The one-second pause
Raza's TED Talk names this pause as the concrete, testable habit: wait one second before picking up the phone. That's the entire technique — no app, no lock, no willpower speech. The pause is short enough to not feel like deprivation, and long enough that the automatic reach has to clear a checkpoint instead of running uninterrupted.
Curiosity and presence, not just restriction
The other two habits Raza describes aren't about blocking the phone — they're about giving the brain something else to do with the impulse: practicing curiosity (asking a real question about what's in front of you instead of defaulting to the feed) and restoring presence (noticing where you actually are). The pitch is pre-internet by design — these are habits people had before there was a screen to default to, not new self-control tech.
Why it matters for DarkBadge
The one-second pause works because it targets exactly the mechanism DarkBadge's Speed and Difficult-to-Self-Regulate dimensions measure: the gap between impulse and action that well-designed apps are built to erase. Instant load times and one-tap re-entry exist specifically to make that gap disappear. A one-second pause is a manual reinsertion of the friction the product removed.