Basically, no fiction media of any sort (the original Black March campaign focused on copyrighted media, I mostly just went with all fiction), no web sites mainly used for killing time with random links and forum fun, such as Reddit, MetaFilter or TVTropes. I did keep reading LessWrong (questionable, since I pretty much treat this as entertainment, but it’s low-traffic enough here that you can’t use this as an inexhaustible procrastination source), and I did keep reading my RSS feeds (also questionable, but again those are quickly exhausted). I didn’t try to change my IRC use in any way. Nonfiction books (acquired earlier and in the reading queue, to go with the Black March non-consumption idea) were allowed, but I only ended up finishing one popular history book during the month, and don’t remember trying to read anything ambitious.
I ended up breaking the media fast twice for social movie-watching. Didn’t otherwise miss games, TV or novels so that I’d notice, I don’t think I was using those much before either. I do think the silly fun website avoidance did matter.
I’ve been back in a day job since and haven’t really thought about repeating the experiment yet. Might try it again at some point.
Basically, no fiction media of any sort (the original Black March campaign focused on copyrighted media, I mostly just went with all fiction), no web sites mainly used for killing time with random links and forum fun, such as Reddit, MetaFilter or TVTropes. I did keep reading LessWrong (questionable, since I pretty much treat this as entertainment, but it’s low-traffic enough here that you can’t use this as an inexhaustible procrastination source), and I did keep reading my RSS feeds (also questionable, but again those are quickly exhausted). I didn’t try to change my IRC use in any way. Nonfiction books (acquired earlier and in the reading queue, to go with the Black March non-consumption idea) were allowed, but I only ended up finishing one popular history book during the month, and don’t remember trying to read anything ambitious.
I ended up breaking the media fast twice for social movie-watching. Didn’t otherwise miss games, TV or novels so that I’d notice, I don’t think I was using those much before either. I do think the silly fun website avoidance did matter.
I’ve been back in a day job since and haven’t really thought about repeating the experiment yet. Might try it again at some point.