Request for help: Android app to shut down a smartphone late at night

Tasker is an Android app that lets you specify "contexts" (specific states of the phone), and carry out actions depending on these contexts. An example use-case might be something like "when I am connected to my home WiFi network, disable my screen lock".

One of the actions available under Tasker is "Run Shell", which lets you issue shell commands to the underlying operating system. To achieve your desired effect, you could:

• Acquire Tasker (a few dollars)
• Set it up to run with root privileges
• Set a context of "between 11pm and 6am"
• Set an action of the shell command "su -c shutdown -h now" (or something similar) to run under that context

This does seem quite hazardous, though. If an emergency happened at 3am, I'm pretty sure I'd want my phone easily available and usable.

ETA: I just Googled to see if there was an existing recipe for this. It turns out Android doesn't have a conventional shutdown terminal command, but does have the "reboot" command, with the switch -p for powering down. Tasker also has a "reboot" under System->Misc, with a power-down option on rooted phones. This can absolutely do what you want it to do. Just don't go having any emergencies between 11 and 6.

Do you really need to be as strict with yourself as offering absolutely no way, or just putting an obstacle on it - like this - would be enough?

A more advanced version of this would be to lock the phone into "emergency calls only" mode within a specific time window. I don't know how hard that would be to pull off.

This appears to be possible with the Device Administration API to relock the screen upon receiving an ACTION_USER_PRESENT intent. Neither of which requires a rooted phone.

Is there a thread with suggestions/requests for non-obvious productivity apps like that? Because I do have a few requests:

1) One chrome extension that would do this, but for search results. That is, that upon highlighting/double-clicking a term would display a short list of top Google search results in a context/drop-box menu on the same page.

2) Something like the StayFocusd extension that blocks sites like Facebook and YouTube for a given time of the day, but which would be extremely hard to remove. Some people suggested to block these websites IPs directly on the router, but I don't have access to routers on my network.

3) Something that would turn-off the internet for a given set of time in a way completely impossible to put it back up. I use Freedom, but sometimes it's not enough. My current strategy is removing the Ethernet cable, locking it in my drawer and throwing the keys behind my desk (I have to get a stick to pick it up). But it would be nice something that would cost me as much willpower as clicking a button.

Why is it so hard for you to, say, dump the computer and go to sleep at [desired time]?

Replace computer with any other activity you think does less good than you could have done.

Alternative implementation: an android widget that posts a "snitch" message somewhere online if ever your phone is unlocked in certain time frames; such that other people can easily see online whether you unlocked your phone in the "forbidden" timeframe.

Seriously though, if you say "akrasia" is a codeword for "lazy as fuck" (or whatever), you've just replaced one symbol with another. Have you made any progress?

Well, for starters, you aren't using a who-knows-where-it-came-from word. You're thinking more simply, which is good.

If you found yourself going to bed an hour or two later than is optimal, and you said "aha! I'm not akraitic, I'm lazy as fuck!", how would that help you?

Second.. that's not going to help you. You should've gone to bed already. But that means you're aware of the problem.

People often say "just have some self discipline!", but that is like saying to a beggar "just cause money to exist in your pocket!" - it's stating the obvious.

Then, why do you not do it? You're aware of both the problem and the solution - why aren't you implementing them?

Having an app that shuts the phone down is a way of achieving your goals with the self discipline you already have, and it is something you can actually do. It's specific and actionable.

With respect to anything that's not your brain, I think you still should self-improve rather than rely on other things. You've yourself said that you haven't found anything optimal and even admitted that it might not exist, so I think the self-improvement way is probably more reliable.

Another problem I have with this is that it seems to be badness-avoidance, rather than goodness-maximizing. Again, once you've shut off your phone, what are you going to do?

Well if you don't know what it is then how do you know ... Anyway if you don't care about any of this then why are you even participating? The internet is a big place man with plenty of other fora...

Because when you post links instead of being able to explain things yourself means that you cannot explain why you hold a certain belief or perform a certain action, but it's all justified as long as you have that piece of information somewhere.