Comment by skybrian
7 years ago
It seems like this should work the other way too? If you want to break a habit, add a delay.
This seems like a good idea for a browser extension. Maybe sometimes you want to undo the work that the website did making things go faster?
That might be a really good idea. Over the years I've tried multiple website blockers, but I keep turning them off (no judgment please...).
Artificially slowing down those time waster websites instead might do the trick. Not so slow it becomes unusable (or I'll turn it off) , but slow enough that over time I start associating it with a bad experience.
Try LeechBlock (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/leechblock-ng...).
It's been a lifesaver in tackling my internet addiction. It has the useful 'delay option' and other nifty features that helped wean me off social media sites.
Personally, I have it installed on all my desktop browsers and Firefox on Android. I give myself half an hour quota per day for the time waste websites (Youtube, Twitter, FB, Insta, etc) after which a 60 second delay rule kicks in. I've found that my monkey brain almost never bothers waiting for a minute for the page to load unless it's absolutely necessary.
The best amount of delay could depend on your goal.
One goal is to quit something completely. For that, you probably want delay across the board so that it eventually saps the joy out of the experience.
Another goal is practicing moderation. With social media as an example, maybe you want to stay up to date on something, so 20 minutes a day is fine, but you don't want to fall into the trap of killing 3 hours on there. So, you could make it full speed for 20 minutes of daily usage, then gradually degrading from there. By the time the speed degrades, you've probably done all the truly appealing parts anyway and it's easier to walk away when nudged.
or tie every login to a donation to the other political party. that should do the trick.
I’ve seen this used to good effect with coworkers that habitually ask for help before trying to solve the problem themselves. Instead of ignoring them or complaining that they’re wasting your time, wait to respond for a few minutes so that you’re no longer faster than looking the information up for themselves.
Obviously this only works over some kind of messaging service; face-to-face conversations have significantly different expectations around long pauses.
I often just ask my coworkers to give me a minute to finish the detail aim working on at the moment. I don’t think it is rude to let them wait a minute or even five when they come and interrupt my flow.
I try and do this with customers, if I slow the response they often figure things out for themselves.
This is what I do with my kids.
They both have the habit of very frequently interrupting me to ask me questions they either know or can find the answer to easily, or asking me to do things they can do for themselves.
I try to avoid just giving a blunt "no" because I'm also trying to instill in them the idea that family is about helping each other. So I try to say, "Yes, but I'm in the middle of ___. Give me a few minutes then I'll help you."
More often than not, as if by magic, it turns out they have the capacity to do it themselves all of a sudden.
I really like this idea of a Chrome extension that makes every load on Twitter/Facebook/Hacker News/[your vice goes here] just take something like 0.5s longer. If no one else builds this, I think I will at some point.
My data plan goes to 3g (feels like 2g) speeds when my data runs out. Its actually awesome, I still get email etc, but browsing crappy content becomes really slow so I avoid it. I wish you could buy cheap 3g only plans
I don't know if that's why, but HN is usually way faster than the linked sites, and I more often than not end up browsing the comments instead of the intended content.