Doing a digital detox when you work in tech is a bit like going on a diet when you’re a pastry chef: hard, but essential.
For a long time I tried to cut back on social media and other media without much success; but for the past few months I’ve finally felt like I’ve turned a corner.
Here are 4 concrete approaches that really worked for me:
Cancelling Spotify.
This is probably the decision that took the most willpower, but it was also the most decisive.
Spotify became a problem for me the moment they added podcasts, which put all the content I was trying to avoid on YouTube and TV right back within a click’s reach.
I also felt like I no longer valued music as much as I used to, and that I couldn’t remember the artists I was listening to, because I had handed even the choice of my music over to the algorithm.
Cancelling Spotify let me break that vicious circle and build other, healthier habits.
AppBlock + strict blocking.
Ever since Ulysses had himself tied to the mast to hear the sirens’ song, we’ve known that willpower alone isn’t enough to resist temptation.
That’s why I decided to block myself from the apps on my phone that do me the most harm: all social networks blocked, all AI apps blocked, and the browser limited to 20 minutes a day.
On top of that, AppBlock has a “strict blocking” feature: you can’t unlock the settings without waiting (for example) 5 minutes, which takes the edge off the urge to give in.
Turning my phone off in the evening, and turning it back on as late as possible the next day.
Since I can’t (and don’t even want to) give up screens entirely, I’ve made a habit of protecting the first hour of the day as a phone-free hour. It’s a habit I found fairly easy to pick up, because at that time of day my mind still has enough energy to resist the urge to scroll and to choose the calm of my morning coffee over the noise of social media.
Stopping taking notes on my computer or phone.
Like any good optimization geek, I’ve worked a lot with digital note-taking systems, Obsidian in particular.
This year, though, I’ve been using that system much less, and I’ve replaced it with a Supernote that I’ve become completely crazy about.
What I especially love is getting the advantages of writing on paper (the feel of writing on paper, no artificial light, no social media within reach of the stylus) together with those of digital (cloud sync, links between virtual notebooks, file sharing…).
All the more so since the OCR built into today’s mainstream AI agents is more than good enough to, for example, write on my tablet and generate a formatted post for LinkedIn or Substack in a few seconds.
These measures don’t stop me from slipping back into my bad habits from time to time; still, I feel like I’ve landed on a system that generally gives me more calm and mental clarity, and leaves me more time to devote to the things that matter to me.
What about you: which techniques have really worked for you?