What to do instead of watching pornography

What to do instead of watching porn depends on what sent you toward it, so answer the feeling rather than the habit. If you are bored, move or give your hands a job. If you are lonely, reach a person. If you are tired, go to bed. If you are stressed, walk, shower or write it down. If it is late and you are restless, leave the room.

Then, over the weeks, fill the hours the habit used to take with things that are actually yours. This page covers both, after one honest point about which comes first.

Stop first, then fill the time#

A new hobby does not stop a slip on its own, and waiting for the perfect one before you stop gets the order backward. What worked for me went in this order: stop; then attention and energy come back; then absorbing things become possible again; and only then, over months, do they start to protect you, because there is less empty time for the loop to fill. The activities below fill the hours and answer the feelings. Removing the cues and deciding to stop carry the weight.

Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit has a rule that fits the inside cues, the feelings you cannot remove: you cannot simply delete a habit, so keep the cue and the reward and change the routine in between. Boredom will still come. What it leads to can change. The outside cues are different. Those you remove rather than replace, starting with the phone in bed, which lesson five covers.

Two details make a replacement work better.

Name what you will do, not what you will not. In studies of snacking habits, plans of the form "when this happens, I will not" made the habit stronger, while plans that named an alternative did not. So write "if I am bored at ten, I go for a twenty-minute walk", not "if I am bored at ten, I will not look at it".

Keep the same answer for the same cue. One prediction in habit research, still unsettled, is that an old habit fades only when a single replacement takes its place consistently, and that switching among several may never build a new habit at all. I take it as a reason to choose one answer per cue and stick with it.

Match it to the cue#

Bored: move, or give your hands a job#

Boredom asks for stimulation, and the quickest honest stimulation is the body. Stand up. Walk around the block, do twenty push-ups, wash the dishes, pick up a guitar or a pencil. Pick one of these and make it your standing answer to boredom.

There is research behind the moving part, though not for pornography. In smokers who were temporarily not smoking, short bouts of physical activity reduced cravings in the moment, and a meta-analysis that pooled the original data from the trials called the evidence strong.

There is also an old idea from habit reversal training, a therapy first described in 1973 for nervous habits and tics: the competing response, a deliberate action the body cannot do at the same time as the habit, used the moment you notice the urge starting. It is well supported for tics, nail biting and similar repetitive habits. It has been studied there, not for pornography, so take the idea rather than the evidence. Hands busy with something real are hands not holding a phone.

Lonely: reach a person#

Loneliness is a request for a person, and a screen cannot answer it. Send a message to a friend about nothing in particular. Call instead of texting. Go where people are, even if you only sit there: a gym, a library, a class. If you have chosen one person to tell about the habit, this is part of what they are for.

Tired: go to bed#

It sounds too simple to count. It counts. Tiredness makes easy rewards look better. In one brain-imaging study, 23 young adults who had stayed awake all night wanted high-calorie food more than after a normal night's sleep, though they were no hungrier. That was food rather than pornography, and a whole night without sleep, but it is the direction you would expect. If it is late and you are tired, the better activity is sleep. How to sleep better covers the rest.

Stressed: walk, shower or write it down#

Stress asks for relief, and the habit offers a fast, false version of it. Give it a slower, real one. A brisk walk. A hot shower, or a cold one. Or three lines on paper: what is actually wrong, what part of it is yours to act on, and the next small step. Writing it down does not solve it, but it moves it out of your head and onto the table.

Restless at night: leave the room#

This is where the others often end up. If it is late, you are restless and the pull has started, change where you are first. Get up, leave the room, turn the kitchen light on, drink a glass of water. The room is part of the cue, so leaving it takes part of the cue away. If the urge comes with you, sit somewhere else and let it rise and fall without acting on it. Urge surfing is the full practice.

Things to fill the hours with#

Start small and specific. Twenty minutes counts. The aim is not to become a different person by next week. It is to give the hour that used to belong to the loop a real occupant.

• Walking. The smallest version of everything below. Some days, without headphones.
• The gym. A fixed time, a simple plan, and a place that is not your bedroom.
• Running or cycling. Easy to start, easy to measure, and tiring in the good way.
• Painting or drawing. A sketchbook and a pencil are enough, and nobody has to see the results.
• Reading. A long paper book, twenty minutes at a time, with the phone in another room.
• Cooking. It takes your hands, your attention and about an hour, and you get to eat the result.
• Music. An instrument you play badly and then less badly, or one album listened to from start to finish.
• Learning a skill. A language, woodworking, code, a sport: anything with a next step you can see.
• Volunteering. Regular hours, other people, and a reason to be somewhere.
• Time with people. A fixed weekly thing beats a vague plan: the same class, club, game or meal, every week.

When you choose, prefer things that use your hands or your body, happen away from screens, and have a set time. If you can do them with someone else, better still.

Questions people ask#

What should I do when I am bored at night?#

Leave the room first, then give your hands something to do: dishes, a walk, an instrument, a book. If you are tired as well as bored, go to bed. Late, bored and tired together is the combination to plan for in advance.

Will a hobby stop me from relapsing?#

Not by itself. A hobby fills time and answers some of the feelings that start the loop, which helps. Removing the cues and the decision to stop do the heavy lifting. If you slip, come back the same day.

What if nothing feels interesting anymore?#

Many people describe a flat stretch some weeks in, when nothing much pulls, and it passes. The flatline explains it. Keep doing the small things anyway. If the low mood deepens or does not lift, talk to someone; the help page lists people you can reach today.

Is exercise a good replacement?#

It is a good one to try first. For smokers, the evidence that short bouts of activity cut cravings in the moment is strong. That is cigarettes, not pornography, but it costs nothing to test on yourself.

None of this replaces the decision. If you have not made it yet, the thirty days is the place to start: stop completely, give the old hours new occupants, and see on day thirty what came back.