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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2227 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 12, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I’ve started putting my phone in grayscale to reduce distractions/addictiveness. It works quite well I’d recommend other folks try it.

Are you sure it isn't that you've made a conscious effort to be less distracted by your phone, and so you're less distracted by your phone?

This feels like a One Weird Trick, such as my aunt advocating everyone put lemon in their icewater after she lost five pounds in a month. Turns out she was just motivated to lose weight that month, tried a method, and ascribed her (temporary) success to the method rather than the underlying true cause of paying more attention to what she was shoving down her mouth.

No it actually works. I know because I had to turn if off, because it was so effective.

I often have to work very late hours, and my phone would turn gray at 11pm. I found that starting at it in grayscale for a while made me really sleepy quickly. Now, I am one of the rare cases were this is undesirable because I have to stay up late.

So yeah, it worked even when I was making a conscious effort to not let it affect me.

Whether it's a placebo or not, does it matter if it works?

Whether it's a placebo or not, does it matter if it works?

Things like lemons in your drinking water are not placebos, they're red herrings. What is "working" is your mindfulness towards the problem you're working at. As soon as that mindfulness fades, you start focusing on your career rather than your weight, the lemon in water is revealed to have been doing nothing. You could have been trying any approach — eating only purple foods, restricting nightshades, activating your almonds, etc

The "gains" you got from putting lemon in your icewater evaporate. And in your eagerness to evangelize the lemon-in-water method on your Facebook feed, you've polluted everyone's information ecosystem and distracted people from approaches that might work durably.

Yep I’ve been consciously trying to use my phone less for years now and I’ve noticed a marked improvement.

Also if you know anything about advertising and psychology you’ll know that colors are a crucial piece of their armament to snag your attention.

Interesting. I'll give it a shot.

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