Freedom.to is a good blocker, it helps but it’s not 100% effective, as you might still find a way to distract yourself one way or another online. But at least it blocks the biggest time and attention killers.
For me the most challenging thing is that I often use the same websites and tools for both work and leisure, so it’s hard to block them during working hours. Another challenge is that I found a way to cheat myself, so I need to discipline myself and think ahead to stop myself from doing this.
Here’s my dashboard (the hours look weird because most of them are almost 24h sessions - so from 23:30 to 23:00, etc):
I admit that I spend way too much time watching Youtube videos of my handful of channels I subscribed to. Some have daily uploads, some have weekly uploads. Something I completely stopped is reading general news sources like 20min. Soo much crap and sadness going on in the world that I now conciously ignore. My main news source is Google Now which has only the very personalized news about stuff like technology, FIRE and orhers.
Ha! Me too, and this reminds me of my gf, who still reads this stuff. And she then tells me: omg these kids ran into a wall with a motorcycle. To which my response usually is: why should I care? Please spare me the gory details.
I think reading news weekly would be better. That way you stop caring about being up to date 24/7. Otherwise you run into the risk checking your phone all the time again. I would appreciate your feedback in 1-2 months!
Also check the app PressReader, where you have thousends of newspaper globally availalbe online. Only for Switzerland they have 35 newspaper available. Subcription costs are CHF 29.- per month.
P.S. you can have a 7 days trial for free, which I just did. And it looks great on an iPad or similar pad.
Don’t underestimate daily news (rubbish or quality ones).
I’m still trying to understand if there is a way to exit our personal bubbles and make a site/app for it.
Don’t underestimate the negative power of the bubble you live in.
An important part of moving towards offline (or any habit shift) is asking yourself what do you do instead? If your new habits are not valuable/interesting enough to you, you probably will fall back to the old one. The same happens if they are too taxing on your time/energy/whatever.
Just to illustrate:
Well, could you have learnt that much? Honestly, I tried to take away all forums, etc. in order to learn new stuff with all that time and I crashed and burned after two(!) days already. What most overlook is that you simply run out of brain juice at some point and you can’t do anymore taxing things.
I guess what I want to say is “Was that really your opportunity cost?”
You are totally right. Looked the local library up and they provide most daily and weekly newspaper and books electronically for around CHF 40.- for me. That is great - thanks for that valuable tipp!!
I think you’re supposed to use the apps, given the licensing constraints (but both pressreader and libby are kinda nice to use, at least they work well for me)
Will visit the library tomorrow and figure it out, but according to my understanding you can use an e-Reader (ePub) or an app with iOS or the weblogin for PDF. Because they don’t have many concurrent licenses a daily newspaper is when used blocked for 2h and then automatically free.
For sure some details are different from local library to library, but for CHF 40.- (no student) per year, you can’t go really wrong here.
Over the last few years, I’ve actively tried to reduce my online time.
I focus more on the phone than the desktop usage, because I feel that it’s more of a reflex/habit to pull out my phone, whereas when I log into my computer, I’m aware of why I’m doing it (e.g. to read up on something specific).
The best way to bring down screen time is to replace it with something more meaningful (reading, doing sports etc.).
Second best, which has been mentionned, is to switch off all the notifications, apart from calls from your favourite contacts.
But since this is not always possible/helpful, I started implementing what I call “green zones”. These zones are certain activities or hours of the day, where I’m not touching my phone.
My first green zone was riding public transportation to work, which I very soon expanded to include the entire commute.
I quickly noticed that I appeared much more awake for work.
The next green zone was putting away my cell phone during all interactions with my child (unless I needed to call my wife). It’s not that I used it much before that, but I want to be able to focus 100% on the child/person I’m with.
Other green zones are the first and the last hour of the day, but I’m not consistent enough with those yet.
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