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Help: advice & tools for digital detox / minimalism? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 2 months ago by dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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Hello, I was wondering if anyone has recommendations for tools to help with digital detox / digital minimalism.

I struggle with mild impulsivity. Whenever I open my computer I almost automatically open a browser and check social media.

It used to be a problem primarily with Reddit and news sites, but since joining Lemmy my behavior has switched to regularly checking Lemmy.

I'm looking for any tools or advice, whether cognitive-behavioral or technical like browser extensions.

In the past I used the Firefox extension called Redirector to redirect myself from certain subreddits like /r/all to something more benign (I like /r/sewing or /r/books for example), and this intervention helped break up automatic behavior and was a kind of harm reduction: still feeding the impulsivity, but with healthier content.

I was wondering if there is something like Redirector that redirects randomly with some probability (like 20% of the time it redirects to the target you specify).

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[–] FergleFFergleson@infosec.pub 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's not exactly what you were asking for, but I'll say one thing that definitely helped me was to remove the mobile apps to sites like reddit from my phone. It was much easier to break its hold on me when I couldn't just view it anywhere. Obviously, it was still an issue on the desktop but nudged me in the right direction that made breaking away much easier. And once I could go several days without hitting a site at all, the addictive nature of the site really subsided a lot.

[–] dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 months ago

That is good advice, but I don't have any apps and I don't tend to spend much time on my phone. I find the mobile UI annoying, so it's really desperation when I turn to a phone to browse a place like Reddit. Usually I do it when I have a burning question that I want to explore and I'm not otherwise able to use my desktop or laptop.

I'm trying to find a way to nudge myself away from this impulsivity on desktop, which the redirecting helped do. I keep thinking maybe I could write some javascript and use greasemonkey to load it and do what I need.