You aren’t pathetic.

Unfortunately many apps aren’t that good and just resort to trying to be the most important app in your device.

Too much ux practice has been perverted to have the user work for their app instead of working for the user.

The really nice thing is we are not alone and rarely the first. The goal is to create and not consume. Write lots like this comment and revisit and review it. Add to it mindfully.

You might like this books called Stolen Focus: https://www.amazon.ca/Stolen-Focus-Attention-Think-Deeply/dp...

To help break the distraction cycles to finish a book, there are more and more resources out there for disrupting the novelty seeking attention dopamine loops.

Some things that help:

- make your phone screen black and white

- turn off all notifications of all apps. This means alerts, notifications , counters and dots.

- the notification thet is on is your calendar. Setup notifications to remind you to check your device or messages at a set time. Your brain the knows you can enjoy it with full focus.

- a tablet is handy for moving your consumption to. When you put it down it’s put down.

- The mode of iOS is really decent.

- Use airplane mode liberally

- social media and digital detoxes help

- On your laptop manually edit your hosts files. Put all the sites you refresh many times a day. Make it a bit hard to edit and you’ll discover you won’t do it much.

- block Hn too on main decides. Dedicate a device to read and consume it and leave it there. Nothing you’ll miss out on.

- turn on all digital health tracking so you see your daily app and website usage. Rescuetime is a great little app.

There is a link that I’m trying to remember which explains this and more very well.

If you want to get your life back, read Stolen Focus. It has all these tips and tricks but it does a lot more - it explains why our focus is shot, and dissects the forces behind it.

It's much more sinister than most people suspect.

https://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Focus-Attention-Think-Deeply/d...

I was spending hours per day on Twitter, and then I learned that overusing social media rewires your brain, and you essentially unlearn to digest information in bigger chunks. This book will horrify you, and that's exactly what needs to be done.

And if a book (to listen to) is too much for you to focus on - listen to Ezra Klein's interview with the author, at least: https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/its-not-your-fault-you...