I guess it's not as simple as boiling it down to the individual's own self-control. To some degree maybe my stance is also biased in that I want to empower myself to be the one to reduce my time online.

You can love something to pieces, yet still find yourself unable to do it, merely because the draw of the internet is too powerful. We are not optimized to deal with the stimulus of the internet. I have found that unfettered access to it is reducing life quality, and I'm not waiting for twenty double-blind peer-reviewed studies to show this obvious reality.

It is much healthier to admit that we have limits, that we are fallible in the face of such overwhelming pleasure, and accept the approach of physically distancing ourselves from the internet.

I found, I wasn't going to the internet because I loved the internet. I was going to the internet because I no longer had ANY interest in my work.

I quit shortly after that, my new job is extremely interesting, and my web usage has minimized severely.

The insatiable desire to be up to date with current news, happenings in my fields of interest or social circles became unmanageable. Furthermore, the teams of people with doctorates employed by tech companies to make their product even stickier with each iteration made my battle all the more challenging.

By creating hard boundaries that were non-negotiable such as limiting time on the top (n) sites, banning certain apps on the phone and deleting accounts helped me immensely.

Being online is hard to avoid such as banking, portfolio management, booking medical appointments and acquiring entertainment to consume are now ingrained in modern society yet learning the skill (or art of) disconnecting to enjoy non-online or 'outside' activities and controlling my compulsion to surf aimlessly (laptop or mobile) from one site to the next took weeks to get under control.

Training my family and friends to not expect an instant reply to messages also took a long time and surprisingly difficult.

Today was a public holiday where I live and I'm happy to say I spent it offline. I did however listen to the news and the footy on the wireless. Only now in the late evening for 20 minutes am I replying to my messages and 'online'.

Every morning I used to start my day with reading HN, on the bus to school I surfed the web. At uni, on every break I used to take out my phone and browse some more. After school I binge-watched TV shows and surfed more. My attention span got so divided that I couldn't concentrate watching a single episode, I constantly switched to a browser to surf more.

I learned a lot about programming, but my personal life suffered.

I couldn't meet deadlines, couldn't study for uni (studying law).

In the end I concluded that I had developed something like an internet addiction.

Furthermore, it wasn't just limited to internet. I stopped changing clothes, stopped keeping my already cluttered room in a somewhat liveable standard, stopped caring for my health, ate a lot of junk food, got hooked to TV-Shows.

Now, instead of constant short bursts of divided internet surfing, I am trying to set out a time for surfing. And outside those hours, I go offline.

It has been a though switch, but I slowly feel that I'm getting my impulse control back.

I recently started reading Deep Work by Cal Newport, I can recommend it to anyone trying to get off the vicious cycle.

Introspectively, the problem with my addiction lies in the acceleration of production as well as distribution. There are more movies being produced, more novels being written, and more content in general to consume. Technology has been making producing these mediums easier and easier. Musicians used to have to write down lyrics and notes on paper - now there are programs which can practically generate a whole song for them. News can be written by your friends who just got the latest scoop at a major conference. Producing content has never been easier.

At the same time on the distribution side, the internet has made all this content available at your finger tips instantly. As bandwidth increased, it became almost too easy to spend 10 minutes watching news or entertaining on YouTube or a myriad of other free media streaming sites.

These processes will only get more efficient and more effective. As a corollary, the media which seems highly targeted and interesting to you will become increasingly prevalent.

There are no easy answers, and I for one am taking the issue relatively seriously. Getting away for extended periods of time without internet is vital - which is also why I don't own a smart phone.

1) Fear: I am scared of mess, of failure, of feeling incompetent or overwhelmed. I will therefore avoid tackling a task because that way I avoid the feelings of inadequacy, disappointment, or failure in the face of an incomplete result. In other words, I want everything to be perfect right away, and since that can never be the case, things don't get done.

2) I believe there is simply something (which I am in no position to specify) addictive in internet-based fora. Whether it's the bite-sized demands on our attention, a voyeuristic synapse being tickled by viewing the opinions, arguments, etc. of others, or the illusion of connectedness - both of things to each other and of us to the world - the internet in itself (for me at least) encourages procrastination.

Feats like that required a level of concentration that I find almost impossible to achieve today. I've developed a tic: write a line of code, check a news site; write another line of code, check email; write another line of code, check a social site.

I can't even call it procrastination anymore. It's something far more insidious. I'm fighting it, but the fight itself requires a nearly exhausting amount of effort.

It's got all the hallmarks of an addiction -- a psychological one, rather than a chemical one, maybe. The trouble is, with many addictive substances, completely avoiding them is a reasonable solution. With the internet, looking up a function reference or even testing and uploading a piece of code can lead too easily to diversions; it's difficult to separate necessary things from distractions and impractical to avoid it altogether.

I hate it. I've tried many of the tricks that people suggest, but the simple fact is, a significant part of my personality would rather mindlessly browse the internet instead of focusing intently for a long enough period of time to do something productive.

> This leads me to believe that the ideas we have reflect the kind of world we live in.

I think this is insightful. I somehow never managed to lose track of my childhood dreams, but instead I'm constantly preventing myself from accomplishing them.

Good luck on your internet diet. If you manage to stick with it for a full month, you're a better person than I am.

The biggest internet timesinks for me have always been those with near infinite novelty and also very occasional strong benefits.

For example, Reddit has clued me in on the Paleo diet and using a tongue scraper for better breath. Those have actively improved my life. I've also spent thousands of hours looking at stupid pictures. Hacker News has been more useful than Reddit, but still has been a large timesink. But we all have our own set of sites.

For me, blocking apps did not work at all, because I can just disable them. Unless I give up root access to my own computer, but that isn't really going to work. Having an "accountability partner" didn't work. I even did money challenges where I had to pay $500 to someone if I browsed Reddit. I did one time pay some money, and after that the group stopped really believing we'd hold each other to it.

Guilting myself has stopped working. But I don't think that's really a solution anyway.

Cold turkey seems to not really help. I'll go for a while without doing the addicting thing, and then get really angsty and then binge. Food can sometimes be this way this too. Yo-yo dieting and yo-yo internet binging both seem harmful.

Some things that have helped me:

First, just becoming aware of what is happening. I've been reading a lot about human psychology lately and came across the idea of "Supernormal Stimuli," the idea that some modern things are incredibly addictive because our brain did not evolve in an environment where it had to deal with things like the internet, Doritos, and internet pornography. This comic sums it up really well: http://www.sparringmind.com/supernormal-stimuli/

If you can in any way limit the sources of infinite novelty, or get rid of the worst offenders that can help. And I think all the sources contribute to make addiction harder to break.

And honestly not having internet at home did solve the problem - I've tried it twice. But I work only from home and kind of need it to do work. If I lived in a place that has better coffee shops, I might stick with that.

Speaking of which, leaving the house helps me. I find I am not as willing to just slack off completely if there are other people around, so I am quite productive in Starbuckses.

No electronics in bed has helped a lot. That alone has helped me not find myself staring at a device at 2am for no real reason.

Humans are creatures of habit and also lazy, and so one advice I've heard is to make the things you want to do as easy as possible and the things you don't want to do as hard as possible. If you can get away with not having internet at home, that might just be a way to solve the problem.

I don't think there is a silver bullet, but continuing to try things has helped me find a few things that have helped me. Also some of the above statements may not be completely accurate and I'm open to correction and further nuance.

Slowly over time I've seen myself become more and more self-controlled, though I'm of course not perfect. I'm convinced that the default today is for people to be addicted and ineffective since humans did not at all evolve in this sort of environment, and so anyone who makes an effort to better themselves can become very effective in life.

Best of luck, and email me if you want to talk more.

For a long time I thought that my constant internet use was a symptom of my disinterest in other things, but more recently I've come to realize that it is, in fact, the sole cause of said disinterest. The quick dopamine hits you get on the internet have subconsciously convinced your brain that the internet is what matters, and that everything else (i.e. your life) is simply a distraction.

Don't take my word for it. You can test this hypothesis in ~2 hours. Hide and/or turn off all of your electronics, and wait. You'll sit on the couch, you'll eat a snack, you'll find that your phone has magically appeared in your hand (how?!?), but just put it back down. As you try to go 2 hours without any passive entertainment, and I can almost guarantee that you'll discover that your mind will begin to show interest in things like hobbies/reading. If you can't get online, a book sounds pretty nice.

There's the rub--if getting online is an option, it's always the best option. The only way to do other stuff is to carve out time where getting online (or, for me, passive entertainment of any kind) is not an option.

Fun fact: If you can forego passive entertainment for the week, you will see all of that junk for what it really is, to your horror and eternal benefit.

I stand by my claim that the fundamental problem that the author has is not with the Internet, it's with their willpower.

I read the same article as you many years ago when it was first published.

My conclusion, however, was different from yours. You seem to have stopped at "manipulate your environment to change how you behave." I preferred the conclusion, "manipulate your environment to change how you think." When I have distraction problems with the Internet I'll restructure my environment to provide gratification in different ways. If Internet browsing is rewarding to me to the point where it causes a distraction it now becomes an effective reward mechanism. I can make a schedule wherein a certain amount of work is rewarded with a small amount of Hacker News.

Moreover, the entire Internet isn't to blame for this person's problem, only a certain set of behavior on the Internet. They describe how slower or less rich internet didn't present a distraction. Why not cap their connection speed or disable images, javascript, and sound?

I see many options and "get rid of the Internet" seems the most naive and harmful in this case.

Food is, of course, a quintessential necessity, and someone who overeats or has an eating disorder needs to come to terms with temperance, moderation, and balance of lifestyle, rather than quit eating altogether.

15 years ago, it was realistic to hang up the modem, unplug the computer, get face out of screen, and get some fresh air for long stretches of time. But my reality today is that I use a device online to manage my household and do ordinary, everyday tasks, including working for my employer is 100% online. Implicit in this article is the fact that the Internet is no longer something to be avoided or removed from our lives; the article simply suggests that we can use it differently, improving our attitudes and our approach.

So rather than a "kick the habit" strategy, we typically need to devise time-management techniques and ways to form better habits around good, productive use of our devices, while balancing that with actual needs to unplug and take a walk in the fresh air.

That may mean that I don't obsessively check bank balances and twiddle my bill payments 3 times a day, 7 days a week. And it means that I'm not allowing every email and SMS to distract me from a task. And perhaps channels about home meal preparation and gentleman's grooming should be dominating my YouTube suggestions, above SNL and Avril Lavigne tracks.

I also need to cope with being triggered. If I have an anxiety attack or fit of rage over someone who's Wrong on the Internet, I am guaranteed to suffer insomnia and all the rest. And so we need the skillsets to short-circuit and defuse those situations, and sometimes the situation is avoidable and sometimes we need to find a way to push through it without losing our heads.

This blogger offers 15 pragmatic, common-sense strategies for coping. And it can get better. Do not believe that you can escape the Internet by avoiding it, nor can you escape real life by going online. Develop good hygiene, good habits, be productive, and learn to cope when things inevitably get difficult.

https://findfocus.net/Overcome-internet-addiction/

Reduce proximity and exposure by design I discovered that overcoming my smartphone addiction was "relatively easy" while it was way more difficult to deal with internet addiction on my computer.

Especially when I wanted to get work done and engage in deep work habits.

For most people, the computer is still the place where we can work most efficiently.

The big advantage of using a computer to access the internet is that it's LESS convenient and therefore easier to not use the internet too much.

The whole approach is based on reducing proximity and expose to the internet and our smartphones.

This will remove most of the triggers that start the addictive hooked model. It will also make it much more difficult to engage in the 2nd step of the model and perform the action tech companies want us to take.

By designing an environment that removes the trigger or and makes making the action much more difficult, I was able to overcome my internet addiction.

If you follow this you will be able to do the same.

The secret ingredient I used is something I stumbled upon in Kelly McGonigal's book "The Willpower Instinct" and it's called Delay Discounting.

Delay Discounting Delay discounting is a mind trick recommend by behavioral scientists.

Researchers found out that the longer you have to wait for a reward (e.g. checking your favorite social media site or playing a game online) the less it is worth to you.

The reason is that your brain chooses immediate gratification at the cost of future rewards because immediate rewards trigger the older, more primitive reward system and its dopamine-induced desire in the brain.

To make this work and to delay gratification, the prefrontal cortex has to be forced to cool off the promise of the reward.

The reason is that even small delays can dramatically lower the perceived value of any temptation.

In practice that means your urge to visit Facebook, Reddit, Youtube etc. or playing a game has only a narrow window of opportunity to overwhelm your brain.

As soon as there is any distance between you and the temptation, the rational part of your brain takes over. For example, even putting your phone on airplane mode and putting it in the drawer will work.

For your smartphone: 1. Delete every app that is potentially addictive from your phone.

2.Download the app Appdetox and add times for apps that you have to use less often but cannot delete completely.

3. Download the app Applock for android to block the play store and your internet browser

For your computer: The Approach That Worked For Me Using the FindFocus (https://findfocus.net)

1.Block distracting websites throughout the day. 2.White-list all the websites that you need to work and force myself to unlock the Internet (for max. 15min per session) if I want to visit a site that’s not needed to be productive. 3. Block email during the day, while still being allowed to send email without seeing the inbox. Works like magic for me!

I can access almost any website (except proven distractions & email) all the time but for a maximum of 15min at a time.

Things that have amplified my internet addiction I think are access to unfiltered internet, online games, social media and porn at a very young age (since around 6 years old - I am gen Z for reference, so I've grown up with normalised smartphone/social media/gaming addiction), as well as how normal it is to be addicted to these things. The fact that I now (subconsciously) associate using a computer with the aforementioned vices means that I have come to _expect_ the dopamine hit when I use them makes doing actual work (because my job is mostly computer based) even harder.

It has got to the point to where I now do not have internet in my house because if I do, I'll just use it all day (despite having various commitments). I now only use the internet in public spaces, on public wireless. This combined with planning my days/weeks/quarter (this is essential for overcoming internet addiction IMO) seems to have solved my addiction. I still have a dumb phone for receiving calls and texts (SIM card is super-glued in) and a smartphone without a SIM card for navigation - the point is, access to information is limited.

Since I got my first computer at 12 I was fascinated. I taught myself how to program, spent my teenage years in front of a screen and got a CS degree at university while working part time as a web/sw developer. Now I'm 26 and half way through a Master's program, but I can't stop thinking about dropping out and never touching a computer again.

As soon as I use a computer, it's become almost impossible for me to be productive. I waste nine to ten hours a day on useless websites or reading news/blogposts online. My self control completely vanishes in sight of a browser. From blocking software to therapy, nothing helped me with this condition and strict abstinence is not an option at uni or at work. Honestly, I lost hope of ever being a productive tech worker.

Should keep pursuing a tech job or find something different?

I say this because I used to think I was a major procrastinator and looked for all manner of tips and tricks to solve the problem. But I was trying to solve the wrong problem. if I turn off the internet entirely, I have no problem at all doing what I want to do during the day.

However, if the internet is on, i can get into states where I not only don't do any of the work I need to do, I don't leave the house, I don't hang out with friends, I forget to eat, etc.

I realized my online behavior was a bigger issue when I started screwing up dates because I was doing something on the internet. Blowing off a boring work task to watch youtube videos is one thing, but when I started missing out on getting laid because I was refreshing HN and getting sucked into a Wikipedia vortex, it realized I had a real problem.

So, maybe you're not really procrastinating, maybe you're addicted to the internet. Maybe not, but it is something to consider.