Hello, I’m writing because, many times before, I’ve tried a month long social media detox, but have always failed. I wanted to try again, only this time with Beeminder, and maybe make this a lifelong habit. Since I’m new to the app, I don’t really know the best way to use beeminder to keep myself accountable. Should I use rescuetime? Is there any way to integrate Apple’s screen time? Should I get premium? I’m willing to get premium memberships of stuff if it helps me with my goal. Any advice on how to move forward would be appreciated. Cheers!
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Are you trying to totally eliminate your social media usage or limit it in certain ways?
If you’re trying to totally eliminate a behavior, I’ve had success with a simple +1 do-more goal where +1 means I didn’t do the behavior that day. A cumulative count of your days without social media could be a nice graph to have. I’ve used this strategy for my out of bed goal that requires me to not get back in bed during a certain time frame after my alarm goes off.
If you’re trying to limit the time, I’m sure others will have input. For example, I’ve noticed a goal on the featured page called unproductive-time that uses auto-data from RescueTime.
Around a year ago I decided to deactivate my social media accounts and gave my passwords to a trusted person. Initially, I only hard-committed to about three months, which I think helped me through the rough period of breaking the habit. I eventually discovered additional distracting websites, so now I use Cold Turkey on my computer and Apple parental controls on my phone for those. A good balance for me is to eliminate things from my phone and limit my use on my computer.
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