All problems are engineering problems

Yes this is another post about screen time/ phone addiction. Everyone says "I need to doomscroll less", "I need to get off my phone", etc etc. These are probably the most relatable statements of the current decade (well, those and "we're all cooked"). People buy contraptions and download apps and treat themselves like drug addicts or prisoners just to break the "phone curse". But it never seems to work. Why? Because they never defined the success condition in the first place! You know, the success condition? The thing that tells you when you can stop working? Obviously, if you don't have one, then the task will never be complete. "Less" is a relative term. "Minimizing" looks different to everybody. For instance, after another night staying up until 3am reading comments on HackerNews, I decided that I do, in fact, need to use my phone less. (If you've been here since the early days of this blog, you know this is an incredible reversal of opinion). But I had already done all the things!…