In this video Luke Murray, a former physician and long‑time entrepreneur, explains how he stopped wasting time on digital distractions by replacing will‑power with concrete, often embarrassing, hardware and software interventions. He begins by describing his personal struggle with phone‑scrolling during study sessions and the failure of the "try harder" mindset. Murray debunks the outdated ego‑depletion theory and argues that the problem is not a lack of willpower but a lack of external constraints. He then walks through a catalog of tools he purchased for under $1,000: lockable phone safes (Kitchen Safe, Mindsight containers, charging‑enabled boxes), portable lockboxes (Chinese “Whiskey” style, cassette‑style, silicone time‑release sleeves), hybrid hardware‑software blockers (Block, Brick, Bloom), pure software solutions (Opal, Be Present, grayscale mode, Cold Turkey website blocker), and a physical TV plug‑lockout device. Murray shares the practical pros and cons of each, demonstrates how they make distraction impossible, and quantifies the payoff: roughly 500 hours reclaimed over five years, equating to a few dollars per hour saved. He reframes the expense as an ego‑cost, encouraging viewers to calculate the monetary price of admitting they need external help. The talk concludes with a broader lesson: for any habit where effort fails, consider environmental redesign—whether moving away from a liquor store or buying a lockable device—because the real barrier is self‑awareness and self‑acceptance, not willpower.
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If you know you waste real hours of your life to distraction and your plan of just try harder hasn't worked, then this video is for you. I'm going to walk you through the embarrassing inventory of hardware that I have here and software that I've purchased to make sure I can't act on my distraction impulses and why I think, although at times embarrassing, it's probably the best money I've ever spent. If you don't know who I am, my name's Luke Murray. I'm a former physician. I've been an entrepreneur for about 20 years. During that time, I've done about $100 million in revenue. My current portfolio does about $3 million a year. And I make these videos because I would like to have ambition without the bullshit. And I'm guessing you would too. So back in medical school, I would get all my stuff together to study and I'd be ready to open the book and I'd pull up my phone and I'd scroll. Not a little bit, like a lot. And every time I caught myself doing this, I'd do some version of hating myself and deciding I just need to try harder, which I have since come to realize is like the all-time undefeated worst strategy for self-improvement. At some point, and no, I don't have a eureka moment or story I can tell you, I realized that the story that I just needed more discipline was protecting something. If the problem was willpower, then I can just fix it by flexing harder. But if I needed tools, if I needed an actual intervention, then that would mean I had a problem. I mean, the word intervention to me at least is synonymous with something that someone who can't get their shit together needs. So now I'm going to show you the absolute onslaught of tools I've purchased. Once I let go of said ego. But one more thing before I get to this gear. I used to lean on the idea that willpower was like a finite resource, that it runs out over the course of the day like a battery. So I, of course, was losing by 10 PM, sometimes much earlier than that. And that sounds scientific, and actually it was considered scientific until recently. Uh, it is no longer considered accurate. The specific theory was called ego depletion. And while it did have one successful experiment, it is that the results have failed to be replicated in over 20 lab studies that have had over 2,000 participants. One of its own early proponents wrote a piece last year actually called The Collapse of Ego Depletion. But honestly, it doesn't really matter because the move I'm about to describe has nothing to do with your willpower supply. It's, it's about making the screw up impossible, not by strategically fighting the urge when your willpower tank is almost full, but by removing the options you never have to. So I started buying things and that's what I'm going to show you right now. And all in, this stuff probably cost me, I'm estimating here, but less than $1,000. So that's why I had that in the title and I'm going to break this down into Hardware solutions. This is all, by the way, for my phone. Hardware, and then hardware slash software, and then software only. Okay. So this is the one that I use the most. This is called Kitchen Safe. And I don't know where I found out about this. I think I maybe saw them on Shark Tank, but it's my favorite version. I use it almost every day. There's a, there's a button on the top. You can spin the timer to see like how much time you want to lock stuff in here. And this is where I put my phone. So I'll, I'll lock this for 1 minute here, 1 minute, and you get 5 seconds and then you'll see right here. There we go. It's locked in there. I can't, I can't get this off. So I love this thing. Then I've got 3 more or 2 more containers that are not as, not as elegant. This I think I got from Amazon as well. And you can set the timer as, as well. And it's got a few different modes, like one where, I don't know, just sets a timer, doesn't lock it. Another one where it locks it permanently or locks it just as, as definitively as this. Um, it's by Mindsight and yeah, it doesn't, I also don't like it that it doesn't come off clean. This is, this is the thing that, that kind of comes out to lock it in, or actually, no, it comes out right here. Yeah, maybe this. Yeah. So you can't just lift it straight up. You have to like lift it and slide it off, which is not very clean. I don't like that. Um, I do like that you, if you wanted to, you could have your cord through there to charge. That's one of the things I don't like about the KitchenSafe. Um, so that's this Mindsight one. And I thought it was going to look a lot prettier. This isn't beautiful. I wish there was like an elegant solution. Actually, I do have one right here. This is when I have a lot of people over. And, uh, they need to put their phones away. Boom. So this has charging cords in it, which I love. What it doesn't have though is a locking feature. And there's just something for me that feels psychologically so freeing when I hear like that. I don't know if you heard that this lid just came off. So those are 3 like big containers. Um, I honestly, I used to travel with this. I would put this in my backpack. Um, thought there's got to be something more portable. So here's one. This is like some Chinese brand, Wiskey. Um, and you can still answer the phone here. Um, and you can charge it here, which I like a lot. This is where you lock it. Um, I, I've never really used this though, and I'll show you why in a second. Um, I've never wanted to, like, if I'm locking it up, I don't want to also be able to talk on the phone. Uh, I want to get rid of it mentally. Uh, here's another one that I thought was just cool looking. It's like a cassette version of this. You hit this button up here and, uh, yeah, keep in box, focus on focus. Yeah. Again, I don't think this was made in America. This is honestly the thing I used second most often. Sometimes it's my most oftenly used. And, um, this is just a silicone sleeve. And this is a time release lock. I will actually plug my phone in here as well. So this is, this is what I use for that. And then I can set this timer to like 100 hours, I think, if I wanted to. So this is what I use when I want to charge it or when I'm traveling, of course. So that's 1, 2, 3, 4. Yes. 6 different, 6 different hardware solutions. And honestly, I, I'm, I'm pretty close to just drilling a hole in this because having completely out of sight and out of mind has been the most beneficial for me. Then there are hardware software combinations, 3 different companies. I only have the hardware for one of them. This is called, this company called Block. And you, uh, you take this and you scan your phone and it blocks whatever kind of, of apps for however long. There's another company called Brick, and this, this isn't the device, um, but it's like basically 2 thicknesses of this. It's like a gray square, same idea. Your phone scans it. And then there's another one called Bloom that is like a credit card thing that you scan. So it's a combination of hardware and software. There's also apps, and this is not difficult to find, but Opal is one of them. Be Present is another. And I've spent I don't know, $50, $100 on those. So my point in here is not to like say, is not to be like, this is what you should use, or this is, this is what you shouldn't use. My point is to show you that I have spared no expense on coming up with what, trying any kind of tool that I could that would successfully keep me from getting sucked in. I also sometimes switch my phone to grayscale. There's actually research on this too. College students using grayscale reduced their daily screen time almost 40 minutes on average, probably because the phone just stops being visually rewarding. I mean, I actually did this for a while where it was on grayscale for weeks, and then I turned on color and I was like, I felt the dopamine flood my body. On my computer, I run something called Cold Turkey almost every day. Actually, it's running right now while I've been working on this video. And it blocks every kind of website or the entire internet if you want. The last thing I want to tell you about is the television. So one night after staying up too late watching some shit I didn't care about, I started wondering if there was something that could physically make a cord like unusable. Like I thought maybe I could put a cover over the, uh, the plug-in area. And it turns out there is. It's an industrial safety product called an electric cord plug lockout device. So the cord can't be plugged in without a key. So here it is. You just plug your, I plug the TV cord into this and then I lock it. And then I take these keys and I put it, you guessed it, right here. So, uh, I just don't stay up late watching TV as a result, not because I've got good willpower, but because I put my pride on the shelf and admitted I don't and I need help. So if you're thinking about doing some weird stuff like this in your own life, but you're feeling the same self-judgment and resistance, uh, or judgment from others— by the way, my brothers and friends still make fun of me when I don't have access to my phone— uh, here's a reframe that made all this worth whatever amount of embarrassment that it was causing me. If someone walked up to me and said, hey, Would you spend $1,000 in exchange for hundreds of hours back over the next 5 years? I would write that check every time. It'd be an obvious trade. The only thing that made it feel like weakness instead of an obvious trade is that it meant that I admitted that I needed to do it. And as I do the math on all this gear, the stuff that I showed you, again, I've spent $1,000 max, but honestly, I really only needed Maybe 20% of it, 10% of it even. So like, I don't know, maybe $100, $200, but I don't want to recommend you should use this or you should use that. I was just showing you how much I was willing to, even if it's only saved me like a couple of hours a week over the last 5 years, I've been doing this since like 2020, 2021, then that is 500 hours. So 500 hours at $1,000 is a couple bucks an hour. Honestly, if it was, I don't know, $100 or $200 like it should have been, it would've been, I don't know, like a dollar or 2 an hour. Once I let go of that, the spending stopped feeling embarrassing and started feeling like one of the smartest things that I could do. But this really isn't about the phone or TVs or the computer. I mean, if you have a drinking problem, one of the smartest moves you could make is to stop living next door to a liquor store. Most people talk themselves out of that. Moving would mean admitting you need the distance. So they stay and then they keep losing. The strong move from the inside can look like the weak move from the outside. And the only difference is whether your ego will let you do it. If there's something in your life that trying harder hasn't fixed and you've been at it long enough to know that effort isn't the problem, then ask yourself what it would cost. Like, do the mathematical cost for a second, not the emotional one. Like, what would it cost to move across town or to buy some lockable device or sign up for some kind of class, because you probably don't have a willpower problem. You have either a self-awareness problem or a self-acceptance problem. And those 2 things often go hand in hand. They're the foundation, actually, of not just this channel, but, you know, like spiritual enlightenment and bliss according to almost every spiritual tradition that's ever existed. And it's often what's standing in our way, not just of this, but of so many things. So what's the thing in your life that try harder hasn't fixed? And what would it cost? Your ego, kind of. Yeah. Tell me about your ego, but what would it cost in terms of just dollars to admit that you need a real bumper and then buy that bumper? Let me know in the comments.
