The problem was not screen time. It was feeds.

I did not build Monk Mode because I wanted to block the whole internet.

I built it because I kept losing good work blocks to the same dumb loop:
open browser, check one thing, get pulled into a feed, come back 20 minutes later annoyed at myself.

Most blockers felt too blunt for how I actually work.

I still needed YouTube for tutorials.
I still needed X for search.
I still needed Reddit threads for debugging.

What I did not need was the infinite scroll, the recommendations, and the algorithm doing its job a little too well.

That was the insight that made Monk Mode click for me.

The real problem was not access to the internet.
The real problem was access to the most distracting surfaces of the internet.

So instead of blocking entire apps and sites, I started building around feed-level blocking.
Remove the slot machine part. Keep the useful part.

A lot of knowledge work is online now. Telling yourself to just avoid the internet is not a strategy. It is fantasy.

What has worked better for me is reducing the number of decisions I have to win every day. If the distracting part is gone, I do not need discipline every five minutes.

Building this also changed how I think about products.

The product got better when I stopped describing the problem in broad terms like focus or productivity and got painfully specific:

I want to use the web without getting hijacked by feeds.

If you are a solo dev building for yourself, that level of specificity helps a lot.

I am building Monk Mode here: https://mac.monk-mode.lifestyle