Fitness

What does Fitness have to do with Sims?

• Fitness can help keep you strong, give you more energy, and help you remain more alert, so that you can enjoy your sims even more.
• Maybe it's upper body strength for sim racing with high strength ffb wheels or heavy load cell pedals
• Or for controlling flight yokes in flight slims and their rudder pedals
• Or perhaps you need to keep a sharp mind for a city sim
• Or keep your energy high for a long session
• Whatever the sim, keeping your fitness at an adequate level can only serve to help your sim enjoyment

Wellness

Grounding The Internet: Putting The Internet Back In Its Room

Covid lockdowns became a time when social media, such as X, became a critical outlet to counter authoritarian tyranny. Over time, my social media use increased to exorbitant amounts of time per day. I knew I would be better off finding a way to reduce the time spent staring at my phone. This information is the result.

Steps to begin moving the Internet off of your phone and back into your home on a computer you can't carry around with you:

• A video thumbnail caught my eye one day and its thumbnail said this: the internet lived in a room
• The video was The Internet Used to Be a Place
• The idea caught me more than the video, itself, although its worth watching, too
• I grew up in the time before smartphones when the Internet did 'live in a room', so to speak, and those were better, healthier times, not just for me but everybody since the advent of the smartphone and especially infinite scroll social media apps
• It got me thinking about how to begin moving the addictive part of the Internet back into a room and onto a computer that I wouldn't always have with me and so help me break bad habits

Putting The Internet Back In Its Room: A Checklist

1. Limit app screen time for problem apps eg. most likely social apps
2. Gradually reduce screen time limit eg. to about one hour
3. Move social icons off your main home screen
4. Setup social access on your home computer ie. using a web browser
5. Create 'bookmark icons' on your home screen instead of the full, native app and move your real app off the home screen
6. Move all apps possible off home screens to the app library
7. Remove remaining social app bookmark icons from main home screen so you have to swipe at least one screen to get them
8. Reduce main home screen to only critical apps ie. move apps to other screens or the app library so that your main home screen has a few icons as possible
9. Eventually delete social apps from your phone

Bonus:

1. Research dumb phones
2. Move to a dumb phone

At The End:

• What you should end up with at the end is a clean, minimal phone experience, without having to go to a dumb phone (unless you wish), which you now have the discipline and willpower to use in a healthy, responsible way while still retaining access to important apps at the appropriate times

Notes:

• This process may take weeks or months
• I am not finished all the steps after a few weeks though I feel like it's getting easier to 'background' the addictive apps on my phone and save it for the home computer

Questions:

• Why this works if the apps are still on your phone?
  • First is an increased barrier to entry, no matter how small (ie. moving an app off the home screen), will tend to reduce your usage. It's petty human behaviour and the trick can work.
  • Second is an app in the app library requires you to at least swipe a number of times or search for it, increasing the barrier of entry, and giving you less incentive and more time to think if you really ought to be using the app
  • Third is bookmark apps tend to be just a little slower and a little less feature-full then native apps and this reduces the incentive and reward-tricks apps use to keep you using them
  • Fourth is psychologically you know you still have access to the apps if you really care that much so there is less angst about it

Tips and Tricks:

• If you feel anxious about removing an app or moving an app off your home screen:
  • Move it to a second or third home screen and see how you feel over the next day or two. If you don't miss it, remove the app or move it to the app library.

If you need more to be convinced:

• The Attention Economy Is Everywhere. Self-Hosting Is the Escape. (Video) - Well done video describing the problem and the solution(s)