I kept wasting time on social media, even though I’d promised myself I’d stay focused. Regular site blockers didn’t help.
I needed something that felt annoying enough to break the habit. That’s how the idea came up: make the blocker ask me to say something embarrassing out loud before it lets me back in. If I actually have to yell “I’m a loser” into my mic. Even better - the louder I screamed, the more time I’d get.
So I put together Scream to Unlock. It’s silly, but so far it’s done its job. My social feeds stay locked unless I really want them.
Extension link - https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/scream-to-unlock-ye...
Its open source and transparent - https://github.com/Pankajtanwarbanna/scream-to-unlock. No data collection or tracking, Audio processing happens locally in your browser. No recordings saved or transmitted.
My daughter is a second grader. If every 5 minutes of tablet use 'cost' her 5 correct arithmetic answers she would be working at space x right now.
Its much better to make kids interested in learning than to reward reaching goals or punish failing to reach them.
Long term, it could still be a win.
Obviously not the same, but in the first years of university, I hated math because it suddenly got hard (never before university did I have to learn math or physics just to barely pass). Then, after many nights of reading through books and practicing, grinding, I realized it's not that hard and it made me enjoy solving the "challenges".
The only thing I'd change from this wonderful comment is that it is that hard! It's just that, like any other hard skill, lots of dedicated study and practice makes it easier to do hard things.
This is still useful after having left academia, I often look at something and the right "tool" pops up from the toolbox. It helos to understand the world around us and realize how much bullshit we are fed through doctored graphs or tables.
What I mean is that before that, I just thought it’s simply too hard for me and the others are smarter or they come from better school. Then, after going through practically 3-5 books for each topic, practically “drilling” exercises, I finally understood why the others “just get it”. It was hard to get myself to sit down, focus, work, practice… but once I worked on a topic for long enough and got better, I realized it’s not magic, I don’t need special talents, and I can just sit down and study most things.
Then, the classes and exams didn’t give me anxiety anymore, I started to enjoy them, treat exams as challenges rather then the step before receiving another failed exam notification…
I studied Physics but switched to software engineering and this experience helped me add another tool to my toolbelt when something gets difficult.
Some perseverance, some time, and we can learn many things. And as you get better, you start to enjoy things.