Designing goal for limiting phone/computer during night

[narthur]

I’m very interested in any solutions you come up with.

For a while I set up Tasker to force me to leave my phone plugged in after a certain time in the evening. This was somewhat successful, though if I was feeling extra akratic I could sit by an outlet and continue using the phone. Also, I wasn’t sure if leaving my phone plugged in all night, every night would be good for the battery.

I made some effort to make Tasker just shut my screen off after a couple minutes every time I’d try to use it after a certain time in the evening. It still feels like this should be possible with Tasker, but I wasn’t able to make it work.

You could use Tasker on an Android to simply submit the raw amount of time you spend on the phone to a do-less Beeminder goal. The thing I don’t like about that personally is that I always want to have the option to quickly check the phone if needed, not the least to make sure I don’t have any outstanding Beeminder goals.

Thinking about it, another approach might be to have Tasker submit a data point to a do-less goal if the phone is unlocked for more than, say, 3 minutes at a time after a certain time in the evening. If you use an Android, I’d be happy to help you set that up. I might even try that approach myself…

Related:

Controlling phone use

What tricks, apps, Beeminder goals, etc, do you personally use to control the amount of time you spend staring at your phone? In the past I had a phone-away goal that was defined as the number of hours my phone was charging in the evening until midnight. It had mixed results. I could keep using my phone even when it was plugged in, and I wasn’t sure I liked keeping it plugged in all night, every night, as I understand that can be hard on some batteries.