The rules, such as they are
Everybody puts their phone face down in a stack in the middle of the table. The first person to pick theirs up before the bill arrives pays for the meal, or gets the washing up, or whatever the group finds funny.
No app, no setup, works anywhere, and it takes ten seconds to explain.
Why it works so well for one evening
It makes reaching visible. That is the entire mechanism and it is the same one every effective arrangement in this subject relies on.
It is also a game rather than a rule, which means nobody has to be the person policing it. The table does that, cheerfully, and being caught is funny rather than shaming.
Why nothing carries over
The stack only exists at the table. Nothing about your evening at home is different, and the mechanism that made it work is the other people, who are not there.
Treating a dinner game as a step towards changing your habits is where the disappointment comes from. It is not a step. It is a good dinner.
- The mechanism is other people, and it leaves when they do.
- Nothing about your defaults changed.
- It is worth doing anyway. Not everything has to be a programme.
What to take from it
The observation, which is that being seen works instantly and completely, on people with no particular discipline, without anybody deciding to be better.
If you want that at home, you need somebody who is not in the room to be able to see. That is the only bit of the dinner game that generalises, and it is the whole of it.
Common questions
What if somebody is on call?
They sit out. A game that forces somebody to choose between the rules and a genuine responsibility is a bad game.
Does it work with two people?
Less well. The comedy comes from a group, and with two it starts to feel like one person testing the other.