Stake against → LinkedIn scrolling
LinkedIn does not make you a better professional. It makes you anxious about other professionals. Pick a daily time limit, pledge a stake, and let loss aversion do the work your willpower cannot.
Suggested starting contract
$7/day against a daily limit of 20 minutes on the apps you choose.
Free on Google Play and the App Store. On Android, grant the screen time permission so the OS can report your LinkedIn usage. On iPhone, grant Screen Time access so Lockin can read your daily app usage.
Choose the Screen Time challenge so the contract resolves against measured app usage rather than anything you have to enter.
Pick LinkedIn from your installed apps. The counter will track the full app, including feed, messaging, profile views, and jobs.
20 minutes — enough for messages and deliberate networking, below the comparison-spiral threshold.
Default 7 USD per day. Pick an amount that you would notice losing but that does not threaten rent. Most professionals land between 5 and 10 USD.
Pick from Lockin's vetted list. If you fail, your stake funds the charity you chose. Lockin charges a small platform fee to cover payment processing and operations.
Review the contract terms, confirm the stake, and the daily cap goes live at midnight local time. The OS counts. You either stay under and your money returns, or you cross the line and the stake forfeits.
From Lockin's data
Verified on-device on both Android (Digital Wellbeing) and iPhone (Screen Time). Feed, messaging, profile views, and jobs all live in the LinkedIn app bucket. No screenshots, no self-report.
"I was opening LinkedIn to clear notifications and surfacing 30 minutes later having read three founder-journey posts and a thread about someone's exit. Staking 8 dollars a day against a 20-minute limit cut it almost overnight. The relief of not measuring my career against a feed every hour is the real return."
— Anonymous beta user, LinkedIn challenge, 6 weeks active
Lockin tracks. On Android it uses Digital Wellbeing; on iPhone, Screen Time. The contract resolves against that number at end of day. One minute over your limit equals forfeit. The app is not blocked; the stake is the friction.
There is a 1-day emergency refund window for genuine outages. Otherwise the contract holds. If your job is full-time recruiting or sales prospecting on LinkedIn, set a generous limit that reflects real working time. The compulsion this challenge addresses is the unconscious 47-minute comparison scroll, not the deliberate 5-minute message session.
Forfeited stakes go to a registered charity from Lockin's vetted list. You choose the charity from categories including climate, mental health, animal welfare, and digital literacy when you set up the contract. Lockin charges a small platform fee to cover payment processing and operations. Refer to the transparency page inside the app for charity-by-charity tallies.
Set a daily cap that fits a deliberate batch — say 30 minutes total per day — and decide for yourself when to spend it (a morning message session and a short afternoon check is a clean pattern). The cap is the contract; how you batch the minutes is up to you. Most professional LinkedIn use is concentrated; the comparison-scroll is what fills the rest. If you batch the deliberate work, you protect both the work and your nervous system.
Free to download. You set the limit, the stake, and the charity.
Author
The Lockin Team — Lockin Editorial
Last verified