[HN Gopher] Pursue High-Quality Leisure
___________________________________________________________________
Pursue High-Quality Leisure
Author : vitabenes
Score : 174 points
Date : 2021-10-16 10:51 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.deprocrastination.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.deprocrastination.co)
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| Maybe you've been "online" for so long that you have no idea what
| to do when you're not online.
|
| This hit too close to home. Ive been online _almost_ everyday
| since 2004 so yeah.
| godDLL wrote:
| What kind of planning would it take for you to have a detox
| week? Do you have to call someone, tell them you won't be
| answering the phone this week? Do you need to notify your
| employer, work something out for that week to only come in on
| Thursday?
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| i have never done that on my own volition.
|
| https://kashmirglacier.com/2019/12/16/internet-gag-
| kashmir-h...
| dainiusse wrote:
| The author doesn't have kids I guess :) that turns the world
| around. Especially if you have twins or more.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| I know lots of people who both have kids and engage in tons of
| the items on this list. One of the most active, well-read
| people I know is a mother of 5.
| iman453 wrote:
| How does she manage? Any particular techniques you learned
| from her? :)
| WalterGR wrote:
| Kids go to bed early. There's time in evening.
| mderazon wrote:
| They also tend to wake up early
| deckiedan wrote:
| Our 4 year old wakes up about 6am (give or take 45 minutes)
| and as soon as she knows I'm awake, wants to read, talk, play
| together. Our 7 year old gets to bed at 7:45 in the evening,
| which is early compared to his friends. All the time outside
| of work between 6am and 7:45 pm is dominated by them. In the
| nicest possible way - but it's full on. All the time. My wife
| and I are both very tired by 7:45pm, need some social /
| couple time, but have so little mental energy to do anything
| beyond chores / essentials that all pre kids hobbies are
| waaaaay deprioritised. Say we have friends over once a week,
| a date night once a week, a social / community engagement
| once a week, a rest evening, it's like 4 evenings (8pm until
| 10pm...) max available for anything - with brains like mush.
| Add in chores, finances, shopping, contacting relatives and
| others...
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Yeah way too tired to do much between 9:30 and 10!
| peterkelly wrote:
| My father's solution was to set aside every Saturday to play a
| full 18-hole round of golf. I grew up in a family of three
| children and he kept this up since the beginning (and still
| does). It did him wonders as a way to de-stress from his work,
| get physical exercise, and maintain a healthy social life
| outside of work, while still leaving time on the weekend to
| spend with family.
|
| I don't have kids myself, but if I did I'd imagine I'd try to
| find something similar.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Reminds me of an episode of Queer Eye For the Straight Guy. The
| guy had a mess of a house. Clutter everywhere. He had no style to
| speak of. Didn't really seem interesting either. Of course the
| queer guys fixed things up for him.
|
| What was mentioned kind of in passing was that he worked two
| jobs. I don't think the makeover was lasting.
| giantg2 wrote:
| How is consuming some of these other digital products better than
| "surfing" the internet?
|
| Most of the time I'm learning things on the internet. It also
| helps one find new hobbies. For example, I've been researching
| ultralight aircraft recently. I dont think I'll actually get one
| due to price, storage, spouse, etc. But it's fun to learn about.
| kstenerud wrote:
| Pro-tip: Don't try to optimize your leisure time.
|
| https://dilbert.com/strip/1997-07-25
| bluehat974 wrote:
| Tomorrow, when we will work less, have basic income, and have
| more leisure time, this type of list will be very important.
| Otherwise, we will be human in Wall E movie
| sysadm1n wrote:
| > he was scared of stopping playing video games and surfing the
| Internet
|
| For me it depends on the _utility_ I get out of games. Minecraft
| is like Lego 2.0 and players often share custom maps they 've
| built so there's a community there too. Minecraft is also
| hackable and I've seen many videos on Youtube of people creating
| exceptionally creative things with it. It's not just a time-sink:
| people derive pleasure out of _sharing_ their creativity with the
| world - something difficult to do with Lego or board-games.
|
| As for surfing the Internet: well yes the Internet can be an
| endless rabbithole if you let it. I've stopped treating it as a
| rabbithole though, and casually glance at the Hackernews
| frontpage in the morning, see what tools / services / products I
| can leverage going forward, then close the tab, after bookmarking
| a link or two which I will revisit later when I'm feeling
| creative. Same for Reddit, Twitter etc
|
| You can either scroll _mindfully_ or scroll _mindlessly_. It 's
| your choice.
| greenail wrote:
| "meet new people" is missing from the list. I wonder how diverse
| a 20-something's circle is these days vs 20 years ago. I used to
| talk to as many different people as I could: motor cycle
| mechanics, Johns Hopkins post docs, NSA engineers, actors, set
| dressers, woodworkers, painters, business owners. Does the
| opportunity to get out of your "social bubble" still exist today?
| qolop wrote:
| It doesn't, for me. I'm 20 something and work from home. I want
| to fix this but don't know how to. The pandemic has complicated
| things even more. :(
| analyst74 wrote:
| I have a theory, all the "high quality" hobbies are challenging
| in one way or another, thus require some level of will power to
| push yourself to do it.
|
| If you've been pushing yourself hard at work all day, then you
| have likely depleted your will power. Passive activities become
| the only ones you feel like doing.
| stevesimmons wrote:
| > Passive activities become the only ones you feel like doing.
|
| That's not the case in my experience. After a full day managing
| teams, solving problems and coding, I find it "relaxing" to do
| a physically and mentally challenging instructor/coach-led
| activity.
|
| For me, that means swimming, water polo or other team sport,
| dance classes learning a complex choreography, etc.
|
| It's relaxing switching off the "I'm in charge" part of my
| brain, while still getting the flow and enjoyment of improving
| a skill, especially with others in a non-tech environment.
| chihuahua wrote:
| That's not the case for me. After working on annoying software
| tasks all day, I like to do a 34-mile/2-hour bike ride. I do
| this same route very frequently. It's refreshing because it's
| so completely different from my job.
|
| In contrast, a lot of games feel like work - guess where you're
| supposed to go or how to solve a problem, fail due to some
| trivial mistake, retry many times.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Even, predictable difficulty is key. Too easy and it's boring;
| too hard and it's frustrating. Suddenly, surprisingly difficult
| is so challenging it's the kind of thing that gets you riches
| and fame.
| godDLL wrote:
| Yes, yes, yes, and no. Not passive.
|
| Low starting effort. Mise en place.
|
| I have similarly found that all of my activities are not things
| you can do when you're recovering from food poisoning and have
| massive thick brain fog all day. So I got into gardening,
| cooking and then baking, improving my own work clothing and
| putting up shelves around the kitchen and house.
|
| And walking alone. Which is amazing, if you leave your phone at
| home.
| aesyondu wrote:
| After switching careers to software engineering, I find that I
| appreciate high intensity / action oriented video games less
| (DMC, Monster Hunter, etc.).
|
| My browser history is now filled with "chill or relaxing
| games", "games that don't need thinking" or something to that
| effect.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Presenting an alternative perspective, I have a high pressure
| job that requires deep thought (I'm in infosec) and my
| hobbies are pretty much all about skill/intensity. No
| judgement if that's what you like, but I find chill/relaxing
| games to be boring and can't play them for very long without
| having to go find something more meaningful to do. I enjoy
| being alone with my thoughts, I just find low-stakes games to
| be a weird in-between area and while I know they're super
| popular I just don't get it.
|
| As a sibling comment says, ego depletion research is pretty
| low quality in terms of reproducibility. Anecdotally, I have
| never found it to be true for me.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| Last time I worked in infosec, it was quite slow, depending
| on what you're doing. AFAIK you're either monitoring
| things, in which case it only gets interesting when there
| is an incident, and/or you're doing projects, but they are
| slow moving because they involve approvals, physical
| hardware, etc. If you're writing code all day I guarantee
| you'll feel drained.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| As I said in the post you replied to, my job is high
| pressure and requires deep thought. My team writes a ton
| of code, and there's an on-call rotation where you're
| dealing with incidents and grooming training sets for our
| models.
|
| > ...I guarantee you'll feel drained.
|
| You'd lose that bet. Maybe you are, I however find
| writing code just as interesting and invigorating as I
| did over a decade ago in university. I do it at work, I
| do it in my free time both for purpose and for fun.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| I'm just saying that from experience, I highly doubt
| there is an infosec job where you have less free time
| than the average coder. If you have time for deep
| thinking about problems, you have the kind of time I'm
| talking about that is super rare _on average_ in the
| industry.
| maddyboo wrote:
| > chill and relax
|
| > don't need thinking
|
| You seem to be seeking proxies for the effect of not
| thinking, putting your mind and body at ease, and letting go.
| Have you given meditation a try? Anecdotally, it can fulfill
| these needs in a way no other semi-conscious activity seems
| capable.
| aesyondu wrote:
| I started meditating when I was in university and have done
| it on and off since then. However, I've stopped a couple of
| months ago and haven't had the will to do it again. I find
| other activities more compelling, like reading everylayout
| or about rails performance.
| [deleted]
| billfruit wrote:
| My experience has been that if work is exhausting, then I
| turn to games that don't have much of narrative, but which
| rather on the mechanics. Like racing games, one does not have
| to think too much, but one has to be alert and focused on it.
| pezezin wrote:
| Doom Eternal was that kind of game for me. After a long day
| with another pointless meeting with the usual assholes,
| slaying demons left and right was almost therapeutic.
| skydhash wrote:
| Same, I have a bunch of games like Nier: Automata,
| Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Bloodborne, Control and I
| found that I can only play them on the weekend. After work,
| I can only play game like Dirt Rally, Trials Fusion and
| Apex Legends' Arena. Where you don't have to strategize
| that much and only rely on learnt reflexes. Anything that
| requires decisions or deciphering clues is impossible.
| dend wrote:
| Ego depletion as a concept has been challenging to prove, if at
| all:
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.0056...
|
| I agree that often certain hobbies require a push to get
| started. That initial barrier is what I found the hardest to
| overcome, but once you start going - it becomes easier and
| easier. Similar to how one can attempt to overcome moments of
| procrastination - you need to get started and push through
| initial discomfort.
| bredren wrote:
| > once you start going - it becomes easier and easier.
|
| It isn't just getting going makes the project (hobby) easier.
|
| It is the ability to organize the project into small steps
| that are relatively easy and yield novel artifacts.
|
| Giving light structure to a hobby or side project (such as
| using GitHub issues even if it doesn't involve code) let's
| you pick up where you left off and see the incremental
| progress.
|
| This administration is a practice of itself but the more you
| do it, the more natural it feels and easier it becomes to see
| progress.
| amelius wrote:
| > once you start going - it becomes easier and easier
|
| This may hold for activities like programming, where every
| decision follows almost logically from the previous ones. But
| if you're doing really hard research, with setback after
| setback, then it's much harder to "ignite" a work appetite.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > Ego depletion as a concept has been challenging to prove,
| if at all
|
| Isn't this just a problem in trying to reduce the phenomenal
| experience of self into some objective reality, a quest that
| reduces to something adjacent to the hard problem of
| consciousness.
| rolisz wrote:
| I think it's more that after 8 exhausting hours, I don't have
| energy anymore for anything. The 8 exhausting hours would be
| a day full of meetings, after which my brain is a mush and
| doesn't work anymore.
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| Yes and imagine an intense level of stress when your
| partner asks what kind of movie you want to watch. Because,
| your brain just cannot process a single new decision.
| bredren wrote:
| Consider keeping a list of media you want to watch for
| occasions like this.
|
| Exhausted or not, you're probably more likely to come
| across something unexpectedly and write it down than
| remember them all and offer up something fitting from
| memory.
| scns wrote:
| Well, the watchlist gets longer and when i want to watch
| something it is hard to choose.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| You wrote it as a humour. But I learned that if I
| minimize an amount of decisions I have to do in my life,
| that makes me more productive at work. I believe that
| making a decision is the most exhausting activity, at
| least for me. I can spend my daily decision limit to
| choosing a movie or choosing a framework.
| scns wrote:
| I read that Steve Jobs chose one outfit to wear every
| day. One less choice to make. Rituals/Habits help too. I
| learned the hard way that organization actually frees
| yourself to do stuff.
| aloner wrote:
| Having a 15 to 30 minutes nap when my brains is mushy
| usually allow me to reset and get my mind in a more
| energized state, might be worth trying for you too.
| teekert wrote:
| I don't believe this, if you push yourself to bike through
| a forrest, run until you're out of breath, talk a long walk
| after work... You'll come back with more energy then when
| you spend that time on the couch binging Squid Game. There
| is just no doubt in my mind about this.
|
| But it may start out feeling like a diet for the mind, that
| I am willing to believe. But like with a healthy diet
| you'll benefit immensely over time. But it requires
| discipline.
| akgerber wrote:
| I took a 60 mile bike ride yesterday in perfect weather,
| much of it on a beautiful forest road, and afterwards I
| was exhausted and it took a huge amount of effort even
| just to feed myself, and it was totally impossible to
| summon any motivation to spend 5 minutes to do the dishes
| afterward. I've been riding a bike for a decades, have
| crossed continents by bike, and have bike commuted my
| entire career pre-COVID.
|
| I slept pretty well and feel healthy and energized today
| and doing the dishes was easy this morning, but it's
| totally contrary to my entire life experience to claim
| that doing something physically tiring gives you more
| energy afterward.
|
| Not that doing nothing all the time feels good-- humans
| just don't have unlimited capacity for output. Taking a
| leisurely morning walk (or a moderate-distance bike
| commute) certainly gets my day started on the right foot,
| but going harder faster longer at physical activity makes
| me physically tired and less capable of doing other
| things.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I'll bet there is a curve. My own experiences cycling
| suggest that a little bit isnt helpful. A good amount is
| energizing, and too much is exhausting. For me those
| attachment and detachment points are probably [0;8;20].
| Your mileage will absolutely vary.
|
| A great exercise would be to find some causality from
| Strava data and git commit, both of which I have fairly
| extensive data on.
| manmal wrote:
| Human metabolism, and also the brain, needs rest after
| exertion in order to be able to do more work. Some people
| have it easier in that regard, but everybody has their
| own limits. Discipline in that context means pushing
| limits, which is not advisable long-term. Every system
| eventually fails when put under too much ongoing stress -
| burnout (/overtraining) is one of the lesser problems
| this can create.
| teekert wrote:
| Pushing limits in terms of the brain is binging garbage
| in stead of looking at trees, listening to birds.
|
| Pushing the limits of a body is sitting in a chair for 8
| hours, barely moving, in stead of walking around doing
| stuff with your hands, taking a swim, climbing a tree
| picking some nuts.
|
| We should make no mistakes about what the natural actions
| and states of our minds and bodies are.
| manmal wrote:
| Sounds like good advice for people who work out of a
| cabin in or near the woods, and probably don't have kids
| or a partner with their own schedule.
| rolisz wrote:
| I do workout regularly and I do go for walks. But like a
| diet, the effect is long term, not immediate.
| grp000 wrote:
| I used to push paperwork and send out emails, sometimes
| analyzing drawings, but not actually use my brain too much as
| a construction project engineer. As a data engineer, it
| definitely feels more taxing on the mental side.
| louis8799 wrote:
| It's not like that at least when it comes to running. The more
| I run, the more will power I have for all the other stuffs.
| andhuman wrote:
| Unless you end up on the bathroom floor, having overexerted
| yourself. Be kind to yourself people.
| elefanten wrote:
| What is even going on here? Scroll to the bottom and this low
| production self-help book (which looks like it should be happy to
| be free) has three tiers of pricing and subscription crap?
|
| This seems nutty.
| itronitron wrote:
| Cleaning the carpets and floors is also a good way to fill the
| vacuum.
| didibus wrote:
| I've actually found video games is one of my high quality
| leisure, but only the single player or local multiplayer
| experiences.
|
| My low quality leisure are my consumption (or constant checking
| for new content or upvotes) of blogs, articles, news, social
| media posts of people that aren't my real close friends or
| family, and all of my online commenting, including this one.
|
| Probably also consuming things I didn't actually want to consume
| count as well, so like watching random things that Netflix
| recommended or just showed up on TV versus watching a movie I'm
| actually interested in and want to watch. This is same for
| randomly playing video games like say on GamePass (like trying a
| bunch of games quickly).
|
| I'm trying to cut a lot of that out, and instead focus on playing
| only the games that truly interest me, watching only the shows
| and movies that truly interest me, only the books I really want
| to read, etc. Once you cut it down to just that, you'll find you
| still have a ton of free time, and you'll slowly be forced to
| also take a walk, go for a bike ride, work on your hobby
| projects, call a friend, grab a coffee, do a workout, cook
| something from a recipe book, play with your kids, take your
| partner out on a date, or go to bed early, etc.
| vitabenes wrote:
| Yes. High-quality games like Factorio or Machinarium are quite
| good fun. Also helps if a game is finite, not infinite. For
| example, while you can play Factorio endlessly, the rocket is
| the goal and it gets less fun once you've done all the things -
| which is good. You play it, you enjoy it, you move on. That
| kind of play is quite healthy.
| [deleted]
| ArtWomb wrote:
| I'd add a scientific bent to those pursuits, if you are so
| inclined. Get into the habits of thinking like a naturist in the
| Age of Humboldt vein. A local library, for example, recently held
| a "DIY Telescope" night. And I always get personally nostalgic
| whenever I see a young child of today heading out to the fields
| to test an Estes Rocket ;)
| motohagiography wrote:
| We need a better popular understanding of "hobbies," because it
| conflates a bunch of highly sophisticated activities, and
| dismisses them as neutral distractions from laboring for the
| profit of others. The underlying presumption is that your
| identity is labour you get paid for, and anything you don't get
| paid for is somehow inessential to who you are. It's an
| impoverished worldview based on scarcity and ignores growth. A
| hobby is only a distraction if you have internazlied an identity
| as the subject of some supervisor, and that "free time," comes as
| a treat or a reward from some other unspecified party, as though
| you were just a pet doing tricks for approval. Treating them
| diminuitively is just a polite way of not embarassing other
| people who are unable to manage their time as well or enrich
| their own lives to the same degree. Personally, I don't have
| hobbies, I just do a lot of things, and so I manage my time to do
| them, and adopting that worldview lets you do more of them.
| pech0rin wrote:
| Learning is not a leisure activity. I'm not saying it can't be
| fun or engaging or a great pastime but it requires as much focus
| if not more than work. It also requires constant attention (even
| if its in small amounts). It gives people a feeling of
| accomplishment and purpose but it is no way relaxing.
|
| I am sort of tired of these articles about procrastination, etc
| that equate like watching a movie and going to the gym or hiking.
| The activities aren't in the same realm at all. Basically shaming
| people for sitting around doing nothing with your brain off. I
| don't think you should be living your life like that all the
| time, but having an hour or two of straight mindlessness is not a
| bad thing. Pushing yourself to always be doing the activities you
| "should" do because some online guru says thats the right way to
| spend your time leads to burnout too.
| vinay_ys wrote:
| At some point in life, usually when we see people around us
| dying of age-related or chronic illness, we start giving
| importance to our physical health - usually the heart, liver,
| kidney, joints etc. If we think of the brain/mind as another
| critical organ, then we should start caring for it similarly
| but it is hard to spot chronic illness of the mind around us.
|
| Mental health is important - now what constitutes good mental
| health regime is under considerable debate. But nevertheless,
| if we care enough to proactively do something about it, it is
| already better than nothing.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I think it depends on what you consider work.
|
| For a lot of people doing manual labor, learning can absolutely
| be a leisure activity. It is a refreshing way to relax your
| tired body while stimulating a restless mind.
|
| If you spend your days in an office, then going to the gym and
| doing deadlifts may feel like a leisure activity. It conversely
| allows you to relax your tired mind while stimulating a
| restless body.
|
| What constitutes relaxation is dependent on what part of you
| needs to rest.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Maybe there's a pedagogical setup where learning becomes ..
| smooth. What's hard is grokking very different and abstract
| notions in one go. But if someone can walk you slowly through
| fun smaller instances of it, let your brain adapt (<= maybe 80%
| of learning) in a happy mood, then come back the day after to
| do that again. Which puts the pressure on the environment
| (reminiscent of people saying focus on the process not the
| results).
|
| Everything can be insufferably hard when approached the wrong
| way, vice versa.
| peterkelly wrote:
| > Learning is not a leisure activity
|
| Depends on what you're learning.
|
| My main non-scrolling hobby is music. Parts of learning to play
| better are hard work that require conscious effort, but the
| majority of time I spend on it is practice, which I find to be
| very relaxing and fun. I imagine the same is true for lots of
| other hobbies.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Parts of learning to play better are hard work that require
| conscious effort, but the majority of time I spend on it is
| practice
|
| If you practice without conscious effort then you aren't
| practicing, you are just playing and almost surely isn't
| improving. There is a reason hobbyist stop improving early
| and then never improve even after years or even decades of
| practice, it is because they spend their quality focus and
| effort on their job rather than their hobby and therefore
| can't improve like professionals who gets paid to focus on
| it.
| peterkelly wrote:
| > If you practice without conscious effort then you aren't
| practicing, you are just playing and almost surely isn't
| improving
|
| This is true to an extent, but at least with music there's
| sort of a spectrum of difficult -> automatic (i.e. hard
| work -> pleasure) as you build up muscle memory.
|
| I played piano for many, many years without making
| conscious effort to improve, and, like you described, I
| didn't get any better. Once I decided to get serious and
| start taking lessons again things changed; it gave me an
| external incentive to make progress each fortnight and
| practice daily.
|
| There's an element of it that feels like pressure at first
| (its easier and more tempting to play something I already
| know than to work on a new song/exercise), but once I get
| the basics of it right and enter the phase of repeated
| practice to improve, that's where the fun part comes which
| I genuinely enjoy. With a bit of practice it becomes
| automatic and I can just enjoy the process and experiment
| with whatever comes into my mind (this is with jazz, not
| sure how it applies to other genres) I find it an extremely
| therapeutic experience.
| badpun wrote:
| > but having an hour or two of straight mindlessness is not a
| bad thing
|
| I am sorry, but in my mind, if it's only an hour or two per day
| on average, then you're still a robot.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >learning is not a leisure activity
|
| depends on what you are learning, I can casually watch
| documentaries or YT videos about a topic and still take away
| some facts with moderate focus when I'm tired after working all
| day. On the other hand if I'm trying to learn something really
| technically/conceptually complex I need a fresh mind and full
| focus on the task
| seaman1921 wrote:
| I found the article useful, maybe it is not for everyone but I
| would try to use some of the tips to reduce the mindless
| surfing time. Eg. today I mindlessly surf for 2 hours, but
| maybe I do that for 20 minutes and then take a 15 minute walk -
| that might recharge me the same amount but still give me time
| to do something healthier or more mindful in the remaining
| time.
| kqr wrote:
| And to nobody's surprise, it turns out humans are different
| from each other. Learning is for me one of the highest forms of
| leisure. But I know not everyone feels that way.
| stavros wrote:
| > Learning is not a leisure activity.
|
| I disagree with that. I agree with the rest of your comment,
| there's nothing wrong with turning your brain off for however
| long you want, but leisure doesn't have to mean "turning your
| brain off". I program for leisure because that's what I like to
| do.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Do you do it after working for 8 hours though?
|
| I sometimes do it on the weekend, mainly because then I can
| program in new and more interesting areas. But after work
| feels impossible, I just don't want to sit in front of the
| computer still.
| saurik wrote:
| I definitely tend to spend all my waking hours in front of
| a computer coding. If I am going to do something other than
| coding I would prefer to allocate an entire day to it than
| bother with a coding session that isn't going to benefit
| from the flow state that comes from coding for 16 hours
| straight. (Maybe you just hate your job? I work for
| myself.)
| momirlan wrote:
| It seems what you do is work, not "mindlessly surfing the
| internet". No need to worry, carry on.
| badpun wrote:
| You've been able to sustain this over how many years?
| saurik wrote:
| FWIW, I turn 40 next month, which is apparently "old" in
| this field. With the exception of a few months in grad
| school when I became so utterly demoralized by how all of
| the software we use on a daily basis is horrible and I
| quit computers entirely (even doing a "powerpoint
| presentation" using physical cellophane slides that I
| carefully drew to look like a stereotypical powerpoint
| presentation with markers) I have kept up my excitement
| to use and program computers until the whee hours of the
| morning for three decades.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I could easily program after my previous jobs (small teams,
| relaxed atmosphere), but at my current job (large
| enterprise, constant crunch) it's impossible.
|
| I'm just mentally done when I come home. I think about
| programming anything and my brain just screams _No!_.
| stavros wrote:
| Yeah, I'll regularly finish work and continue programming
| for a few more hours. I like it a lot.
|
| Not always, of course, but not rarely either.
| a3_nm wrote:
| I think there are at least three notions of "high-quality"
| conflated in the article:
|
| - leisure which also satisfies longer-term goals (e.g., listening
| to an educational podcast, practicing a skill), vs leisure which
| is only pleasant in the moment
|
| - leisure that you had to make some deliberate effort to initiate
| and with a clear end time (e.g., going out, going to the movies)
| vs leisure which starts automatically and ends when it does
| (e.g., binge-watching)
|
| - leisure that gets you outdoors and/or with other people, vs
| leisure that doesn't
|
| And of course you can find many kinds of activities along these
| dimensions. Binge-reading Wikipedia can be instructive even if
| it's an impulsive behavior and indoors/alone. Sitting down to
| play a short video game and finish it in a few hours can be
| actively chosen fun even though it's indoors and only pleasant in
| the moment. Walking in nature can be pleasant and outdoors but
| not instructive. Ambient chatting with a friend can be social
| even if it's indoors and impulsive...
| silhardt wrote:
| I've been seeing a lot of these sorts of articles recently (time
| online is ruining your life; here are 17 ways to disconnect), and
| I have to say I simply reject the premise. Once again, it's
| binary thinking creeping in and human brains generally being far
| more receptive to arguments along the lines of "this
| technology/concept/ideology/whatever is bad and you should reject
| it" over ones that say "this technology/concept/ideology/whatever
| is a tool and its value is dependent on how its used and when
| it's applied".
|
| I've seen the binary thinking problem applied to the
| internet/online life quite a bit recently, and it bothers me
| because growing up my experiences of the internet/web were almost
| overwhelmingly positive, constructive, and developmental in
| nature. It was instrumental in my development as a person because
| it's a tool that allows you to read constantly. For people with
| lots of innate curiosity there really is nothing more powerful
| than that. The encroachment of the social media/video
| streaming/adtech companies into the space doesn't negate that use
| case, so I'm extremely hesitant to say if everyone would just
| unplug the world would magically be better.
| suketk wrote:
| While I agree that completely "unplugging" is not the ideal
| solution, doing so occasionally helps you understand how to use
| technology intentionally (i.e as a tool, not an escape). You
| realize what you miss and what you don't, which allows you to
| reallocate your usage.
|
| What's missing for most people is some structured way to
| reflect about this, so I created a free* accountability group
| program [0] that helps them do this alongside others who want
| to use technology in a healthy way. (Very open to feedback!)
|
| [0] https://themoai.org/intentional-technology
|
| * Free to join, but requires a credit card to enforce financial
| accountability - we donate money to charity (not us) on your
| behalf if you don't complete the program. Time commitment is
| only 15 min/week.
| whytaka wrote:
| This may seem snarky but you should apply similar thinking to
| the article itself. It might be written in a certain but you
| don't have to read it as it's intended.
|
| I've learned, grown, and profited a lot around screens but now
| I'm looking for hobbies outside screens. While I reject the
| premise that time spent looking at screens are wasted, this
| article may help with finding my next hobby.
| yuuu wrote:
| My hobby is putting spaces before bold tags.
|
| I also get the feeling that the upvotes on this are from blackhat
| SEO.
| vitabenes wrote:
| Spaces fixed. Upvotes are regular, people are just interested
| in the topic.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Mild cfs has freed me from worry about these kinds of
| optimisations. Day on Reddit? All good.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-17 23:02 UTC)