It's been 11 days since my last post, and since then I've marked 4 days as failures and 2 days as successes.

4 and 2 don't add up to eleven? Uhm, yeah, they don't. I don't know how to explain what happened without coming off as a hopeless screen addict. Not using YouTube for 30 days shouldn't be that hard otherwise. Maybe I am addicted to tech? If I am, hopefully it's not hopelessly.

Here's an outline of how the six days I did log went:

June 5th: Success. I spent most of the day doing stuff I intended to do. Spent time on YouTube during my breaks.
June 6th: Failure. Same as June 5th, but I scrolled Reddit during my breaks instead.
June 7th: Failure. Binged Rabbit Hole covers.[1]
June 8th: Success. Got through the day without using tech for fun.
June 9th: Success. Out of the house most of the day.
June 10th: Failure. More Rabbit Hole.
June 11th: Failure. Binged KATSEYE content on YouTube.

By my standards, only June 8th was a win. As mentioned in my previous post, I've found that defining hard rules that work for me is difficult, if not impossible.

One such rule I thought up was "I can't use YouTube for anything other than studying,". It seemed good enough at first, but in practice, two issues came up. The first was that I found other ways to waste time on the web, outside of the go-to YouTube and Reddit. The second was that cutting off my primary way of winding down after a long, tiring day only made those days even more long and tiring.[2] A day would come where I'd be so fed up with studying that I'd reason myself into a doomingly extensive binge, thinking I "deserved" it.

Also in my previous post, I mentioned using my own judgement to decide whether my screen usage was mostly intentional and useful. Here's that part:

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.

I've made a few changes now, and think they're a step in the right direction:

Instead of writing a single journal entry at the day's start, I've shifted to interstitial journaling.[3] I don't have to write entries in my one paper journal; if I'm at my laptop, I can open Notepad and narrate my thoughts there.[4]
I've made my blockers a bit stricter. I've set passwords for them that are impossible to memorise, written them down and put them in a high cupboard far from where I usually am during the day.[5] For desktop browsers, this also meant enforcing the extensions through the registry, so they couldn't be disabled or removed.[6][7]
I've eased the amount of studying and work-ish stuff I do each day, so stuff will be a bit slower, but my routine will be more consistent and sustainable in the long term.

That's all. Again, I'm in for the long game with this and expect to make more adjustments as the days go on.

[1]: Yes, the DECO*27 song.

[2]: You could argue that one should have more (particularly analogue) ways to relax or have fun. Full reliance on tech for any purpose should be discouraged, both because you shouldn't be putting all of your eggs into one basket (device?) and that you don't have the same permanence and reliability that you do with not-digital stuff. Phones can shut off and not power on again, files can become corrupted or accidentally deleted and cloud services can raise prices or just cease to exist. Things like that.

I agree, but I can't conjure a tech-free hobby out of thin air. It'll take a bit of time to reroute that desire for dopamine from www.youtube.com to a bookshelf or sketchbook and pencil. I'm hoping this approach allows that to happen.

[3]: The webpage I first read about interstitial journaling on: https://nesslabs.com/interstitial-journaling

[4]: I think a similar state of clear thinking can be achieved purely in one's own head, sometimes. Even so, I prefer to use paper to force my head to slow down by getting those thoughts into written words. I think it helps to ensure that state of clarity better than not doing so.

[5]: The blockers I use are Leechblock NG (Chrome/Edge/Firefox) and ScreenZen (Android). ScreenZen only supports 4-digit PINs (too easy to remember) so I asked my younger brother and sister to think of a 4-digit number (one for each app group), type it in, write it down, scrunch it up and then put the paper slip in a bag. I put the bag away.

[6]: See https://www.techlockdown.com/articles/how-to-enforce-browser-extensions and https://www.proginosko.com/leechblock/faq/remove-extension-firefox/ . Android doesn't have a good equivalent to this. Admin apps can be easily removed, if you know where the option is. I guess that also applies here, but the registry is much more foreign to me than Android's settings.

Despite that, I don't think I'll ever uninstall ScreenZen, since there's no option to export or import my settings. I don't want to have to set everything up again.

[7]: The reason for doing this is not to zero out on YouTube & co.; I've explained why I don't want to do that. What I want is for my visits to those sites to be thought-out and not mindless. I'd have to come to the decision that, yes, I've done well these past few days and can let loose a bit, then decide how much time I should let myself have, then unlock the blocker for that specified time.

Before, I'd use a different browser or YouTube client and open the floodgates to endless time-killing. To be fair, there are likely still ways to work around them, albeit less straightforward. Just hoping interstitial journaling helps me avoid going that far.

more detox talk (i changed my approach... again)