Freedom from Distraction
My Phone: A Success Story (for now)
My iPhone home screen is text-only, with shortcuts to tools I use. I don't have a single distracting app installed. My screen is always in grayscale. I have Screen Time set on potential distractions, most notably Safari, and my dad has the password so I can't just disable restrictions. (I wonder how he felt when I asked him to set a password after years of breaking any rule or regulation my parents tried to set on my device use?) My ScreenZen restriction lists (there are multiple) are very long, blocking any app or website I could potentially derive dopamine from. Every time I discover a loophole, the lists get longer.
From about 2023 to now, my phone screen time went from about eight hours a day to less than two hours. Qualitatively, the main change was that I went from regretting the time I wasted on my phone doing things I wouldn't remember by the end of the day to feeling neutral or even enjoying the time I spent, because I was using it to do things that mattered to me.
The main mindset change that helped me was remembering that my phone is a tool for communicating with other people. Anything other than that is an activity that belongs on my computer. Do you need to carry video games, books, newspapers, podcasts, music, and the rush of data from the Information Superhighway every time you go to the grocery store? At most you only need one of the above.
I ended up offloading most of my phone activities to other devices that I don't always carry with me. I read books on my Kindle, play video games on a dedicated console, and have my iPod and CDs for music (though I also use my phone for this, I try not to listen to music when I could be talking to the people around me.) I understand that being able to afford separate devices for separate activities is a huge privilege, but keeping everything on my phone was unmanageable.
Most other activities, like browsing the Internet, were shifted to my laptop. And that is where my trouble begins.
My Laptop: A Failure Story (for now)
I can do more on my laptop than on my phone, especially given that my phone is an iPhone subject to Apple's restrictions. My laptop is far more powerful than my phone, newer, with over five times as much RAM. I can have more tabs open, run more and different applications. This gives me more opportunities to learn and do things, but also more opportunities to get distracted.
I do various things to control this. The main one I used for a while was a browser extension called LeechBlock NG. I could restrict websites, keywords on websites, or opening any websites that specific websites linked to. Any time I found myself spending too much time on any website, especially when I had work to do, it went on the list. It didn't matter if the website was "productive" or "educational": at one point, even Wikipedia was on there because I couldn't stop reading it.
Over the years, my blocklists got longer and longer, migrating between devices, browsers, and even OS installs. I couldn't open Reddit links, even if it was to figure out something tech-related where Reddit was the only relevant source I could find. I basically couldn't use Youtube, because inevitably one of my blocked keywords would show up in the search bar or in a creator's past video titles, resulting in the entire page getting blocked immediately. I even had to block the Extensions page because otherwise I would just disable LeechBlock.
Every time I couldn't trust myself with another website, my blocklists got longer.
Control
Sometimes, all the things I've done to try and control my own penchant for distraction are exhausting. See LeechBlock above; the extension itself worked perfectly, it's open source, and if being unable to access the websites that distract you is what you need, I highly recommend it. My problem is intrinsic, though: Why can I not trust myself to use my laptop productively? Why do I always police myself, in fear of getting distracted, only to get distracted anyway?
An extrinsic solution like LeechBlock can't work for me as I currently am because I will always seek out another distraction. That's the problem I have to fix, and the fix might not be technological.
It's Not (all) My Fault?
The Internet is a unique phenomenon, and growing up on it was an experiment carried out on my generation.
I've read so much about how online services spent time and money to make sure their user base is as hooked as possible. I've been using these same services for years, and I've been online for even longer than that. Who knows how it's affected my brain?
I still need to do the work, but I can give myself grace too.
Intrinsic vs Extrinsic
The methods I've described so far are mostly extrinsic methods of control: home screen, grayscale, Screen Time, ScreenZen, LeechBlock NG. These external tools remove or mitigate known ways I could distract myself.
But I did mention one intrinsic method of control: the way I regarded my phone changed, from an all-in-one pocket computer to a device meant for communication only. My change in thought shaped my intentions for using the phone: it guided me to remove apps not meant for communication and evaluate the time I spent.
The main reason I could use to support my change in thought was that phones have an established history as communication devices: initially stationary and meant for calling other people, then portable but still for calling only, then eventually texting, IMing, chat applications, and more.
Knowing my Weaknesses
I initially turned off all blocking on my laptop. This went poorly. I would browse Reddit for literally the entire day, then be very upset with myself at the end. It messed with my sleep schedule and even my meal schedule.
Reddit specifically has been my biggest weakness for years. It was the first social media platform I started using regularly - I started browsing it when I was in elementary school over a decade ago. Reddit is forum-like, but the difference between Reddit and standalone forums is that most forums are dedicated to a specific topic or activity, while Reddit has forums for basically anything you can think of. So when I exhausted all of the content in one subreddit, I would just hop to another and keep browsing.
I've been aware of this weakness for years now, and prevented myself from using Reddit for over a year for this reason. It sucked because a lot of the cool stuff I'm interested in is only on Reddit, the topics too niche for forums or the standalone forums already dead, but the alternative to avoiding Reddit entirely is spending entire months only browsing Reddit and doing nothing else, which is literally how I spent my breaks in high school. I cannot consume Reddit in healthy moderation.
When I edited my hosts file to block the main Reddit website on my entire laptop, I started using one of the public Redlib instances instead. I used it so much I memorized the URL and would instinctively type it in the moment I saw my browser open. Finally adding that instance to my hosts file stopped me.
Enjoying Focus
It's been a few months since I turned off most of the website blocking on my laptop (except Reddit as I mentioned above.) I've been forcing myself to only moderately scroll the websites I used to restrict and then binge on. For the most part, it's worked. I only check the top few forum posts, or only read a few articles from my feed reader, and I only do this during breaks (not even daily, just when I feel like it.) This does mean that my feed reader is never cleared; I treat it more like a tasting menu than an inbox.
(Content blocking and Screen Time limits are still on my phone, partially because it's really annoying to disable everything, and partially because I no longer feel the urge to browse the Internet on my phone. Trying to read or watch anything on a tiny phone screen is the worst. Ideally, my next phone will be even smaller so it takes up less bag and pocket space!)
When I get distracted, I remind myself of that feeling I get when I've been scrolling for hours when I know I have work I need to get done. There are so many entries in my journal about how I spent the entire day running between cars on the Information Superhighway instead of doing the things I actually enjoy. I have a limited amount of time each day; there's an unlimited amount of content to consume, but the best parts will still be there when I actually have time set aside to see them.