Great article. I myself am completely unable to limit my consumption of novel information input by “willpower” or whatever. I’m 18 yo, and the internet, programming, HN, reddit and all are too damn interesting, unnaturally, too much. My brain is completely wired to seek novel information input and surge dopamine. I was an addict of some other thing before too, and I know this is %100 dopamine addiction. The only solution that I found to work, that lets my brain “breathe” and brain fog to clear is restricting access.<p>I set the password of my iPhone to a 20-digit number which I surely won’t be able to memorize while setting it up. I put all my contacts to my Emergency Contacts so that I can call them without unlocking my phone. I’m logged in to WhatsApp Web on my iPad, I use it from there. My iPad has Screen Time on, its settings are controlled from my iPhone. All domains except some necessary government etc. domains are blocked, and new app installing is disabled on the iPad. After setting up Screen Time, I asked my brother to enter a random password for the Screen Time password and forget it.<p>I created an iOS Shortcut on my iPhone which dictates my password[2] only if I’m X meters away from banned locations (home & school), because every once in a while I need to unlock my phone to do something. I go on a walk/run and unlock my phone in that case. The shortcut is a widget, it works while my phone is locked.<p>I also time-locked[1] this password to 24 hours (you can only open it after a decryption process which takes 24 hours) and saved it to my DO server in its locked form, because Shortcuts very rarely doesn’t work. I use my server to decrypt if needed.<p>My computer’s (NixOS) password is time-locked too, as I’m currently still in school and shouldn’t be using it (Little time left to university exam). After the exam, I plan to lock it down to 6 hours a day and writing a browser extension which uses an LLM to close the current tab if I’m not working on my project X and instead say, doomscrolling HN.<p>1: I use this program I wrote, in case anyone is interested: <a href="https://github.com/aerbil313/timelock">https://github.com/aerbil313/timelock</a><p>2: It doesn’t dictate the password digits for security reasons. It plays a different notification tone for each digit while I’m entering the password. I memorized which sound is which.