Willpower cracks: one developer's fight to make the internet boring
Making the Internet Boring
A developer who kept overriding his own website blocker for 444 minutes explains why he stopped relying on self-discipline and started building friction instead. His layered defense includes grayscale on his phone, a minimal launcher, browser extensions like LeechBlock NG, and a custom Tampermonkey script that strips color, blur, and rounded corners from distracting sites. He argues that willpower eventually breaks, but friction holds—and that doomscrolling is an addiction, not a lack of discipline.
Willpower cracks. Friction holds.
- CommenterPerson
Here are some things I try:
Turn off location services except when navigating or calling the taxi.
Use browser, uninstall as many apps as possible.
Use adblocking anti tracking browser (I use Duck, alt suggestions welcome).
Report unknown / unwanted senders as spam.
That said, I am a NEWS ADDICT. There are four world leaders whose downfall I eagerly await, and frequently check the news for this ;-) .. you might be able to guess three but not the fourth.
- academic_84572
For me, adaptive friction has been very helpful - allow access to distracting apps/sites, but make them progressively harder to use.
For phones, ScreenZen is great at this. Makes you pause before visiting an app or site, and you can configure the pause to grow each time you use it. You can also set a timeout on the app. Very flexible settings.
For desktop, I recently built a free browser extension called MooBlock - it's similar to ScreenZen in that it adds a forced pause before you reach a distracting site. But once you reach the site, a herd of cows start walking all over your screen to make the website less appealing.
It's available in both the Chrome and Firefox extension stores. Hoping to make an Android version later this year too.
Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/mooblock/eanbagjehd...
Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mooblock/?utm...
- rglover
Putting in blockers and the like helps, but what I've found worked best was to consider this quote by Anthony DeMello:
"When you fight something, you're tied to it forever. As long as you're fighting it, you’re giving it power."
When I learned to stop feeling bad/guilty/thinking this was a problem to solve and just let my mind drift, I found that my mind naturally learned when it was disciplined work time vs. browse the internet time. Personally, I noticed that when I didn't have any artificial restriction, I was less inclined to waste time on those things.
In practice: "oh, my mind doesn't want to do that other thing right now but it does want to go look at this thing; let it." The more I've loosened my grip, the less distractions have affected my productivity.
- bix6
I use triple click accessibility on my phone to enable grayscale since I need colors sometime.
- _ink_
I also need a solution for my addiction. I was thinking of blocking all addictive apps in my main (phone) account and set up a kids account for myself where all the drugs are installed. Then I need to ask myself for screen time. I hope this is annoying enough to not switch accounts constantly. If that doesn't work, I need to give another person the control over the screen time.