This "digital detox" thing has proven to be harder than I initially thought. I'm okay with being in it for longer, if it means the better habits actually last. Anyways, I'm currently on day 4 of the 30DT.
Can't say for sure. It's difficult to define hard rules for something like this, since many websites these days (
cough YouTube) can be used to both make the least and most of the time spent on them.[1] There were a number of days that I felt were successful, but because they weren't totally perfect I erred on the side of caution and marked them as failures.
I've kind of flipped now, and mark days as successes if no period of mindless surfing or scrolling happened. As long as my screen usage was vastly intentional and useful, I'm okay with that. If there is something I think I could improve, I write it in the notes section of my habit tracking app.[2]
My daily phone screen time averages out to 2 hours, and on my laptop 3.5. It still sounds like a lot, but studying (laptop) easily takes up 3 hours. Anki reviews (phone) take up another half hour. 2 hours aside from studying isn't terrible, right? I think I could maybe decrease it, even if a bit?
Eh, that's all for now.
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[1]: I had the idea of compartmentalising as much as possible. Since I study on the same device every day, downloading videos I view frequently (e.g. ambient sounds and helpful explainers) and viewing them through, say, VLC would mean I wouldn't have to visit the actual YouTube site and risk becoming distracted.
That idea didn't really go anywhere, since I'd still have to visit YouTube to search for videos on a given science topic. I use Unhook to avoid becoming distracted, and it seems do be doing that well. Link:
https://unhook.app/