Lesson 4 of 6 · The one change, and it is not deleting the app
Why the obvious answer is not the answer
You have probably already tried deleting it. A weekend off, a blocker, the phone in a drawer.
It works while it lasts and it does very little afterwards, because the machinery was never the phone. The machinery is a measuring habit, and a measuring habit follows you into the drawer and starts on the people in the room. That is what a habit is, on the research below: a response that has come to be cued by the situation it was repeated in, rather than driven each time by the goal that first produced it. Take away one cue and the response finds another.
There is also a specific reason not to build a detox with a countdown attached. A countdown becomes a streak, and a streak becomes a number you can lose. What that produces on the day you lose it is a larger version of the feeling you started with.
What the research says
Habits become triggered by the situation they were repeated in rather than by the goal that started them. The practical consequence is that changing your surroundings beats trying harder, which is why the move in this lesson is about where the phone is and not about willpower.
Habits are responses that come to be triggered directly by the context they were repeated in, rather than being driven each time by the goal that first produced them. One practical consequence is that removing a single cue does not remove the habit, because the response transfers to whatever cue is still available.
Wood W, Neal DT (2007). A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface. Psychological Review, 114(4), 843 to 863 doi