Beginning

A few years before, I had read a book called Deep Work by Cal Newport. One of the aggressive advice he gave was not to use digital devices & social networks.

During that time, I also read another article by the New York Times which shows that the software companies [eg: Basically everything under Meta] includes a lot of subconscious tricks using color and UX design to hook you. The suggestion is to turn on the color filter to grayscale, then the apps will become much less attractive.

I tried and it works, things are much less attractive but this setting is also very inconvenient, eg: sometimes for work, I need to see the photos in color; sometimes for food ordering, I really want to use the color view. While changing it back to color view takes 10-20 seconds which is socially awkward back in the day before COVID.

Therefore, I gave up after 2 weeks……

Recent discovery

Recently, I discovered iOS devices have an excellent workaround for this!

settings > accessibility > accessibility shortcut > select color filters

Then when you hit the home button 3 times quickly, accessibility mode will be turned on/off. This means I can swap b/w color and gray mode within a second and it looks like a more pragmatic option.

After all, you probably don’t want to use Google Maps in gray mode when you drive. You probably don’t want to see the photos from your family group in gray mode.

This mode offers a good tradeoff, if you really need color mode, then you can turn off the filter effortlessly

Experiment

I discovered this trick around the end of July 2022 and I am planning to do an experiment for 21 days to see the effects [such as device use time, apps use time] and build a habit.

I will update this post in early Sept and see whether it works!

But at least for the first few days, the apps are not that attractive to me now, I really just use the apps to look for the info, reply to the message, and that’s it!

Isn’t this the role of digital devices!? They are the tools, we manipulate them, not they manipulate us, the gray mode option forces me to decide whether I really need to see things in color

Levels of digital detox

  1. Gray mode with easy on/off
  2. Gray mode with difficult on/off [don’t use accessibility]
  3. Don’t use at all - suggested by Deep work

To reclaim our life, I think level 1 is sufficient and pragmatic for people in modern & busy life