How One Man Took Drastic Measures To Beat His Digital Addiction

David Joerg is addicted to the internet.

The father of two daughters and the husband of a loving wife often finds himself staying up until the late hours of the night to sit in front of his computer, playing video games for hours upon hours.

In an interview with New Tech City on WNYC, Joerg explains his addiction to his laptop and his phone.

"At 2am I'm like, 'I'm gonna be exhausted anyway' and then I just stay up until 5am, 6am," Joerg says. He often survived on less than three hours of sleep; not great for a father of two small children.

WNYC reports Joerg tried everything - setting calendar reminders to tell him when to go to bed, for example - but nothing helped. He said he even bought a sleep tracker and it even worked for a few weeks. But he needed to create "a system."

The system ended up being a software program that kills everything Joerg is doing on the computer between the hours of 11pm-6am. It's also something Joerg created himself (you can read more about that here.)

The trick? The system sets itself based on how much sleep Joerg has been getting. It knows how much sleep thanks to the sleep tracker Joerg hooked up to the program.

But the most drastic thing Joerg did to help curb his addiction? He took away administrator status on his computer, and changed the password to get in to a long jumble of characters. The password is written on five pieces of paper and hidden in places hard for Joerg to reach at night; his daughter's piggy banks or his wife's nightstand. He says the passwords have to be hidden in complicated spots or else he'll cheat; his wife is a light sleeper.

Has it helped? Joerg explains the drawbacks and the benefits, but says mostly yes. Take a listen to WNYC's full feature on Joerg: