Turn your phone to grayscale through accessibility settings to make apps like TikTok and YouTube Shorts less visually appealing. Without color, you get fewer dopamine hits and scroll less compulsively. You can triple-click the side button to toggle color back on when you need it.
Use your phone in black and white. There's a cool little productivity hack I learned, I guess, 2 years ago, and I've been using it more in earnest in the last month or so. It's made a huge difference. It causes me to just look at my phone less, and those YouTube Shorts or TikToks are just not nearly as addicting. On both Chrome and iOS devices, there's an accessibility mode. So you go into your phone settings, go to accessibility, and for people, particularly people who are colorblind, you can turn it into a grayscale mode. That grayscale mode just doesn't give you the same level of endorphins that the color mode does. And so even when I find myself accidentally or, or instinctively clicking into the not so helpful short section on YouTube, I find myself clicking out of it because it hasn't engaged me nearly as much. I can triple-click my side button and go back into color mode for things that I need, maps or what have you. But as long as I keep clicking back into black and white, I find that I'm able to keep my focus on the things that matter for longer.
