App Needed: Addiction Manager

Hello, my name is Michael and I am an addict. 

My addiction is dopamine. 

My source of an unlimited supply of it is online in the form of "News". 

Other sources of this dopamine flood are facebook, instagram, etc.

Something is always happening somewhere that's gonna get me hooked and falling down the rabbit hole to a time suck while dosing myself with more juicy dopamine... More, more, more! 

I know it's a bad thing. I gotta stop. 

But it's so easy to get a hit, just a click away. 

How would James Clear (Atomic Habits) deal with this? 

Just a simple matter of eliminating a bad habit. 

Gotta look that up. 

My first (Virgo engineer) thought is to create an app that would filter all inputs according to user-set criteria. Why exercise self control when we can make an app for that? 

STOP NEWS ADDICTION. aka “DoomScrolling”

Limit number of news viewing events, and duration of each. For example, a limit of 3 news viewings per day and limit of 20 minutes per view. Describe the act of news viewing so heinous, so ridiculous and illogical that it would be inconceivable that anyone would spend their time doing such a thing. Rather like reading the National Enquirer or other tabloid. I want to remain an island of calm in a great calm sea, with storms barely noticeable out on the far horizon. Imagine the time that can be put to other good use instead of being dosed with dopamine because of some random ClickBait. It really is a lot like trolling for idiots who will snap at the next shiny object. Do not be that idiot. 

All media exists to produce addictive dopamine experiences.

All random events reduce planned productive bandwidth.

The unlimited variety of media, and increasingly sensational clickbait (headlines, graphics, etc) all indicate a growing need to manage bandwidth for certain activities.

Resolve to recognize the motives of the medium before allowing input to proceed. And then, also based on a variety of filters. For me this would delete any news of Kardashians, all of Hollywood actually, the music scene, politics, sports, religion, gambling, violent crime, and would favor news about local events...)

Use the medium (news) for what it can provide, but with portion controls, and other similar nutritional filters (which medium (podcast, url, etc), which subject matter keywords, etc.).

Here's a list of bandwidth limiter tools.

There seems some futility to delegating our self control to technology. 

We want the quick fix.

I want to know the way where the quick fix is automatic.

Mental.

Click on.

Click off.

A bad habit (addiction) can be attributed to having nothing better to do.
Find something more rewarding to do and the "addiction" falls away.

Habits: Autopilot for Living, Good or Bad

 Learn more on Amazon

In my years of flying, I often wished I had an Autopilot, but that would have taken the adventure out of the experience. It was a lot of work

All commercial airliners, business jets and most other aircraft have an Autopilot installed to relieve the human pilot of a lot of the busy work of staying on the proper compass heading, maintaining altitude, keeping the wings level, etc. These things consume a lot of mind-share while flying but when delegated to a robot who will perform tirelessly and perfectly, the pilot can focus on other important tasks such as communicating with air traffic controllers, looking out for traffic, dealing with checklists, etc.

Ordinary humans have an Autopilot feature too. It's called Habit.

Habit

an acquired behavior pattern regularly followed 

until it has become almost involuntary

Dictionary.com

After we have performed a task enough times, we can do it without thinking; it becomes a habit. Like riding a bike, or making a cup of coffee. The challenge with human habits is that it takes a lot of "programming" for a habit to be bulletproof. The Autopilot on airplanes comes already programmed and works flawlessly from the first time you use it.

We would probably like to have some rock solid habits such as exercise, meditation, getting enough sleep, being more organized and productive, etc.  Maybe we do exercise, but we are inconsistent and therefore miss a lot of the benefits.

Also, we probably have some bad habits we would like to drop, such as eating too much, eating the wrong foods, excessive drinking, staying up too late to watch TV, procrastination, disorganization, etc.

First we make our habits,

and then our habits make us.

John Dryden

Wouldn't it be great if we had the good habits that guarantee a good life and success in business?
It works best if we create good habits when we're younger, but here we are right now, a jumble of some good habits, hopefully, and a lot of bad habits we'd like to get rid of. That probably seems like a lot of work, almost impossible, right? That's what I thought, but I found a way that makes it a lot easier than you might imagine.

We get into the habit of living 

before we acquire the habit of thinking.  

Albert Camus

We are what we repeatedly do,

Excellence, then, is not an act, but a Habit.

Aristotle

Chains of habit are too light to be felt

until they are too heavy to be broken.

Warren Buffett

You'll never change your life until you change something you do daily.

The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.

John C. Maxwell

Motivation is what gets you going.

Habit is what keeps you going.

Jim Rohn

Watch your thoughts; they become words. 

Watch your words; they become actions. 

Watch your actions; they become habits. 

Watch your habits; they become character. 

Watch your character; it becomes your destiny

Lao Tzu

In the absence of clearly defined goals 

we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia 

until ultimately we become enslaved by it.

Robert Heinlein

The strength of a man's virtue 

should not be measured by his special exertions, 

but by his habitual acts.

Blaise Pascal

Your net worth to the world is usually determined by 

what remains after your bad habits are subtracted from your good ones.

Benjamin Franklin

I love Client SS

He always has the best questions and now that he has an executive assistant I get the questions a day before our meetings so I can give his concerns a really good think and some research so when we meet I'm as helpful as I can be.