How to eradicate the desire to check time-wasting sites
12mingyuan
10Gunnar_Zarncke
2Alexei
1Raj Thimmiah
2Viliam
2Dirichlet-to-Neumann
1Raj Thimmiah
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1alexlyzhov
1pilord
1My OTP is your OCP
2Gunnar_Zarncke
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1Tim Liptrot
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Wow, I've had Crackbook Revival for 24 hours and I'm very impressed! The fact that the timer resets if you switch away is great, but an unexpected bonus is that it delays every action on those pages that changes the URL. Now doing anything at all on Facebook is really inconvenient (I already didn't have newsfeed, which I assume isn't susceptible to this due to being infinite-scroll), so I'll probably only use it if I really want to do something specific – and not just to internet stalk old friends and make myself feel lonely. Nice.
I have my starting time set to 5 seconds but it only increases .1 second per check, because when I had it set at 1 second things went out of control really fast. This is because there are some sites that I don't want to check mindlessly, but that I do endorse using for other purposes (e.g. I use LW for reference, research, and writing). That means I take actions on those sites somewhat often, and the counter goes up every time, and it becomes untenable. I would set a larger increase interval if I was only using the extension for sites I never wanted to check (but in that case, I'd just block them entirely with Freedom).
What worked for me was asking myself whether I act on the information I get from the site. If it doesn't change my behavior it is not worth checking at all. Sometimes this may take a while. It has been the reason I stopped checking a major German news portal and also a blogger I followed for 5 years (the latter did provide a lot of insights I used but then followed his audience into the abyss; my heuristic helped me detect this).
Same here. That’s why I stopped using FB. And that’s currently my main filter for whether to continue engaging with something.
I like this, will try it myself. Would be interested in an extended post on the idea.
It seems to fit into a class of things I want to try myself: iterated experiments. Too easy to assume many things are net good without actually measuring it and trying to optimize them over time.
For some reason, e-mail is no longer addictive for me. Probably because most people in my bubble switched to Facebook, and I get e-mails so rarely that my System 1 assumes that I don't have a new e-mail.
I've used the DelayWebpage extension. It can delay the loading for websites you choose but doesn't offer some features mentioned in the article such as resetting if you alt+tab or increasing the wait time each check.
Great approach. I use it in a slightly different way - I have a rule that each time I open a website from a list, I have to report it to my assistant, and I have to report a good enough reason. I also use website blockers on all platforms as an additional cost (Block Site on Chrome, Screen Timer on Android). But website blockers don't work that well on their own - I sometimes have to visit those websites for legitimate reasons and so I have to disable a blocker, and after a while I slip and the bar for disabling them gets too low.
This is amazing. I've often used blocking extensions, only to remove them when I "needed" them - e.g., a google search about a health question resulted in an informative reddit thread. This is great, because now I can use these sites when I have a legitimate need (or at least when it's worth a 30 second delay). It's great for email in particular, because I use it both out of need and as a distraction.
I was able to define URL-based blacklists on my router, so certain websites were entirely inaccessible. And since it's on the router, it actually takes a minute or two to change- a better barrier as compared to browser extensions. It doesn't help over a data connection, since it's keyed to just that one router, so I can still access some sites over my phone.
My principal issue with it was getting locked onto those sites in the middle of an otherwise productive or rewarding time at the PC, It's not as damaging when I pull out my phone in line or on break.
Note that this is in conjuction with other similar tech, like leechblock, etc. I did not know about this one, and I'll be looking into it - I found the leechblock delay screens to be more incentive to turn off or override the extension, since I pavlov'd myself into hating that block screen with a passion.
I did a somewhat weaker version of this: Add entry for the site in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. This will block it and it requires enough manual steps to serve the same purpose. It did work for me.
Something I started looking for just today, and here it is, thank you. I noticed when I stop using most of the addictive things my habit of clicking on bookmarks slowly shifts to sites that don't give me any sort of fix (like checking weather) aside from the act of clicking itself. It feels rly dumb and this looks like a good potential remedy.
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