{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"7MS #722: I Turned My Phone Into a Brick","description":" Hey friends! Quasi-vacation week over here, so today\u2019s episode is lighter and more personal: just a story about how I turned my phone into a \u201cbrick\u201d (kind of) and what that\u2019s done for my mental health over the past week. The product is called Brick (getbrick.com). Not sponsored, no discount code \u2014 just something I\u2019ve genuinely been enjoying. It\u2019s a $50 NFC dongle + app that lets you \u201cbrick\u201d your time-waster apps until you physically tap the brick again. Here\u2019s what stood out: The physical separation is the magic. Other digital-wellbeing apps just need a code to unlock \u2014 Brick makes you walk to wherever the dongle lives (mine\u2019s on the fridge) and tap your phone to it. That extra step is enough to break the habit mid-flight. I caught myself doing three or four Pavlovian pocket checks an hour, on autopilot, with zero notifications waiting. \u201cJunk food for the eyes\u201d realization. First day I bricked socials until end of day \u2192 felt great. Then I unbricked, sat down, and spent 25 minutes catching up on everything I \u201cmissed\u201d \u2192 felt noticeably worse afterward. Scheduling is a sleeper hit. You can set the phone to auto-brick on a schedule \u2014 no physical tap needed. Mine kicks in from 9pm to 8am. Result: calm wake-up with my wife and son, no email triage in the school drop-off line, and my \u201cwork brain\u201d doesn\u2019t fire until 8am. One-to-many is a real win. A single Brick works across household members, each with their own app profile. My oldest son Cam (deep in paramedic-school crunch) tried it for a study session and reported the same thing \u2014 reaching for his phone between turning book pages, for no reason at all. He even left for evening class with his phone still bricked and decided not to burn an emergency unbrick. Emergency unbricks are scarce by design. You get five total and that\u2019s it! The stats are anti-shaming. Instead of the dreaded Sunday-morning \u201cyour screen time is up 10%\u201d notification, you get to see number of hours you spent in brick mode. Love that! Want to see screenshots and hear more about Brick? Hop over to 7MinSec.club \u2014 this week\u2019s Tuesday TOOLSday was all about Brick. Got a digital-wellbeing tool you swear by? Let us know! ","author_name":"7 Minute Security","author_url":"https:\/\/7MinSec.com","html":"