I'm not sure I have the willpower to follow your example but at least I managed to turn of notifications on my watch after reading your post.
I'm not sure I have the willpower to follow your example but at least I managed to turn of notifications on my watch after reading your post.
Willpower's not the solution. When we isolated cocaine from the coca leaf for the first time, the world pretty much went insane. In those first years people were injecting it into their eyeballs and spines. The most popular beverage on earth in 2026 STILL contains extract of the coca leaf as a holdover from the days when it was laced with its namesake, Coke. People were smoking cocaine, ingesting cocaine, giving it to their kids for a toothache, pretty much anything you could stick it in, they did.
The solution to this wasn't willpower, it was to get rid of all that fucking cocaine. There's a reason you don't have the stuff lying around your house today, if you did you'd probably get hooked. In 2026 we're basically speedrunning the coke boom with infotech.
So once again the solution is: get rid of it. Any time you're in a low stimulus environment, remove the tech so that you don't HAVE to exercise willpower. That means turning off the phone and the watch and maybe stuffing them in a drawer in another room or something. That's all it takes.
I can't say how society will look back at this moment in history 150 years from now. But I do know I'm way happier and more relaxed when I just shut off the devices and put them away. When I'm at home or in the office, my phone's on mute, in a drawer/bag/other room, and I don't think about it unless I take it out for a few minutes to order a delivery or do a 2fa or something. At night it's simply turned off. I'll never own a smart watch. I still keep the phone on me when I go out and haven't found that to be a huge concern because if I'm at a bar or something it's competing with a lot of other stimuli for attention. We were never 100% available to anyone for all of human history until the last 10-20 years. I am not opting into this current Cocaine Moment.
Willpower is a great solution if the problem is to let the companies off the hook, though.
Not even a smartwatch? What's your opinion on fitness trackers (the passive ones, without display)?
I think it depends on how you use it. All things in moderation and all. I've had one for years but when I set it up it only allowed it a few notifications. When meetings start during my work day, getting e-mail to my personal account, and when I get messages from my wife, that's it.
So when I'm not working the watch is... just a watch.
I was a fan of the Apple Watch initially because I felt like it kept me from having to take out my increasingly large iPhone to check things like the time and if I was going to get rained on, but they've managed to make WatchOS some weird nightmare of distractions and things I need to actively shut off on my phone, and I've grown very tired of it.
> fitness trackers (the passive ones, without display
Do you mean my belly when I look down? That and the answer to "can I keep up with my kids?" has always been enough fitness tracking for me.
I wear a self winding watch. I suppose if it stops going while I'm wearing it, I've been very still and might be dead.
To stick with the analogy: to me, your question reads as "What's your opinion on Speed?".
More like "Not even weed? What's your opinion on psychedelics (the mushrooms, they aren't addictive)?"
My big discovery a few years ago was uninstalling apps, especially social media apps. I don't mind the platforms, but removing their ability to ping notifications up was massive. I watch some people just get their phone out to dismiss a load of notifications for 20-30 seconds. It's a chore now. I think limiting notifications is the best thing you can do, on your phone and your watch.
I honestly don't think it is willpower, it is simply that I never had to break the "addiction" because I never had it in the first place.
I always found the form factor extremely limiting compared to a desktop (it's the same reason my laptop ended up running a TV upstairs, the idea of programming on the sofa sounded great but in practice I'd get frustrated and immediately retreat to my quiet downstairs office with multiple screens when I had to do something tricky/requiring concentration).
Where I do use something that optimises for distractions, I look for how to minimize the distractions (e.g YouTube - I use the excellent Unhook (with Ublock Origin) which turns the YT home page into a search box and little else, hides mixes, shorts and other distractions) and make it work for me.