No Magic Bullet
February 4, 2022

I've been having problems, yet again, with spending too much time online. I'd
already converted most of my computer programs to plain, command-line interfaces
to prevent the distraction of shiny, bells-and-whistles graphical programs. Set
up an RSS reader so that I could get most of my news and information in text
form. I even tried switching to text-mode internet browsers. (Though the modern,
graphics-heavy internet meant that most of the sites I needed to visit no longer
worked, and I had to switch back to a GUI program.) And still, I spent too much
time surfing.

 So this past weekend, I looked into making the use of my internet browser more
difficult, by setting up my computer so that I'd have to manually turn on the
software that handles all graphics each and every time I fired up my browser. It
took several hours of research and experimentation, but I found a way--it was
clunky, unwieldy, but it worked. Mostly. But not all the websites I regularly
access opened properly and I began wondering what would happen if the browser
needed to open multiple windows, which happens sometimes when doing things such
as filling out online forms or attending video meetings. I played around a while
longer, but came to the conclusion that my current setup is about as minimal as
I can have and still be useable (and useful).

This forced me to once again confront the fact (confronted every time this
happens) that it's not my internet setup that's letting me spend too much time
online, its me letting me spend too much time online. Even if I got that
rock-bottom, manually-start-the-browser kludge system working on my laptop, it
wouldn't necessarily solve the problem I have. There's no magic bullet--there's
just me.

But searching for a magic bullet is what we all try to do these days. It's so
much easier to try to find something--a diet, a book, an app on your phone--that
will force you to do what you want to do. Something that doesn't require all the
hard work of changing yourself, with only yourself to blame for the times you
fail. Far less bruising to the ego to simply look for the next thing that might
(this time, this time!) make you achieve your goal.

The real source of change is changing habits. We have to stop doing what doesn't
work and find the actions that move us closer to our goal. Then we have to
actually do those actions until they become a habit.

So this weekend will be spent searching out what triggers my bad habits when it
comes to internet use, coming up with actions to replace them, and finally
developing a plan to make those good actions a habit. Then I'm going to have to
keep track of my successes and failures and make adjustments from there. It's
not going to be quick--or easy. But that's because there's no magic bullet.

(c) 2022 by Andrew Gudgel 
email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com