How I broke my auto-pilot LinkedIn habit with a redirect
I work a computer job and often have 'micro-down times'. Like 3 minutes here, 5 minutes there. My mouse was just automatically opening LinkedIn, scrolling, then closing, without me even being that conscious of it. My daughter actually told me I'm addicted to LinkedIn, then I realised I had a problem.
I felt like I did some amount of willpower (I don't have any other social media), but I just needed friction in between my impulses. I've used apps like Opal before but they got in the way more often and I ended up uninstalling them.
So anyways, I built a browser-extension with a couple of key features which I thought would help me. Specifically, you can nominate a website to redirect to. So, whenever you open a tab on auto-pilot, it would redirect me to somewhere more productive. It also has a 7-second timer to turn it off, which I found more flexible than Opal (like sometimes you just have to open a site).
Anyways, I've been using it for a month and have attached my data (edit: no links allowed).
Before: averaging around 6–7 opens a day, peaking at 14.
After: most days are 0–3, with plenty of complete zero days.
I still have some bad days, but I've found myself a lot more focused at work and seem to have broken the "auto-pilot" habit. Lastly, because the blocker has a little mascot, I felt bad about turning him off, so wanted to just keep it on and keep him happy lol. I should note Anti-Social is open-source; I'm not looking to monetize it in any way.