How I Control Digital Distraction
⦿ I deleted accounts that only waste my time, and don’t generate value for me: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Quora, Pinterest…
⦿ I deleted my Hacker News account. And any other accounts on forums for engineers, except Stack Overflow. This is because I found that these forums have too much negative emotion, criticism without understanding, and mean-spiritedness. I’d become anxious when checking my threads, mentally preparing to be attacked. If something provokes the wrong emotional reaction in us, we should reconsider whether it’s serving us.
⦿ I limited access to some services like Telegram, LinkedIn and Gmail to my computer. I haven’t installed their mobile apps. On Android, Gmail can’t be uninstalled, so I disabled it, taking control of my phone, reminding myself that I don’t need to go with Google’s decisions. If I need access to my email when I’m out, say in a supermarket to look up some information I’ve emailed myself, I install Gmail, access my email and, after I return home, uninstall it again.
⦿ Make it hard to login, such as by enabling 2-factor authentication. Friction is good! That may make you think whether you really need to log in, rather than reflexively logging in to check if there are any updates.
⦿ I disabled my mobile browser, and I find it saves a lot of time that was being wasted as timepass.
⦿ I turned off autoplay in Youtube, because autoplay makes me waste hours watching dumb videos that pump up Youtube’s metrics but are not in my interest.
⦿ When I’m on an Apple device, I read articles only with Safari’s Reader mode, which strips all the distractions out.
⦿ If a page is annoying to read, like animated ads or popups, I sometimes just close the tab. The value of the information in the article is unlikely to be worth the annoyance.
⦿ I’ve disabled notifications for all services on my phone — my phone doesn’t make a sound or vibrate unless someone calls me.
⦿ I don’t subscribe to Netflix or other platforms where I pay a subscription fee to access serials or movies. Because if I’m paying, I’d want to get my money’s worth, by consuming more content than I otherwise would have. I don’t want to get into such situations. If I’m busy with other aspects in my life, be it work, family or other forms of entertainment, I don’t want to feel bad that I’m wasting my money. Netflix hurts us by autoplaying the next episode, and encouraging bad habits like binge-watching, which make us feel terrible afterward. Yes, I can disable auto-play, but I’d think twice about trusting a company whose incentives are mis-aligned to mine. Paying for each TV serial or movie is better.
Perhaps pirating is even better to avoid the situation where you’re in a theater, watching a bad movie, but you don’t want to walk out because you’ll waste your money if you do. This is illogical, because now you’re wasting your time in addition to your money, but we humans are illogical and have these heuristics, for better or worse. I’d rather harness these to my benefit [1].
Reducing Distraction From Work Accounts
⦿ I don’t have my work accounts or apps on my phone like Slack, Github or a task tracker. I do have Google Meet to attend meetings on my phone while taking a walk, which helps me exercise as well as get a change of scenery compared to being indoors all the time. Instead of blindly setting up work apps and accounts on my phone, I made each account justify itself before I installed it. This controls digital distraction, and enhances work/life balance.
⦿ When I’m done with Slack, I close the tab. I don’t remain on Slack all day, because I don’t need to be available every hour of the day — that takes away focus from my work. I’m paid to get work done, not to chat on Slack. Communication is only a means to an end. I’m intentional about opening Slack. I have to have a reason for opening it. If I feel like opening Slack, I stop and ask myself why I want to open it. For example, I may need to send a message to someone, so instead of remembering it in my mind, it’s better to get it out. So be intentional about opening Slack. And once I’m done with Slack, my rule is that I have to log out. This increases friction to logging in again, which is exactly what I want. Seamless is bad! Companies like Slack are incentivised to boost their engagement numbers, not act in my best interest. We’re all addicted to coordination, which is bad for the same reason being addicted to alcohol is bad. I’ve told my peers that I won’t log in to Slack every day, and I’ll respond tomorrow, but I won’t forget, and that can always call me if something is urgent. Now that I’ve set expectations, I feel comfortable logging out for a whole day.
⦿ Make it easy to log out of all work services at once. I use Edge for this purpose, and clearing all cookies logs me out of Google, Slack, Mixpanel and more. Using a second browser makes it easy to out of work while remaining logged in to my personal accounts in my primary browser. Remember that the goal is to make it as easy as possible to log out. Because if something is hard to do, you’ll end up not doing it — you’ll take the path of least resistance.
⦿ If you need to log in to work, log in only to the services needed. For example, if I need to attend a video call on my laptop, I log in to Google Meet, not Slack.
[1] The incentives are a bigger problem than the payment. I don’t mind paying per se. I bought a Star Trek OST to support the franchise (this was before Discovery), not because I wanted it. I bought a remastered version of an album I already have, again to support the band. So it’s not the payment that’s the biggest problem.
The other problem with video content is DRM, and I don’t want to be locked out of my content, or locked in to a platform. Pirating is often better.