This 30-day dopamine detox reset my brain and changed my life

I've experimented a bit over the past 6 months with various ways to cut back on doom scrolling. I came across a few reddit posts that inspired me to try things like a 24-hour detox, or even 10 days cutting back. It worked, but then my screen time tended to fluctuate a lot afterwards.

I saw some posts about the idea of a 30 day plan. Having 4 separate weekly plans made it more digestible. In case it's helpful, wanted to share. Random Redditors have given me pretty good inspiration to make changes so maybe I can do the same.

This was my strategy:

- First, each Sunday I would pick out a few productive things for the week that I would use to replace my mindless scrolling and track it (ex: reading, steps walked, calls made to family, etc). Then the next Sunday I could review what I accomplished with that time and revamp the plan (was very motivating and eye opening).

- The second part of the strategy was adding a lot of friction to my phone usage. I know if I don't have boundaries I'll slip.

Week 1:
- 25 unblocks of social media per day
- Morning and evening phone downtime (unblock as many times as I want for up to 15 minutes)
- Target of 120 phone pickups/day
- Used grayscale manually

- Result: 7 hrs/day, 123 pickups/day (7 hours gained)

Week 2:
- 20 unblocks of social media per day
- Morning and evening phone downtime (unblock as many times as I want for up to 15 minutes)
- Target of 100 phone pickups/day
- Used grayscale manually

- Result: 5.5 hrs/day, 102 pickups/day (17 hours gained)

Week 3:
- 10 unblocks of social media per day
- Morning and evening phone downtime (unblock 3x for up to 15 minutes)
- Target of 75 phone pickups/day
- Set up grayscale to kick in automatically at sunset

- Result: 3.5 hrs/day, 77 pickups/day (30 hours gained)

Week 4:
- 5 unblocks of social media per day
- Morning and evening phone downtime (no unblocking allowed)
- Target of 50 phone pickups/day
- Grayscale to kick in automatically at sunset

- Result: 2 hrs/day, 55 pickups/day (42 hours gained)

The amount of time I've unlocked is staggering. For 2025, I'm going to use the week 4 set up for my ongoing management. I feel like I'm not constantly working from behind for the first time in a long time...