I built an app to force myself offline for an hour a day. It's barely working.
I spent February building this thing out of desperation. My screen time was 5-6 hours daily and I hated it.
◼️ The app is simple: tap begin, your screen goes black for 60 minutes. If you leave the app, the session ends. That's it.
Launched it in March. Used it myself to test it.
🐛 March: 6 successful sessions out of 31 days.
🦋 April: 12 out of 30.
So I'm still failing most days. But there is improvement. 12 out of 30 means I couldn't stay off my phone for an hour on 18 days. That's humbling when you literally built the tool.
🏔 But when I completed the hour, it felt relieving. Like I accomplished something important. Like climbing a mountain (or maybe a hill :))
The app has a journal at the end of each session. I write how I felt during that hour. At the end of the month, when I read all the notes, it's like a recap of what I actually did and felt.
I'm not promoting this like it's a solution. It's clearly not working well enough for me. But if anyone wants to try failing alongside me, it's called The Square (thesquare.is).
Free. No account. Your journal stays private and encrypted on your device. iOS and Android beta.
May is halfway done. I've done 7 sessions so far. Still losing to my phone most days.