Space L Clottey

Delays cure addictions

Cripplingly addicted to something with no idea how to fix it? Incredibly desperate for a solution?

Add a small delay.

It’s unbelievable how effective it is.

I had been battling my discord addiction for an entire YEAR before it just *poof* vanished upon adding a delay.

I had been battling internet addiction (and by extension procrastination in general) for months and years, respectively, and *poof*. Fixed.

The only reason why I even remembered that this is a problem crippling enough and serious enough to warrant a write up of the found solution after reading back through my daily notes of May and June and seeing how much distress these addictions brought onto Past-Me.

The solution: add a delay.

I think it was the beginning of June, I thought “what if I just used delays again, but on everything, and never made any exceptions? If I could do that for just two months, just until August without changing anything, and I kept it on all the time, then I could cement the habit long enough to forever change my future. I would be free.”

I strongly considered making a bet with someone to carry out these terms, but I just didn’t, but this thought, this fear, this feeling like my future hinged apon whether I could stay till the end of July kept me motivated to keep it on.

So I reinstalled the Leechblock browser extension, set a 15 second delay for every single website, and clicked okay.

And it just worked.

I went from being hopelessly addicted to my computer and Discord to being free. I went from being the person who’d scoff at anyone who had over two unread pings to racking up hundreds myself with total indifference.

I went from being the person who’d fear and resent my own possession for thinking it controlled me.

I went from hating how I wasted my life, from being able to be productive far more, and to taking part in specific “time wasting” activities that are specific so I have a route to managing them if they get so out of hand and if I so desire.

My life is just better because I’m now more in control, not cursing day after day from a fight that only involved me and my will.

I like my life — and me — more now.

The craziest part is, I don’t even remember the moment of change, or realising all this as it happened. I just don’t have those problems anymore, but I was reminded through my past writings that I did, and their overwhelmingness was able to come flooding back.

Here are a couple of the puzzle pieces that helped this solution make sense:

1) Had already done no-discord challenge prior, teaching me I didn’t need to check Discord every day

2) Read Digital Minimalism and valued real conversation over texting, making excessive Discord checking lower value and unnecessary (and already had vital contacts moved elsewhere)

3) Had done no internet challenge previously, I believe this taught me I didn’t need internet as much as I thought (also made being able to go on anything but just with delays a proper treat)

4) NO DISTRACTINGS THINGS INSTALLED LOCALLY

This has been a principle forever, and for good reason: if you install Discord locally, it’s that much easier to load, and that much easier to block. If installing Discord locally for you is normal EVER, then if Discord in browser is taking 15 seconds to load you’ll be tempted to install local discord again.

Same goes for Instagram on phone.

DON’T! YOU GOTTA BE SUPER ALLERGIC TO INSTALLING THINGA LOCALLY!!!!

“If you’re going to use social media, stay far away from the mobile versions of these services, as these pose a significantly bigger risk to your time and attention. This practice, in other words, suggests that you remove all social media apps from your phone. You don’t have to quit these services; you just have to quit accessing them on the go.”

Email > Discord addiction

You might say I’m addicted to email instead.

Email concretely ends, though. Discord doesn’t. So I’d prefer to be “addicted” to email.

Don’t Block

Don’t block all out, that’s lame and makes you feel like a prisoner. I have total freedom to go on any site at any time, it’s just boring because I need to wait so the desire dissapates

The key aspect to remember, whenever a delay is annoying is:

You’re saving more time across your life by having the delays, then by having them.

Incase you are curious, I will include below the logs of how I got to this conclusion:

Attempts to stop browsing spirals:

How to stop browsing spirals?

Browsing spirals make me deeply unhappy and are easily the worst aspect of my life. I wish to eliminate them. 

Please email me if you have any ideas or know how.

Last week I did a no browsing challenge: I visited ~0 sites that weren’t school related and it was nice! I spent the time on SuperMemo, learning and doing things that compounded over time. Rather than miserably watching cartoons, I’d watch the invigorating videos I have saved.

All I want now is for this lesson to compound.

There is never a good reason to browse aimlessly.

Attempts / Ideas

 

Attempt #2 – constrained browser unblocked window

FocusMe block FireFox (personal browser) all day except 1930-2100

Constraints:

Vulnerabilities:

 Result

 

Attempt #1

Constraints

Tools

Current idea:

Result:

 

This solution is fragile to

Other ideas

 

(Attempt #2)

 

Give a man a taste of freedom, and he will become unemployable.

Attempts to cure Discord addiction

How to stop checking for messages?

Massive problem for a really long time: constantly checking Discord / Email / WhatsApp throughout the day.

How to solve it permanently? 

Precursors

Ideas

= Delays = 

Pros

Cons

= Schedule = 

Pros

Problems

 

== Empty Room Mindfulness == 

Turn on some kind of notification and make sure it covers all possible channels you might want to know about and then pay attention to your desire to check discord when you know you haven’t gotten a notification.

Train yourself to feel that “okay, I didn’t hear anything happening, it would be pointless, it’s like I’m excitedly checking an empty room to see if anyone’s there without having heard anyone arriving”

The Ideal Messaging App

Above all else, it should be easy to make the three functions clearly distinguished:

  1. Sending only
    • Quick
    • Available phone + computer
    • No chance of being sucked in
  2. Quickly retrieving information
    • No chance of being sucked in
  3. Reading messages for leisure
    • Community

And the first two must be available essentially all the time and everywhere  and must have NO CHANCE of getting sucked in and being distracted. They must be clearly distinguished.

Please email me if you have any ideas on how to make this a reality.

 

Surely this problem has been solved before. Lets see how some influential people managed it.

 

Current Attempt: No Discord

Shedding my skin. And all that petty baggage. Shedding my skin. I’m free.

I’m not going to use Discord until next Sunday, except from a single small server for school stuff which I have to stay in lest I wish to miss out on vital exam info.

Now that I’ve set it up, I do actually feel like I’m free from Discord.

For the first time in forever a year.

We’ll see how it goes.

I am going to school this week so I’ll be getting high quality IRL social interaction all week, so no risk of insanity.

Lighter than a feather, this is my soul.

For a more rough look at the steps between, here’s a look on a SuperMemo item describing my thoughts on this over the past six months:

Erecting transaction costs means, in many cases, demoting our multipurpose devices to a single purpose–that is, crippling them.

what’s another way of erecting transaction costs to procrastinating? blocks & actually closing tabs How to permenantly figure out a way to check thinsg that’s not addictive? mail derek sivers about it? hmm. what else? Blocking all the time is a pain. delays! delays are great! have posted about this on gj so that’s good. How does woz do it? willpower… how can I cripple my devices? - workspaces Disable all message checking from my current profile. This can be a self directed messaging profile. I eventually don’t want to be blocking things. No more Netflix or Disney + here. Already doing that. Dial back on the message checking. (tick) I did it.

It’s gone, it’s all gone bye bye woo see ya!

Space L Clottey