to address every need at every moment and that's ok.
Personally, I find my smartphone addiction gets worse when I turn off all notifications. Because then FOMO takes over and I spend tons of time digging into apps to make sure I didn't "miss anything". For me, it works much better to intentionally choose the notifications I get to be the things I really want to be interrupted by. I wish there were an AI or human secretary who could make those judgements on a per-notifi…
One other thing I do is have physically separate devices for work versus entertainment. A spare phone is my Twitter/Facebook phone. I have a separate laptop for watching videos, playing games, social media, and HN. (I also have a tablet for long-form reading: Kindle, Instapaper, The Economist etc.) It helps establish that there are separate modes, which limits FOMO for me.
For me it's the browser. What I did yesterday on Firefox for Android: - installed uBlock Origin (also First Party Isolation and HTTPS Everywhere), - disabled JavaScript via about:config javascript.enabled, - and added .css| rule to uBlock Origin (I would still like to disable CSS entirely, this only half works). Basically I would like to have "links2 -g" [0] for Android. There is also an extension for Firefox to auto…
I think you can have links on Android using something like Termux [ https://termux.com ] (but you probably won't enjoy it that much on a small screen with a touch keyboard).
Another more extreme step I've heard others take is to put their device in one of those locking cookie jars: https://www.thekitchensafe.com
For me it's the browser. What I did yesterday on Firefox for Android: - installed uBlock Origin (also First Party Isolation and HTTPS Everywhere), - disabled JavaScript via about:config javascript.enabled, - and added .css| rule to uBlock Origin (I would still like to disable CSS entirely, this only half works). Basically I would like to have "links2 -g" [0] for Android. There is also an extension for Firefox to auto…
I use startpage.com on night mode, it's minimal on css and does not track.
Personally, I would love a flip phone with a removable battery and a physical button on the side to turn WiFi hotspot functionality on/off -- with OFF being the default. Having a phone that you only need to charge once a week is a great feature!
I confess as a news junkie I enjoy twitter, youtube, podcasts and reddit etc on my iPod but as it is wifi-only of course there are built in constraints in its use. I also have taken to going out without iPod or phone after work hours... very liberating and almost revolutionary! Nice to have an untracked-feeling if nothing else.
Personally, I find my smartphone addiction gets worse when I turn off all notifications. Because then FOMO takes over and I spend tons of time digging into apps to make sure I didn't "miss anything". For me, it works much better to intentionally choose the notifications I get to be the things I really want to be interrupted by. I wish there were an AI or human secretary who could make those judgements on a per-notifi…
One of the things I struggle with is the endless novelty of a newsfeed. I can always scroll and get more. And then I can reload for another chance at finding something interesting.
There are extensions that do this for Facebook alone, but I was thinking something more general. And something that's also clever about eliminating the way companies use notifications to for similar novelty-injection, rather than true notifications.
I suspect I also need a "please temporarily show me the newsfeed" mode, possibly on some sort of time restriction, with mandatory delay, or requiring some boring work, so as to raise it from "compulsive response" to "considered choice", but still keeps people from removing the extension on the occasions they really need to see the feeds.
Would you use it? And what services would be required?
I really recommend unplugging for a few days. It helps you notice how you are interacting with technology. I spent 4 days on a tiny island (population 11) a few years ago. I was there with one friend and we decided that there would be no screens and no watches/clocks for the whole time. You very quickly adjust to not having it. Easily within a day. We ate when we got up, and then again later on. We went to sleep soon…
Ahhh, what a fabulous waste of time and resources. So... what was the thread about again?
One huge distraction-enabler is the fingerprint sensor. It makes things too easy for me - I put my hand in my pocket, put my finger on the sensor, and by the time it's in front of my face I can be mindlessly browsing reddit. So I would add the following tip: disable the fingerprint sensor if you have one (also face recognition, etc), and replace it with an inconveniently long password. This way you really need to thi…
I don't own a smartphone, simply because it's not convenient. I've had one from my previous job, it was Iphone 4 IIRC. It was bulky, I had to charge it every day, and when I enabled maps or a browser it got hot quickly. Now I'm using Nokia 106. It lasts 2 weeks on one charge (1 week if I'm listening to radio/podcasts a lot), it's much smaller than iphone, never gets hot, and I'm not afraid to drop it. I dropped it se…
I use GPS all the time for public transport, I doubt a standalone GPS does that. What about photos, tablets can have decent cameras but phones are usually 2-3 generations ahead.