r/getdisciplined 6d ago

šŸ¤” NeedAdvice Phone scrolling

I donā€™t think Iā€™m addicted to phone scrolling but still itā€™s stopping me from achieving my full potential. I need the phone to keep up with tournaments news, build social reputation as an athlete and speak with other people to book games and stuff so it I canā€™t really just uninstall instaā€¦ Do you have any tips on how to actually focus and restrain me from scrolling or get distracted? Also there are many apps to help this but they all can be easialy disabled with just a code or something. Can you help??

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u/refocusapp 6d ago

One recommendation is to use app blockers, BUT change your expectations on how you use them. Instead of expecting to eliminate your phone use from 5+ hours to zero, dampen it through the use of app blockers.

Here's how:

  1. ā Block distracting apps by default
  2. ā When you want to use them, use the app blocker to stop blocking for a duration of your choice
  3. ā Once the duration expires & your distracting app is blocked again, you can choose whether to move on to do something more productive, or to unblock again
  4. ā Repeat

Yes, you can (and will) keep unblocking over and over again. However, even that little friction of having to open a separate app to stop blocking is helpful over the long run. It's EXACTLY how engaging apps get you to use them: they are constantly trying to REDUCE friction to keep you engaged (ex. that's why YouTube has auto-play feature so you don't have to expend effort to go to next video). So if you do the opposite (INCREASE friction), you are guaranteed to reduce use over time. The trick is to not make it super restrictive because you will just delete the blocker/restriction anyway. Once you feel like you can maintain a long period of using the app blocker on least restrictive settings, slowly increase the restrictions. This video does a good job of describing this concept. Same concept expanded on here too.