lock the notifications down completely. Every notification on your phone should be something your ideal self cares about—usually direct human contact. Might help to differentiate between “public” vs “private” apps—“public” apps aren’t allowed notifications because it’s the algo pushing stuff on you, whereas “private” apps are allowed notifications because they consistently represent an actual human who you’ve invited to contact you.
Model your engagement with content as training your algorithm. Just as you probably wouldn’t cuss in front of a toddler that’s absorbing everything you say, be careful of watching garbage because everything you watch is training it that that’s what you like.
Block all ads and the too-aggressive engagement feeds. Unhook is one extension that does this for YouTube; I keep the home feed but hide everything else (recommended vids, shorts, etc)
Move your app icons on your phone whenever you catch yourself reflexively opening an app. Put something else in the location where you’ve formed the habit of tapping when bored.
replace “don’t wanna x” with “do wanna y”. Same principle as teaching a dog to pick up a pillow instead of “don’t bark” when it hears someone at the door—the easiest “don’t x” goals are shaped like “do y” ones. Maybe that’s “use my flashcards”, maybe that’s “read a book”, maybe that’s “be still and quiet”… the trick is to start your “do y” as easy as possible. If it’s “read a book”, start yourself on the trashiest easiest most clickbaity-engaging book you can find, or even a magazine or comic.
on extensions: note you can use ublock origin[1] to stop sites from loading by setting a filter against their main content. this is preferable to minimize the amount of extensions which can read site data[2], at least if you already use ublock.
Similar stuff that’s worked for me includes:
lock the notifications down completely. Every notification on your phone should be something your ideal self cares about—usually direct human contact. Might help to differentiate between “public” vs “private” apps—“public” apps aren’t allowed notifications because it’s the algo pushing stuff on you, whereas “private” apps are allowed notifications because they consistently represent an actual human who you’ve invited to contact you.
Model your engagement with content as training your algorithm. Just as you probably wouldn’t cuss in front of a toddler that’s absorbing everything you say, be careful of watching garbage because everything you watch is training it that that’s what you like.
Block all ads and the too-aggressive engagement feeds. Unhook is one extension that does this for YouTube; I keep the home feed but hide everything else (recommended vids, shorts, etc)
Move your app icons on your phone whenever you catch yourself reflexively opening an app. Put something else in the location where you’ve formed the habit of tapping when bored.
replace “don’t wanna x” with “do wanna y”. Same principle as teaching a dog to pick up a pillow instead of “don’t bark” when it hears someone at the door—the easiest “don’t x” goals are shaped like “do y” ones. Maybe that’s “use my flashcards”, maybe that’s “read a book”, maybe that’s “be still and quiet”… the trick is to start your “do y” as easy as possible. If it’s “read a book”, start yourself on the trashiest easiest most clickbaity-engaging book you can find, or even a magazine or comic.
Agreed. The Unhook Youtube chrome extension is great. Another extension I use in combination with it is Improve Youtube.
Together they’ve saved me hundreds of hours.
on extensions: note you can use ublock origin[1] to stop sites from loading by setting a filter against their main content. this is preferable to minimize the amount of extensions which can read site data[2], at least if you already use ublock.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-is-completely-unrelated-to-the-web-site-ublock.org
i remember finding an extension which claimed to block some individual site, but tried to request read access on all sites