Chapter 316 - Implementation[7] (2/2)

First, before we get into blocking specific apps or the entire phone, you should go into your settings and disable most/all of your notifications. I don't care who you are or what you do or what f.u.c.k.i.n.g horse you rode in on, notifications are like the second-hand smoke of attention—they give everyone a coughing fit.

Disable both the sound/vibration and the little red circles. You know those circles are red for a reason, right? We unconsciously see them as being urgent and they encourage compulsive clicking to get rid of them.

Those little red dots are Satan, in case you were wondering.

(Optional: I also turn off my ringer and all sound from my phone. My philosophy is: unless we scheduled a call, or I'm expecting to hear from you, I don't want to hear from you. Nothing personal.)

Once you've done that, let's talk about limiting our app use.

iPhone users have it the easiest, as Apple has started implementing features to let you temporarily block apps from yourself. You can find a guide for how to do it here.

Google's Digital Wellbeing app for Android accomplishes the same thing, although without as many options as Apple. One thing I do like about Digital Wellbeing is you can set a bedtime for yourself. So, at that time every night, your phone becomes unusable.

Google's Digital Wellbeing app is a good start, but still leaves some features to be desired.

But, if you want to customize how and when you can use certain apps, you have to download a third party app. There are a lot of options, but the best one from what I can tell is aptly called ”Help Me Focus.” It has the flexibility to block some apps and not others, and lets you customize when you block throughout the week.

OK, this tip is only if you want to get hardcore (and also if you have kids). This idea comes courtesy of my buddy Nir Eyal. When I heard him describe it, I was like ”damn dude… that's some next level shit.”

For about $12 each, you can buy timers for your power outlets. You can then program them to cut off power to whatever is plugged into them at certain times of the day or week. Buy a few of them and put them around the house and you can customize what hours of the day or week your wifi router works, when your television is usable, when your video game systems will function, and so on.

Ideally, you'll be so occupied with work and productive stuff during the day that in the evenings, you won't have to resort to controlling yourself this way. But hey, desperate times call for desperate measures.

I have a tendency to get sucked into video games. I've been pretty good about it the past year. But the next time I find myself playing until four in the morning every night, I know this is exactly what I'm going to be using.