I’ve begun a two week experiment to ban the internet at my house. I plan to make almost daily updates to this log about what I’m experiencing, the technical difficulties I’m running into and the adjustments I’m making.
##Why am I doing this?
I expect that this will help with general productivity. I have inattentive ADHD and more than just being a time-sink, I feel like my brain operates worse after indulging in distracting websites. I have done similar experiments before (like avoiding digital media for a month) and have found that my brain benefits from a daily rest period absent of refreshing content. An outcome I hope for is increased writing output.
I’m inspired by Lydia Lutsyshyna’s project where she essentially banned schoolwork from her apartment, confining it to the library. She found that she spent more time with her friends and on her creative pursuits. Her schedule seemed to stabilize with mealtimes and sleep happening at more consistent times of the day.
I have had much more success with designing my environment to discourage certain behaviors than trying to exert willpower. I am willing to go to ridiculous lengths to add strategic inconveniences to my technology.
##What are the rules?
The rules are pretty simple. I’m turning off the internet for my devices when I am at home. The intention is to have clearly defined contexts for certain activities. Work is to be done at a co-working space and personal internet use is to be done at a cafe or library (using a vpn), but it’s okay for me to do work at those places as well. I’m interested to see what new behaviors will emerge. Will I go to the gym, instead of working out at home, so I can download podcasts on their wifi?
##What’s the set up?
The implementation is a bit more complex. My router will be my main enforcement tool. The main difficulty I have in pulling this off is that I want to turn off the internet for myself, but not my partner. I try not the draw her too much into my dumb experiments (though the month where I avoided all electric light after sunset and we had dinner by candlelight was nice). I’m able to set rules on my router so that certain devices can not access the internet, identified by their IP addresses. Currently, I don’t have static IP’s set up for my devices, so I’ll have to see if this becomes a problem. I’m also not doing anything special to block my access to the router. I expect that I will need to make a number of tweaks in the first few days. If temptation becomes too much of an issue, I can write the router password down on a piece of paper and give it to my partner to hold on to.
##What are the exceptions?
I’m making room for a few exceptions that I find reasonable. My friends and I have a weekly online gaming night where we play either D&D over a virtual tabletop or other games like Heroes of the Storm. My gaming pc will be able to access the internet only from 8pm until 1am every Wednesday night.
I’m also making an exception for my phone. This seems like a massive exception, but my phone’s internet access is already tightly controlled. I don’t have a browser or any social media apps. I use only self-tracking, messaging, reference and general utility apps (e.g. apple maps, foursquare, dictionary, etc.). I also allow myself to listen to my iTunes library and audiobooks that I check out from the library. But there is no app where I can say, “what’s new?” and refresh the content. I even have the Mail app disabled by default. I use Buffer so that I can post to Twitter, but I can’t see my timeline. Another principle is that I don’t use any app that causes me to stare at my phone for extended periods of time. So, no flashcard apps like Anki, or offline reading apps like Instapaper. While my relationship to the internet is terrible, my relationship with my phone has gotten pretty good after a couple years of experimenting with removing its functionality.
Another exception is any joint activity with my partner, like streaming a movie.
That’s the current set up. I’m sure to make many adjustments and plan to document them here.
##What are my metrics?
Oh yeah, those. I don’t see this as a metrics driven experiment. It’s more about creating artificial constraints and see what happens. This is why I aim to post near daily updates documenting my subjective experience.
However, I’m still interested in how this will affect my productivity and mood. Because of the nature of my work, I only log time when I’m actively working. My number of hours worked each day is a pretty good proxy for how productive I have been. For mood, I use moodscope and will be doing that test first thing in the morning. I can also look at sleep, fasting blood sugar, blood pressure, resting heart rate and weight. These are all things that I measure regularly, so there’s always a baseline established for any experiment.
I’m also in the middle of a willpower measurement experiment (which I need to start a project log for). I assume there will be an impact there, but I’m still in a calibration stage with that experiment and am frequently tweaking my process.
##When did I start?
I implemented the rules on the router on Wednesday, June 12th. I’m using this week as a calibration period to make sure the system is working and plan to keep with it until at least Sunday, June 30th.
##How’s it been so far?
I had my first full day with no internet at home yesterday. I think it made it easier for me to get my day going in the morning even though I stayed up late the night before (the aforementioned game night). I made the mistake of bringing my iPad and the usb key that unlocks access to the personal profile on my laptop to the coworking space with me (the work profile on my computer has a lot of restrictions on which websites I can access). The idea was that I would work on my personal stuff at 5pm for an hour before heading home. I found access to the personal profile to be too much of a distraction. Even though I biked to work, I had a pretty hard time concentrating. Around midday, I used a timed lock to lock the usb key in a small bag until 5pm.
When I got home, I worked out for the first time since getting back from vacation on Monday. I didn’t have any grand plans for what to do with my time after that. I went on my gaming pc just to see which games would work without internet access and watched part of a German movie that had been downloaded to my iPad for my recent trip to the east coast. Not a great use of my time, but I think it was enough stimulation to assuage the part of my brain that revolts whenever I try to implement these kind of restrictions.
