Troubleshooting Internet Urges

Over the past few months, I've been trying to notice the emotion and my physical state whenever I have a bullshit urge to check my phone. Not turning to technology with a distinct and useful purpose in mind, but those thousand little twitches

(The average person touches their phone 2617 times a day; the heaviest users, 5427 times.)

When this happens, going on the internet is more of a 'stasis' state. It rarely solves the problem I was experiencing, because I haven't even noticed and acknowledged what it is.

Practice pausing whenever you feel this happen. Closing your eyes momentarily to get it out of sight, and putting your fingers together so your hands cannot move automatically, and then taking some moments to breathe. Try and notice what's actually happening. Use this page to diagnose your own little lusts, and attempt to replace it with an action which nourishes you.

Bonus resource: You Feel Like Shit, an interactive game which will talk you through diagnosing why you feel bad and giving simple instructions, like 'have you taken your meds' and 'when was the last time you showered'. This is a classic, I was devastated when the original url went down and have gratitude to this site for reviving the work.

If you want to add new states, or contribute new ideas for the states that are here already, please get in touch. I want it to be useful for all sorts of people.

• Physical Distress
• Brain Tired
• Starved-Bored
• Procrastinating
• Understimulated
• Overstimulated
• Lonely
• Switching Costs
• Aimless
• Need to check something quickly

Physical distress

Are you actually:

• tired
• hungry
• forgot your meds or other health management technique
• too cold
• in an uncomfortable social situation
• in need of a wash?

Resolve that if you can.

You Feel Like Shit can help guide you through this process if you struggle to notice emotional and physical states.

Brain Tired

You are out of energy for focused work. Do something simple, repetitive and brainless. You may have energy for different kinds of activity, just not the thinky kind.

Do absolutely nothing

• Have a nap.
• Have someone take you for a drive
• Chatter with somebody.
• Sit with a cup of tea on the front step.
• Close your eyes and listen to an album.

Do something brainless

• Tidy up the house. Potter about the garden
• Put on trashy telly (daytime television, cooking competition programs, game shows, stand up comedy etc - nothing stressful or taxing)
• Do yoga, stretching or meditating.
• Go for a walk.
• Noodle on a musical instrument
• Sort out metadata (for your ebooks, file folders, mp3s)
• Do very easy handicrafts (like scarf knitting)

Don't underestimate your desire to simply sleep. Of all the states on this page, I find tiredness is the most common. My body is telling me to sleep, but I want to stay active, and so I do the only thing which I have energy to do - low grade browsing. At such times, the thing to do is to sleep.

Starved-bored

Something sensory and a strong change of pace. You crave the easy serotonin boosts and easy interactivity the web provides, but this will only make it worse as sitting on Facebook is itself very boring.

• Look for something to make right now a 'special occasion' - like the way on your birthday, you might feel an urge to 'treat yourself' by doing something a lil luxurious, just for you
• What are your favourite hobbies? Is there a film you've been looking forward to? Do you have a favourite meal you could cook?
• Can you go out somewhere? To the pub, to the park, the library, the cinema
• Do something highly sensory: food, sex, music.
• Look at a list made earlier of things you're excited about doing (for example, your books to read list)

Procrastinating

You're putting off a thing you need to do - and can neither crack on with it nor allow yourself to stop.

1. Commit to taking a break, right now.
2. Try and identify the reason for procrastinating (are you tired? bored? stuck?)
3. Make a decision about what to do instead, and set a time at which you will decide if you are ready to return to the work.
4. Move your body from where you were.
5. Check in if you have any physical needs
6. Resolve #3 if you can
7. There are already other good resources online for learning how to defeat procrastination & revenge procrastination. Study up ahead of next time!

Understimulated

You need to take in ideas - lots of them. The hippetyhoppity deluge of words and concepts of the web is appealing - but in this kind of mood, its too shallow, and temptingly scattershot, to actually feed the deep and taxing engagement you want right now.

• Thinky media - a difficult nonfic ideas book, an artsy movie, a lecture or tutorial
• A challenging game (preferably against a human opponent)
• Build something. Practice painting a still life. Whatever puts you in a physical flow state.
• Go jogging (wipe out the desire for more intellectual stimulation by giving your body too much else to do)

Overstimulated

You need to shut down for a bit - out of body, out of mind, something unphysical and dissociative.

1. Notice what is overstimulating you (if you can)
2. Take yourself out of the situation if possible
3. Assess if there are any other needs you need to sort - particularly silence, comfort, privacy, light, or anything else that's overwhelming you.
4. Assess the urgency of this urge. Sometimes, going online is actually the best thing you can do. If you are in danger, distress, or unable to exit your situation, get yrself on twitter for a bit
5. Decide if you want to fight against the urge or lean into it

Lean In

• Browse on a wholesome part of the net - neocities or a curated link list
• Play a computer game (brainless but better than facebook!)
• close your eyes and listen to music (the Caretaker is great)

Escape

• Move your body away from your machine.
• Do something physical: bath, cup of tea, gentle stretches
• ground with your senses - count how many colours you can see, what you can hear, and so on.

Lonely

You want the simulacra of interacting with people, and reading words or typing them offers the illusion of doing so (albeit in an environment filled with advertising and cruelty).

• Do you feel able to use the internet right now in a way that's in line with your values? Because there's nothing wrong with connecting online, so long as YOU are in charge and using it consciously as a tool, rather than being dragged under by the algorithm. Do you know anyone online you have an actual person-to-person connection with, who you can DM for an old-fashioned chat? Are any of your servers running a social event now or in the near future? Is there a voice chat/coworking channel in a server that is typically respectful and mellow with people you know and like?
• Telephone or message someone you actually know for a chat
• Ask someone in your house to spend time together (cooking? a walk? telly?)
• Go to the pub
• Look up an event you can go to right now or tomorrow
• Make plans with someone for social time very soon.
• Sit outside and watch a bird or passers by
• (worst case scenario) Play an interactive game (like, Skyrim or Minecraft - it's still digital and screens and not people, but at least it shields you from the issues of seeking sociality by scrolling down a twitter wall
• When you have some time, assess what your social life is like right now. Do you need to block in more time in your week with other people? Come up with some ideas and put them in the calendar.

Switching Cost

You have completed one activity and are ready to move onto another, but the act of switching is itself tiring and you don't have the energy for it.

1. Close your eyes for five minutes
2. Imagine the steps you would need to take to begin the new task
3. Now, physically move yourself into a separate space from your technology.
4. If you've identified any barriers to you actually doing the thing, resolve those first
5. If you determine you still don't have enough energy to do the thing, either rest or do a very low energy activity.
6. There are resources online for learning how to resolve Switching Cost issues more easily, especially for people with ADHD. Make some time when you're ready to learn up, so you're better armed next time.

Aimless

You've come to a sort of dead point in the day, but have no plans

• Get into the habit of making plans ahead of time, like a schedule for the day the night before that you check in the morning
• Start making short-medium-long term goal lists, and breaking them down to fill these times - so you know what is important.
• Experiment with whatever medium helps you to make and look at these lists.
• Assess what your energy level is like, & choose from the above as seems right - either resting or doing something purposeful

Need to check something quickly

For example - checking the time, adding something to your calendar, looking up an address. All the truly useful functions of the internet, which you can only access by tiptoeing through the psychological mindfield that big tech has gated that useful function behind

• Set the intention to only do that one thing before you even touch your phone - verbally, or speaking in your mind
• Get in touch with your higher self and values - the reasons why being freed from the algorithm is important to you. It could be spiritual, practical, health-related, political, or pure stubbornness.
• Now, do the thing, and only the thing.
• Once you are done, close your eyes so it is no longer in view. Do calm breathing until it passes. Take your hands away, and interlace your fingers, so they cannot do any automatic actions. Continue until you feel not just a little past, but well past it.
• Another option is Mindfulness - checking in with your body and physical environment. Name five things you can hear. Look at the view and try and name the colours, as if you needed to paint it accurately from memory. Do a body scan. Assert where you are, in time and space, as a separate entity to your phone - which is a mere tool, and you are its master.
• This point feels (to me) like that noted by Cal Newport in Digital Minimalism. People who couldnt concieve of being offline for a month and got actively panicky and disoriented, after 30 days going back online found it boring, and couldn't really understand why they had ever found it so engaging, and hyperaware of its 'Noisy Macdonalds Advertising Billboard' vibes. It takes a moment for me to move past the urge, and into 'actually, I remember and really acknowledge that being online in this way is kinda gross to me, the same way I can't see a free fast food toy without thinking of dead rainforests'
• When you have a moment in the future, see if you can replace this need with something untriggering. A physical wristwatch, a paper calendar, a non-networked mp3 player, and so forth. Or, use other techniques like greyscaling your phone screen and using Leechblock or other tools

Life is wonderful

It is brilliant and vibrant and alive and short and all out there. The internet is wonderful too, when it helps you enhance all that life can be - and the worst thing in existence when it saps your energy, your mood, and vitality and turns it into profit.

Be kind to yourself! Stay strong! If it doesn't work today, try again tomorrow. There is no judgement here. We are all doing our best to practice harm reduction, one moment at a time, in the face of an overwhelming opponent.

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