Shutting down my Internet Addiction

Hey!
I have been trying to do the same thing past few days. Been reading a lot about digital minimalism, and reducing internet usage so you can do some deep valuable work. I feel like my mind is actually shutting down as I try to cast off this habit though. I have used a couple of digital detox apps to cut the phone and pc use completely down for specific times of the day, like 6 AM to 2 PM followed by 4 PM to 10 PM, but man once you take a break and as much as pick up your phone again, you are instantly battered by the desire to keep doing things on it. The quality I want from my work is still elusive. I am determined to tone my habits down though. After doing quite well yesterday I fucked up today and now I am gonna start again tomorrow. This time though I am not gonna use a detox app to completely cut out phone use because I feel like it only reinforces the scarcity mindset in your brain that makes you stick to it for longer periods of time after the break is over. I might give Forest a try. It looks like a pretty good app that can be used like a Pomodoro timer as well.
Good luck to you, hope to listen from you about the positive results of this change soon, perhaps I can learn a thing or two and help my own progress towards cutting down the unnecessary distractions and clutter surrounding my work.

 

You could keep beating the average by wasting only 9 hours every day from now on.

 

True Way: your smartphone in the bucket, take an old nokia with buttons or another old phone style. If you don't have it you can't use it. Alsondelete all your Anxiety (Social) Networks, Fb, Instagram, etc, youtube too....all shits. Youtube is good only for relax after a work daycon pc, like i watch videos like TedxTalk, but things like memes make me puke now. delete all, is the only way.

And read things on papers, educate yourself, don't just google things that you will miss the next day.

 

The internet is a good tool to inform and educate yourself But self control is paramount .

 

Internet is good for discover things, not for completly understand, if you just read wikipedia you will never understand everything of a certain thing i think.

 

I am having similar problems. For me it just kills every bit of motivation and even my will to life. Even though I am generally quite happy and content, after such a day where I waste 5+ hours (yes even 10, I have been there) I really start to get suicidal thoughts! Which is brutal, as I wouldn't have gotten them with a normal day. Really scary

 

Did I mention Wikipedia?

 

Could you elaborate more on your Internet addiction?

What is it exactly you are most drawn to (apart from PMO of course) ? News? Social media? Discussion boards? Wikipedia? Gaming?

I suffered from Internet addiction for the last 15 years, half of my life.

Namely online news addiction (mostly news sites, and some Wikipedia and reddit). I wasted so many hours every single day on it, people won't believe me if I tell them. It's an endless stream of 99% useless information, like fast-food it never satisfies and never ends. News are depressing, make you feel agitated and actually stupid. Read one single book by a good author about a certain topic and you will have more knowledge than one entire year of online news consumption.

Only a couple months ago I finally got in charge of it. At first I limited myself to only a handful of news sites and then only to 3 regional news sites. But neither approach worked. So eventually I cut down news to zero, which was pretty tough for a few days. I still keep that zero-news policy and it made me feel much better now. Still suffer from other Internet-related addictions (otherwise I wouldn't be here haha), but that was one big burden.

You are not missing anything, because most news are irrelevant/repetitive and you can't change anything about it anyway. If I need certain information I'll search for it only and that's it. If something really important and groundbreaking happens in your country you will get informed by other people or random public headlines at some point.

Some people might disagree, but in my view online news are one the same level like PMO and they operate with the exact same mechanism (= super-stimulus of endless novelty).

 

Totally agree - it's endless novelty and super stimulus that makes it so difficult. I need to get a grip on this.

For news you could probably restrict yourself to physical newspaper copies only?

 

What a profane click when he search something on the internet? What is the site where Google and other Web Browsers suggest you when you search a certain topic? What site it indicate? Maybe the profane can neglect it at the start, but when he had familiarity with Internet research he will identify Wikipedia as the new Christ of the information, and we seen it with these new ''Smart'' Assistant: ''according to wikipedia, bla bla bla'', this is the age of fast and easy answers, where pledge stop to exist.
Anyway isn't a free encyclopedia because if you want to add something, contribute to it the admin can decide with a click if your Info would be good. And if the admins had the power to decide what you (they) can add, they can remould people brain. You don't need to mention it, is clear.

Also spracht Zarathustra.

 

Hey the challenge is for sure a great deal and for sure everyone needs kick of extra motivation to step his game up! That´s why I will join you and reduce the screen time with app and schedule. At least this should help me to close my goal in, because I circle around to much. This fucking screens are really what drives this generation nuts. At first this new won time should be invested somewhere else, but it´s hard to unlearn an unconcious habit.

 

This is a very honorable goal to have, I wish you truly the best. I used to get so intensely into no screen challenges, made up so many for myself. Perhaps you could try to gamify quitting this addiction if it works for you?

Another great tool is time tracking, with apps like Rescue Time and Toggl, which I've recently installed and who's greatly helping me see where exactly I spend my time, with reports and such. Maybe you'd be interested in this And lastly I've also installed Freedom, which is an app for both desktop and phone that has the powerful ability to completely shut down the sites you wish, or all of the internet, or even apps, for a set amount of time. Extremely powerful; you have the option to deactivate everything your mind would think of in order to deactivate Freedom, so you're FORCED to not be online. And it synchs really well. Can't recommend this app enough it's been a life saver for my diploma project

 

10 hours browsing!!
Man switch to an obsolete Button-operated phone. Keep the Desktop/Laptop in a closed box and put it away. Check your smartphone once a week or so.

 

Who would have guessed?

 

Things done:
Bought the book digital minimalism by cal newport
Last 48 hours no time spent on laptop, merely 3 hours phone use in total
Used the free minutes for catching up with friends and workouts.
Openend my laptop today but will only spent 2 hours on it.

Goal: Adapting a new philosophy for technology use over the summer holidays.