Weaning off Twitter

First thing in the morning. On the bus. In between meetings. As a distraction from hard tasks. Instead of opening a book or reading an article. As a treat. These are all things that tell me that my Twitter usage isn’t healthy.

It’s a habit I’ve managed well in the past, but not consistently. Screen Time helped for a while. Automating Focus time during work hours with Shortcuts was hugely helpful while working remotely. But it’s pretty easy to enter a code and get around those controls to feed your Twitter habit.

Twitter has been good to me, to be fair. It’s how I find things to read and has helped me build a network. Stupid little shitposts are funny as heck too, a dose of light relief in the day. But social media is tiring and I’d like to devote more time to reading, thinking, writing and side projects. So Twitter has to go.

Since December I’ve been using one sec which introduces more friction than Screen Time or Focus modes. When you try to open the Twitter app, it asks you to take a deep breath before deciding whether to open Twitter or not continue. It short-circuits a habit by asking you to take a moment to breath. Though I’ve only been using it to block access to the Twitter iOS app, I’ve got good results.

My Twitter app use is down by 87% compared to peak usage
On average, it has reduced my attempts to open the app from 10 times per week down to 4 times per week

That’s a lot! Despite that, I’m still using the Twitter website for 1–2 hours per day. one sec allows me to block access to that, and I’m going to try it for the next month.

Will report back with results. And while I’ve got you, why not try setting up an RSS reader and subscribing to some feeds? Check the footer for ‘What is the feed?’ which will give you some tips on how to get started.