Lessons learned | BACK | (Feb. 27th 2026)

Over the years I've come to know a few things about how the human brain works in regard to being online. I decided to briefly list a few things here; things that work, and things that don't;

Firstly: Forcing yourself using willpower is in vain Let me explain. Rarely does this work. I've tried it for many years unsuccessfully. The line of thought is usually like "This time I'll lock in; This time will be different" - No it won't For me atleast, pure willpower is like an emergency battery. It definitely works, and it surely has its place, but trying to force permanent change with something like this usually doesn't work unless you're unusually strong-minded, which most of us are not.

Secondly: Do not bully yourself, and do not expect perfection immediately (don't expect it at all!) The situation I was in was 4-5 hours of screentime on my phone. This consisted mainly of short form content. Sometimes I slip up, and that's okay. You can't really lose by going back to your old habits. Here, losing is giving up.

Change the system, and tailor it to your situation. For me, that consisted of deleting Instagram and deactivating YouTube on my phone. I also archived all "irrelevant" chats on WhatsApp so I am not disturbed by any potentially unwanted notifications. (I can access Instagram through the browser, (mainly messages and a few friends' stories) but there's a barrier now and it's laggy and inconvinient.) And the real gamechanger was this: GRAYSCALE
To be fair, this is where it gets weird. Upon setting my phone to grayscale, 90% of the fun disappeared. I'd play Clash of Clans like usual but the dopamine was just *not* there. The first day I tried this, I was in sort of a "hole" after coming home from school (I'd like to note that I played games too much on my PC, so now they're not interesting anymore). Like there was a "hole" of dopamine. That evening I wanted to go to the gym, and I was weirdly enthusiastic about it; I looked forward to it with joy, and not with dread like usual.

Find replacements Okay, so you can surely a camera, those older digital ones for taking photos. They're nice but a pain in the ass sometimes. Plus I'm fairly positive that I'd lose mine if I chose to carry it around more often. I bought a notepad (which I carry in the inner pockets of my jacket). Furthermore I carry a random, bogus book with me when possible. Like I just grabbed one from my shelf and I read in it whenever I want to kill a few minutes. This may sound weird now, but carry a rubber band with you. It's just something to fumble around with when you're bored. I guess try to keep yourself busy. You WILL be bored out of your mind. I'm bored beyond belief writing this, but it's kinda fun still. Also I use an old PC to do most of my work now, and my laptop for my coding. Due to a combination of this PC's weirdness and OS choice you can't really run games on this thing. Even something as simple as Minecraft Alpha runs at barely 20 FPS. It's so bothersome that I don't even try.

(additional tip: you might to try journaling and writing shit down, I don't know how effective it is, but still). This has managed to reduce my screentime on my phone from 4-5h all the way down to 1-1½h. Not bad.

ok that's it.