I mean specifically for dopamine hits that leads to endless scrolling and such btw. I’ve noticed that in the past week or two that I’ve been going to almost 7 hours a day of scrolling on my phone and want to learn how to pace myself. Any advice?
Posts and comments here share personal experience — not medical advice. For treatment questions, talk to a clinician.
Delete social media was the best solution/desicion since 4 months 🙃
Timers can be super helpful if you use them. Mindset is the key. Give yourself permission to scroll for an amount of time you think is reasonable. Let’s say for example you give yourself permission to scroll 3 hours a day. Look at when you are doing the scrolling. Is it 7 hours straight or a total in a day. When are the longest periods of scrolling? Does it correspond to something particular in your day? Are you using it to avoid a particular hard or boring task? And then you run out of time to do it so it becomes your excuse that it didn’t get done and you can set that worry aside until the next day? The cycle repeats. (examining the reasons for that is another story.) as far as the timer though, let’s say you’ve decided three hours a day is your limit. Then decide if you want to use it all at once or break it down into segments throughout the day. You could either schedule it for X number of minutes at certain times of the day, or set a timer for an hour let’s say the first time you start scrolling then you decide if you want to extend your time or go ahead and stop and know that you have two hours left. If you extend your time it’s shortens what you have left later. So it all depends on how your day goes and when you’re doing the scrolling. The mindset part is to firmly establish how long you’re gonna give yourself permission to do it. And then be firm about that with yourself. Use the timer for tracking your time. If three hours doesn’t feel like enough since it’s been seven then make it five for a few weeks and make it less each week until you get to an acceptable amount of time that you’re gonna give yourself permission to have. Baby steps are still steps and sometimes we have to start small and build momentum.
I do my best not to pick up my phone until after my morning routine or the first hour. You can try using the do not disturb on Apple (don’t know what it’s called on android) and that won’t let me access chosen apps in the timeframe I’ve set up
Time limits and let friends or a family member set the password and ask them whenever you need to change things (there are other possibilities but they require general work with self control and that takes a lot of time and patience)
This works really well for me too!
