Digital detoxA seven-day plan for the apps you actually open
Not a cleanse. A week of gradually giving the decision back to yourself.
Your seven-day plan
- 1
Day 1: Measure, change nothing
Today you only look. Open your screen time report and write down the real figure for Social media and Short video. Change no settings and cut nothing. A baseline you tampered with is not a baseline.
- 2
Day 2: Add the pause
Put a 20-second pause in front of Social media and Short video. That is the whole task. You are not banning anything; you are inserting a moment where the gesture has to become a choice.
- 3
Day 3: Take back the first hour
Social media and Short video stay closed until one hour after you wake up. If your phone is your alarm, move the charger out of arm's reach tonight. The first reach of the day is the one that sets the tone.
- 4
Day 4: Set the budget
Cap Social media and Short video at 40 minutes for today. Choose a limit you would still keep on a bad day; an aspirational number just teaches you to ignore the alert.
- 5
Day 5: Protect the evening
Social media and Short video close ninety minutes before bed and stay closed. Expect this to be the hardest day so far. The evening is where the habit does most of its work.
- 6
Day 6: Sit with the boredom
Today, when the pull arrives, do nothing instead. Waiting rooms, queues, lifts, the two minutes before a meeting. The discomfort is short and it is the part that actually retrains the reflex.
- 7
Day 7: Decide what stays
Review the week and keep only what you will still be doing in a month. Usually that is the pause and one window of the day. The rest is worth dropping. A plan you abandon entirely is worse than a smaller one you keep.
Nothing here is stored or sent. Copy the plan if you want to keep it. Reloading the page clears everything.
A free seven-day plan built around the apps you actually open, at the intensity you choose. It starts by measuring rather than quitting, and you can copy and keep it.
- You enter: Your intensity and the apps you reach for.
- You get: A seven-day plan you can copy.
- Cost: Free, instant, no sign-up.
Day two of the plan is a pause. Offimo is that pause.
Set the pause and the daily limit once, and the plan keeps running on the days you would have skipped it.
"Dopamine detox" is a bad name for a reasonable idea. You are not detoxing from a neurotransmitter you need in order to get out of bed; you are lowering how often you get a fast, effortless reward, so that slower things start feeling worth doing again.
Which is why the plan below is a week rather than a weekend, and why it starts by measuring instead of quitting. A total blackout on Saturday teaches you nothing that survives to Monday.
Why the week is ordered this way
Day one changes nothing on purpose. Almost everyone who fails at this starts by cutting everything at once on their most motivated day, which means the plan is calibrated to a version of them that will not be back.
The pause comes before the limits because it is the only step that costs nothing when you are tired. Limits are a promise; a pause is a mechanism, and mechanisms keep working after the motivation has gone.
Pick the intensity you can survive
Strict is not better. The best version of this plan is the one still running in three weeks, and gentle-and-kept beats strict-and-abandoned every time.
If you are not sure, start gentle. You can tighten the pause on day four when you know what the week actually feels like, that decision will be better informed than the one you would make now.
What to expect around day five
Days five and six are where most attempts end, and it is rarely dramatic. It is an ordinary evening, a bad mood, and a reach that does not feel like a decision.
Plan for that evening now rather than resolving to be stronger during it. Somewhere else to be, something to do with your hands, and a phone that is not within reach will do more than any amount of resolve.
Frequently asked questions
Is a dopamine detox scientifically real?
Not as the name suggests: you cannot and should not deplete dopamine, and nobody is doing that. What is real is habituation: reduce how often a fast reward arrives, and slower rewards start competing again. That is what this plan targets.
Do I have to delete the apps?
No, and deleting usually backfires. Reinstalling takes thirty seconds, so a deleted app is a speed bump; what changes the pattern is a pause that is still there on the day you would have reinstalled.
What if I break the plan on day three?
Continue on day four. A broken day is normal and a restarted week is how this turns into an annual ritual instead of a change.
Is seven days enough?
It is enough to see the pattern clearly, not enough to replace it. Whatever you keep after day seven is the part that actually matters.
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