Some ideas.
Delete any accounts you have with these services.
When you’re home, put your phone away, don’t carry it on you.
Read the book “How to break up with your phone” by Catherine Anne Price.
Have one or two books that every time you are tempted to go to one of those services you pick up and read that book instead.
Meditate. Exercise. Do gardening.
BUT ultimately… figure out the root cause of your addiction and work on that.
Fortunately, I never became addicted to my phone because I never moved past being addicted to my desktop :) I completely forget I have my phone on me when I'm out and about, but I don't leave my house a ton and work remotely.
I unsubbed from all my subreddits a long time ago and don't really comment much. I engage with the site the same if I'm logged out. I'm pretty close to deleting my Facebook, but have at least trimmed friends down to below 100. I suppose I could at least make the transition to just using Messenger for Desktop instead of full-fledged Facebook to preserve the few contacts I message on that platform.
I'll give the book a skim and see if it has anything insightful. Thanks for the suggestion.
I agree I could be meditating more. I have a subscription for Ten Percent Happier and dabble in it, but rarely have streaks longer than a month. I agree that it's possible practicing meditation more heavily would give me a stronger ability to see my mind's desires and respond to them rather than being subject to them.
The actions just feel subconscious at this point. Like when tests/CI are running then I flick back to media on a second screen, or when I get stuck on a problem or am having trouble getting into the zone then I procrastinate by thumbing through media. These aren't really times where I feel I can get up and go do an entirely different activity that puts me away from the screen. It's more like a behavioral pattern that subtlety saps my efficiency when I'm trying to be productive, you know?
Your last paragraph is telling.
Try to read it by substituting “Sean Anderson” for “I” and critically evaluate what you think of Sean Anderson’s explanation…
Yeah, fair. My first thought was that I can get up and do something else and am just choosing not to do so.
I definitely have the same problem (I just sent a work email, and have to go back to a task that's a bit difficult, so I'm just giving advice that I don't follow to a total stranger instead).
One thing I noticed about the "hard stuff" that I procrastinate away from is that I am a very slow thinker, and usually, the reason why I don't get into it straight away is that the first idea I have is not the right one, and I kind of know that in the back of my brain, and so letting the ideas flow freely in the brain while doing something else helps the good solution cristallize in a slow way. So when that's the case, I just need to embrace that and work on something else that's simpler like small frontend stuff that gives you good satisfaction for very little thinking.
Anyways, other things that sort of works for me are : lifting small weights while waiting, or doing grip training (I am climbing, so these are things that help for that), or doing dead hangs (I work from home...). Take a short walk. Like I literally used to walk back and forth to the bathroom when I was a kid.
I think that something like a underdesk bike, that's connected to a game on your screen would be kind of nice, you'd pause it while you work, and when you build something, you'd add an extra mile to that game... I don't know, I'm just making stuff up now.
Back to work ffs.