Digital Health Rules
deprocrastination.co
deprocrastination.co
Before that, I tried several different things to modify my dating app behavior:
I would set Screen Time in iOS and give myself a one hour limit per day with a separate Screen Time password. This worked OK but it was still too easy to keep requesting 15 more minutes at a time. To deal with this, I would delete the app from my phone when I reached my time limit since they're way too easy to access from the iOS app tray and the app icon is a major trigger for me.
The major thing that helped was setting a month-on month-off schedule. I would pay for a premium account for one month only and cancel the subscription right after purchase and get to inbox zero on my app when it was time to turn the app off.
At the end of the month on, I would put my profile into hidden mode so I know that I won't get new matches in my month off, and I would also delete all stale matches. I would keep all active matches and just talk to them until we either met or went silent and then I would delete them. Keeping my inbox as clean as possible really reduced temptation.
How many people actually have a garden these days? Access to the great outdoors was further confounded by the recent lockdown, too.
(founder of awalkaday.art - digital gallery of photos taken during daily walks).
I do this. But I think of my phone as a toolbox. I grab it when I need it to do something for me.
I used SelfControl to block distracting websites for 24 hours at a time. I'm currently taking a break before enabling it for another 24 hours.
Then I aggressively reduced the number of emails, notifications, ads, "related content" and feeds I see. I scrubbed my profiles clean, unfollowed everyone, then removed the feeds with ad blockers. Basically, every time something grabbed my attention and shouldn't, I set up a countermeasure. My internet is a lot calmer than the unfiltered version.
It works - I spend less time mindlessly browsing, and I think a lot less about what's going on on social media. The computer gets really boring after I'm done working, and it compels me to do other things.
One must understand the chain of events that lead to overusing the internet and intervene waaaay befor the urge arises. Once it does it is roo late. You can't simply "search, don't browse" if you are bored with nothing to do, hate what you should be working on, don't have friends to hang out with or whatever.
I do applaud the author for making this blog straight to the point.
I think you could TL;DR the article even further and say "Use technology purposefully and not aimlessly". In doing so, you'd come up with your own "rules" that works for you.