Answerscounting the days
Should I tell someone I am trying to quit?
The evidence leans yes. Harkin and colleagues found progress monitoring worked better when progress was reported to someone or made public. That finding covers health behaviour in general, not porn, and telling one person you know is a different thing from posting a public streak.
Monke ResetUpdated
Probably yes, if it is one person whose reaction you can predict. Reporting progress strengthened the effect of tracking it in a large meta-analysis. That research did not separate a trusted friend from a public audience, and for this behaviour the two carry different risks.
What does the research say about telling someone?
Harkin and colleagues pooled 138 studies and nearly 20,000 people in Psychological Bulletin in 2016. Progress monitoring promoted goal attainment at d+ = 0.40, and two things strengthened it: recording the information physically, and reporting it or making it public.
The studies covered health behaviour such as eating and exercise. Nobody has run the equivalent study on quitting porn, so the finding is a reason to lean towards telling someone, not a reason to be certain.
Is a public streak better than telling one person?
Not for this. The finding does not transfer cleanly to something people are ashamed of. For most people a public streak about porn is a reason to delete the app, and an effect from an app you stopped using never arrives. We decided that trade was not worth it, which is why Monke Reset has no feed. The reasoning is in why there is no leaderboard.
How do you tell someone you are quitting porn?
One person, one sentence. It is not a confession, and not a commitment you will be held to in six months. Something like: "I am trying to stop watching porn and I am telling you so it is not only in my head." Pick someone whose reaction you can predict, because an unpredictable reaction is the main risk.
If nobody fits right now, recording your progress is the other half of the finding, and it needs no one else.
Keep reading
- What to do after a relapseWhat counts as a relapse, why the day after carries the most risk, and why you should log a slip instead of resetting the count to zero.
- Is it normal to relapse after 30 days?Common, and habit research found one missed day did not seriously impair habit formation. What that study shows, and the part of it people overclaim.
- Why Monke Reset has no leaderboardResearch finds progress reported publicly works better than progress kept private. Why Monke Reset keeps the streak private anyway, and what that costs.
Day oneis tonight.
Write your reasons down now, while it’s quiet. Help keeps them for when it isn’t.
- Blocks adult sites and apps
- Counts the urges you beat
- Stays on your phone