I have been using Foqos for 181 hours, 23 minutes. That’s about seven and a half days. If you haven’t read the original article, you can do so here. TLDR: I set up an NFC tag to block/unblock certain apps on my phone when tapped. In that article, I said I’d follow up in about a week, so here we go.
First of all, which apps did I block?
I blocked ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. I blocked pretty much all social media apps and their web versions. That includes YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, Bilibili and more. I blocked DoorDash, a couple of food apps (Chipotle, McDonald’s, etc.). I blocked any games on my phone like Dominion and Chess. That’s pretty much it!
When I tapped that tag the first time, I treated it like an experiment. I figured that I’d tap it on and off, and maybe have times of more focus, and times where I unblock all apps and allow myself to let go. Nope.
I tapped it once to block all the apps, and I haven’t tapped it again. Those apps and their web versions have been blocked on my phone since the moment I first tapped it, and I love it!
Before I tried this, the most distracting apps on my phone included: ChatGPT, YouTube, and Dominion. Whenever I had free time, I was either doing something with AI, watching a YouTube video, or playing Dominion.
Now, whenever I have free time I am either: following up on messages or doing something else productive on my devices, journaling, reading, thinking, just existing, listening to music (I’ve been doing this a lot more), writing a blog post, or working on some other hobby or project.
The thing is, I can still do anything on my laptop. I can access ChatGPT and Codex, go on YouTube, order DoorDash. I just tend to be much more focused when working from my laptop, and the opportunities to use my laptop are fewer than the opportunities to use my phone, but I still always have a chance to use my laptop everyday.
What that means is my sessions on any of those blocked apps are inherently limited to the time that I’m able to use my laptop for. I can’t be listening to a YouTube video in my apartment, leave to go run an errand and have it still playing in my AirPods. Once I leave the apartment, I can’t continue watching the video. That’s just one example, but hopefully it illustrates my point.
Also, I’ve found that I’ve re-learned how to trust my gut more. Now that ChatGPT is off my phone, I don’t run literally every decision through it. That was bad that I got to doing that in the first place.
I’ve also found I am reading more articles to learn about things instead of using AI as Google Search. In reading more articles, I am saddened that I’ve seen some articles that appear to have been written by AI. For those that are written by humans though, it is so refreshing to be back to reading things directly written by humans, rather than asking a question, and having an LLM do all the reading for me. As a side note, it also makes me feel like I am contributing something positive to the internet just by having articles written without the help of AI.
I’m loving my new set up. I know there are lots of people who use dumb phones or Brick or other elaborate systems to try to reduce screen time. I’m very satisfied with this cheap NFC tag and a free app. It allows me to carry my smartphone around without worrying about the most distracting pieces of it. If I ever do need to stop it, there are 3 emergency stops available per month, but I feel perfectly content just leaving it on and continuing this way indefinitely. I’ll follow up again on this next month and see if anything changes!
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