No surf

Being federated doesn't make Lemmy psychologically healthy, it's still a descendant of a design paradigm meant to extract your attention. Every time I see something I didn't want to see, that's a moment of effort to redirect my attention back to things I consider worthwhile. I only have so much time and so much effort. A large part of me just wants to call it quits but I need a way to talk about stuff I can't talk to anyone IRL about, so I'm trying it for now.

I really don't like that the default page (at least on lemmy.world) is "all." I'd like to turn off that page or mass block almost every community but I don't know that the technology exists to do either of those.

Anything folks do to waste less time & make Lemmy work for them?

Coming from Rexxit and having only followed the perfect trinity, I am so happy to have found you guys!

Now I can live in peace with you guys, /dumbphones and /digitalminimalism.

PS: New to the Fediverse, so I assume it's possible that there are multiple versions on multiple instances? :-O

If so: "Gotta catch 'em all!"

It's Friday again - this is the time you determine whether you waste another weekend!

Take just a few minutes today to put together a small list of things you want or need to do this weekend - and avoid stumbling into the default option again: hours and hours of screen time.

For example you could:

-Go outside and take a photo of objects that look like each letter in your name

-Buy or pick flowers for your significant other

-See a liveshow in your town of a band you have never heard of but that looks cool.

Also: See the list of nosurf activities if you need inspiration.

Good luck & have a good time!

It's Friday again - this is the time you determine whether you waste another weekend!

Take just a few minutes today to put together a small list of things you want or need to do this weekend - and avoid stumbling into the default option again: hours and hours of screen time.

For example you could:

• Get a bag of cherries and challenge a friend to a spit-off.
• Order two coffees made from different beans and see if you can tell the difference - best done in the morning.
• Buy a postcard and send it to a family member.

Also: See the list of nosurf activities if you need inspiration.

Good luck & have a good time!

I have tried for a couple of years now to reduce my screen time and focus more on other goals, specifically, reading more. Here are some of the things that have helped me reduce my screen time until now:

• Turn both computer and phone to greyscale mode as often as possible
• Constantly have phone on Do Not Disturb mode, notification sounds off, battery saver mode on (this last one has allowed me to only use 50% battery per day and only charge my phone every other day)
• Apps I use for my (android) phone: minimalist launcher; lock me out; keep me out
  • minimalist launcher: a very simple launcher, black and white, apps are listed in a text list rather than using icons
  • lock me out: set timers for distracting apps (I use Firefox for Lemmy so half hour limit for Firefox, after which there is a 30m lockout; Instagram has 1h lockout after 15m; YouTube has 1h lockout after 15m. This has helped me better manage my usage and I have pretty much stopped using Instagram and YouTube as a result)
  • keep me out: I barely use this now, but you can voluntarily lock yourself out using a timer. Worked well when I was finding myself frustrated after scrolling for a long time and could not seem to stop myself (this was when I didn't have quite as many "lock me out" restrictions).
• view Lemmy, Reddit etc as website in browser instead of using individual apps
• Not nearly as many restrictions on the computer but there is not as much of an urge to get distracted on the computer for me. There is an app called SelfControl which I have on Mac which is a very lightweight and strict timed website blocker, but I don't have to use it very much.

This has helped me reduce my screen time very significantly recently to an average of probably 1-2 hours per day for recreational things. Probably closer to 1 hour most days.

I am mostly using my phone/computer for keeping in contact with friends or family, or doing work / school related things. I would like to continue cutting down on recreational screen use and switching to reading, especially on weekends...

I recently used the Reddit debacle as motivation to finally quit Reddit and switched over to Lemmy, which I hope will further decrease my screentime as Reddit was the final frontier of social media for me, so to speak. Regarding Reddit, I would recommend the book, "You Should Quit Reddit" by Jacob Desforges.

Fellow NoSurfers, with the ironic hope that this becomes a vibrant place to lament about social media and help each other getting less dependent on it: can we maybe include the NoSurf activity list somewhere in the description? It has always seemed a good resource to point people to.

https://nosurf.net/activity-list/