[HN Gopher] Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
___________________________________________________________________
Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
Author : memorable
Score : 746 points
Date : 2022-05-06 15:00 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (zan.bearblog.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (zan.bearblog.dev)
| pythonb3sss wrote:
| I wouldn't say I'm addicted to them, but when I find myself
| bored, I open a meme site (which shall remain unnamed) and just
| look at mildly popular memes. Doesn't matter what they're about.
| I just like the occasional laugh I get out of them. I also like
| social topics being turned into dark, twisted humor which is
| sometimes captured perfectly in memes.
|
| But when I was going through a rough patch of my life
| (depression, suicidal tendencies), I would doom scroll said
| website every free second I could. I just didn't have anything in
| my life that gave me joy, apart from dark, twisted memes. I'm
| doing much better now and even though I am an extreme introvert
| with social anxiety, I find that I have replaced my time that I
| would spend on that site with time I spend with my colleagues. I
| still don't have friends, but Rome wasn't built in a day.
|
| Why did I waste so much time on the Internet? If I hadn't, I
| wouldn't be here. It gave me that much needed laughter every once
| in a while that kept me from going over the edge and I would just
| keep scrolling, looking for one more laugh that will make my day
| a bit more bearable.
|
| Just my experience though. IMO, generally speaking, people are
| spending more and more time on the internet because the products,
| or rather the content factories, have become so good at capturing
| and keeping our attention on them, that in comparison the real
| world seems bleek and bland.
|
| EDIT: Fixed some grammar. English not native language
| s5300 wrote:
| > Why did I waste so much time on the Internet? If I hadn't, I
| wouldn't be here. It gave me that much needed laughter every
| once in a while that kept me from going over the edge and I
| would just keep scrolling, looking for one more laugh that will
| make my day a bit more bearable.
|
| Battling long term physical illness here that is an absolute
| fucking slog. Can very much relate to this sentiment.
| davesque wrote:
| Well said. Internet is a very good coping mechanism.
| darioush wrote:
| Usually this happens when I am bored or blocked at work or I am
| in a meeting where there is nothing for me to say or do 90% of
| the time.
|
| Slack creates a culture that is built around response time but
| often topics on slack are low urgency and of little long term
| value. Heavy use of slack requires people to be around
| synchronously and inevitably people will be blocked on others.
| This is inefficient.
|
| Daily stand-ups are a similar routine that provides not much
| value in terms of unblocking people.
|
| I greatly look forward to tech companies who prefer written
| documentation (eg, Notion) over Slack.
| satsuma wrote:
| > I greatly look forward to tech companies who prefer written
| documentation (eg, Notion) over Slack.
|
| this is (at least how i'm reading it) a similar issue i've seen
| in hobby spaces that have moved from forums to platforms like
| discord for support. discord is great for right now
| collaboration but the archival process is like pulling teeth.
| it leads to repeated questions being asked because threads
| aren't often used and one problem's solution is mishmashed in
| with ten other conversations.
|
| sometimes there are links to a wiki in the discord, which is
| nice. but it's still only sometimes, and if you have a problem
| that hasn't come up yet, you're stuck navigating discord.
| minroot wrote:
| For having zero people to spend time with
| paulcole wrote:
| Got nothing better to do. Don't care about being "productive."
| Get through the other things I want to do - exercise, eating
| healthy, watching TV, reading, and then internet is left.
|
| It's not wasting time, it's how I choose to spend my time.
| spir wrote:
| I am addicted to twitter and reddit. Especially reddit. It often
| takes the place of reading, hobbies, quiet moments, improving my
| home, talking with my spouse, and playing with my baby.
|
| When reddit records a click or an upvote, it thinks it has been a
| Good Product, and created Engagement. Reddit then takes those
| feedback loops and tunes the algorithm and feedback loops to
| create further engagement.
|
| But in reality, there's almost no positive relationship between
| my engagement with social media and my personal human
| flourishing. I think these products are mostly poison for my
| soul.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I would encourage you to not think of this in an addiction
| framework. Instead think of this as a self medicating
| framework.
|
| Why are you choosing reddit over spending time your baby? Do
| you fear handling the baby? Does handling the baby make you
| feel uncomfortable thoughts or feelings?
|
| Is there something, like ego, that reddit gives you?
|
| This is a good problem for self journaling, working with
| someone, or whatever your preferred form of self introspection
| is.
| blacksmithgu wrote:
| Chronic media consumption is not always based on avoidance.
| It is very easy to open social media during genuine downtime
| "for 5 minutes" only for an hour to pass before you know it.
| That is just bad self control due to dopamine addiction.
| bogwog wrote:
| I had a similar addiction to reddit a couple of years ago,
| especially while I was in college. It just became something I
| did as part of my routine. In hindsight I don't know why, since
| I rarely had a good time on there. It felt like everyone was an
| asshole, the content was all repeats of the same shitty jokes
| and fake stories from people desperately trying to farm
| internet points. It all felt pathetic, and I knew it at the
| time, but something kept bringing me back.
|
| So one day I decided to just delete my account, and that was
| it. As soon as the account disappeared, so did my interest in
| the site. It was like a switch flipped in my head. I guess it
| was the internet points that were tickling the addiction part
| of my brain?
|
| Next time I find myself wasting too much time on a social
| network, I'm just going to delete the account and move on.
| Unfortunately, I don't think HN lets you delete your account,
| so I'll need to get creative if I decide to drop this site too
| (maybe do something to get myself banned?)
| Crabber wrote:
| >In hindsight I don't know why, since I rarely had a good
| time on there.
|
| Someone told me once that addiction is built more strongly
| with _negative_ experiences and it blew my mind. I think it
| 's probably true.
|
| Addiction isn't built by you getting a reward, it's built by
| you desperately chasing a reward you never quite reach. We
| call a book a "page turner" not because it's a satisfying
| book, but because every chapter ends in some bullshit cliff
| hanger. Same applies to TV shows.
|
| I would suggest that maybe you weren't addicted to reddit
| because it was actually giving you what you wanted, but
| because you were chasing some satisfaction that you never
| quite got. Satisfied users leave a site happy after 5 minutes
| and get on with life. People who have spent 2 hours opening
| 200 threads and still haven't got the happy feeling they came
| there for stay around to open "just one more thread" another
| 50 times.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > But in reality, there's almost no positive relationship
| between my engagement with social media and my personal human
| flourishing. I think these products are mostly poison for my
| soul.
|
| This is why "engagement" is something only corporate f---splats
| say under normal circumstances. Either they secretly know it's
| a form of psychological enslavement or they're oblivious to the
| problems inherent in trying to measure it.
| tayo42 wrote:
| my problem with reddit (and here i guess?) is idk what else to
| do with like 5-30minutes of down time. I dont really have my
| life optimized for constant activity and idk what else to fill
| that with now.
| psyc wrote:
| I'm the same, and I've been struggling with it for a couple of
| years. I've even addressed it in therapy, and it hasn't helped.
| The only thing that has helped at all is a site blocker.
|
| Twitter and HN _mostly_ fill me with frustration, loathing, and
| angst. Like the cigarettes I smoke fill me with tar and
| carcinogens. Reddit at least I occasionally find something
| interesting, due to carefully curated subs.
|
| It's just addiction, nothing more.
| darkerside wrote:
| Unfollow everybody on Twitter.
|
| Why does HN bother you like that?
| chrsig wrote:
| There are a lot of incredibly frustrating, problematic, and
| exasperating opinions and personality types to be found on
| HN. The particular members of any of those sets will differ
| based on the eyes of the beholder.
|
| There's no shortage of passive aggression, angst,
| oneupsmanship,virtue signaling, dogwhistling, etc. It just
| so happens that there's a sufficient about of incredibly
| useful opinions and comments from subject matter experts
| that make it worth consuming in spite of the fact that it's
| a forum on the internet, and all of the baggage that
| entails.
|
| (side note: this isn't intended as a dig on HN moderation -
| you probably all do a better job than most other venues.
| kudos.)
| darkerside wrote:
| I find HN with its moderation to be night and day
| difference from many other forums.
| jansan wrote:
| Site blocking helps. For about two weeks. I do not even
| remember why I removed twitter again from my router's
| blacklist.
| IntFee588 wrote:
| For me, reddit is the one that gets me angry. It's addicting,
| but also seems like teenagers and bots arguing with it each
| other. Instagram is increasingly inundated with ads, but at
| least I get to see thirst traps and cute animals.
|
| Youtube is the only social media site that I think is a net
| positive on my life, because I learn so much, but I've
| started going for runs again because I really need time away
| from a screen and the constant dopamine hits.
| rvbissell wrote:
| I almost never regret time spent reading a book. But I
| frequently regret time spent on Reddit/Youtube/Twitter, even if
| I enjoyed the content at the time.
| wrycoder wrote:
| I'm more likely these days (as the decades pile up) to
| deliberately stop reading a book, if it hasn't engaged me by
| the time I've read 20% of it. Of course, many never get
| started, once I do a quick scan.
|
| I estimated how many more books I would likely read before I
| die, and it's a shockingly small number, even though I read a
| lot! So - choose wisely.
| codq wrote:
| I am absolutely caught in a loop between refreshing reddit,
| hopping to twitter, hopping to Instagram, and then back to
| reddit -- a cycle that takes just long enough for all three
| platforms to re-popluate with more content.
|
| It's not healthy, and I feel bad about it.
|
| They have got me exactly where they want me.
|
| And like you, it's very clear that this is not conducive to
| human flourishing. Unfortunately, I've been caught in this, and
| similar loops for so long that I have a hard time knowing what
| flourishing even looks like anymore.
|
| EDIT: One thing that did help me, for a time, was finding a
| REALLY good book, one that completely sucked me in--in this
| case it was David Mitchell's latest, 'Utopia Avenue'. It's been
| a long time since I found a really fantastic book, when you do,
| there's nothing better.
|
| And I realized that the next morning, when you wake up after a
| long evening of reading a good book, you remember it. You
| remember it as being a great use of time, something you can be
| proud of.
|
| An evening spent scrolling through social media is _never_
| memorable. It 's never something you're proud of, something you
| want to tell people about.
|
| A good night with a good book is a good use of time.
|
| I need to remember this more often, myself.
| nvusuvu wrote:
| As a married husband (almost 20 yrs) and father of five kids,
| allow me to share some wisdom. Spouse time is vital to a
| healthy, strong, vibrant, lasting relationship. Reddit doesn't
| care about you like your spouse does. And kids grow up way too
| fast. Treasure every moment.
| v-erne wrote:
| >> Spouse time is vital to a healthy, strong, vibrant,
| lasting relationship
|
| Hear! Hear! This cannot be overstated.
|
| >> And kids grow up way too fast. Treasure every moment.
|
| And this on the other hand ... works only if You somehow like
| children (and who does not like small psychopats with
| dictatorial aspirations). For the others (I believe most of
| people who lives in my housing estate can be counted) I
| observe that the moments they really treasure are those when
| their children are is safe distance from them taking care of
| themselves.
| b555 wrote:
| could not agree more with this. social media exists out
| there, but spouse and kids are right in front of you each and
| every day. when done correctly, seeing the growth of your
| family and spending time with them can be extremely
| rewarding, even more than the dopamine produced by
| interacting with the social media
| pde3 wrote:
| A possible experiment to try: what happens when you only browse
| Reddit through an anonymous, not-logged-in browser and IP
| address? And then only use your account when you are actually
| sure you want to post something?
| recursive wrote:
| For me, it's enough just to log out. The friction of logging
| in is just the right amount of friction.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I do this,I find my self scrolling a lot still. Though its
| helped avoid alot of the stupid back and forths I used to let
| me self get into.
| bvinc wrote:
| Everyone else replying to you is trying to convince you with
| arguments that reddit isn't a good use of your time. As you
| already know, this won't work. You're already convinced.
|
| The only thing that works is a site blocker. It actually works.
| Convince yourself that the block is permanent. Delete the app.
| This of course won't completely stop you, because you could
| always unblock yourself. But it'll stop you from mindlessly
| pulling up reddit.
| swayvil wrote:
| everybody likes to put their reddit down.
|
| but we are just good friends.
|
| reddit man.
| operon wrote:
| I am compulsively curious.
| bricemo wrote:
| The simple answer is machine learning algorithms. AI are very
| effective at this, it is the same thing at YouTube, Instagram,
| Tiktok. They will optimize to get you to want to come back
| whycombinetor wrote:
| I read another techno-dystopian rambling within the last 24 hours
| that this text strongly reminds me of. It even has spelling
| mistakes too (stratergy).
|
| "i swear its always the days where i cannot help but fall asleep
| during the day, which always starts as a nap that is supossed to
| take no more than 20 minutes but ultimately takes more than 2
| hours, where i learn something great about myself and feel giddy
| and silly the rest of the day or utterly destroyed by my own
| previous obliviousness.... i gott lucky today i took a nap today
| and feel extremely silly, goofy, and content, the euphoric high
| of a drained and noided individual..(corny i know but whatever) i
| swear all the computer generated music and single-wavelength
| light i see looks and sounds a bit better today.... i think the
| zuck has infiltrated my brain but i kinda like being online idk
| about yall... i think i have reached the zenith of what consumer
| culture and the mall aesthetic inspires in people... i feel as if
| i have traveled back to the extremely-early 2000s and also
| simultaneously 50 years in the future..." From the description of
| this youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCSMaKWzz8Q
| davesque wrote:
| I love how this very rough but very honest and relatable
| expression of despair over the loss of self control has won out
| over all the other tech news right now. That says a lot.
| neriymus wrote:
| I have the EXACT same problem. Constantly refreshing and
| refreshing insta, reddit, hackernews, etc etc. Shameless plug, I
| built this to try to curb my addiction ->
| https://github.com/neriymus/Fetcher, maybe it'll help someone
| else.
| albertTJames wrote:
| Because I have absolutely nothing else than work in my life.
| Staying connected constantly is the only way I excape the dread
| of the abyss.
| andi999 wrote:
| It just makes you feel slightly better. Same reason why the TV
| was on 15 years ago. Or the radio 40 years ago.
| mescaline wrote:
| Ads, mostly. If you work on ads, or support ads, fuck you.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| It's when you have an power cut for a number of hours do you
| realize what a waste of time it is. When you have no electric
| then there's many other things to think about.
| willchis wrote:
| I downloaded Duolingo and now every time my finger itches for
| reddit/instagram/YT at quiet point, I force myself to do a few
| exercises on Duo instead. I'm not going to master a language like
| this, but it feels a bit more worthwhile.
| juanani wrote:
| kshacker wrote:
| Why do we?
|
| I am currently in a 25+ people weekly sync up that is completely
| meandering. I can't do anything productive since it is hard to
| focus but I can read hacker news or Reddit because it does not
| strain the mind that much.
|
| Do this 9 times a week, and pretty soon it is a habit.
| galgot wrote:
| I think there is a kind of zapping effect with that. The internet
| is a constantly changing thing with informations constantly
| added, and our brain is rewarded with a bit of dopamine each time
| we find a new interesting stuff for us (even very small, and can
| be completely unconscious) . Not that we will keep our attention
| to the new found stuff very long, it's just the fact of finding
| something new that becomes an unconscious reward, thus this
| endless zapping.
| johnvega wrote:
| Attention hijacking becomes micro-habbits that become a rourtine.
| After just a few days, it becomes very difficult to undo, even if
| being aware of what's going on. This is what I understood from
| Tristan Harris several years ago and it's still happening today.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| We are sensory creatures. The brain used to have to move the body
| along to see new things, but now it has realized that it is far
| more efficient (calorie-wise) to sit and bring sensations to the
| eyes (mind's eye as well).
|
| If you weren't reading/viewing with your eyes/ears, what are you
| missing?
|
| Taste, but you can eat while viewing.
|
| Touch, this is missing, but the negative survival/health feedback
| loop is slow, so we ignore the loss of touch i nour lives.
|
| Smell, this is missing, but we can smell our food.
|
| Basically it is inevitable that the future of humanity will spend
| more and more time stationary while enjoying the internet.
| gerash wrote:
| The Tiktok, Instagram feed or YT feed (or even HN feed or any
| other news feed) feel like snack food. They taste more delicious
| than other food but at the same time we aren't evolved to consume
| them in huge amounts so too much consumption is harmful.
|
| So we always need ways to constrain the amount of snack food and
| snack media we consume
| lazyjones wrote:
| Because you don't have important goals and the discipline to
| focus on them.
|
| If the Internet didn't exist, it would be TV or something...
| antipaul wrote:
| I have started hiding my personal laptop behind a drawer. Phone
| too
| oldinternet wrote:
| The internet is where we learn, create, express, communicate, and
| be. The internet is the most interconnected part of our world.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Because large companies have built the most popular places on the
| internet to intentionally be addictive (but call it engagement
| instead).
|
| Their massive wealth relies on converting engagement into ad
| spend.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Addiction. I've been addicted to the internet since a teen. I
| have worked to moderate my time on it for the last 5 years and
| have changed my life significantly.
|
| Technology is beautiful, but there's more to life than sitting in
| front of a screen doing exactly what the author mentions.
|
| I'm writing a book right now that is talking about this challenge
| and the various things I had learned to find balance.
| FoolishOne wrote:
| Because it sucks my brain away from the real world to the virtual
| world!
| chrsig wrote:
| The author's post aligns with a lot of ADHD narrative. If the
| author is reading, consider getting evaluated.
|
| That said, why do we spend so much time not being productive?
| Because we're not obligated to be productive 24/7. It's ok that
| you're browsing youtube instead of being productive!
|
| You're demanding too much from yourself -- not because you can't
| live up to it, but because the expectations are too damn high.
| mrkramer wrote:
| I spend many hours on the internet because it is endless source
| of information plus I listen music when I'm doing research. I can
| also say I'm not enjoying it 10/10 but I'm addicted to
| information and I'm in pursuit of knowledge.
| qiskit wrote:
| Why not? What should we waste our time on instead?
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| RSS was better. You could mark feed items as read and save time.
| Feeds that do not implement mark as read are an waste of time.
| davesque wrote:
| I think we'd all be spending more time doing things that are
| "worthwhile" if we felt like they were worth the while. As it
| stands, I think the vacuousness of modern day life is hiding in
| plain view. Why put more effort in at work if it just amounts to
| a lifetime of toil for only the chance at a few years of rest far
| outside of your prime? Why bother learning something when you
| have the keen sense that a thousand other people are already
| working on it who are more talented and resourced than you? Long
| story short, we live in a world now that doesn't much value
| people but rather strives to capitalize on the value that people
| represent. Corporations and institutions have been given
| relatively free reign to kick people below the belt of their
| attention and to try and squeeze another ounce of effort, however
| misdirected, out of them. It's all a numbers game.
| dcatx wrote:
| The folks building the internet are very, very good at exploiting
| our weak points to keep us scrolling.
|
| I've recently gotten way more aggressive about managing my screen
| time because I realized I had become incapable of just sitting in
| silence and peacefully focusing on a single task -- even while
| working I was constantly using my phone to open Reddit or Twitter
| or Discord, for reasons that I couldn't explain. My brain needed
| constant dopamine hits to function and spending more than a few
| minutes on any particular task was extremely difficult.
|
| I've had a lot of success recently by leaving my phone in another
| room and replacing as much of my non-work screen time as possible
| with slow, screen-less activity -- writing in a notebook, reading
| real books, walking through the neighborhood (with my phone left
| at home), gardening, cooking. Basic stuff, but all things that
| had gradually disappeared from my life as my smart phone and
| laptop took over every part of my brain.
|
| The first few weeks of this were pretty tough, I was constantly
| looking to where my phone normally would have been and I had to
| relearn how to just focus on one thing at a time. Now that I'm in
| the groove my brain feels dramatically more clear and calm and
| the urge to grab my phone every 30 seconds has mostly faded away.
| I'm getting more comfortable feeling "bored" again. As a bonus,
| I've regained my ability to read novels -- I've read more fiction
| this year than I did in the last 10 years combined.
| ggregoire wrote:
| Broader questions for the author:
|
| - Is entertainment a waste of time?
|
| - What's "too much" when we talking about entertainment
| consumption? Where is the limit?
|
| - Do you consider YouTube/Instagram a form of entertainment? If
| not, why not?
| inafewwords wrote:
| 1024core wrote:
| My habit of scrolling through my FB feed endlessly went away
| after I unsubscribed from every "friend"'s feed. I had random
| people in there, people I had met just once, or people I had
| dated just once, or even one-night stands and FWBs.
|
| One day I scrolled through the feed and for every item in the
| list, I clicked "unfollow". Soon, my feed was practically empty,
| except for the feeds of a couple of cooking pages I follow, and
| friends who rarely post.
| [deleted]
| juanani wrote:
| ahallock wrote:
| The why is easy. I mean, you basically have infinite
| entertainment and information at your fingertips. And it's all
| tailored to your interests. This is unprecedented. I don't think
| anything comes remotely close in human history.
| coolhoody wrote:
| My excuses:
|
| 1. No free will.
|
| 2. Bad parenting.
|
| 3. Witches.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Right now it's because I don't want to go and do the thing that
| makes me sad to even think about. Sometimes it's because I am
| frustrated with the thing I'm supposed to be doing. Well, now I
| will go make food and tell myself I will do the sad thing
| afterwards.
| fabk wrote:
| There is something in the animal brain that enjoys _variable
| reinforcement_ more than other kinds of behavioral reinforcement.
|
| I am not an expert, but if something gives you a reward
| _partially randomly_ -- e.g., the one cool (or otherwise
| captivating) post on Facebook that sometimes comes out of the 200
| you scrolled through -- this kind of reinforcement produces the
| behaviors most resistant to extinction.
|
| See "Effects of different types of simple schedules" on
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement.
| chefandy wrote:
| This sounds like a major depressive episode. A very experienced
| psychologist recently told me that even folks with no hint of
| mental health trouble started having a hard time with motivation
| and mood in the pandemic, but many with existing tendencies
| towards depressive states were plunged straight into oblivion.
| Talk therapy and medication can be a big help, but CBT exercises
| can also help if you're against using medication and can't
| imagine going into a deep dive about your feelings with a
| therapist. Even if it's not depression, this poster should talk
| to a psychologist. They're not able to right the ship themselves
| which doesn't bode well for it improving on its own. Finding a
| therapist sucks but telemedicine is more accessible than ever at
| this point.
|
| As an aside-- folks love dismissing mental health concerns by
| saying things like "everybody has a hard time getting motivated."
| That completely ignores the scope of the problem-- it's no
| different from telling someone their motorcycle accident is no
| big deal because kids fall off their bikes all the time. There's
| a boatload of peer reviewed research out there that discusses the
| debilitating effects of depression. Go read it if you're
| skeptical-- I'm not your research assistant.
| motoboi wrote:
| For those who didn't get the memo:
|
| Be warned, folks! Depression is not about sadness, but about
| not being able to do things.
|
| If you are feeling incapable of doing things, like physically
| siting in front of the computer and not being able to do any
| work, you are probably depressed.
|
| Sometimes you'll sit in front of the computer, try to start
| some task but somehow end opening hackeer news, digg, youtube.
|
| Seek help as soon as possible, do not wait until you are fired.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| > Sometimes you'll sit in front of the computer, try to start
| some task but somehow end opening hackeer news, digg,
| youtube.
|
| I have to strongly disagree.
|
| If that kind of behavior gets out of control it sounds like
| typical adhd. One still wants to do stuff but unable to get
| oneself into actually doing it.
|
| Depression IMO is when one starts losing motivation and
| ability to derive pleasure from activities that were normally
| pleasant.
| hypefi wrote:
| What about "Depression" is a sign that something deep down
| is shifting or needs changing. After introspection, my loss
| of motivation is a lot of the times me knowing that I want
| to work on problems that I dare worthwhile for the future
| of humanity and earth like climate change, environmental
| work, planting trees and social work..., and being obliged
| to not work in that triggers the lack of motivation unless
| obliged by survival. I am very skeptical of medication to
| solve these kind of issues.
|
| 'Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct
| your life and you will call it fate.'
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| I think that the issue of deriving meaning from one's
| work (and life) is as old as humanity.
|
| It looks to me also that there's a bit of idealization
| going on on your side. In any case you'll work with other
| people and I bet you won't feel too good if you'll be
| doing env. work with total assholes. So I would also look
| at that angle -- being among people you like/appreciate
| and who reciprocate also kind of eases that existential
| thing (IMO).
|
| Now I am working in the field and organization which
| definitely are worthwhile / good cause (imo). But it
| comes at a price, I wouldn't mind to work in a less
| meaningful place (subjectively) for a few years with a
| significantly higher comp.
|
| Also good cause is a motivator but the not the most
| immediate one. Used to work in a slightly dysfunctional
| company but my responsibilities were (mostly) so well
| defined and managed day-to-day that just getting stuff
| done was satisfying.
| chefandy wrote:
| It's not that cut and dried. Comorbidity of ADHD and
| serious depression or anxiety is something like 80%.
| Depression also affects your ability to focus. Either way,
| you should get help if it's negatively impacting your life
| in ways serious enough that you've made concerted efforts
| to stop. That's especially true if you haven't been able to
| improve it yourself.
| statquontrarian wrote:
| I'm taking intermittent internet & phone fasts.
| leodriesch wrote:
| Could you expand on that?
|
| Does it mean you don't use your phone till 10AM or not after
| 9PM or something like that?
| statquontrarian wrote:
| I'm still experimenting; so far, it includes:
|
| 1. Turning off my phone at night. This removes the risk of
| looking at my phone in the middle of the night after going to
| the bathroom.
|
| 2. Consciously waiting to turn on my phone until I'm ready,
| which usually means after breakfast. I want to lead my phone,
| not the other way around.
|
| 3. Intermittent fasts of addictive computer behavior; in
| particular, I found I was checking news sites and HN
| addictively throughout the day, so I take some days off from
| that, completely.
| praptak wrote:
| "Procrastination Monkey" series from waitbutwhy is the best
| treatise on this that I know.
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| A big part of the problem: brain plasticity. (Which, ironically,
| I read about on the internet....)
|
| But the idea is if you're doing a lot of one thing, your brain
| adapts. So if that one thing is "quickly scrolling headlines" or
| "consuming bursts of updates," over time your brain just atunes
| itself to that form of stimulation.
|
| If that's true, who knows how far it will lead? I was on jury
| duty, and spoke to the prosecuting attorney afterwards. And his
| complaint was that over the years, "juries have gotten dumber" --
| that he'd consistently seen the attention span of a typical juror
| getting shorter and shorter....
| danenania wrote:
| The positive side of plasticity is that your brain can also re-
| adapt fairly quickly to a lower (healthier) level of
| stimulation if you can get over the initial hump.
|
| My understanding is that most of this is regulated by dopamine,
| and your dopamine system needs time to reset in order to adapt
| to new patterns. In the meantime, it's normal to feel bored or
| lacking in motivation; that's part of the reset process and you
| just need to wait it out.
|
| Personally, I've found it's easiest to change habits and
| patterns via some sort of healthy distraction that takes my
| mind off whatever I'm trying to change. Travel, getting into a
| new hobby/project, or starting a really good book are all great
| for this.
|
| Andrew Huberman goes into this stuff in depth in his podcast,
| especially this episode:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU
| [deleted]
| pigtailgirl wrote:
| it's cheap - i could go for a walk - go to the gym - call my
| mother - clean the house - na - clicking the same 3 buttons in a
| different order on youtube - hoping for something new and
| amazing-- is "cheaper" - it's easy - & very occasionally - I win
| something amazing-
|
| think this has always been true tho - mum used to buy the sunday
| times then read the same pages multiple times throughout the week
| - not sure she thought she would get something new out of them
| each time - it was just something cheap to do -
| stnmtn wrote:
| > clicking the same 3 buttons in a different order on youtube -
| hoping for something new and amazing-- is "cheaper" - it's easy
| - & very occasionally - I win something amazing-
|
| You just made me realize that these algorithmic feeds are quite
| literally a skinner box because you're exactly right.. once in
| a blue moon there is a recommendation, a video, or a tweet,
| that really is amazing and can change your perspective or give
| you huge amounts of enjoyment
|
| So we click on, waiting for that next payout of gold.
| pigtailgirl wrote:
| and if that is indeed true - do we control the algorithm - or
| does the algorithm control us? :=)
| davesque wrote:
| Feels kinda pathetic to lay it out like this, but the one thing
| I wish I could do is call my mom. But she's gone.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| That's the last thing I wanna do, and she's alive (and calls
| me). D:
| burntoutfire wrote:
| ... what else there is to do? The days are 14 hours long
| (assuming healthy 10 hours of sleep), but I have energy for maybe
| 4-8 hours of activity on average. Rest of the time needs to be
| filled with some form of "time wasting".
| layer8 wrote:
| It's an addiction. The internet works like loot boxes -- the
| randomness with which you find something that gives you a quick
| dopamine kick keeps you scrolling/refreshing and keeps you coming
| back.
| XCSme wrote:
| > Why do you waste so much time on the internet?
|
| Because our brain doesn't like to get bored. We need to
| constantly do things. Also, the brain doesn't really like to
| start doing the right thing because that feels too much like
| work, even though once we start being productive we do feel good
| and enjoy it.
| jbjbjbjb wrote:
| Unless you're at work, on vacation or meant to be spending time
| with others at dinner or some social event it's ok to waste time
| on the internet.
|
| You were not going to do something useful anyway. Before the
| internet people watched too much tv, played video games, read the
| newspaper, watched the news on repeat, read crappy books, ate
| crap, drank, smoked. We need downtime stop the self-flagellation.
| tester756 wrote:
| Partly?
|
| because I feel like I should learn stuff, get better at computers
| and then translate it to bigger total compensation - I'm young,
| later I will have less desire to put effort into that or other
| things like kids and stuff
|
| but very often it ends on HN/9gag or similar :D
| carlgreene wrote:
| For me it's a busy brain with any information it wants to consume
| at my finger tips. This is something I'm working incredibly hard
| to combat, but my brain is constantly going a million miles a
| minute with the most meaningless and out of my control crap. The
| way I can "close" the thought is by looking stuff up on the
| internet related to that thought, or just distracting myself with
| some garbage.
|
| A calm mind to me at this point is one of the most valuable
| things. I seldomly experience it, but thankfully it's been
| happening more often lately now that I'm conscious about it.
| peter_retief wrote:
| You need more coffee.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Recovering from eye surgery. Nothing else I can do.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Has anyone tried?:
|
| * Using an apple cellular watch and leaving your phone at home
|
| * Using a smaller phone like an iphone mini
|
| * Using a lower tech feature phone
|
| * Using screentime
|
| And found success that way?
| dbalatero wrote:
| Yes, I use an Apple Watch for maps/subway directions and a flip
| phone for my phone. Works well, best of both worlds. Apple
| Watch is hard to waste time on due to the cramped UI.
| criddell wrote:
| Do you also have an iPhone that you just leave at home?
| [deleted]
| Tade0 wrote:
| My previous phone died on me suddenly and at that time I didn't
| have spare cash for another one, so I got an old Nokia 3600
| classic from a friend and spent 9 months using it while I was
| working my way to get my finances in check.
|
| The moment I bought a new phone all the old habits came back,
| so I guess the answer is "nope".
| windowsrookie wrote:
| I tried an Apple Watch. It had a couple of issues that
| prevented it from working for me. When it's on LTE the battery
| only lasted me about 5-6 hours. It's just not designed to be
| used away from an iPhone for more than a couple hours. So you
| have to carry an Apple Watch charger with you, and it can only
| charge if you take it off your wrist. Also while iMessages
| would come thru, text messages would not reliably get sent to
| the watch while it was on LTE only. Another issue is you can't
| send/receive messages from social media apps like
| instagram/snapchat. 80% of my communications with friends is
| through Snapchat. Maybe there's a Facebook messenger or
| telegram app for the watch but I don't use those apps. Also,
| there's no way (that I know of) to stream music to your car
| radio from the watch, streaming music over LTE to your
| headphones drops the battery life to 2-3 hours.
|
| I then tried the light phone 2. https://www.thelightphone.com
|
| Similar to the Watch it has short battery life. Maybe ~8 hours
| with sending some texts and listening to an hour long podcast
| or music. It uses Micro-USB so you have to carry one of those
| around because everything is USB-C now. It can receive texts
| but no images. So anytime someone sends you a picture in a text
| you have to ask them what it is. Again no way to send messages
| in social media apps. Also there is no way to stream music from
| any streaming service.
|
| I then tried an iPhone SE. It can do everything you need, but
| not very well. It's screen was often too small, and too dim
| outside. Compared to high end phones the camera sucks, and
| again it has bad battery life. I eventually came to the
| conclusion that if I'm going to carry a full smartphone It may
| as well be a good one.
|
| So after all that I'm back on an iPhone 13 Pro Max. Not using a
| smartphone for a few months did seem to "reset" my brain tho. I
| don't really use any Apps on the iPhone aside from safari,
| camera, YouTube music, and Snapchat for messaging. Having a
| good camera on you at all times is really hard to give up.
| [deleted]
| stevecalifornia wrote:
| Install a scheduled host blocker and block all your time wasters
| until the hours of 10PM until midnight.
|
| Don't be afraid to admit that the moment you feel a touch of
| boredom you reflexively type 'reddit'. Tools like 'Freedom.to'
| block these time sinks and you don't even realize how frequently
| you visit these sites until you get the block notification.
|
| After a week or two your cured.
| laurex wrote:
| I think an underappreciated aspect of this phenomenon is
| loneliness.
|
| Many of the things that suck us in (including HN) have this
| aspect of being with other people, though they don't actually
| lead to us feeling actually known or cared about in the same way
| as our bodies/minds evolved for.
|
| Thus, it's very easy to feel an ambient loneliness, go online
| where there are other people saying things, sharing things,
| sending us emails (even if they are not actually "to us" like
| newsletters) and getting sucked in, then feeling like "where did
| that time go" because it was not really an investment in any of
| those top-of-pyramid needs, but instead 'empty calories' of
| socializing.
| kabdib wrote:
| A week ago I deleted my Twitter account. Today I'm deleting my
| Reddit account. I'm keeping Facebook simply to stay in touch with
| family and a few friends, otherwise it would _definitely_ go. I
| 'm on the fence about HN, but it will probably go as well.
|
| These online communities are a net negative in my life, and I'm
| done.
| b555 wrote:
| when folks talk about going cold turkey like this, I have a
| question for them - do you think they were a net negative or
| our capability to moderate our use of these social media was
| not controllable?
| sarsway wrote:
| Because we humans have a lot of idle time.
|
| We feel like we're wasting it, and we feel we should instead
| spend time archiving goals, to better ourselves, to do something
| more meaningful. But that is not how life works. You are just
| unnecessarily burden yourself with guilt. Thinking you should be
| doing something else. There are so many things to learn about, so
| many things to experience, right? We fear on missing out on life,
| chasing something, but what exactly we don't really know.
|
| But maybe you just don't need to? Most of us are exactly fine
| with where we are. Of course you should always strive to improve,
| but truth is "killing time" is a big part of life. Especially for
| top of the food chain animals like humans. Watch some livestreams
| of lions on youtube, what do they do? 99% of the time they just
| sit under a tree doing absolutely nothing, and I bet they don't
| feel guilty about it. People used to walk labyrinths for hours
| and hours, just to kill time.
|
| This whole notion that you need to make the most out of every
| moment, live life to the fullest, see all the places, chase the
| uncomfortable! - I don't think it's necessarily the best advice,
| the happiest people I've met tend to have very simple boring
| routines.
| frankus wrote:
| I think most people would like if they could be productive 24/7
| (or more realistically, consistently productive during their
| waking hours), but I think there is some amount of "waking
| rest" that humans need, or at least that modern human existence
| makes it hard to avoid.
|
| This same post could have been written 30 years ago, but it
| would be about mindlessly switching channels on the TV,
| watching vapid sitcoms interrupted by a handful of commercials
| you've seen dozens of times.
|
| Maybe before that people would read the local fish-wrap
| newspaper or same stupid book they've read dozens of times.
| pugets wrote:
| Maybe that's true, but it doesn't provide me with any comfort.
| I'm only going to live once. When I'm old and bound to a chair
| (hopefully due to frailty and not because a psychiatrist
| strapped me to it), I want to feel like I achieved something
| more than a passive human existence.
|
| All these hours spent consuming forgettable garbage on Reddit,
| YouTube, Facebook, and in video games... these are hours not
| spent learning recipes, making music, writing programs, lifting
| weights, or practicing Spanish. If I could channel my energy
| towards these things, then the long-term payoff would be much
| more enriching. Not only that, but I'd probably be a happier
| person if I was disconnected from whatever daily drama social
| media wants me to care about.
|
| If I spend the next 10 years of my life the way I spent the
| last 10, I'll approach my midlife with no discernible talents,
| ambitions, or meaningful lived experiences.
| Daishiman wrote:
| > All these hours spent consuming forgettable garbage on
| Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and in video games... these are
| hours not spent learning recipes, making music, writing
| programs, lifting weights, or practicing Spanish. If I could
| channel my energy towards these things, then the long-term
| payoff would be much more enriching. Not only that, but I'd
| probably be a happier person if I was disconnected from
| whatever daily drama social media wants me to care about.
|
| I do all those things and I still waste a ton of time on
| Youtube.
|
| And it's fine; your brain cannot dedicate all of its waking
| time to high-intensity intellectual endavours, you just end
| up burning out.
|
| I worked full-time and studied for a few years. Remarkably, I
| still had a share of free time, but I couldn't do anything
| "productive" with it as I had no mental energy to do perform
| these tasks. You _have_ to just hang out and do nothing.
|
| The most productive people I know waste a ton of time outside
| of their chosen specialty, and it's not a coincidence.
| minroot wrote:
| > People used to walk labyrinths for hours and hours, just to
| kill time.
|
| I walk and ride bicycle just to kill time to this days
| Sujeto wrote:
| I agree with this. Not to mention that being idle still
| involves complex thought processes, like treating traumas and
| understanding concepts.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| Excellent points and a fresh perspective.
|
| We should be happy we have a few hours to "waste". Enjoy it
| instead of punishing yourself pointlessly.
|
| If you wish to force yourself into a habit of doing something
| else instead -- take steps but also question the intent.
| Crabber wrote:
| >Watch some livestreams of lions on youtube, what do they do?
| 99% of the time they just sit under a tree doing absolutely
| nothing, and I bet they don't feel guilty about it
|
| Lions are at peace with the world. They sit around with clear
| minds, watching nature go by. They are content with the world
| and their place within it.
|
| This is absolutely not the same as a human who spends 4 hours a
| day doomscrolling through twitter and reddit and can't help
| checking their phone every 5 minutes.
| soared wrote:
| The point is that lions are chasing down prey 100% of the
| time, and so humans also don't need to be actively doing
| something 100% of the time either. Doomscrolling isn't a
| great example, but is comparable to the leisure of lions.
| Crabber wrote:
| The point I was trying to make is that even within
| "unproductive time" there are extremely healthy, and
| extremely unhealthy ways to spend it.
|
| Someone introduced me to the idea of "mental diet" a while
| ago. I find it to be an interesting concept. We know not to
| spend hours of our time eating junk food because it's not
| good for our physical health, why do we never consider our
| mental health in a similar way?
|
| Doomscrolling is just filling your brain up with mental
| junk. Most content on the modern internet is just mental
| junk honestly. And spending hours reading and getting
| invested in all of this crap really does affect your
| headspace for the rest of the day.
|
| Lions, by comparison, have a very pure and healthy mental
| diet.
| rchaud wrote:
| > Lions are at peace with the world. They sit around with
| clear minds, watching nature go by. They are content with the
| world and their place within it.
|
| Maybe for an adult lion at the peak of its powers. An elderly
| lion will end his days alone, cast out from the pack,
| surviving on its fading wits until....
| goy wrote:
| And here we are, wasting time to write for the n-th time 'if feel
| the same". Someone even write it's refreshing ...
| senjin wrote:
| I know exactly why I do it and it feels impossible to stop. I
| scroll endlessly to avoid the pain of everything else in life.
| Doing work, doing chores, doing hobbies, talking to anyone,
| making decisions even about projects I'm excited to work on, it
| all causes a small hit of emotional pain. I don't really know
| where this pain comes from either. Maybe some childhood trauma
| that I can't even remember? I don't know.
|
| The 2nd part that cements this into what feels like an
| unbreakable habit is that I feel like I'm constantly learning.
| It's partly true, I'm constantly learning about things that have
| even benefited me and my team at work, but in general it's low
| quality garbage I'm learning about or just the surface of a
| good/useful topic.
|
| Like the author I have recognized this and done research on it
| and have no idea how to fix it. I remember finding the word
| akrasia [1] years ago that has stuck with me since but no help
| actually getting past it.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia
| drpotato wrote:
| Mate, if you haven't already, go talk with a therapist. I've
| struggled with avoidance my entire adult life - avoiding
| awkwardness, pain, risk, "bad"emotions, difficult
| conversations, conflict - and talking with a professional has
| really helped me.
| rchaud wrote:
| Much like making new friends past university, therapists are
| a crapshoot. Some simply aren't a good fit or have poor sofa-
| side manner or fail to develop a sense of trust.
|
| If the therapy is part of an employer funded benefit, you
| also only get a limited number of sessions, and only with the
| employer-approved provider.
| qiskit wrote:
| > I know exactly why I do it and it feels impossible to stop.
|
| The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind commands
| itself and meets resistance.
| jordanpg wrote:
| I believe the sociologists of the future are going to look back
| at this era and cite the manifest lack of meaning in human life
| as the ennui that is the subject of this thread.
|
| For a long time, religion filled this void, but for almost
| everyone, it no longer does. I don't even think most people who
| hold themselves out as religious _really_ find any significant
| meaning there -- not doubting their sincerity, only the
| compatibility of those beliefs with modern secular realities.
|
| It is simply true that it is a simple matter to learn enough
| about what we know about the universe to know, somewhere in the
| back of your mind, consciously or unconsciously, that none of
| this means anything. And the rest follows. It is garden-variety
| Camus' Sisyphus.
|
| I believe this results in a void in our primate brains that is
| inadequately filled by anything yet available. We are in a
| transitory period where we are looking for true secular meaning
| to replace what we evolved with.
| benlivengood wrote:
| To put a fine point on it, the problem is not that life is
| meaningless but that it has significant meaning and value and
| also death exists. Death is the antithesis of most human
| values and we're so far powerless to deflect it on a long-
| term basis, while religion gave hope or belief of
| circumventing or ameliorating death.
|
| I scoff at all of the "accept it as part of the natural
| order" rationalizations; death is the enemy and my goal is to
| push it as far toward the heat death as possible. That final
| end will be a defeat, but much less of a tragedy than the
| ~120 years we get now. If meaning and memory can exist for
| 10^100 years instead then that's a prize worth fighting for.
|
| I think all the proof anyone needs of this is the joy of
| children; death is unlikely and far from them and so they
| have nearly boundless ability to enjoy life and its meaning.
| rchaud wrote:
| > For a long time, religion filled this void, but for almost
| everyone, it no longer does.
|
| Did religion actually fill this void? Or did enough people
| simply go through life not voicing any of their troubles for
| fear of exclusion or even institutionalization in a religious
| and highly superstitious society that didn't understand
| mental health?
|
| Religion didn't prevent alcoholism, out of wedlock
| pregnancies or domestic violence. It did however force
| families to take brutal measures to keep their missteps a
| secret from the rest of society.
| JackFr wrote:
| No. I think you misunderstand.
|
| When you tell people there is nothing transcendent, that
| life is indeed meaningless - sometimes they believe you.
| JackFr wrote:
| From a philosophical perspective that Wikipedia article covers
| a lot. I truly want to do A, but I do B instead. How is that
| possible?
|
| The Wikipedia article offers a couple of classical and modern
| takes on the problem but I'd offer one more. That we
| misunderstand our own intentions. When I say "I'd like learn to
| speak Italian" that's not what I mean at all. What I mean is
| "I'd like to be able to speak Italian." and I haven't even
| considered the work involved.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| Because I don't have a life.
| djsamseng wrote:
| Find something better.
|
| Don't quit social media. Don't restrict yourself by setting rules
| you'll break a few days later. Why? Because it doesn't work.
|
| Life can be and will be about what you are passionate about.
|
| So sure go ahead and enjoy wasting time on the internet. But
| after 15-30 minutes when it's no longer enjoyable but rather you
| are seeking that enjoyment you first had, get up and try
| something new. It might be awful (so one and done), but it also
| might be amazing. It might just become the activity you wake up
| excited to do every day that social media/web scrolling doesn't
| even compare to.
| aantix wrote:
| I wonder if this is because we're lonely..? Just wondering out
| loud here.
|
| E.g. Twitter - feels like many of the "thought leaders" I follow,
| their "friends" are also on Twitter. And they tweet/respond so
| much I often wonder if they're really ever "building a business".
| And are they ever interacting with their real-world friends or
| family?
|
| Or if their lives just consist of a constant refresh of their
| feed. Even at dinner, I wonder if they're even present?
|
| And I wonder if that's why podcasts have become so popular - it's
| someone talking to you. Someone having a conversation, albeit
| one-sided, but usually it's pretty interesting.
|
| For the same lonely reasons, I wonder if this is why public radio
| has been so popular with long haul truck drivers. Everyone wants
| to hear a human voice once in a while.
|
| The constant reading, listening and entertaining videos... The
| voice in your head generates a discussion, with itself. At least
| it's something.
|
| We work from home. It's quiet. With no one around. We're looking
| for a preoccupation.
|
| We're just desperate for any type of human interaction.
|
| "Likes", hearts, thumbs-up, upvotes, +1, PR merge, etc. - are we
| just clinging to anything that acknowledges our existence and
| humanity.
| pchristensen wrote:
| I miss working with you, Jim!
| aantix wrote:
| You're the best Peter! :)
| tayo42 wrote:
| I think pod casts just replaced radio. I don't think that's as
| interesting of a phenomenon as youre suggesting.
| agumonkey wrote:
| i don't know why everything old feels like it had more flesh,
| even with the limitation and flaws (conflict of interests
| etc)
| reggieband wrote:
| People often say they will keep old TV shows like Friends, How
| I Met Your Mother or The Office on in the background. I think
| it simulates the feeling of having familiar social connections
| in ones life.
|
| In Fahrenheit 451, the protagonist's wife Mildred "finds
| herself more involved in the "parlor wall" entertainment in the
| living room - large televisions filling the walls" [1]. She
| frequently calls the entertainers that appear on the screen her
| family. So this satirical observation is at least as old as
| that fiction.
|
| I frequently wonder how AR/VR will play in this particular
| space. Cynically, I believe there is a killer app to be had
| there.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| > In Fahrenheit 451
|
| The rewriting of online history is going on right now, its
| like Fahrenheit 451 is a blue print.
| drivers99 wrote:
| I got really into watching Twitch for a while in 2020
| (especially IRL content such as a mechanical watch repair guy
| (relevant to yesterday's top post about watches), musicians,
| and other small streamers I could get to know and they'd
| recognize my name) and that scene often came to mind.
| reggieband wrote:
| I wanted to keep my post short so I didn't list all of the
| ways I feel we express this tendency. Others mentioned
| podcasts and talk radio but Youtube and Twitch are great
| examples. There is no denying that people who watch
| creators like Mizkif are feeling like they are part of a
| group of friends. Ludwig called it out most famously in his
| parasocial video [1]. It is so well known it is already a
| hackneyed meme.
|
| Sometimes I feel smug looking down on people who become
| obsessed with the latest Kardashian drama or the British
| Royal Family or whatever celebrity culture. But then I turn
| a critical eye on myself and I'll realize I spend a lot of
| time watching YouTube videos on woodworking, small engine
| repair and outdoor activities. I don't do any of these
| things and I tend to watch the same creators over and over
| again.
|
| Some people want to feel like they have hyper-crazy friends
| like Jake Paul who live wild fantasy lifestyles. I'm not
| certain that is different than me watching videos of some
| guy quietly building a log cabin on his own in the woods.
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzyQbfh4t_8
| pigtailgirl wrote:
| the risk is also low - you can feed your lonely without much
| risk of damage - the real world is harsh - the world you curate
| for yourself can be as you please - given we tend away from
| difficult human interactions[1] - this cure of the lonely is
| easy and "safe" - however - more difficult to assess - is this
| making us more or less lonely?
|
| [1]
| https://www.google.com/search?q=books+about+difficult+conver...
| seydor wrote:
| Many youtubers use youtube to reach out to friends or make
| friends. For younger generations using the media as antidote to
| loneliness is more common. Unfortunately all the media rot
| after a sweet period
| acwan93 wrote:
| I've read that the decline of religion also plays a role here.
| Aside from the religious aspect, the sense of community and
| regularity you get meeting the same people on a regular basis
| is lost.
|
| It's kind of the mix of a loss of "third place" (institutions,
| coffee shops, etc.) and the increase of social media bubbles
| that pushes us to be more polarized, I think.
| ehnto wrote:
| The only place I've gotten the regularity feeling of a third
| place was a really specific gym I used to both work and train
| at. Everyone knew who I was even if I didn't train with them,
| because I also worked there, so when I trained there it was
| my third place as well and I was always having great
| conversations.
|
| I haven't had anything like it since, and I've been
| relatively proactive too. I have hobbies, go to meets, and go
| to the same coffee shops and restaurants so often that they
| know my order, but there is always this barrier between
| everyone, like no-one needs eachother because they have their
| phones. I ride the same bike park twice a week and go to the
| gym every couple of days, but I moved on to a 24/7 gym and
| everyone is buried in their phones, and I don't see the same
| people twice at the bike park. Me and the cleaner always have
| a great yarn though, I appreciate that.
| Aromasin wrote:
| I always say to people that CrossFit is my church, and
| while I say it with mild sarcasm, internally it is true.
| Everyday I turn up, see the same people, build a community
| to the extent we do socials, help each other out with all
| manner of things, and honestly it gives me fulfilment more
| so than anything else I do.
| acwan93 wrote:
| Maybe that's why places like SoulCycle, Barry's Bootcamp,
| or yoga studios have also sprung up. People _do_ want
| connection, just not in the way it was before.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| I know next to nothing about crossfit and it definitely
| looks like religion to me. I'm not even sure where this
| impression comes from but it's probably first or second
| thing that comes into my mind when I hear "crossfit" (the
| other thing is that someone I vaguely know does it to
| keep in shape -- but we never discussed it in any
| detail).
| ehnto wrote:
| There is a level of passion and commitment to crossfit
| that other disciplines don't always have, and due to the
| way it's practiced it's really beneficial to have your
| own space for it so crosfit tends to happen at crossfit
| only gyms, at scheduled times amongst regular
| practitioners.
|
| To keep riffing on the religious theme, there was a fair
| bit of controversy around crossfit when it first arrived
| on the scene, to the point where even other fairly
| similar gym disciplines were pushing it out of their
| gyms. That kind of criticism tends to drive you back into
| your group (the same way door-knocking drives evangelists
| back to the warm embrace of the parish), and I almost
| never see crossfit happening in regular gyms, just
| crossfit gyms. As above that's partly practicality, but I
| think it's also fair to say it wasn't received well at
| first and that likely drove people to those specialized
| gyms instead of practicing it at their local.
|
| I do powerlifting/strength training and powerlifters had
| the same issue in mainstream gyms, and there are
| powerlifting specific gyms around. But that's gotten
| better over time with mainstream gyms having
| powerlifing/olympic lifting gear more often than not now.
| jumpkick wrote:
| On of the best "third place" locations I've had was a gym
| as well. This was about 15 years ago, before iPhones and
| Airpods, etc. existed, or were as prevalent, so it was easy
| and common for gym regulars to strike up conversations and
| get to know each other.
|
| I don't go to the gym anymore, but a few years ago when I
| resumed for a bit, everyone was on their phone, or dead-
| eyed while listening to music or a podcast, etc, and not
| interested in talking to anyone.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Boxing/mma gyms are good for this. Can't really keep
| headphones in if you get hit in the head!
| organsnyder wrote:
| The community of my church is probably keeping me there more
| than my faith is.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I'd probably be more into church if it was just a social
| club and didn't come with that expectation that you'd be
| worshiping an invisible sky daddy, adopting questionable
| morality/philosophies, and attending what's basically a
| Republican political rally every Sunday. My wife goes to
| hers and it's nice, socially for her, that it comes
| prepackaged with a ready-made group of friends, but as soon
| as the Bibles and Trump flags come out, I bounce.
| arcticfox wrote:
| That's a really good point... These days a lot of us work-
| from-home or independent contractor types don't even have
| much of a _" second"_ place.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > I wonder if this is because people are lonely..? Just
| wondering out loud here.
|
| Discord has propped up my social life for years now. And I mean
| outside of the internet as well! I also engage in independent,
| more traditional social engagement and it usually ends in
| nothing more than a hangover.
|
| Not unexpectedly, the internet makes it easier to bring people
| with similar interests/believes/personalities together. There's
| also some weird demographic issue where apparently the internet
| is the only place where people my age seem to exist. I meet a
| ton of people irl m, mostly much older, with some only several
| years younger or several years older. In the past year for
| example, I've met maybe 2-3 people who were within a year of
| myself.
|
| Also I often find myself mindless swapping discord channels or
| refreshing HN or Twitter constantly, when I'm bored and want to
| talk/argue/whatever, typically at night.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Discord is most likely the most phallocentric large scale
| platform ever made. It is an abysmally terrible place to go
| to meet people, and particularly to go argue. Ever seen what
| the most popular politics server on discord looks like? 4chan
| is tame by comparison...
| gigaflop wrote:
| Deep rock Galactic is a video game that actually has a
| decent Discord integration, to the point where I feel like
| I gain value from being there.
|
| The general chats are whatever, but having a collection of
| people who may respond to an LFG call is great for when I
| want a higher-quality batch of compatriots for the more
| 'hardcore' parts of the game. Plus, they have a bunch of
| pre-made voice pods that cap at a game's player limit, and
| have built support for direct-in-Discord lobby invitations.
| ehnto wrote:
| The issue isn't discord, discord is in essence just IRC
| again. IRC wasn't exactly a bastion of intelligent
| conversation in all corners, but one of the biggest issues
| I think the internet currently faces is that everyone is
| here now. Every brain with a thought no matter how vapid or
| vile is now joining the conversation.
|
| But just like with IRC, it's all about the specific
| community you've joined, not the platform. You can
| definitely find good communities on discord.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Cry about it somewhere else. Most of the servers I'm in are
| private servers with small amounts of users and a pretty
| good gender balance.
| Aurelius3 wrote:
| It started out as a pc gaming type thing, so yeah, most of
| it is men, but the choice of server matters and they have
| expanded and rebranded a lot. If you are going on political
| servers it's already not worth it and you missed the point
| with discord, stick to small servers made by friends,
| people to play games with, or communities dedicated around
| 1 thing like open source projects or some specific media,
| etc. Once servers become too general or inclusive the
| system breaks, but even then on large servers (political or
| not), 4chan is not tame in comparison.
| ehnto wrote:
| I have found that people who grew up on the internet tend to
| have a "third place" that's online, which it sounds like for
| you is discord. That kind of makes that your priority over a
| real-life third place like a pub or something, since it's
| where all the people you are super familiar with are it's
| easier just to stick around that.
|
| For me all my online third places disappeared (specific IRC
| chats and forums), and I never really found another. I'm on
| discord but they're very shallow places for me now. I spend
| most of my time online just on YouTube, and the rest of my
| time at work, with my partner or family, and doing hobbies.
| It's a very reasonable offline-life but I do find myself
| missing a third-place. Maybe I need to join a gaming clan or
| something.
| gigaflop wrote:
| It feels like a semantically-strained take, but I think Twitter
| is more of a place for people to say things, than it is for
| having conversations. Most people seem to use the site to
| broadcast something to their audience without really engaging.
| specialist wrote:
| FOMO
| amelius wrote:
| Solution: every day, make a list of stuff you found on the
| internet that you couldn't possibly live without.
|
| Chances are your list is empty all the time.
| georgia_peach wrote:
| Dear Bearblog,
|
| Coffee. Stimulants.
|
| A M P H E T A M I N E S !
|
| You're welcome.
|
| -GP
| jmrm wrote:
| No one mentioned, but when we are here, looking anything at the
| screen, we aren't thinking about those thing we don't want to do,
| and this could be a coping mechanism to avoid doing those things.
|
| After a severe burnout I would also say that we need some time
| everyday to not do anything who require some mental or physical
| energy, and that could be browsing the internet, watching the TV,
| or just laying in the sofa looking at the ceiling.
| roguas wrote:
| The algorithm. It can offer you a very decent local maximum. So
| you keep riding the wave of decent local maximum. If you stray
| from this path you might find a better value but you also may
| find (more often than not) no progress at all. For the bigger
| journeys "career" and what not I do not recommend to follow local
| maximum paths you will go very on the surface and true fun is in
| the depth.
| adra wrote:
| If you have social media apps, TURN off notifications, block them
| forever!
|
| I also tried using greyscale screen modes in accessibility and I
| found it cut my phone usage in half. Definitely a cheap win for
| me to the point that I barely ever use my phone for "idle" time
| anymore, and certainly not "the" place I go to satisfy my need to
| spend time.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| I don't get how people could have them on. I have a tendency to
| put my phone in absolutely silent mode so it's a pain to find
| at home -- simply calling doesn't work)))
| dailyplanet wrote:
| If it annoys you, then you're probably an extrovert.
|
| I am an introvert and I like being alone and being able to choose
| how much I self-express and communicate. In person, I do not have
| as much choice about my time and energy commitment in front of
| company if I want to be polite. It's just easier for me to manage
| my social bandwidth while being on the internet.
| II2II wrote:
| I am also an introvert and the computer is an easy escape after
| a day of what I can only describe as sensory overload. That
| said, the author's point was more about productivity than
| socialization. There, I can only agree.
|
| To offer a couple of personal examples: I have to actively
| avoid certain types of games since it is far too easy to
| explore virtual worlds, gather virtual resources, and build
| virtual things when I would feel more productive doing
| something real. That something real may be as mundane as
| learning how to develop software more sophisticated than toy
| projects, simply because the product is reflects reality rather
| than fantasy.
|
| The other example is my tendency to watch other people do real
| things, like embedded development or repairing electronics. I
| have the interest and I even have most of the tooling. Still,
| consuming is easier than creating. That is especially true
| after a mentally exhausting day.
|
| I can only conclude that technology has made some things easier
| than others, and that it doesn't necessarily correlate with
| what people value. It doesn't even matter whether those values
| are social or asocial.
| jansan wrote:
| I think he is more annoyed of being unproductive, i.e. wasting
| time on social media instead of getting work done. I am more of
| an introvert and love working alone, but I hate looking back at
| a day and realizing that I spent most of my time lurking on
| certain wensites instead of implementing that undo
| functionality which I had originally planned.
| Havoc wrote:
| I've personally focused on improving the quality rather than
| trying to push down the time.
|
| i.e. browse more /r/selfhosted and less /r/ukpolitics
|
| Leaves me in a slightly better mental state - less continuous
| outrage vibes.
|
| And same for twitter - I never post, and follow a handful of the
| hn gang basically.
|
| Not perfect but adjusting reddit subs and follows is a mechanical
| actionable action you can take and get done today where "spend
| less time" is a vague aspiration for the future that requires
| continuous motivation
| petercooper wrote:
| It's so often expressed it feels like a universal, but I don't
| feel like I do, at least. I spend a _lot_ of time on the Internet
| but I don 't think it's a waste because there's nothing else I'd
| rather be doing. Now, maybe my ambitions and dreams are set a bit
| low, but that's a different matter ;-)
| HoraceSchemer wrote:
| zackmorris wrote:
| For me it's because I come up with roughly 10-100 ideas per day
| that I'd like to do, but there is (and will never be) enough time
| to do them all.
|
| So I live vicariously through all of the other people doing the
| tiny handful of things that they manage to do in their entire
| lives.
|
| This brings me down periodically, but then I remember that time
| is an illusion, and our perception that we're wasting time on the
| internet would seem comical to people who had never seen it (as
| recently as 1995) and will be remembered with fondness when we
| near the singularity (as soon as 2035).
|
| Practicing non-attachment and understanding that this is not
| forever has really helped me rise above the downward spiral of
| depression, back to the upward spiral of gratitude for being here
| as part of the human experience.
| kurofune wrote:
| >sometimes i wonder why do i waste so much of time on internet
|
| I enjoy my time on the internet and I treasure it as a tool for
| reaching new intellectual heights but not in a straightforward
| fashion. I speak two languages more than my own native one thanks
| to the time "wasted" on the internet shitposting on imageboards &
| forums, watching JP vtuber clips and anime, playing CRPGs or
| MMORPGs, etc... and that's just the one quantifiable metric I can
| offer, cause to me it's pretty clear I would be a worse, less
| polished version of myself if I hadn't spend so much time on the
| internet running in circles.
|
| >not even doing productive work >back to that unproductive and
| mindless pithole
|
| What a tragic and servile mentality to think we are always meant
| to be productive to deserve enjoying our time on this Earth;
| guilt-tripping yourself back into the cog in the machine mindset
| to force yourself to become something you don't really want to be
| seems a terrible choice. That path will only lead to wearing you
| down, eroding your actual capability to be productive in the
| process.
|
| PS: Try to improve your experience on the internet by constantly
| filtering your information sources until you find you stay here
| useful.
| bradstewart wrote:
| I don't think OP is implying _all_ time on the internet is
| wasted. Or that we are meant to always be productive.
|
| Speaking personally, I think all of the time I spent gaming and
| "hanging out" in specific internet/gaming circles when I was
| younger was hugely valuable. I think some portion of the time I
| currently spend reading HN is valuable.
|
| But there are absolutely times where I _want_ to be doing
| something productive, to be accomplishing a task, but I
| mindlessly browse the internet instead.
| oliv__ wrote:
| This link should be pinned to the top of HN permanently: what a
| time saver!
|
| I've impulsively opened up HN at least 5 times today, then closed
| the tab feeling shamed by this link haha.
| praptak wrote:
| HN has built in antiprocrastination controls.
| rambambram wrote:
| Do you even lift? I mean that seriously.
|
| Lifting heavy weights helps one get rid of all that mental
| bullshit. It's a cornerstone habit. So lifting can form a base
| for all other beautiful stuff in your life.
|
| It's hard to care about trivial shit on Youtube or Instagram when
| you just lifted dumbbells until fatigue and did some good squats.
| keenmaster wrote:
| Or browse the internet between sets. It's big brain time. I'm
| not even joking, if you're going to waste time at least
| multitask and get stronger/healthier in the process.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| For that reason I never take my phone to the gym. I just
| enjoy resting between sets. I also try to make my workout as
| efficient as possible.
| gigaflop wrote:
| This is the sole reason I use reddit on my phone. I keep a
| tab for AskReddit, open something for later if the title
| seems interesting enough, and at least skim the thread within
| a few days. No app, no login, old-style UI.
|
| Since my brain is usually disengaged when lifting (gotta save
| those calories for what matters), I rarely bother with
| anything 'deep' between sets.
|
| One potential upside of this is that the threads are usually
| a few hours or days old before I actually read them, which
| means that I can expect no new content from them once I have
| my fill of a thread.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Or you start worrying about RPE / programming and comparing
| yourself to others.
|
| At least that's what happened to me. Got very strong over the
| years, didn't get much happier, and then would stress out about
| losing any gains that were made.
|
| Eventually I quit caring and started walking more. I feel the
| same.
| blueflow wrote:
| Might be some kind of addiction. I suspect because smoking works
| for me as substitute.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| As opposed to wasting so much time on ... ?
| gcheong wrote:
| " I even made a stratergy to stop this, but no matter what I do,
| it just...doesn't work. I will follow that thing for 2-3 days
| then back to that unproductive and mindless pithole. "
|
| You could view it as a failure or you could view it as something
| that worked for 2-3 days and go from there.
| terr-dav wrote:
| Like any other addiction, it's a way of coping with painful
| emotions that you (and I) are hiding from (consciously or not).
| I've been in therapy for several years now and I'm still
| struggling.
| dudeDDRrulez wrote:
| Top answer IMO.
|
| Substituting drugs, alcohol, shopping, cutting yourself, etc,
| it's all the same root cause which is hiding somewhere deep
| inside yourself. Either do the work to find out what that root
| cause is or be held hostage by it. Took decades for me to
| figure it out for myself. Well, the process took decades to
| play out. Once the root cause was dealt with, improvement was
| instantaneous.
| geniium wrote:
| So I can reply to that kind of question
| dcolkitt wrote:
| > Its not like I enjoy them 10/10. So why do I do this?
|
| I'll push back on this. I think we have such a deep inbuilt
| instinct to lie about the things we enjoy that we often delude
| ourselves. Humans are social creatures, and the things we say,
| especially the things we say about ourselves almost are heavily
| biased by what we think will make others like and respect us.
|
| You know this as well as I do. When people ask you what your
| favorite music, movies or foods are you'll almost always
| prominently declare the high status things you want and omit the
| low status. It doesn't even feel misleading. Of course my
| favorite food is sushi and not french fries, even if truth be
| told and I spent a minute introspecting I'd have to admit that in
| the moment I probably enjoy McDonalds more than Nobu. Why would
| it be any different about the moment-to-moment activities we
| enjoy?
|
| Note this is very different that what produces a sense of
| fulfillment on a broader, zoomed-out level. If I think of any
| abstract weekend a year in the far future, of course my far mode
| self-image tells me to say I'd prefer to spend it doing a cool
| hobby like hang gliding than binge watching reality TV. And
| afterwards, I'll have fonder memories of the hang gliding
| adventure than the 9th season of The Bachelor. But in the actual
| day itself, I'm almost certain binge watching is more enjoyable
| on a moment-to-moment level than hang gliding.
|
| There might be some short exhilarating intervals that slightly
| edge out the dopamine peaks of the reality TV reveals and drama.
| But the day of hang gliding also involves a ton of boring
| monotony and sweaty gruntwork. The medians and especially the
| lows are much more enjoyable vegging out on the couch.
|
| What even is the point of driving this home? Because I think the
| lying is counter-productive to actually changing the behavior.
| Like the drunk who paints a romantic narrative about how the
| reason he drinks is to numb the pain, when in reality he's just
| lazy and undisciplined and really genuinely enjoys getting
| loaded, especially compared to applying to jobs.
|
| If you've deluded yourself into thinking you don't even like some
| habit, then you've also deluded yourself into how easy you can
| change that habit. "I don't even like endlessly mindlessly
| scrolling through my YouTube feed, so all I have to do is build a
| better system and remove the triggers and it will be a problem".
| But if you really, really enjoy mindlessly scrolling YouTube,
| that won't work. Little, arbitrary barriers aren't going to stop
| you. The only fix is to do the deep psychological work it takes
| to build discipline and impulse control.
| zelias wrote:
| Hits a little close to home. I'm sure I'm not the only one, and
| anyone who speaks out about this should be applauded.
|
| Years from now we will still be examining the after effects of
| years spent at the mercy of addictive user engagement algorithms.
| dan12ha wrote:
| Well done, you have condensed and encapsulated the problem into
| a single line. This is evil corps motto, "Keeping you at the
| mercy of our addictive user engagement algorithms since 20xx".
| ruined wrote:
| sometimes i wonder why do i waste so much time high, not even
| doing productive work. Just drinking and smoking and sometimes
| doing lines. Its not like I enjoy them 10/10. So why do I do
| this? I even made a stratergy to stop this, but no matter what I
| do, it just...doesn't work. I will follow that thing for 2-3 days
| then back to that unproductive and mindless pithole. I haven't
| achieved anything in life, but i want to, i want to own
| things...i want to have friends...i want to have fun....but
| this....something is just holding me. I could simply just say i'm
| lazy, but is that a good reason..why would i even need a reason.
|
| I would like to think its not laziness, but then what even is it?
| And again i will search on the internet about this, find some
| videos that talk about this, then some people in the comments
| will say the "i suffer from the same things",,,and then? then i
| will feel better that there are people that are similar to
| me....and? guess what? back to the same routine. I am sick of
| this...its like i know i will not have these comfortable days,
| these days where i just sit down and stay sober. But what will be
| at the other side of it? A person who i would envy and want to be
| like or someone who no one cares about and is pathetic
| DerekBickerton wrote:
| I'm not sure about wasting. Most of my surfing consists of
| unearthing gems, and I have to wade through a lot of noise and
| muck to find those gems, but the gems are there. If I could
| automate it, I would, but it wouldn't be the same.
|
| A piece of code that crawls the net looking for something I would
| really enjoy is a hard problem, and I would have to code in my
| own biases to the program to make it work properly, and this
| means I couldn't share the program with others since it would be
| very personal and context specific.
|
| I am aware of confirmation bias and filter bubbles, but it
| doesn't mean I don't like my own bubbles. It's just plain
| psychology afterall and we're all human, although I do try to
| break out of my comfort zone in terms of what content I consume,
| and regularly scout for different places to get my content
| besides The Bird Site, Reddit, FaceBuck etc
| IntFee588 wrote:
| The quality to noise ratio on mostly social media platforms has
| become obscenely low over the past three years or so. I do
| think social media can be a force for good but it seems like
| the algorithms are best at perpetuating the lowest effort,
| spamiest content.
| medicalman wrote:
| Completely agree with this - it's those gems that keep us
| addicted. If the internet were 100% time wasting garbage, I
| think it would be easy enough to quit completely. But that tiny
| percentage of good content, which can often be _very good_
| (some of the best and most worthwhile writing I have ever
| encountered has been posted on obscure forums), keeps you
| searching for the next "hit."
|
| Personally, I would love to subscribe to a paid service that
| would produce a "daily briefing" of sorts with well curated
| highlights of the internet. Content aggregators have tried to
| get at this, but the signal to noise ratio is still way off. If
| someone could produce this product, I actually think it could
| be quite successful.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Can you give an example of such a gem? Normally I just rely on
| HN to provide me with interesting links, but lately it doesn't
| seem to give me the same kick it used to.
| mdoms wrote:
| I'm not the person you asked but I try to keep my gems in
| bookmarks, would love to share some. Obviously I don't know
| your interests so take it for what you will. I have many more
| than I'll post here if you want some.
|
| Some of this came from HN, some from elsewhere.
|
| This website lists the first references to some cultural
| icons on Usenet (for example the first time AIDS was ever
| discussed, first mention of a new TV cartoon "The Simpsons",
| etc.) http://www.eightyeightynine.com/culture/80susenet.html
|
| The Public Domain Review, a collection and analysis of
| interesting stuff in the public domain
| https://publicdomainreview.org/
|
| David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. I have spent many
| hours browsing the incredible content here.
| https://www.davidrumsey.com/
|
| Artvee. Free, high quality art. https://artvee.com/
|
| Restoration Mustang. A high quality long term journal of the
| restoration of a classic Mustang. Think like an /r/diy
| project but with way more detail and over a longer time
| scale. https://restorationmustang.com/
|
| The Renegade Gardener. Highly opinionated no-bullshit
| gardening advice. I especially love the "Don't Do That"
| section. https://renegadegardener.com/
|
| Garden Myths. There's a lot of misinformation and old wives'
| tales in gardening, this website cuts the crap.
| https://www.gardenmyths.com/
|
| Million Short is a search engine that lets you cut out the
| million (or 10,000 or 100,000) top results from a search,
| really good for finding gems. It also has an option for
| removing e-commerce websites from search which is a godsend.
| https://millionshort.com/
|
| This one is relevant if you live in New Zealand and love the
| outdoors: Can I Light a Fire?
| https://www.checkitsalright.nz/can-i-light-a-fire
| DerekBickerton wrote:
| Sure. Some links I just bookmarked and will use:
|
| https://highbrow.se/ (Alternative search engine)
|
| https://cora-pic.com/en (Meme generator)
|
| https://www.mightyapp.com/ (New upcoming cloud browser)
|
| https://ossdatabase.com/ (Database of OSS)
| gpm wrote:
| My own list, which is pretty different in character than
| Derek's.
|
| Gankra's work on a useful rust memory model is both
| fascinating and useful:
| https://twitter.com/Gankra_/status/1509335163045650436
|
| This tool to convert low-complexity rust tests to proofs is
| interesting and something I'm glad I know exists:
| https://model-checking.github.io/kani-verifier-
| blog/2022/05/...
|
| I'm using this code I found out about via reddit in a side
| project, probably less interesting to you though:
| https://github.com/setzer22/egui_node_graph
|
| (Warning, videos from here on out):
|
| Cool product demo of a futuristic debugger:
| https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/debugging-by-querying-a-
| datab...
|
| These people also have a cool demo of splitting a single
| program across two different computers (frontend and backend
| webserver in their case). Maybe a bit less convincing than
| the previous one, but something I intend to watch:
| https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/uis-are-streaming-dags
|
| These people have some really cool work on automatically
| solving physics problems (just linking to one of their talks
| as an example): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHhDgxkiR9c
| shortstuffsushi wrote:
| > code in my own biases to the program to make it work properly
|
| Isn't this, in theory, what the "algorithms" are trying to do
| for you? They see what you interact with and try to optimize
| for "similar" content to surface these gems for you
| automatically, since it will keep you in their platform longer.
| eimrine wrote:
| Where to spend my time else?
| daenz wrote:
| I waste time on the internet when I am "compiling" My thoughts.
| Being in knowledge work, like many others here, means that most
| of the work is performed by thinking about a problem. After the
| problem has a good solution or set of solutions, there's only so
| much active thinking you can continue to do about it. I like to
| take a break and screw around while the solutions percolate some
| more. I usually see something I didn't afterwards.
| sdo72 wrote:
| I think the internet just feeds what most people want or our
| minds want. It can be in a form of happiness, agreement,
| entertainment, etc... It's just part of spending time on things
| that we like to do. It may be considered as wasteful to some, but
| may not since that's what we want.
|
| There are many people who have tried to quit and eventually
| gotten back because life out there may be boring, at least to
| their mind temporarily.
|
| Until there're some serious conditions that cripple our physical
| bodies, then we consider some changes.
|
| I think it's all a part of living things. We don't normally say
| "why does human waste so much time on earth?"
| lbriner wrote:
| I suspect lots of different reasons but for me I think it is
| simply catharsis to engage with something that doesn't require
| effort or reaction unless I want to, I can just consume. This
| helps my brain recover from the focussed deliberate work I do
| during the day.
|
| Of course, this does beg the question, if we took steps to stop
| doing it, would it give us more time to do useful focussed work
| or would we instead just watch TV, read a book, go to the part or
| whatever.
| gravypod wrote:
| Well if you want friends the first step is to find them. Wish
| there was an easier way to do this but messaging people from
| HN/Slack/Discord has been a great option
| modinfo wrote:
| Honestly I have the same problem, but I found a very simple
| solution to be productive.
|
| The problem is not the internet itself, but a fast internet that
| allows you to watch videos.
|
| A simple and yet very effective solution is to have 64kbps
| internet, at first sight it sounds absurd, but actually it's a
| very good solution for people who want to be productive, with
| such internet you can easily browse the most important sites like
| Stackoverflow/GitHub/HN, download packages from npmjs or use
| IRC/SSH.
|
| I've been working on 64kbps for two years now and if it wasn't
| so, I wouldn't get as much as I did thanks to the low speed
| internet.
| thingification wrote:
| The mechanism of https://www.beeminder.com/ is unreasonably
| effective at limiting this kind of thing.
| hussainbilal wrote:
| It sounds like their habits are influenced by your environment.
| Just tie the habit to a new productive habit. Make it work for
| you.
|
| Example 1: start learning a new natural language, and also switch
| all your social media feeds to only provide content in that
| language. You'll either lose interest in learning the language
| and start withdrawing from social media, or your unbreakable
| habit will sustain your new language learning habit.
|
| Example 2: I listen to a lot of music. I don't feel right unless
| it's running in the background. So I tried learning french and
| listen to only french pop. It worked for a few months, but then I
| hit the problem of not being able to pick up spoken (not written)
| french and parse its grammar while also trying to pick up the
| phonetics of native speakers. But I then learned about creole and
| its more flexible and simpler grammars and phonetics. I was able
| to start thinking in the language using french vocabulary. So I
| pivoted my habit to learning Haitian Creole and listening to
| Haitian music.
| hawksprite wrote:
| This sounds like a methodology I'd like to try. I've not heard
| of it before. Do you have any suggested Haitian musicians or
| artists?
|
| Thank you for sharing.
| nonstickcoating wrote:
| Another key factor is, that YouTube interleaves really well made
| educational content with fun and stupid videos (these have their
| own merit, of course). I think this leads to people hunting for
| new videos about topics that really interest them, those can be
| insightful and stimulating. At the same time, the next 20 minute
| TikTok compilation is one click away, as well as numerous click-
| farmy videos with no real substance but the appearance of depth
| and knowledge. This is simply not possible if you, for example,
| get your knowledge and entertainment from e.g. books. To click a
| funny video after watching a good video essay or educational
| content is somehow simpler than putting away your textbook and
| searching for your favorite comic in your bookshelf.
| llaolleh wrote:
| It's the hedonic dopamine treadmill. It's not the content that
| drives this endless dopatrain, it's the nice UI and interactivity
| of the spinning window and flashing pages.
| NanoWar wrote:
| Really: What can you do?
| [deleted]
| scubakid wrote:
| It's almost like the platforms were designed and optimized to
| keep you on them ;)
| [deleted]
| est wrote:
| I am so used to Internet since young, and sometimes feel guilty
| of the time wasted on it. So I spent sometime completely cut off
| from the online world, go back to books and in-person
| interactions.
|
| Ironically, books and people kept telling me: why r u hearing
| this now? It's already _all over the Internet_.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _why do you waste so much time on the internet._
|
| Because it's better than your regular life and what you have to
| do at work. And nothing realistic will give you the means to go
| beyond those.
| caffeine wrote:
| There is a great episode of Jocko podcast with Andre Huberman
| that just came out where he carefully addresses this specific
| issue. Worth listening to (it's in the first hour or so, I
| mention it because it's 5 hours long!!)
| oicU00 wrote:
| Because my career has curved away from solving problems to
| find/replacing parameters in template repos
| uvu wrote:
| I am also in similar situations. Currently, I stopped using all
| social media. This video help me https://vimeo.com/97415346 in
| some way as well. I think its a habit and addiction combination.
| danuker wrote:
| Relevant: http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html
|
| > Societies eventually develop antibodies to addictive new
| things. [...] It took a while though--on the order of 100 years.
|
| > Most people I know have problems with Internet addiction. We're
| all trying to figure out our own customs for getting free of it.
| Apreche wrote:
| Just speaking for myself, I've noticed that my habit is to eat
| what is in front of me, and clean my plate. I mean this both
| literally and figuratively.
|
| If I have dessert in the house, like a bag of chocolate, then I
| eat one after dinner. If I don't have it in the house, then I
| just don't eat dessert.
|
| If I have a social media feed full of content, then I'll scroll
| through all of it until there's nothing else that's new.
|
| So what I've been doing is not entirely quitting Internet stuff,
| but instead I just massively unsubscribing, unfollowing, and
| filtering all the feeds. Sort of a Marie Kondo thing. I go
| through every subreddit I'm in, every RSS feed, every account I
| follow on Twitter, and i strongly consider "is this really
| providing lots of joy and/or value?" If not, it gets the chop.
|
| I've cut out at least 2/3s of the stuff I was following since the
| peak, and it's only going down. Now when I doomscroll it's only
| for a few minutes. I hit the end of new content very very
| quickly. When that happens I start to look elsewhere. I've been
| reading a lot more actual books, done more chores, and been more
| productive overall.
|
| As for the things I unfollowed? They clearly had no value because
| not only do I not miss them, I can barely even remember what they
| were.
| fma wrote:
| Switching Twitter to timeline mode rather than their poor
| excuse of an algorithm helps. Learned that from HN....but I
| have a browser plug-in that also removes all their recommended
| and "Joe also owed this tweet" junk.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Which browser plug is this? It sounds amazingly useful.
| fma wrote:
| https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter/
|
| If you need it for mobile, on my mobile (Android) I
| downloaded Kiwi Browser so I can install that plugin.
| Braini wrote:
| Funny enough I have the opposite opinion regarding twitter:
| If I use it in timeline mode I have the urge to read through
| all of it until where I stopped last time as the OP described
| (same with my Feedly RSS feed) In algorithm mode its more
| like a "don't care, its garbled anyway, just a sea of stuff".
| That being said I am still mostly using timeline mode.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| In weight watchers (yes, weight watchers), we classified
| certain foods as "red flag foods"; these were foods that we
| _knew_ we could not control ourselves around. The kind of food
| where you have one, and then suddenly you've finished the
| bag/box.
|
| I tend to agree with you: if it's there, you're going to go for
| it. We all have things like this. "Cleaning your plate" is a
| good metaphor, but I'm betting you don't "clean your plate"
| when it comes to exercise or other things that may be less
| enjoyable.
|
| Identify the things in your life that are red flags, and
| consciously keep them out of your life. It's hard at first, but
| soon, you don't even miss them.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| So many threads on HN are basically "What does neurodiversity
| look like?"
| grvdrm wrote:
| Are there entire feeds that you've deemed too wasteful? I get
| that you can slash much of what you look at on Twitter and
| still get what you want.
|
| But what about things like Instagram, TikTok, etc. - did you
| delete those apps altogether or also aggressively trim (if you
| use them)?
| SamBam wrote:
| I cut out Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
|
| Facebook I left a decade ago, for its ethical issues.
| Instagram I left because I felt the performance aspect was
| unhealthy: even in my only-friends-and-family circle, I'd
| still care too much about picking out the perfect photo of my
| kid or wherever.
|
| For Twitter I realized it was way too easy to get sucked down
| political/angry feeds. One day Twitter said my account has
| suspicious activity (maybe a bot tried to log in) and I
| needed to reply to an email to re-enable it. I never replied
| to the email. Somehow this meant that _every time_ I followed
| a Twitter link, I 'd get that alert, so I could never see
| content. I felt so much happier.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| I think a corollary to this is the relatively modern idea that
| life needs purpose in the form of measurable accomplishments.
|
| Looking back at how most people lived their lives, it was
| sustenance, interspersed with things like family, religion, and
| friendship (if you were lucky). Nearly nobody owned much,
| nearly nobody 'did cool things,' nearly nobody was famous.
|
| They all just had a part of life (surviving) that they knew was
| bad and hard work, then they tried as hard as they could to
| escape that briefly.
|
| Now, we expect work to be fulfilling _and_ non-work to be
| fulfilling. For the majority of people where that isn 't true,
| it feels really depressing, which is compounded by the fact
| that society pushes you to spend more time on improving the
| work side of things (which again for most people will not be
| intrinsically fulfilling no matter how hard they try), so they
| end up feeling lonely and sad.
| hinkley wrote:
| In the world of food it was a watershed moment for me in
| controlling my waistline when I stopped checking the unit price
| on items at the store.
|
| The brain invents its own portion sizes that are more dependent
| on the size of the container than the total supply. I don't
| know how you introduce portion control to the Internet, but we
| definitely need it.
|
| Some people have strategies for avoiding a shopping cart full
| of junk food. I wonder how far you can stretch that into media
| consumption before the analogy tears.
| number6 wrote:
| Interesting, I had the same thought about the size / price
| ratio recently. I want most bang for the buck but it kills my
| waistline
| jimbokun wrote:
| There was a study with a soup bowl that would automatically
| refill, and found people ate a lot more than they would if just
| given a regular soup bowl.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15761167/
|
| It strikes me the Internet is now a bottomless soup bowl of
| content, and we have know indicators to tell us when we should
| stop.
| spupe wrote:
| It's a good analogy, but that study was retracted:
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-
| quarters/2018/feb/1...
| [deleted]
| barbazoo wrote:
| This is great advice. Unsubscribing, especially from the stuff
| that triggers me, helps me not to waste too much time.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Yup, dashcam videos / crashes is a huge time sink which I
| have to ruthlessly unsubscribe from. It's one of those things
| where you can feel your blood pressure increase as you watch
| it.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I noticed the same about myself and have been doing something
| similar. I haven't been as focused on cutting down things I
| follow (actually even increasing), instead just paying
| attention to what I find valuable and aggressively cutting out
| everything I either dislike or find superfluous and spammy (eg
| if I see the same post multiple times on my reddit feed, I'll
| quickly check the poster's profile, if they spam the same
| content on several subreddits regularly I'll block them even if
| the content is something I enjoy).
| baby wrote:
| On the other hand I started following only "teaching chinese"
| accounts on instagram. Whenever I go on instagram I just watch
| stuff to learn chinese because it's in my feed.
| fdsfdsafds wrote:
| You're on the path, and the end is almost inevitable - no
| social media accounts at all, and no smartphone. It's
| wonderful.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| Haven't been using social media for more than five years and
| it doesn't feel like I'm halfway there.
|
| Now I am using my smartphone pretty much in the same way I
| was using my PC when smartphones didn't exist (e.g. 20 years
| ago): quite a bit of browsing and few comments here and
| there.
|
| It's not that I can't do without smartphone: on holidays I
| can totally avoid using it for browsing. But that inevitably
| comes back to "normal".
|
| And I'm pretty sure I was distracting myself with literature
| in a similar way when I was even younger (e.g. 25 yrs ago). I
| read very fast and hardly retain anything:) Is it in any way
| healthier? Not so sure, it feels like binge reading is as
| addictive and unsatisfying -- I do that nowadays (rarely)
| too.
| Vladimof wrote:
| > If I have a social media feed full of content, then I'll
| scroll through all of it until there's nothing else that's new.
|
| I could never do that with Facebook as it is mostly all useless
| crap and ads
| gigaflop wrote:
| I used to spend a lot of time on youtube, in part because I had
| the free time to spend on it, and had gaps in my schedule that
| were convenient for watching certain content creators.
|
| Since moving into the workforce, my free time is no longer
| segmented into so many pieces. I don't get as much value as I
| used to from 10 to 15 minute chunks of entertainment, so I stop
| keeping up with the sources, and just lose touch.
|
| It isn't that the content I'm leaving behind is bad or 'cheap',
| it's just that I don't have the time and attention to keep up
| with most of it. My entertainment time is better spent on stuff
| that takes longer to engage with/consume, since those bigger
| things are often more valuable as entertainment.
| uoaei wrote:
| I'm coming to a realization across all facets of my life,
| where I am interested or engaged in many more things than I
| have time for. I am starting to prepare myself for the
| uncomfortable process of sacrificing a few (in fact, many)
| things I've previously mentally and emotionally invested in,
| but I know it's going to be a big shift and the dread causes
| my feet to drag. There's just not enough time... and I don't
| believe that the solution is "improve focus and productivity"
| because that's a fast track to burnout and disengagement for
| all but the most obsessive of minds.
| gigaflop wrote:
| Curiosity can be a curse, and has killed several cats.
|
| I may have been on psychedelic mushrooms at the time, but
| something I took away from the trip was an acknowledgement
| of a feeling of 'shedding' in life, in terms of hobbies and
| interests.
|
| Stuff will get boring and be forgotten, or fall to the side
| and be ignored while it collects dust. This is something
| that I should expect to happen, and be prepared for. So
| long as you derived some value from those once-great
| things, it hasn't been a waste, and is just a symptom of
| time passing.
|
| Maybe you pick those things back up later, and maybe you
| don't. For myself, I think my 'best life' would be one
| where I had the space and tools to be able to pick up or
| put down whatever ideas come to me.
| uoaei wrote:
| > I may have been on psychedelic mushrooms at the time,
| but something I took away from the trip was an
| acknowledgement of a feeling of 'shedding' in life, in
| terms of hobbies and interests.
|
| I had a very similar feeling in a similar setting, like a
| large part of the process of life is scrubbing crusty
| exteriors off so that new capacities can emerge. Like
| continuous molting.
|
| Thanks for the reminder.
| u2077 wrote:
| > my habit is to eat what is in front of me
|
| This! I often let my phone run out of battery and avoid
| plugging it in so I can do other things.
|
| From a similar thread, someone mentioned that phones are only
| good for content consumption. When I'm on the computer, I'm at
| least somewhat productive and the distractions aren't quite as
| strong.
| haxiomic wrote:
| It's what's keeping me running an old phone; short battery
| life has its advantages!
| Dave_TRS wrote:
| I'm the same way, keep me away from buffets, cupboards
| containing sweets, and any newsfeed.
|
| One thing I've founds success with was getting a digital
| Economist subscription (confession, just a shared password).
| Having a steady stream of high quality content without paywall
| nonsense helped me replace my regular trolling around internet
| with something more useful and less addictive. Perhaps paying a
| bit for something high quality can help fill void for those
| dopamine seeking internet impulses.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| >I just massively unsubscribing, unfollowing, and filtering all
| the feeds.
|
| Nothing has been more effective for me than this, as well
| unfriending/following people or accounts that actively make me
| angry. Had to unfollow like 10 people tops and the quality of
| my feeds got noticeably better.
| uoaei wrote:
| "Out of sight, out of mind" works great for me too. It's
| staying occupied so that your thoughts don't meander back to
| that thing, that makes the trick.
| toyg wrote:
| A lot of addictions are borne and sustained out of boredom.
| When you find something else to fill time, they can be
| removed relatively easily.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| Thought this was just me and it's so refreshing to hear. I can
| never eat just part of a bag of chips. Or save the really good
| sandwhich for later. Or not drink another coffee because I
| already had one. Etc. etc
|
| Do lots of other folks experience this? I seem to only have
| self control when it hurts my job or income, and even then,
| barely.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| An easy way to have self control is to switch to a keto-like
| diet. You don't even have to count calories and carbs in most
| cases. There's a variant called lazy keto, where you just
| stick to approved foods and don't need to count. It's
| surprisingly hard to overeat on things like cauliflower and
| pork chops.
|
| Be wary however of the more "extreme" advice on keto-like
| diets. You don't have to stuff yourself with fats, or put a
| stick of butter in your coffee.
| thoughtpeddler wrote:
| 100% this. People often ask me "How do you stick with keto?
| It's such a strict diet." I always answer: "It's actually
| one of the easiest diets: the answer to most 'can I eat
| this?' question is 'no'."
|
| There isn't a persistently high cognitive load on deciding
| what you can eat, once you master the foundational
| knowledge of eating low-carb.
| riekus wrote:
| I really want to follow it, but what about the bad
| breath?!
|
| It's definitely a thing, you can smell when people are in
| ketosis
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| isn't that ketoacidosis not ketosis? (i'm genuinely
| asking )
| uuyi wrote:
| This is terrible advice. Any fads are. Ketogenic diets are
| not good for you in any way.
|
| Bad behaviour starts with acknowledgement and the best way
| to do that is to track what you eat and learn to adapt
| slowly and develop self discipline. Use a tracker app and
| set a reasonable daily break even nutritional target and
| start thinking about what you eat. Slowly substitute better
| choices in. Eventually you will develop self control.
|
| People want quick fixes but keto just breaks other things.
| dawidw wrote:
| What is so bad about keto diet?
| reportingsjr wrote:
| The key thing you do in a keto diet, entering a state of
| ketogenesis, can cause massive complications for diabetic
| people due to ketoacidosis.
|
| Unfortunately a lot of people who would be interested in
| dieting and trying out a keto diet are diabetic. It's not
| always dangerous, but it's generally not a good diet for
| diabetic people because of this.
| tomca32 wrote:
| This is incorrect. I'm a Type 1 Diabetic and in my
| opinion keto diet is probably the healthiest diet a
| diabetic can be on.
|
| Ketoacidosis is a result of extremely high blood sugar
| for a prolonged period of time combined with ketosis. The
| reason this happens is that without insulin your body
| cannot use the sugar in your blood so your blood sugar
| keeps going up and your body doesn't get any energy out
| of it.
|
| What happens when your body is out of fuel for a couple
| of days? It enters ketosis and starts to burn fat. Ketons
| mixed with sugar in your blood will acidify blood, this
| is ketoacidosis. It's an extremely dangerous condition.
|
| However, if a diabetic is on keto diet they will have low
| blood sugar and their body will enter regular ketosis
| almost eliminating the need for insulin and ensuring a
| stable healthy blood sugar.
|
| In other words, a diabetic will end up in ketoacidosis if
| they're bad at controlling their blood sugar, regardless
| of their diet. However, if they are on keto diet the
| chance that their blood sugar will be very high is
| extremely small. High blood sugar is the killer, not
| ketosis.
|
| I've been doing a keto diet on and off for a number of
| years. When I'm in ketosis my blood sugar is steady in
| 80-100 range and I don't need almost any insulin.
| uuyi wrote:
| Not going to list them here but I suggest you go and do
| some research of the side effects and risks from actual
| medical research not HN users.
|
| For me it ended in a few days in hospital.
| incrudible wrote:
| How?
| aurizon wrote:
| https://www.ndtv.com/health/top-10-reasons-why-you-
| should-no...
| incrudible wrote:
| This is a very low effort, unsourced listicle, that is
| probably wrong on several points. Disregarding that, I
| was more curious about how this particular person managed
| to get hospitalized.
| scruple wrote:
| > Do lots of other folks experience this?
|
| I don't think we're alone but I doubt that we're "normal."
| newbamboo wrote:
| I'm normal.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Anybody want to define "normal" ?
| scruple wrote:
| I'm Joe, nice to meet you.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| I think a lot of people with ADHD would relate, or have been
| able to at some point.
| evergreyskies wrote:
| ADHD here. Kids are ADHD. My Malinois has to be ADHD. Being
| ADHD like I am with almost two decades of IT under my belt
| has felt weird. I crave my YouTube channels and certain
| news sites since the content creators I watch/read put out
| daily content. Ditto my insane amount of caffeine and
| nicotine consumption, which I learned from having my kids
| diagnosed, is me self medicating in lieu of something
| pharmaceutical. I'm also OCD, so that doesn't help. People
| with ADHD/OCD need closure something fierce, so when I feel
| like I'm not getting it, I feel the world is not right.
|
| On the professional side, my ADHD/OCD makes for some clean
| code and pedantically-set up servers. Nothing says ADHD/OCD
| like taking two days to crank out code which some of my
| colleagues can crank out in half the time. I'm told I'm too
| pedantic sometimes. Too much of a perfectionist. ADHD can
| do that to you. I'm happy with my lot in life.
| jotm wrote:
| I don't know why this comment feels like a punch in the
| face... I have severe ADHD, it's been getting worse and
| only medication helps, and I cannot get it.
|
| I have failed my whole life, I cannot start shit, I
| cannot finish anything, I'm just an impulsive monkey who
| is unfortunately aware of their own situation, stuck
| inside a body, forced to watch a deadly trainwreck in
| slow motion.
|
| The little I've achieved has taken me 10x as much time as
| it would've a normal person. And I'm pissing it all away
| anyway.
|
| This is hell.
|
| And then I see "everyone in my life is ADHD lolkek" "I'm
| happy".
|
| Sorry. Glad your case is mild enough.
| tlokas wrote:
| I don't have ADHD, but I have family with ADHD.
|
| Wouldn't you say that ADHD affects the person, and
| therefore the type of personality would change the
| outcome? (In contrast to ADHD defining the person)
|
| Edit:spelling
| s5300 wrote:
| Why can't you get medication? Is it because of the
| country you live in?
| XCSme wrote:
| It's common.
|
| We tend to keep doing what we are already doing (an inertia
| of sorts). If we are eating, we keep on eating (even if we
| are not hungry anymore) until an external factor stops us
| (e.g. the food is over).
|
| Changing states (starting/stopping) is the hardest part, but
| if you trick yourself somehow to stop it's easy to just put
| the food aside. The question that remain is how do you stop
| yourself from doing what you are currently doing? Some people
| use an "1,2,3 technique", where you just count to yourself
| and once you reach three you start doing what's needed.
| Mindfulness also helps, where you take a breath and think
| exactly what you are doing and why (I am eating, I am putting
| my hand in the bag of chips, I am bringing the chip to my
| mouth even if I am not hungry and don't even enjoy it that
| much, this would just make me feel fat afterwards).
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| I think it's pretty common. I personally call it "Goldfish
| syndrome", although apparently that's caught on with another
| informal meaning according to the internet.
|
| Eating and drinking delicious high calorie things rewards
| your brain. On an evolutionary time scale, delicious things
| were relatively rare and often required expending a lot of
| energy to acquire. In the last 100 years or so, modern
| technology has shifted the typical diet to be primarily
| cheap, processed high calorie foods.
|
| If you want to change your behavior, I would suggest calorie
| counting with a phone app. Do it every meal or snack, before
| you eat it. Even if you don't restrict yourself, it will make
| you consciously aware of your intake. You'll naturally start
| thinking in terms of energy intake rather than sensory
| intake. You'll also start to be able to correlate your
| emotional state to your current level of hunger rather than
| the other way around. "I am so hungry I could eat 300
| calories of potato chips!" I did that for a few months
| recently and lost 8 pounds. I stopped doing it more recently,
| and have gained 3 back.
|
| If you're a hipster at heart and have free time, you could
| also start doing more of your own food processing at home.
| Rather than order a pizza ever again, learn how to make a
| really good hand stretched pizza dough from scratch. If you
| really like good coffee, buy a hand grinder and whole beans,
| or figure out how to roast your own beans.
|
| If you think you're eating unhealthy and having external
| pressure would help with your self control, maybe just go see
| a primary care physician and request a cholesterol check and
| to be screened for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. If you
| have indeed been too indulgent and lethargic over an extended
| period of time, your cholesterol will probably read high, and
| you probably have fat in your liver that may be causing
| slightly elevated enzyme levels. A Dr. telling you to try to
| eat healthy may not be motivating, but quantitative data may
| be.
| crdrost wrote:
| If you want an altogether nerdier name maybe call it
| Wittgenstein syndrome?
|
| Drury reports a conversation with the famed philosopher:
|
| > So the next day when we were alone I asked Wittgenstein
| to tell me more about Kierkegaard. Wittgenstein:
| "Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker of the
| last century. Kierkegaard was a saint." He then went on to
| speak of the three categories of life-style that play such
| a large part in Kierkegaard's writing: the asethetic, where
| the objective is to get the maximum enjoyment out of this
| life; the ethical, where the concept of duty demands
| renunciation; and the religious, where this very
| renunciation itself becomes a source of joy. Wittgenstein:
| "Concerning this last category I don't pretend to
| understand how it is possible. I have never been able to
| deny myself anything, not even a cup of coffee if I wanted
| it. Mind you I don't believe what Kierkegaard believed, but
| of this I am certain, that we are not here in order to have
| a good time."
| ricardobeat wrote:
| > Rather than order a pizza ever again, learn how to make a
| really good hand stretched pizza dough from scratch
|
| This is good for different reasons, such as less additives
| in your food which might be healthier in the long term,
| taste, and the pleasure in the activity itself, but is
| unlikely to help with weight loss. There is little
| difference in calorie content between two similar pizzas,
| home made and from a restaurant (assuming you're not eating
| Domino's cheese-stuffed crust style pizzas).
| nebulous_two wrote:
| If you compare the same pizzas restaurant vs. homemade
| then sure, but learning to do it well allows you to
| modify everything to suit your needs. A really nice thin
| crust can be made with quite a bit less dough, which may
| then need a lot less cheese to saturate the dish. Just
| like that you've knocked down two of the most calorically
| heavy parts of a pizza!
| [deleted]
| criddell wrote:
| For me it depends on how my day is going.
|
| When I first read about willpower being an exhaustible
| resource, it totally aligned with my experience. A few years
| later I read that those ego depletion studies had been
| invalidated and that surprised me. Running out of willpower
| seems like something I experience.
| tlokas wrote:
| That is my experience too.
|
| But it might be something that is subjectively felt, and
| people then attributed it to be something that depletes.
| Even if the depletion is invalidated, the subjective
| feeling might however still be valid. --- If I should
| suggest another possibility on the spot, I would suggest
| mental fatigue. You get tired of denying yourself things
| the same way you get tired of denying your kid pestering
| you for a treat.
|
| It's not directly depletion, but I could subjectively
| describe it as a resource getting depleted.
| nebulous_two wrote:
| It might be worth thinking about what it is that is being
| depleted, exactly. When I "run out of willpower" it
| doesn't really feel the same as when I "simply cannot do
| it anymore". If I lift a weight enough times, eventually
| I simply can't anymore, no matter how much I will it.
| It's not a decision, like a decision to stop working on a
| problem. That would be a lack of willpower to
| continue...?
|
| Is there really a mental equivalent to physical
| exhaustion that leaves us beyond the ability to make a
| decision? Is that what running out of willpower would be?
| riekus wrote:
| This is me so bad. I have it in the good and bad ways.
|
| In the good I will run couple marathons a month and in the
| bad I will eat whatever I can find.
|
| I always felt like an outcast, good to hear I am not alone :)
|
| For media consumption it is exactly the same. The good is
| that I get to the nitty gritty of technical problems. But I
| also read the unless crap till no end.
|
| I have been able to ditch Twitter, reddit, Facebook and
| Instagram but I just substitute it with hackernews and
| YouTube.
| xkbarkar wrote:
| Haha. Same here. I have gotten back into reading though.
| That took a while because I lost the ability to concentrate
| on books as I grew more dependent on streaming and social
| media. Its been about a year now, since I left all the
| major social media hubs, got incredibly selective on daily
| news (only one local media outlet and a couple of polar
| opposite international ones that I pay for) and cut down on
| watching streaming services, that I started to be able to
| concentrate on reading books again. I grew up reading
| everything I could get my hands on. I missed it terribly.
|
| HN and youtube still stick. Mostly tutorials, workouts or
| info videos ( Andrew Huberman, justforfunc, 3blue1brown
| etc. ) on youtube though.
| joaomacp wrote:
| It may be a common trait in programmers, since we're rewarded
| by getting to the bottom of things: "why is this function
| failing? who calls it? in which possible states?"
|
| Most programmers have experienced being so immersed in code
| that we don't notice time is passing, forgetting to eat or
| sleep.
|
| It's similar with immersion in social media / food /
| whatever. We become lost in the activity and lose our sense
| of self.
|
| I've recently heard of the concept of conscientiousness as a
| personality trait. People with low conscientiousness tend to
| procrastinate more, and it's tied to ADHD. Apparently it can
| be trained. I'm trying (though not really succeeding) to make
| pauses, take a deep breath and think about "what am I doing
| right now? What should I be doing instead?". Seems so basic,
| like I've regressed to being a child who has no self
| control...
| trash_cat wrote:
| It's worth mentioning that conscientiousness is a
| personality trait that's part of the "big five"
| personalities traits. It's a personality trait brouping
| that is supported by evidence [1] unlike Myers Briggs [2].
|
| [1] https://www.simplypsychology.org/big-five-
| personality.html
|
| [2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-
| flapping/2013/mar/...
| bityard wrote:
| I identify with all of this, but this:
|
| > to make pauses, take a deep breath and think about "what
| am I doing right now? What should I be doing instead?".
|
| this too can have its pitfalls. In my case, I always feel
| like I have BOTH too many things that I WANT to do and too
| many things HAVE to do and whenever I step back and try to
| look at the bigger picture, I realize that I don't feel
| like I'm making tangible progress on any of them. And then
| the anxiety sets in and I feel like, "well, if I'm working
| this hard and not even keeping up, why am I working at
| all?" And so I sort of "give up" for a few days or a week
| and feel even MORE guilty because literally nothing is
| getting done and I'm getting even further behind.
|
| A lot of the comments I write here may sound like I really
| have my shit together, but that's just because I have a lot
| of generalized experience that just basically comes from
| lots of introspection and time being alive. But I have yet
| to figure out the one weird trick to being both productive
| (making progress toward future life goals) and happy
| (enjoying what I have in the present).
| billti wrote:
| I joke about my procrastination with my team: "I looked
| at my TODO list for the day and there's no way I can get
| to 90% of it, so I might as well just not get to 100% of
| it". Sometimes there's a lot of truth to the joke,
| however.
|
| As much as I know I should prioritize it based on
| urgency, highest impact, what I could delegate etc., if
| the willpower required to do that is more than the
| ramifications or not doing it, it can be a losing battle.
|
| On days when I push through a ton of work, I'm energized
| at the end of the day. Compared to the feeling of guilt
| that I just wasted a day when there's so much to do and I
| achieved little. Yet knowing that still just doesn't
| provide the necessary motivation some days. I've yet to
| figure out a reliable solution for it.
| [deleted]
| stult wrote:
| Yes indeed, many of us do. Nearly everyone I've ever dated
| gets mad at me at some point because I can't keep cookies in
| the house or I will eat them all. You are far from alone, and
| in fact I suspect the overwhelming majority of people are the
| same. Hence the obesity epidemic.
|
| Personally I find that my self-control is limited to the same
| extent that my time and energy are limited. If I'm tired,
| it's harder for me to be disciplined, and the place that I
| most often tired is at home at the end of the day, when
| temptation to over eat is at the greatest. I believe there is
| a fairly substantial body of evidence that shows I am not
| unusual in this regard. This phenomenon is why groceries
| stores put candy in checkout lanes, when you are mentally
| tired from exercising discipline by not picking up the
| delicious-looking tray of cupcakes in the bakery aisle and
| thus are most susceptible to temptation.
|
| I think some people can just use willpower to maintain their
| discipline in every situation, but those people are extreme
| outliers. Like Navy SEALs or Olympic athletes or other
| extreme high performers, and not even all of them. Those who
| can are experts at delayed gratification and are able to
| visualize what they want and then never deviate from their
| plan for how to achieve it, regardless of their current
| emotional state or energy levels. But that is vanishingly
| rare and often their behavior is a result of some deep trauma
| (eg someone who is super disciplined about their diet because
| their dad died early from an obesity-related illness) rather
| than a positive focus on a certain outcome. The truth is that
| the vast majority of people just follow their natural
| inclinations and do whatever is easiest for them. The path of
| least resistance.
|
| As one such weak-willed person, my approach has been to
| structure my life to remove temptations, much as the GP
| comment above described their approach to curating their
| internet content. For example, I have lived almost
| exclusively in big cities for my entire life until the last
| year, when I moved to the middle of nowhere. Which means I
| can't get takeout food delivered and it's much harder to go
| out and get ice cream on a whim. Compared to living in a
| major city where I could get Michelin star restaurant food
| delivered in a matter of minutes, the temptation is just
| much, much less powerful. I order my groceries online too,
| which also dramatically reduces the tendency to impulse buy
| anything unhealthy (I get to skip the checkout lane with the
| candy, for one thing). On the other side of the caloric
| equation, I set up a home gym so that travel time to the gym
| doesn't become an excuse not to exercise. Basically I add
| barriers for bad choices and remove them for good ones. I am
| in the best shape of my life as a result.
|
| I guess what I'm saying is that most people achieve good
| behaviors in part because of their intentional discipline and
| in part because their environment is conducive to those
| behaviors. The real trick is figuring out how to
| intentionally structure your environment to match whatever
| behaviors you want. It's effectively borrowing motivation
| from your peak-energy level periods to provide discipline
| during periods when you don't have the energy to generate it
| yourself. It can be incredibly hard to figure out, because
| you need to know how to change your environment and how you
| will actually react to that new environment, which isn't
| always predictable.
| [deleted]
| eterm wrote:
| I'm similar, but I'm far from neurotypical, so I can't say
| whether it's typical or not.
| hemreldop wrote:
| bsder wrote:
| > I can never eat just part of a bag of chips.
|
| To me, part of it is being _mindful_. Don 't open the bag of
| chips and then watch a movie or surf the net while munching
| on them. You will eat the whole bag.
|
| If I mode change from sitting in front of the computer to
| standing in the kitchen eating the chips and then mode change
| to back in front of the computer, I don't _mindlessly_
| consume the whole bag. But I will still sometimes consume the
| whole bag.
|
| One thing I have also tried to do is differentiate between "I
| want chips because I'm hungry" vs "I want chips because I'm
| craving _salt_ ". It's not easy for me to tell the
| difference. I coat some baby carrots in salt or Old Bay
| seasoning and munch a few--if that keeps the munchies away,
| my body wanted salt. If I'm hungry again 15 minutes later,
| well, my body wants calories.
|
| Nevertheless, I'm mostly in the camp of "Just don't have
| chips/cookies in the house". It also helps that I learned to
| bake as a child. I like _tasty_ desserts, and most of what
| now exists is mostly sugar overload with no flavor. So, a
| dessert easily sets off my "Is this dessert tasty enough to
| merit skipping two entire steaks <or insert whatever main
| course you like> to compensate?" And, if my that activates,
| the answer is almost always a resounding "No." and I skip
| dessert.
|
| Unfortunately for me, I found a middle eastern place that
| does homemade Baklava with a cream filling. It's right next
| to a Mexican restaurant that I also find quite nice. This is
| a bad thing for my waistline.
| amelius wrote:
| > If I have dessert in the house, like a bag of chocolate, then
| I eat one after dinner.
|
| I think for most with social media the equivalent would be to
| eat the entire bag.
| helpm33 wrote:
| Yes, he eats one. Bag :)
| kixiQu wrote:
| https://tokimeki-unfollow.glitch.me/
|
| Presents the Twitter accounts you're following so you can
| decide whether they "spark joy"... pairs well with
|
| https://opml.glitch.me/
|
| Which looks at the accounts you're following, looks at the
| links in their bios, sees if there's an RSS feed indicated at
| that link, and puts the whole thing together into an OPML feed
| (the standard XML-of-RSS-feeds format used for RSS reader
| import/export, among other things).
| dewey wrote:
| I just spend the past 20 minutes in the unfollow tool. Thanks
| for helping me waste so much time on the internet!
| higgins wrote:
| this tool is great, thank you!
|
| i would love if a tool like this were made based on
| interactions I've had with authors. generally, i like comment
| or retweet content that "sparks joy".
|
| would be a good first pass filter
| kixiQu wrote:
| Glitch will let you fork ("remix") and modify -- I don't
| know if the Twitter APIs are real friendly anymore for that
| open-ended of use, but it'd be worth trying :)
| jbverschoor wrote:
| We are just monkeys smashing buttons in front of us
| leodriesch wrote:
| Doing the same, but this does not really apply for algorithmic
| feeds.
|
| When you open YouTube the recommendations are always the first
| thing you see, same for TikTok and Twitter (although at least
| you can configure it there).
|
| Sure you can say "just don't use recommendation systems" just
| as you can say "just don't go on YouTube".
| eimrine wrote:
| > When you open YouTube the recommendations are always the
| first thing you see
|
| There is a brilliant hack to YT's urge to show you some BS.
| Make a bookmark of YT submissions on HN. Clear cookies. Click
| on any few random vids. Voila! Now YT considers you enough
| smart person to be shown a decent recommendations!!! (But the
| magic quickly disappears if you will click any BS from main
| because my hack does not affects the main page).
| eulgro wrote:
| I just block the recommendation and comments section with
| uBlock. No dessert, no temptation.
| NoLinkToMe wrote:
| True, but I exclusively watch YT on laptop and have the link
| to my subscriptions. It really does help.
| kradeelav wrote:
| You can follow Youtube channels via RSS feeds, though, which
| removes the issue with recommendations.
| alexktz wrote:
| This is the way.
|
| https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist
| madars wrote:
| I use the following user stylesheet to hide YouTube
| recommendations for exactly the reason you mention:
| /* hide main page */ ytd-browse[page-subtype="home"]
| { display: none; }
| evergreyskies wrote:
| Nice. I'll have to incorporate this little gem for the
| Linux laptop. Thank you. When I'm home, I primarily watch
| YouTube on my TV, but I don't use YouTube. Rather, I use
| SmartTubeNext, which grabs the same videos as YouTube, but
| has no ads, tracking, kills sponsored content in the video,
| as well as no YouTube recommendations. I'm very happy with
| it. I run it off my Amazon Firestick. If you're interested,
| here is the how-to: https://troypoint.com/smarttubenext/
| strifey wrote:
| I find it relatively easy to use YouTube without exposing
| myself to their recommendations (not that they're ever
| particularly good, in my experience).
|
| My bookmark for YouTube is directly to my subscriptions, and
| it's also possible to create a android shortcut link directly
| to subscriptions. Occasionally, a flow will direct me to the
| homepage, but that's rare and I usually organically bounce
| back to my subs without even thinking about it.
|
| There's always recs below a video, but again, those are
| rarely very interesting to me or they're things I've
| subscribed to anyway.
| cturtle wrote:
| I've been using a really nice extension the past couple
| months called unhook [0] that gives a lot of control over
| the YouTube UI. I've disabled shorts, the homepage, related
| videos, comments, etc. and now I only see videos I have
| subscribed to. Much more useful (I subscribed for a
| reason!) and much less time wasted. Just thought I'd share
| in case it helps anyone!
|
| [0]: https://unhook.app/
| phatfish wrote:
| That looks good, thanks.
|
| I block recommendation sections on some site with the
| ublock element picker (like the "recommendations"
| stackoverflow puts in the right column from their other
| sites, completely unrelated to the current page or search
| terms).
|
| I never got round to trying that with Youtube, this seems
| a better solution.
| [deleted]
| aeternum wrote:
| The recommendation algos can be quite good but you need to
| give them good signal. I doubt many people do this, but
| clicking 'not interested' on the clickbaity vids and thumbs-
| up high-effort content can very quickly tune your
| recommendations to be very high quality.
| orbit7 wrote:
| I recall life before smart phones either feeling bored or being
| looked at strangely for sitting on a laptop at a bus stop, not
| that I cared.
| ge96 wrote:
| Can't afford to move out to some place with land yet.
|
| Otherwise I'd spend a lot of my time tinkering with stuff
| outside.
|
| I always have something playing whether it's music or tv (form of
| YT or some Netflix-type place mostly YT though). Also my friends
| are not in the same state as I am so I don't really have a life.
| omalleyt wrote:
| Variable reward schedules. Like slot machines.
| taurusnoises wrote:
| I'm repeatedly amazed by what makes it to the front page on HN.
| I'm not judging, really I'm not, but this is the first post on a
| blog (so, basically unknown) and is essentially two paragraphs
| asking "why is it so hard to not stare at the internet all day?"
| I'm stoked for the author to be getting some HN love, but what
| about this deserves such an esteemed placement on HN??? It's
| literally the same question every single person is asking and has
| probably posted a thousand times before.
| metadat wrote:
| We like thought provoking discussion.
| [deleted]
| taurusnoises wrote:
| As do I. I'm just genuinely curious how this caught people's
| eye. There's no way through the sea of "content" that these
| two paras could stick out without an artificial boost.
| epalm wrote:
| Something that really helped me with YouTube was installing the
| Unhook browser extension https://unhook.app/
|
| Unhook can remove all 'suggested' videos. The home page will just
| be blank, and when watching a video, there will be no other video
| links on the page. This means I can still use YouTube, but I have
| to search for what I'm looking for. This alone has completely
| solved the endless video merry-go-round sessions.
| ericskiff wrote:
| Thank you! Just installed
| epalm wrote:
| No problem!
|
| The real problem is "The Feed", the never ending infini-
| scroll. I don't think it's a coincidence that usually the
| item you're looking at in The Feed is shorter than the frame,
| so you can always see at least part of the next item, and
| when you scroll, you see part of the next item, and so on.
|
| I need Unhook for Facebook and Reddit.
| Decabytes wrote:
| I waste so much time on the internet because it's easier than
| doing anything else. Binging YouTube videos and peoples post
| mortems gives me a dopamine hit akin to being productive without
| actually putting any work towards my goals. I hate it.
| belkarx wrote:
| The modern internet, with ever-refreshing recommendations, is
| fully intended to be addicting. Possible mitigations: make it
| very inconvenient to repetitively view social media. Examples:
|
| - Create UBlock rules to remove recommendations, only keeping the
| search bar on the youtube home page so if you want to watch a
| video you have to explicitly seek it out
|
| - Redirect an address like reddit.com in /etc/hosts so it is
| inaccessible
|
| - Seek out more productive forms of social media, and set loose
| timers for accessing them so you don't get caught in infinite
| scrolling
|
| - Do not have social media apps on your phone
|
| - Turn off internet when doing productive work if possible. Or
| employ context switches - one browser for fun, another for work.
| [deleted]
| cute_boi wrote:
| Same here :(. I understand the consequence, but still I spend all
| my time watching useless news, reddit & hackernews. IDK why I am
| getting so much addicted on internet... And, I believe this is
| also why I haven't been able to achieve great things in my life.
| mikotodomo wrote:
| I only use it for 1 or 2 hours a day. But this was one of my
| worries about becoming a programmer. Will it cause me to spend
| ten hours a day on the computer?
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| When I was a child, my father decided to convert from Catholicism
| to Evangelical Protestantism. For reference, both sides of my
| family have been Catholic going all the way back for at least 300
| years. So a schism occurred. My dad dragged me to his church
| services and wasted my entire Sunday mornings, and my sisters
| remained in the Catholic faith. My mom told me on the day that I
| was to first go to his church service that if I went with him,
| that she was not my mother anymore. So I went with my dad,
| because even at that age, I didn't do emotional terrorism.
|
| Because this was in the 80s and we only had one television, books
| were my refuge. I was a voracious reader. In standardized
| testing, I went from having a 1st grade reading ability in 1st
| grade to college level by 3rd grade. That tapered off because I
| wasn't a huge fan of reading fiction and I had basically read all
| the interesting non-fiction in the local library by 5th grade.
| Being an 80s kid, I had a lot more personal autonomy than kids
| since and started spending a ton of time outdoors, riding my bike
| to go fishing and playing sports outdoors. When it got really
| cold, I'd write code in GW-Basic, but that was mostly to enter
| competitions to miss school (state science fair for the win).
|
| So then I got to college, and was able to browse the web on NCSA
| Mosaic. And there was just TONS of new things to read. My ADHD
| went full blast reading article after article and my grades
| suffered a bit. Every new day is an attempt to avoid falling down
| the rabbit hole.
| rocky1138 wrote:
| I experience this and go through periods where I get away from it
| all by setting Reddit and other sites to 0.0.0.0 in my hosts
| file.
| mrwnmonm wrote:
| Feeding your identity?
| u2077 wrote:
| Stress for me is an equation.
|
| When # things I need to do > # things I want to do, I become more
| stressed.
|
| Although each task has a weight to it as well. Needs are weighted
| on importance and wants are weighted on desire.
|
| This allows the "stress scale" to tip with many tasks or a few
| larger tasks.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| I'm approaching my 50s, and for me, it's because I am still
| astounded by the achievement of a global, low-cost,
| communications network.
|
| When I was a child, international phone calls were still rare,
| expensive, and unreliable things, and if you left your home
| country, staying in touch mostly involved getting newspapers from
| home (24 hours late), or maybe getting lucky and receiving
| shortwave radio broadcasts like the BBC World Service or Voice of
| America.
|
| First getting internet access seemed amazing, and for me it's
| _still_ amazing. Even when you were first tethered to a copper
| phone line, that line seemed like a pipe to the entire world.
| Cellular internet blew my mind, and satellite technologies like
| Starlink are blowing my mind again.
|
| What an absolute privilege to be living in an age of almost
| universal global communication.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Yes, I remember that early thrill of a chat room or forum where
| I was communicating with someone on the other side of world.
| And not only that, the marginal cost to do so was practically
| free once I already had a cheap second hand computer and a
| dialup connection, and during college my school ran a free
| dialup ISP for times when I was at home.
|
| The shine has worn off though. The fact that you might be
| 10,000 miles away or even typing you comments from the
| International Space Station no longer thrills me. It's all
| become mundane. (Well, if it was the ISS then I suppose that
| would still be pretty awesome)
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| grayscale your phone. Its subtle psychology that keeps you coming
| back
| spark3k wrote:
| When I was a kid my parents had a big physical encyclopaedia set.
| I used to lose myself in those things just as much as I scroll
| through stuff now. Just because in both instances, it's
| "interesting".
|
| But my brain doesn't necessarily discern between "good"
| interesting and "bad" interesting without me trying to work it
| out and guiding it.
|
| Which I normally fail at.
| sedatk wrote:
| Dopamine addiction. Thank you for attending my TED talk.
| abramN wrote:
| I've been around since the birth of the internet, and just have
| been amazed with how much stuff there is to do and see and learn.
| Granted, there's a lot of cesspools, but lots of good wholesome
| stuff too. I mean, think about it - when in the history of
| mankind have we had so much information at our fingertips?
| sidcool wrote:
| I think it's akin to addiction. Internet secretes the pleasure
| chemicals in brain. And it's fun.
| tOUSSia wrote:
| finally a hackernews article I feel qualified to have an opinion
| on...
| dcchambers wrote:
| My completely unprofessional opinion is that almost everyone that
| uses the internet throughout the day has developed some form of
| undiagnosed ADD/ADHD.
|
| The modern internet has broken our slowly evolved brains. We are
| not built to cope with these types of attention destroying
| activities and media. At least 20 years ago you had to sit down
| at a specific place and use a chunky computer. Smartphones have
| made it 1000x worse.
|
| There's no easy solution. I don't think becoming a digital
| luddite is the answer...but we all need to be more intentional
| with our time.
|
| It's not the only answer, but Cal Newport's book Digital
| Minimalism^1 is a good read for anyone that finds themself
| feeling this way.
|
| [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40672036-digital-
| minimal...
| the_only_law wrote:
| I remember years ago being a teenager and having limited access
| to computers and the internet so when I did have them I used my
| time to learn as much as I could.
|
| When I didn't, I got bored, and I picked up books. I remember
| reading books on history, biology, psychology, electronics,
| programming, etc. and learning from them, often just by
| flipping pages and reading passages that looked interesting. In
| fairness, even nowadays, it's not uncommon for me to have a
| dozen Wikipedia tabs opened about random stuff that piqued my
| interest.
|
| Nowadays I can't get bored anymore. My phone is rarely out of
| arms reach and I own every steam game I ever wanted and a
| computer that can handle them.
|
| Recently, I recall trying to work on a side project when I got
| stuck on a design aspect. My power went out later and with all
| my devices dead and I remember being bored to death, pacing
| around the apartment when the solution came to me.
| Crabber wrote:
| Someone introduced me to the same idea a few years ago and it
| really stuck with me, "the only time people in the modern
| world experience boredom is in the 15 seconds before they
| pull out their smartphone".
|
| It's in moments of boredom that you start having deep
| thoughts about the world, start thinking through solutions to
| problems you have, start thinking about changes you can make
| in your life.
|
| I got rid of my smartphone and now the 20 minutes each day on
| the train where I'm "bored" are one of the most valuable
| parts of my day. And my mind feels much fresher after it,
| rather than being crammed with 20 minutes worth of mental
| junk food from the internet.
| v-erne wrote:
| >> I got rid of my smartphone and now the 20 minutes each
| day on the train where I'm "bored" are one of the most
| valuable parts of my day. And my mind feels much fresher
| after it,
|
| Thats interesting - I think I lost ability to be bored even
| if I do not reach for phone immediately. My mind somehow
| switches to a strange mode where I reply random events from
| my life and try to come out with different plays for each
| interaction. And I cannot do this if I feel discomfort -
| its too hot or too cold etc. And I used to think that this
| was boredom but now I think this was because I was
| distracted by environment. The real boredom is something
| that I vaguely remember from my early childho hit`od and I
| cannot get there now - my mind is to full of past
| interactions. The smartphone age can be somehow at fault
| here - maybe my brain thirsts for dompamine hit so much
| that it creates its own mental junk.
| 30944836 wrote:
| >I got rid of my smartphone
|
| Teach me! How do you keep in touch with people on the go?
| This is the only thing that has stopped me from dumping my
| iPhone altogether. I sometimes leave home without it but I
| end up relying on others for coordination, etc -- which
| means I haven't liberated myself so much as fobbed off the
| responsibility to others.
|
| I don't have social media (besides HN), so my main contact
| with people who aren't in my immediate vicinity is through
| sharing photos directly on iMessage and the odd article-
| inspired rant.
| Crabber wrote:
| I just use a PS15 nokia phone (they still make them). It
| calls, texts, and plays snake.
|
| Texting on a T9 keyboard is slow but I've come to
| consider that a feature. Before I had a smartphone I
| would just text everyone, now that texting takes actual
| effort I find myself calling people more, or asking to
| meet up in person. And I find myself forming much deeper
| personal connections with people as a result.
| olah_1 wrote:
| > The average shot length of English language films has
| declined from about 12 seconds in 1930 to about 2.5 seconds
| today
|
| https://www.wired.com/2014/09/cinema-is-evolving/
| 30944836 wrote:
| I think it's much shorter now, that article is almost 8 years
| old. With the ubiquity of digital cinema, I suspect the
| average shot length is 1.x seconds.
| muwtyhg wrote:
| What movies are these? An average shot length of less than
| 2 seconds sounds like it would give me a massive headache.
| 30944836 wrote:
| Here's a list I stole from Quora:
| https://www.quora.com/What-films-have-the-lowest-average-
| sho...
|
| ASL 1.55 - Doomsday (2008) : 4052 shots over 105 minutes
|
| ASL 1.72 - Transporter 3 (2008) : 3360 shots over 96
| minutes
|
| ASL 1.73 - Domino (2005) : 4046 shots over 116 minutes
|
| ASL 1.83 - Quantum of Solace (2008) : 3198 shots over 98
| minutes
|
| ASL 1.84 - Crank: High Voltage (2009) : 2718 shots over
| 84 minutes
|
| ASL 1.92 - Transporter 2 (2005) : 2524 shots over 81
| minutes
|
| ASL 2.01 - Band of Ninja (1967) : 3424 shots over 114
| minutes
|
| ASL 2.01 - Moulin Rouge! (2001) : 3594 shots over 120
| minutes
|
| ASL 2.03 - Gamer (2009) : 2502 shots over 84 minutes
|
| ASL 2.03 - The 6th Day (2000) : 3418 shots over 116
| minutes
|
| ASL 2.08 - Hot Fuzz (2007) : 3304 shots over 115 minutes
|
| ASL 2.10 - Dark City (1998) : 2982 shots over 104 minutes
|
| ASL 2.15 - Armageddon (1998) : 4025 shots over 145
| minutes
|
| ASL 2.17 - The Transporter (2002) : 2420 shots over 87
| minutes
|
| ASL 2.17 - The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) : 2910 shots over
| 105 minutes
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| Not exactly. It's definitely not ADHD if there's no prolonged
| and debilitating impact. Being distracted an hour there and a
| couple there is not like ADHD.
|
| ADHD would be like more like falling in a pit where one
| basically cannot do anything meaningful for days and days
| despite willing to do so (if the motivation is lost, in turn,
| we are talking about depression-like states).
|
| I doubt that many of normal smartphone users get into such pits
| despite they appear distracted and might have an urge to get
| into one's smartphone.
| tobylane wrote:
| Agreed. We may have a lack of practise/comfort with the
| slower pace, but I think it call it ADHD is to understate the
| disorder.
| ketzo wrote:
| ADD/ADHD are very much a spectrum. If someone is having
| trouble focusing for a few hours a day, even if it's not
| literal days on end, I don't think it's crazy to investigate
| ADD/ADHD as the cause/name of the problem.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| Agreed. Especially if slacking for days would quickly lead
| to negative consequences. ADHDs are often distracted until
| the very last moment when the failure becomes imminent --
| and then work to avoid it.
| 30944836 wrote:
| I found Newport's book to be so surface level for anyone with
| even a passing familiarity with the problem that it wasn't
| worth my time.
|
| What really helped me was these two books:
|
| (1) The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu (2) The Age of
| Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshanna Zuboff
|
| and the nextdns.io installed on all my devices. I literally
| blocked Reddit, et al to break the cycle of "I just woke up so
| I'mm scroll until I'm fully awake" and then oops -- an hour
| went by.
|
| The thing that ended up motivating me to change was reinforcing
| for myself the fact that I'm in this mess because very smart
| people have designed systems to exploit me. Fuck that. I'm in
| control of my attention.
| jordanpg wrote:
| See also Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention by Johann
| Hari.
| almost_usual wrote:
| I would not be surprised if we have permanently damaged our
| brain's reward centers.
| AnonC wrote:
| I'd also recommend Nicholas Carr's 2011 book "The Shallows:
| What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains". I read it a long
| time ago and was impressed with its insights on attention (or
| the lack of it) and the usage of the Internet.
| iamhamm wrote:
| I have diagnosed ADHD and I can waste just as much time on my
| amateur radio as the Internet. I guess we get a pass due to the
| technical neediness, but I spent 3 hours yesterday listening to
| static trying to hear a specific station...
| agumonkey wrote:
| There were a few points in my life where:
|
| - I forgot how time could pass outside of internet. Days were
| flying in-house.. yet everytime I walked to anything 5mi away..
| suddenly I felt like I lived a whole life yet only 1 hour had
| passed.
|
| - It reached a point where when my ISP was failing, seeing the
| internet box being solidly offline dilated time in the blink of
| an eye. I had a giant "oh god yes." screamed by my brain
| because I felt free.. no more F5/refresh of stuff that only
| satisfied me shallowly and forbid mind wandering or in-depth
| activities. Stunning effect an electronic pipe..
| senectus1 wrote:
| information/stimulation addiction is a thing....
| vorpalhex wrote:
| No, it's not. This "X is addictive" where X is
| porn/videogames/making popcorn view is based on a flawed
| understanding of brain circuitry.
| ChrisFoster wrote:
| ADHD is a developmental condition which is highly genetic and
| relates to neurotransmitter brain chemistry (Dopamine /
| Norepinephrine). People with ADHD have it their whole life,
| it's not something you can develop in adulthood. However,
| people can be (commonly are) diagnosed in adulthood, especially
| for the inattentive subtype which has less outward symptoms.
|
| What _can_ change or develop over time is the life
| circumstances that a person with ADHD finds themselves in.
| Circumstance can make the difference between ADHD being a
| disorder with significant impairments vs a joyful and creative
| existence.
|
| Situations which demand executive function, like putting down
| that mobile phone or closing youtube in favor of doing
| something more productive are _much_ harder for people with
| ADHD. The market built by the tech industry to transact human
| attention for profit certainly hasn 't helped here.
|
| Here's a good brief overview of ADHD:
| https://www.adhdbitesize.com/post/understand-what-adhd-is-re...
|
| Or a bite-size youtube version
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMWtGozn5jU
|
| An online ADHD test which is relatable and seems fairly
| accurate: https://totallyadd.com/do-i-have-add/
| alisonkisk wrote:
| is it ADD or is it just a common pattern of human nature?
|
| Is eating sugar when it is offered a disease, or an environment
| that is toxic to instincts that usee to suit us well?
| dcchambers wrote:
| > Is eating sugar when it is offered a disease
|
| It's not, but it will lead to some (obesity, diabetes, heart
| disease, etc).
|
| In the same way, consuming infinite amounts of quick-hitting
| and dopamine-inducing social media is not a disease, but it
| can damage our brains and lead to "disease" in the same way
| that sugar damages the rest of our body.
|
| Again, I'm not a doctor and I have no facts/evidence to
| share. Just my own thoughts on how things are going.
| brimble wrote:
| I'm reminded of Scott Alexanders musing re: whether someone
| "has ADD" if they have trouble focusing on things that are
| simply boring as fuck, like looking at spreadsheets (or
| code...) all day every day, week, after week, after week.
|
| But then if all their peers are in fact outperforming them,
| because they're _already_ all self-medicating for ADD
| symptoms, or have a prescription for ADD meds, so they can
| focus on something that _most_ ordinary people would have
| trouble focusing on... what then?
|
| What's normal in a work environment that's fundamentally and
| extremely _not normal_?
| makeworld wrote:
| Got a link to that post?
| cipheredStones wrote:
| Not the GP, but it's
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks-
| much-mo...
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Given enough time abnormal becomes normal and everyone who
| couldn't fit in is selected out. Several thousand years ago
| agricultural societies were abnormal, but they allowed high
| population densities and were better at war so they
| dominated (except on the steppe).
|
| When Henry Ford popularized the assembly line he had
| extremely high employee turnover. People didn't like
| working that way.
| dbetteridge wrote:
| The spice is life...
| elihu wrote:
| I think the last couple years have been especially bad. We've
| had a pandemic that isn't 100% over that removed a lot of the
| non-Internet interactions from most people's lives, we have a
| major land war in Europe now that could turn into a
| civilization-ending nuclear war at the drop of a hat, we had a
| contentious election in the U.S. about a year and a half ago
| that culminated in the Capital being ransacked, we've had
| ongoing droughts, wildfires, and heat waves that will probably
| just keep getting worse, we have supply chain disruptions, and
| so on.
|
| It's really no wonder people are paying attention to the
| Internet, because at any moment some new calamity will be upon
| us. (It was kind of also true for me during the Trump
| presidency: I felt compelled to check the political news
| multiple times a day as if somehow my personal supervision and
| online comments would keep Trump from doing anything too
| crazy.) I've started to wonder if I'm exhibiting ADD-like
| symptoms, and I'm also wondering if it's not just me, that it's
| happening to most people at the same time.
|
| Maybe things will go a little bit back to normal as in-person
| social interaction ramps back up. (I'm in the Portland area.
| Here, Covid restrictions are basically over but a lot of people
| are still operating in a pandemic mode. We've just now been
| allowed to work from our cubicles again, and only a couple of
| my coworkers actually do it on kind of a once-a-week cadence.)
| I don't think things are going back to anything like what I'd
| like to think of as normal, though. The world's just a really
| turbulent place right now.
| pde3 wrote:
| Split this into two questions:
|
| (1) Why do we procrastinate? (2) What is it about various
| Internet platforms and patterns that makes them so addictive, and
| good for procrastination?
|
| For me, (1) turned out to be about not having a clear picture of
| what exactly I needed to do next for my goals, and sometimes not
| having enough social reinforcement and accountability for the
| things I'm working on; (2) there are lots of tricks and accidents
| that have made modern platforms really addictive, but one of the
| big ones is uncertain reward. I reload all sorts of things hoping
| for something new and interesting. Noticing that pattern is the
| first step to damping it.
| smeej wrote:
| I had to reach a point where I admitted to myself that, as much
| as I may wish I were a person who could handle having a
| smartphone in my pocket, I'm not. If I have one there, it will
| suck up time I don't want to give it. I tried putting all kinds
| of guides in place until I just...got a flip phone that, yeah,
| can run Android apps, but absolutely sucks to use. It doesn't
| have a touch screen, so I have to navigate with a D pad and type
| with T9. It's awful.
|
| That's paired with a color eInk device that can also run Android
| apps. It's wonderful for reading things that have discrete pages
| (ebooks), but awful for anything that moves or requires
| scrolling.
|
| My personal computer sucks too. This happened totally by
| accident, but I wound up with a machine that won't sleep
| properly, so I have to shut the thing all the way down every time
| I'm done using it. It's a pain to use.
|
| When I reached the point where I actually wanted to change, I had
| to make it suck to do the things I used to enjoy. I kind of envy
| the people who can add smartphones to their lives and have their
| lives get better. Mine got worse.
|
| But at least now, when I'm looking at some free time, I don't
| want to pull out my phone (I hate using my phone), I might want
| to read an ebook, and I don't want to pull out my computer. I
| wish it didn't come to this, but at least it works.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| I am much the same way. I use more of a half measure than you,
| which is to physically remove the phone from my proximity as
| much as possible unless I'm intentionally trying to zone out.
| So if I'm working, the phone is in another room on silent. When
| I'm done with work, I do a hard "screens off" time for family
| time from 6-9 or so. That, combined with deleting fb/ig and
| logging out of twitter (still sometimes useful for news so I
| haven't deleted it), has helped me exercise more control over
| my habits versus just sheer willpower.
| smeej wrote:
| I think you're in that category of people whose discipline I
| envy/admire! Half measures are so much better at mitigating
| the downsides of any tradeoff. I totally recommend them for
| anyone who can use them and make them work!
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| nolist_policy wrote:
| What phone do you have and can it run osmand? There aren't many
| android flip phones...
| Crabber wrote:
| I agree completely, the only reliable way to quit using a
| smartphone is to stop carrying one.
|
| I don't know why we apply such different thinking to digital
| addictions than physical ones.
|
| You would never tell someone who was trying to quit smoking
| "just carry a pack of cigarettes and a lighter everywhere but
| don't use them".
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Because we still need certain utilities on our phone, like
| Maps and Music and Search and Camera. Those aren't the
| problems--we still want those things, which are not addictive
| and fruitful, but we want less of things which are addictive
| and fruitless, like Twitter and Reddit. Cigarettes have no
| such essential and positive utility.
| smeej wrote:
| That's why I like this phone that _can_ do those things,
| but I really have to be sure I want to do them.
|
| It's surprising how often I actually don't, though. Rarely
| am I going anywhere I actually don't know how to go. Rarely
| do I actually _need_ to take a photo of something (though
| to be fair, I 've never really been into photography; this
| would be different for people who are). I prefer quiet to
| music (although again, admittedly, I know I'm not the norm
| here). And not being able to search the answer to any old
| thing whenever I want? Turns out I forget most of those
| things by the time I get to a computer, so I guess they
| weren't terribly important. I make more of a point of
| trying to learn things now.
|
| I don't distract myself as much as I used to. I feel like
| I'm actually more present when I'm present because I don't
| have anywhere else to be.
|
| YMMV, but there's no perfect solution. Everything has
| tradeoffs. You just have to choose which set you care about
| most.
| Crabber wrote:
| >though to be fair, I've never really been into
| photography; this would be different for people who are
|
| Anyone who is seriously into photography will be carrying
| a proper camera. The idea of professional photographers
| using smartphone cameras is just pure marketing bullshit
| IMO. Smartphone cameras are severely limited by physics
| and always will be.
|
| As someone who used to be heavily into photography, my
| smartphone may as well have not even had a camera because
| if I wanted to go out and take pictures I would bring my
| DSLR.
| Crabber wrote:
| >Because we still need certain utilities on our phone
|
| You don't "need" any of those things, humans got on with
| life just fine without them for 100,000s of years,
| smartphones have only existed for the last 15.
|
| >Maps
|
| Look it up on a computer before you go, or ask someone on
| the street for directions. The only "benefit" having maps
| on a phone gives you is that you can completely avoid
| talking to people and just stare down at a screen instead.
|
| >Music
|
| MP3 players still exist. Or just ditch the music and be
| present in the moment.
|
| >Search
|
| I have never spontaneously needed to search something that
| couldn't wait 30 minutes until I was back at a computer.
|
| >Camera
|
| If you're going somewhere you know you're going to want to
| take pictures then take a proper camera. Otherwise you
| probably don't need one. I can't think of a single instance
| in the past 2 years where I needed to take a picture of
| something that actually mattered without knowing
| beforehand.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| Randomly reinforced dopamine hits.
|
| Same reason some people play slot machines all day.
| dgunay wrote:
| For me it feels like at some point, I stopped feeling like I
| could throw myself into hobbies that require real engagement.
| Long video games, deep dive coding, instrument practice sessions,
| etc.
|
| Once I got a job, partner, and pets, at any moment something can
| demand my attention. Enough times of having to abandon a
| multiplayer game, break concentration, break my flow, and at some
| point I just started choosing to do things that have zero
| commitment. I still play games, but only ones that I feel I can
| drop at a moment's notice and don't require practice. Music is a
| faint echo of the presence it used to be in my life. The only
| thing I still get to do every single day is code, because I have
| to do it in order to live.
|
| I also feel the loss of the "third spaces" in my life. It used to
| be a few select hangout spots with my friends, then it was the
| rest of the college campus. I've lived in a car dependent
| hellscape my entire life and it only got worse when I moved to
| the US capital of suburban sprawl for work. None of my friends
| live within ten miles of me anymore.
| annadane wrote:
| I think the problem is I don't waste enough time on the internet
| (where 'waste' is a loaded word) - there's so much on there and
| yet I'm relegated to the same 5 or 10 pages I always go to
| 65 wrote:
| If you live in the boring suburbs where you have to drive
| everywhere to do things and see people, then yeah there's
| basically nothing to do except watch television and browse the
| internet.
|
| My general theory of existence is that your environment makes up
| a huge portion of your overall wellbeing. Boredom, happiness,
| depression, anxiety - it all comes from your environment.
|
| If you set your life up in such a way that the only thing to do
| is browse the internet, then yeah... you're going to waste a lot
| of time on the internet. Trying to block the sites, to resist the
| temptation, etc. is not going to work if there's nothing else to
| fill your time with.
| rakejake wrote:
| +1. I came to the same conclusion. The pandemic sped up the
| timeline of my mental processes and illustrated all the holes
| in my model of the world. That way, I am glad this lockdown
| happened before I made any life-altering and hard-to-reverse
| decisions.
| davesque wrote:
| This comment sums up what I was trying to say in another
| comment quite nicely, except in a more direct and practical
| way. Sometimes, I feel like this boring dystopia you describe
| is found in so many places as to seem inescapable. It's
| something intrinsic to modern life. Every building looks the
| same. Every road looks the same. Everyone's clothes and
| haircuts look the same. Everyone has the same attitude. Why? As
| Steve Ballmer would say, "Corporations, corporations,
| corporations, corporations." What do we get when the entire
| world, both physically and mentally, is shaped by the same
| style of hierarchy whose sole purpose is to extract human
| effort from the population for cash while ignoring the long
| term cost?
| leodriesch wrote:
| I've been thinking about this for some time, since so many people
| (including me) seem to struggle with this, even while being
| completely aware of our behavior.
|
| I think legislation should force social networks to:
|
| - have a reverse chronological timeline for your network
|
| - optionally disable any algorithmic recommendations
|
| Social Media companies are mostly unrestricted in the current
| legislation system while they are trying their hardest to
| maximize user engagement.
|
| Just like the use of certain drugs this something some people
| can't responsively deal with themselves, hence it should be
| regulated.
|
| And probably my idea is not very fleshed out, but I think
| something has to be done, and it has to come from states as the
| companies themselves can't be held responsible.
| greggman3 wrote:
| I find myself wasting too much time on the internet and I don't
| spend any of it on social media. I waste most of it on HN.
| ngamboa wrote:
| escapedmoose wrote:
| I used to spend an embarrassing amount of time on the social
| media, not really enjoying myself. I tried taking breaks for a
| month or so at a time, but would get sucked right back in because
| of some dumb meme or hype train or something.
|
| Then after a while something snapped. I realized everything I saw
| online was extremely boring and shallow, and I had no desire to
| see it. I didn't log out of any of my socials, and I still have
| the apps installed, I just have 0 desire to use them. Same goes
| for news sites and blogs (I used to read an article or two a day
| on at least a dozen sites). I don't know what in my brain
| changed, but I'm glad it did because now I get about 4 hours of
| every day back.
|
| Most of what's online is just so pointless, but even worse, it's
| not very enjoyable, and is often anxiety-inducing. I'd rather
| literally stare at the ceiling and just let my mind wander.
| Hacker News is the last site I still frequent, but even this has
| seemed extremely dull lately.
| swah wrote:
| Do you still have interest in other things like reading, movies
| or exercising? Or its a general dullness?
| bloaf wrote:
| Why do you feel like not being productive all the time is a moral
| failing?
| kataklasm wrote:
| For me at least I feel like there's a difference between being
| unproductive due to doomscrolling $socialMedia and being
| unproductive due to a more 'traditional' way of "wasting" (as
| in not being productive) time. Spending time on a grassfield in
| the sun is just as unproductive as doomscrolling, yet it feels
| a whole lot different. One feels abusive and abrasive to the
| soul; the other is relaxing and soothing. All while being
| unproductive. There may be a lot more layers to this
| productivity conundrum than being just a productivity boolean.
| LigmaYC wrote:
| Do you not feel bad when wasting time? Especially if you're
| just refreshing youtube and instagram, as the blog states.
| hintymad wrote:
| The cure does not come from discipline but from finding things
| that are more fun to do.
|
| I'd rather read a book or tinker with a program instead of
| wasting time on the internet, but somehow my phone alone still
| recorded at least more than three hours of use and usually
| sometimes more than four. Reflecting upon this, I identified two
| reasons for such irrational behavior. First, I was afraid of
| getting carried away from reading a book, while checking timeline
| of twitter seems non-committing. Second, this little dose of
| dopamine from reading a short update from the internet seems
| really addictive.
|
| Luckily, I find a treatment that seems working:
|
| 1. I realize that reading a book or a long article is not as
| addictive as before, for whatever reason. In addition, I use a
| timer to remind myself just in case.
|
| 2. I surround myself with many types of books, videos, articles,
| magazines, and some exercise routines and equipment. Whenever I
| have an urge to take a break, I first ask myself if I really need
| to get distracted. It's amazing how awareness itself can reduce
| the urge to check updates from the internet. If I do want to take
| a break, I pick the book/video/article/exercise that's most
| appealing at the moment. This little trick works quite well. My
| phone usage has been consistently below 2 hours, with nearly half
| of them coming from reading Kindle and Apple Books. I finished
| multiple books in the past few months, including tombs like
| Programming Rust, and Isaacson's Leonardo Da Vinci.
|
| I wish I could spend even less time on social media, but at least
| I can see concrete improvement now.
| holyknight wrote:
| Everything on the internet is made to be as addictable as
| possible. Anyways i don't "love" social media, but I just want to
| have free time to spare, but between my job and my wife only
| Friday nights are the only time i can really enjoy and i mostly
| don't enjoy it as much because I'm exhausted from the week and I
| just want to sleep. I use social media in between my daily life
| as a guilty pleasure to feel free to waste some time in some
| mindless shit without having to plan anything.
| DanHulton wrote:
| I'm surprised nobody's mentioned ADHD yet. It's not clear-cut or
| anything, but I recently just went through diagnosis and testing
| and mentioned this behavior. For me, I tend to resort to this
| behavior when I can't summon the focus to work on things I know I
| SHOULD be doing, so I end up scrolling for hours instead, because
| there's so much less inertia to overcome there.
|
| It may be worth talking with your family doctor about. If so,
| there's medication and/or targeted coaching that can help
| significantly.
| devmor wrote:
| I am addicted to absorbing information. Always have been. I had
| textbooks about random subjects as a kid (my favorite was a
| geology book mainly on Groundwater), and my most used computer
| program before my family got internet access was an interactive
| encyclopedia.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| I'm curious, do you feel the motives for your voracious
| information digest are positive or negative? By that I mean, do
| you feel you're making up for something by wanting to learn as
| much as you can about different subjects? perhaps some kind of
| insecurity? Or is it just good old curiosity about the world
| and trying to be less ignorant each passing day?
| grappler wrote:
| I set a points threshold on what hacker news stories I see. This
| article broke through that threshold even though it is not worth
| my time, so the thing I'm going to do immediately after posting
| this comment is raise the threshold some more.
|
| That's the action that should always follow, any time something
| gets through the filter. Make the filter more restrictive. Over
| time, that should clear out the low value things.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what's your threshold?
| goldenshale wrote:
| I wonder if this is why the internet hasn't led to the dramatic
| increase in productivity that one would have predicted a global
| communications network would have produced? Instead we are
| turning ourselves into mice with a dopamine feed on tap.
|
| Maybe we need to find ways to value creation far more than
| consumption. Missing new and cool ideas is peanuts in comparison
| to creating something from nothing, whether that be art,
| technology, or friendship.
| trophycase wrote:
| Addiction/Coping Mechanism
| swayvil wrote:
| Sometimes I have intelligent conversations about stuff that
| matters to me. I really like that.
|
| Admittedly, it can be like sifting a public beach for pennies.
|
| And 99.999% of the time I end up talking to people who can't see
| a paving brick if it's wedged under their eyelid.
|
| But I suspect that a really eloquent style can penetrate even the
| thickest. Well, I suspect it less lately.
|
| And I just like talking to people.
| fleddr wrote:
| When you're past the denial stage, you're already halfway there.
| Glass half full and such.
|
| From the blog it is clear that the real problem is a lack of a
| meaningful physical/social life, as the person indicates they
| have no friends, hobbies, etc.
|
| Therefore, none of the tips on cutting down screen time are
| likely to address the fundamental issue. If you free up time this
| way but have no better purpose for this time, you still end up in
| the same spot.
|
| So you need to rebuild your physical/social life and I have a
| solution at hand: volunteer work.
|
| An animal shelter is incredibly fun and rewarding work. Another
| thing I tried is to help out the elderly. Where I live you can
| volunteer to "walk" them. You can chose the commitment in hours
| per week. These people are very old, typically lonely, and
| immobile. So I go outside with them, push the wheelchair whilst
| chatting with them.
|
| I figured this would actually kind of suck, a job nobody wants to
| do. I was totally wrong, it's awesome. They are so incredibly
| grateful and the chats are tons of fun. They're full of stories.
| In case you're socially awkward (I personally am not), this is a
| safe way to practice just making casual conversation.
|
| The great thing about volunteer work is that you will be
| universally accepted and LOVED, there's no anxiety of being
| rejected like you might have in making new friends.
|
| The reward is infinite. I'm a stoic but truly there is nothing in
| this world more rich and rewarding than the response you get from
| helping others. You can see it in their eyes. This tiny
| commitment from your side means the world to them. A beacon of
| light in darkness.
|
| Your work changes lives and you get to feel good about yourself.
| Your time has meaning and you have meaning. Volunteer work is
| also a great proxy to get to know the community, make new
| friends, etc.
|
| Do it. Look it up in the local directory and just try it.
| rossjudson wrote:
| During the pandemic I realized that I love power outages, and we
| should have more of them. Make them long enough that all the
| phone batteries run out.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I waste time on the internet because I don't have enough
| contiguous blocks of time to do anything productive or
| interesting outside of work (which is boring and repetitive and
| not automatable). I'm hoping to retire early so I can spend time
| on better things.
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