Disclosure: Reset is ours. This post is from the people who make it.
In short
Every self-imposed rule has the same flaw: the person who made it can unmake it. The oldest fix is to give the power to someone else. Ulysses had his crew tie him to the mast. You can give a friend a six-digit code.
Why willpower is the wrong tool at 11 p.m.
You are not one person across the day. The you at 9 a.m. who sets a limit and the you at 11 p.m. facing a fresh feed want different things, and the 11 p.m. version has the phone in hand. Behavioural economists call the fix a commitment device: a choice made in a cool moment that binds the hot one.
In a well-known study, students who were allowed to set their own binding deadlines for coursework chose to bind themselves, and those with evenly spaced binding deadlines did better than those left free. People know their future selves will cave. Given the tool, they use it.
Why a friend, not a timer
A timer is a weak commitment device because the app that set it can cancel it. A code your phone never shows is different: to end the block early you have to ask another human, out loud, for permission to scroll. Most of the time you won't ask. That small social cost is doing the work. It's the same reason gym buddies and accountability partners show up in every study of habit change: it's not that they force you, it's that quitting quietly stops being an option.
How Reset's key works
- You create a key and send your friend a link. Their copy of Reset (or any standard authenticator app) shows a six-digit code that changes every 30 seconds.
- You start a block with the friend lock on. The countdown runs, the apps stay hidden, and the only way to end early is to enter the current code.
- Your phone never shows the code. It only checks it. The secret sits in your iPhone's Keychain and in your friend's; there's no server in between.
The emergency unlock, and why it's slow
Real life happens: your friend is asleep, you need a blocked app for work. Reset has an emergency unlock, and it deliberately makes you wait. When you set up the key you choose the delay, from 15 minutes to a day. Tap "Emergency unlock" and the block ends after that wait. You can cancel any time.
The wait is the feature. An unlock you can get instantly isn't a lock. A twenty-minute wait is long enough for the urge to pass (they usually peak and fade within minutes) and short enough that a real emergency isn't a disaster.
Picking your person
Someone you'd be slightly embarrassed to ask. Someone who won't send the code just because you sound sad. A partner works; so does a friend doing the same thing, holding each other's keys. Reset lets you hold as many keys as you like, so a group can lock each other in for exam week.
Sources
- Ariely D., Wertenbroch K. (2002). Procrastination, deadlines, and performance: Self-control by precommitment. Psychological Science, 13(3), 219–224.
- Bowen S., Marlatt A. (2009). Surfing the urge: Brief mindfulness-based intervention for college student smokers. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 23(4), 666–671.
- RFC 6238: TOTP: Time-based one-time password algorithm (the standard behind the six-digit codes).