I love sweets, I love Facebook, and I love YouTube. But as much as I love these things, they don’t love me back. For me (but not necessarily you), these products are harmful. Your harmful distractions might include other indulgences, like being a sports fanatic, a romance novel reader, a Netflix binger, a political news junkie, or worse. In any case, it’s not for me (or anyone else for that matter) to point fingers at whatever poison you pick.

What all distractions have in common is that they have the potential to keep us from living the life we want. When I think about what I want to accomplish with my remaining time on this planet, certain things just aren’t helping me.

If I could wave a magic wand and no longer want to use these products, I would. Unfortunately, there is no such craving-killing spell. The reality is, I do want to consume these things. They’re fun! They’re entertaining! They’re delicious! But they’re also driving me akrasia. The tendency Socrates and Aristotle warned us about lives right here.

Why do we do things against our better interests? For the most part, when a product doesn’t give the customers what they want, they stop buying it. You wouldn’t keep buying apples at a grocery store that sells rotten fruit. But distractions are sneaky. We use them despite knowing they aren’t doing us any good. Distractions trick us into hurting ourselves by dulling our awareness of the price we’re paying. They feel good now, but we feel bad later.

However, as seemingly sinister as distractions might be, the responsibility to quit them is on us. Though I’d like to say I’m powerless against the pull of Facebook, YouTube, or sweets, that’s not really true. “Distractions” are defined as behaviors that harm us but that we can stop doing, if we choose.

How do we put distractions in their place? The answer is: we realize and reduce.

The first step is to call these products what they are. Distractions are bad habits. For me, a scroll of the newsfeed, a sweet snack after a meal, or a video binge after work are all things I do just ’cause.

By definition, habits are impulses to do a behavior with little or no conscious thought. Therefore, the solution starts with bringing consciousness to an otherwise unconscious act. When I asked myself the uncomfortable questions, “Is this product serving me? Does it help me do what I really want?” I answered with a sheepish, “No.”

Over the past several years, I’ve dissected what makes products habit-forming and compiled what I learned into my book, “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.” I discovered habit-forming products take users along four basic steps that keep us coming back: a trigger, an action, a variable reward, and an investment.

It’s not that candy makers and tech companies are evil; it’s that the market rewards them for making products people want. By and large, that’s a good thing. However, the result is more engaging Facebook feeds, more engrossing YouTube videos, and more delicious desserts.

In a world where the features that make a product better also makes it harder to resist, the answer lies in the ability to spot these hooks and deliberately break them where they don’t serve us. When we understand how products hook us, they lose some of their power. Getting unhooked starts with removing the triggers, making the action more difficult, delaying the rewards, and consciously not investing.

For the specific techniques I used to unhook myself from technology, see this video.