Oh my fuck, this was literally my art teacher last year, I email her about my paintings and I thought she was just busy but no, she held be back after class to discuss the email, at least she has the excuse that she is old enough to not know anything about basic online communication…

Yeah, brain fog and lack of productivity is horrible, it’s difficult to avoid when you’ve got distractions all around you, but it’s not impossible to fix, contrary to how lots of people put it.

If the main cause of it is your phone, try to deprioritise it, use tech that makes it more difficult to keep scrolling, or at least makes it more uncomfortable, like a desktop setup.

Once at the desktop phase, you still wont be that productive but it’ll be easier to start. If you have another device like a laptop lying around, make sure it only has content you can learn with or just have somehing to do that forces you to think, such as coding lessons or other resources. Then you should use the dinner table or another desk to do productive tasks, as to not have the distraction of your initial setup.

Lastly, make sure you’re in the right mood or at least tired of constant dopamine shots, that will make it much easier.

Also I’m mostly relaying my own experience, so it may be different to some of you, but even if it is, I hope it’ll get you thinking about how to start your own way.

If you need some resources to get you started, I recommend Blackbird Hour of Code (app.blackbirdcode.com/hoc.php), which are python coding lessons with step by step instructions.

TLDR: prioritise a desktop setup instead of a phone, then use a different device at a different desk or table than your setup to conduct activities to challenge your brain, such as coding or other stuff.

Although it might not seem like it, not all users of tiktok are the doom scroller brain-dead stereotype you believe. Tiktok has helped many small businesses get off their feet, allowed people and groups to get donations they may need, and has facilitated education about topics from news to interesting facts to scientific phenomenon and beyond.

Granted, it does have its negatives, like brain rot content and the hyperfocused algorithm, but it has it’s pretty amazing aspects as well.

I fully agree with that, and I was wrong in assuming that it’d be very simple. In my country, we only got online piracy firewalled, so I don’t have experience with apps or other kinds of websites getting banned, and somehow I assumed that most of the demographics of a service would try and use it a different way just like how we use VPNs to hop on the pirate bays, but that isn’t the case.

Honestly, true. I must be underestimating how tired I am and overestimating how much brain power I got left because, I must say, I barely had a single thought when typing that.

Oh right, I somehow didn’t think they’d remove the app at first, I thought they’d just firewall it or smthn. The monitisation part also makes a lot of sense too. Honestly I don’t have even the smallest experience with witnessing anything online get banned in my country apart from piracy.

Have people somehow forgotten that VPNs exist? Like millions are moving to rednote but the easier way is to literally just, at minimum, get a shitty free VPN, and still have access to tiktok.

Personally tho, I’d probably opt for a cloud server VPN if I really needed one.

Edit: this was a stupid take, I forgot the app would be removed from devices and that it will cause inconvenience.

what specs do you have? im wondering since im planning to install it on my school laptop (lenovo thinkpad 11e 4th gen, 4gb ram, 128gb ssd, intel celeron, integrated graphics.) and in wondering if it would work somewhat fast, especially at web browsing.