[HN Gopher] My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment o...
___________________________________________________________________
My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention
span
Author : llui85
Score : 251 points
Date : 2022-06-25 12:45 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (idratherbewriting.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (idratherbewriting.com)
| yandrypozo wrote:
| Also stop reading Hacker News :)
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Since I haven't been commuting or going many places, my phone
| mostly sits idle for days, unused. I watch my wife and daughter
| constantly in front of theirs and I don't understand. I hate
| using those little screens with terrible input and fundamentally
| boring distracting apps.
|
| The problem is though, I'm addicted to my computer. I'm not
| actually sure it's that much better.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Same here. I don't understand why someone would willingly use a
| 6" screen when they have a glorious 24" and actual input
| devices available.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Because it's easier to use a 6" screen when you're laying on
| the couch or in bed.
| kkfx wrote:
| It's much better just because your desktop it's yours. Even if
| it run Windows or OSX it's still give you less strict cage,
| surveil you less and give you more options.
|
| Unfortunately even if you run a FLOSS OS you run on crapload of
| proprietary fw down to the CPU but again, you have some ability
| to move and act, on a mobile you are just free to do what the
| OEM decide you are allowed to, with it's right to change policy
| as it wish.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| I love the form factor and input for reading fiction. Probably
| 90% of my phone screen time is that, which adds up to a
| significant time each week.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Schedule a time where everyone agrees to not use screens.
| Dinner is a good starting point but ultimately, whatever works.
|
| Practice conversing and talking.
|
| Socialising is a muscle, and smartphones (and other devices)
| are a crutch that lets us avoid using that muscle.
| downut wrote:
| We try hard to eat at the table together for all dinners and
| weekend breakfasts. Screens are strictly prohibited, even for
| guests. Some guests... hahaha, think this is quite the
| sacrifice. So what? My daughter has brought the convention to
| her group house.
|
| When we eat out we try to do the same but because of the damn
| menus, translation app, etc. the screens still come out. We
| still are usually doing much better than the other tables in
| the restaurants. Helps to turn the devil device face down.
|
| We think it is just so sad to see people out on a date, or
| even a clearly married older pair, each staring at their
| (own) screens.
| thih9 wrote:
| What about people who use smartphones for socialising?
|
| Staying in touch with friends, finding new interesting
| people, browsing local events, deciding where to meet, etc.
| skydhash wrote:
| Browsing through my distractions websites- HN, Twitter,
| Reddit, Dilbert - only take me about 15 minutes to note
| everything interesting. I do that thrice a day, and it's
| more than enough.
| Swizec wrote:
| With the kind of friends who won't leave you alone for 2
| hours to focus on something important, who needs enemies?
| arkitaip wrote:
| Boards games and card games are great too.
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| It is the golden age of board gaming and it couldnt have
| come at a more crucial time.
| mrfusion wrote:
| What are some good ones that work for common people?
| ornornor wrote:
| Carcassonne, saboteur, splendor.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Board games fall into a few categories:
| https://www.gearhungry.com/types-of-board-games/
|
| Then within those categories you have easier and harder
| games (and better made or less better).
|
| Try a sampler platter and see what works and is fun.
|
| Some specific suggestions:
|
| Love letter, Takanoko, munchkin, elder sign.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I do wonder how much web design contributes to the apparent
| epidemic of attention difficulties.
|
| There is very often (even some in the article) visual noise in or
| around the text. Ads are designed to draw attention to
| themselves, and ignoring them wears on your cognitive resources.
|
| Sometimes the text is "enhanced" to fight back against the
| surrounding noise by adding images or color or highlighting
| portions of the text or any number of tricks. That just makes the
| visual noise worse, and further adds to the habit of skimming.
|
| It's like talking in a bar. The noisier it gets, the more the
| communication turns into shouting short simple sentences, further
| adding to the noise level, further imposing restrictions on
| what's able to be communicated.
| alexalx666 wrote:
| What's scary is that having a clean distraction free layout
| becomes an exception on the web. Most articles "regular" ppl
| read can probably only be read via reader layout in safari
| jaqalopes wrote:
| So glad to see I'm not the only one taking drastic action after
| falling into the phone/attention trap.
|
| This won't work for everyone, but maybe 6 months ago I got a
| phone safe (this kind of thing: <https://shorturl.at/drzMT>, I
| refer to it as the "phone jail"), which I leave my phone in from
| bedtime every night to ~4pm the next day. And I leave the whole
| rig on my bedroom shelf while I go to work at the
| library/cafe/kitchen table.
|
| There are obvious drawbacks to this that I don't think most
| people would accept (especially regarding being reachable or
| having a way to place emergency calls). But it's been invaluable
| for me to make the mental space I need to finish my manuscript.
| Plus you _can_ still use the phone through the holes in the cover
| if you need to, it 's just really annoying and not very portable.
|
| In the long run, I'd like to become a fliphone guy like some
| other commenters here, but I genuinely do get a lot of value from
| having a smartphone. I just need to get away from it during
| working hours.
| bombcar wrote:
| Getting an actual honest-to-goodness _landline_ isn 't terribly
| expensive, and works as a phone for emergencies.
|
| Most people wasting time on smartphones would put it down
| almost immediately if it had no internet access.
| TheFreim wrote:
| I have a landline in my home, it's great. Can't get texts so
| people have to call, they can leave a message if it's urgent.
| I can leave my phone off as long as I want and still be
| contacted when I'm at home.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, and if you want to go the "hacker route" you can
| terminate the landline in a cobbled-together Asterix PBX
| for even more fun.
|
| You could use a VOIP number but then it would go down when
| the Internet goes down.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Increasingly, "landlines" are VOIP with legacy
| connections.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, the trick sometimes is ask for "burglar alarm" or
| "actual two-wire" or similar so they give you a real pair
| to the CO.
| em500 wrote:
| You don't a landline. As you mention yourself it's very hard
| to waste much time on a mobile phone with no internet access.
| OTOH, a laptop with internet can be as just much of a
| timesink as a smartphone.
|
| The internet, it's a hell of a drug. Can't live with it,
| can't live without it.
| TheFreim wrote:
| > especially regarding being reachable or having a way to place
| emergency calls
|
| I love being unreachable, it's one of the reasons I'll often
| turn my phone off during the work day or leave it at home. This
| means I won't have a phone to make emergency calls, but I'm not
| really bothered by that (it's how I lived over half my life).
| losteric wrote:
| I did something similar for a while, but I still found myself
| distracted when the phone was out of the case. I ultimately opt
| to simply make the phone less addictive.
|
| On Android, I used Digital Wellness to monitor how I was
| spending time. Then I uninstalled all the timewasting dopamine-
| trap apps, set limits on Firefox (10min day), disabled
| vibration/sound notifications except for phone calls, removed
| all app icons from the home screen, and set a complex unlock
| passcode (disabled face unlock). I also started using the phone
| for "harder" things, like writing long emails.
|
| At this point, my ADHD brain just sees the phone as a tool...
| because that's all it is.
|
| Next step is figuring out how to apply the same lessons to my
| laptop.
| danr4 wrote:
| Related: Anyone using Blinkist? How is it?
| thenerdhead wrote:
| The summaries are mediocre at best. If you are willing to have
| someone you don't know summarize a book for you, then it's
| good. There's plenty of people posting book summaries online
| that are a bit more reputable. I personally think it's filling
| the exact niche of people not spending more time being analog
| to find out for themselves by reading and redeveloping their
| attention.
| alexalx666 wrote:
| jacquesm wrote:
| The addictive nature of those devices is exactly why I don't have
| one, I'll end up with even less time in my life and that's pretty
| much the only currency you never get more of. It's bad enough
| with just a desktop/laptop.
|
| I just stuck to my Nokia 'dumbphone' while it still worked and
| after the last of the networks that it used went dark I switched
| to the N800, it's not perfect (technically a smartphone, it runs
| KaiOS), but it still has buttons and I refuse to go online with
| it (you can't do much on that silly screen anyway). In a pinch it
| will serve as a mobile hotspot.
| sarang23592 wrote:
| This article was describing more and more about myself. In
| between the article I drifted off to another site without even
| realising. I am going to do my digital detox right away...after I
| browse through my youtube feed. I need help :(
| jmfldn wrote:
| I use focus mode on my Android phone all the time. Only have
| phone, messages (not whats app) and a few things I need for work.
| Basically turns it into a dumb phone. I do deactivate it
| sometimes and sneak a peak at a website but it seems (amongst my
| friend and colleagues at least) that noone is using these
| features nearly enough.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| djvdq wrote:
| Oh, it's what I started to think about today. That I use my phone
| way too much and I have to fight it. Unfortunately, fight it
| again, because a few months ago I tried, it worked for a few
| weeks and then was back again even bigger :(
|
| I want to read some book and play some computer games. Neither is
| working for me because of some "problems"(?). In case of books I
| was aware that the phone is the problem. But in case of games I
| was pretty sure that I'm just "too old". But more and more I
| think about it, the phone is again the cause of this.
| k__ wrote:
| I'm trying to recalibrate my dopamine receptors for a few weeks
| to no avail.
|
| Maybe, it's not the right month. Too hot to do anything
| remotely complex.
| the_only_human wrote:
| it took your mind 2 million years to develop those receptors.
| good luck
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| I also think that we use our phones as a way of coping with how
| shitty our quality of life is in the modern world. Many people,
| including myself, are so stressed and exhausted from modern
| life that I think being able to zone out on my phone is a gift
| in some ways.
|
| Yes phones are designed to be addictive in a negative way, but
| I think we should also recognize they are a safety blanket we
| can take anywhere with us that costs almost nothing to use as
| much as we need. We should partially put the blame on the
| society around us that makes us need thar safety blanket so
| badly.
| hackernewds wrote:
| You could try to establish Systems (instead of pure
| motivation).
|
| * Disable unnecessary notifications * Get an app like Daywise
| to batch notifications that are necessary but not timely. * Use
| Digital Well-being on Android or Action dash to set timer on
| your apps (owned by a marketing company though) * Track streaks
| of days where your usage is < x hours using a Habit tracker
| such as Habits
| helloworld11 wrote:
| One thing I do that makes my cell phone work well for exactly the
| opposite isto install en ebook reader app in it and use it to
| read more books than I previously did, on the go, whenever I have
| spare time. Some people can't handle this with their eyes,
| granted, but in my case it's never been a problem so far.
|
| Also, I don't have any chat apps in my phone except whatsapp.
| Definitely no facebook app and even instagram, though present, is
| completely silenced. I also silence all notifications in general
| except phone calls.
|
| All together, these things have helped keep the phone handy
| without it turning my brain to mush.
| g9yuayon wrote:
| I forgot who, but someone influential said more than 10 years ago
| that browsing internet is like having intellectual squirt, which
| keeps us wanting more. I guess a phone with
| Instagram/TikTok/Twitter just make it worse. My counter
| measurement is surrounding myself with all kinds of books and
| articles and courses. Whenever I have the urge to go to Twitter,
| for instance, I'd ask myself why. Usually being aware of the urge
| is enough for me to stop the urge. Otherwise, I'd pick a reading
| at the moment. If I really worry that I may spend too much time
| reading instead of going back to work, I'd take a Duolingo class,
| which takes no more than 5 minutes.
| codemonkey-zeta wrote:
| The author must have gone to P-town in the winter. I imagine
| going there in the summer to regain focus wouldn't pan out so
| well...
| agumonkey wrote:
| Not to go against, it's not smartphones, it's free high speed
| internet ..
|
| I have the same issue at home with a laptop. compulsive F5,
| serial alt-tabber ... nature wasn't ready for this amount of thin
| stimuli and shallow emotional hooks.
| spookybones wrote:
| I agree with most of the points in this article and try to
| practice them, but I wish the author would have waited before
| offering his take. There are too many bloggers who read a self-
| help book or two, get really energized, and then, before testing
| the long-term results, suggest their readers to follow suit.
| Often, a few entries later, the blogger will then modify their
| take, which gives them more content for the blog, but seems like
| a waste of the reader's time.
| frereubu wrote:
| There are some valid insights in this piece, but just a note of
| caution about the book by Johann Hari that he cites a lot. This
| Twitter thread unpicks a lot of issues with that book:
| https://twitter.com/DrMatthewSweet/status/147912591089697587...
| user_7832 wrote:
| Thank you for that Twitter thread. Unfortunately quite a lot of
| books end up with criticisms that feel like it undermines a lot
| - Gun, germs and steel and Why we sleep both come to mind as
| having inaccurate or misleading information.
| frereubu wrote:
| Yes, Why We Sleep seems to have been particularly egregious.
| walrus01 wrote:
| The best thing you can do is FULLY TURN OFF notifications from
| any social media app (twitter, facebook, instagram, etc).
|
| Anything that would result in a requirement to swipe down from
| the top of the screen on android and look at a notification/popup
| and either slide it away to dismiss it or click on it.
|
| It's easy to do in android or ios.
|
| You should only see content when you specifically choose to open
| the app.
|
| This is by no means a complete solution but goes a long way to
| reducing the compulsion to check things every 5 minutes.
| hackmiester wrote:
| It improves battery life too.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Or uninstall the apps and use a browser instead.
| kristianc wrote:
| Although the attention span myth is one of those things that is
| taken to be almost idiomatic, there's actually very little
| empirical evidence for it.
|
| There's no such thing as an 'average' attention span, and even
| for those individual tasks it would be very much context
| dependent (where I'm sitting, what I'm doing at the time, my
| general opinion of the author, the mood I'm in).
|
| It's a nice story, and it will invariably generate a nice stream
| of anecdata in a comments section like this, but there's very
| little evidence for it at all.
| MrYellowP wrote:
| There's no such thing as an average. Dividing sums isn't real.
|
| We can't even measure what attracts the attention of people. We
| can't track their eyes. We haven't been improving our
| techniques for catching someones attention and focus for the
| last decades+. We don't try to keep people hooked to our
| websites by making sure they stay engaged. FarmVille is a only
| a myth, too. "Endless scrolling" doesn't actually exist either.
|
| Chatbots on websites, which try to engage you in a conversation
| within seconds of inactivity, don't actually do so to keep your
| attention on the site.
|
| Man ...
|
| If all your understanding is based solely on data other people
| have gathered, then you not only are completely unaware of all
| the potential data that _hasn 't been gathered yet_, you also
| have only very little understanding of pretty much anything out
| there.
| dumpsterlid wrote:
| This is an extremely crucial point. Though I do think social
| media apps are designed to be addictive in a negative way, the
| narrative that they are destroying our attention spans has
| absolutely no backing in science and yet it is taken almost as
| common sense.
| jmt_ wrote:
| Totally agree with both of you. I don't see this issue in
| terms of "attention span" per se, rather we now have an ever-
| present device that most often contains software engineered
| to grab as much of our attention as it possibly can. I can't
| think of anything similar past generations had that was close
| to this in terms of magnitude and accessibility. We all know
| the rat in a box will tap the dopamine button as many times
| as it can and now, unprecedentedly, we carry that button in
| our pocket every day.
| darkerside wrote:
| I will say that perhaps the reason the author couldn't get into
| those authors is not that they lost the ability to read longer
| material, but that they have somehow matured or evolved to a
| point where a certain type of book that used to be entertaining
| just isn't anymore. And that's ok. At some point, you've tapped a
| book, TV series, or other similar content for all you're going to
| get. It starts to get formulaic, and it's fine to move on.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| Power your phone off and don't install any garbage apps. Don't do
| social media on your mobile phone either. This is really just
| about will power.
| codemonkey-zeta wrote:
| > When I pulled up at a stoplight waiting for the light to
| change, I would instinctively reached for my phone (mounted on my
| dash) to check my email (personal + work), check ESPN, look up
| something on Amazon, etc. While pumping gas in the car, I'd whip
| out my phone while waiting. Stuck in line somewhere? Time for my
| phone. Waiting in an elevator? The phone. Riding the train? The
| phone. Going to the bathroom? Make sure to bring the phone!
| Eating breakfast? The phone. Any spare or idle moment? The phone
|
| This describes every single person I know under the age of 25,
| and I'm in that demographic. It must be the single greatest
| public health experiment of all time.
|
| The crazy part is, not one single person I know thinks of it as a
| bad thing. They just seem to accept it as part of life, which
| makes me feel so alienated whenever interacting with them, since
| I am hardly ever using my phone (the computer on the other
| hand...)
| iratewizard wrote:
| For anyone struggling, turning the screen to black and white
| helps. Less dopamine per hit makes it easier to break those
| habits.
| wcchandler wrote:
| I never thought to do this and already enabled it per your
| comment. Let's see how it goes the rest of the weekend.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I genuinely prefer greyscale displays. If I weren't
| visually impaired and/or so much UX didn't rely on color,
| I'd turn it off permanently except for art creation.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Actually?
|
| If I was in this state I would be scared for myself. Maybe I
| wouldn't need to be, but it seems seriously concerning.
|
| I think I'm bad with my phone, but I'm nowhere near that level.
| I can still leave it at home without anxiety or choose a book
| over Instagram, so to speak.
|
| In some naive way I almost hoped younger people would see the
| problem with phones and navigate their way around it. I felt
| almost blindsided by how addictive they are, having acquired my
| first smart phone around age 25. Perhaps the reality is that
| we're all weak to the phones and being steeped in it for a
| lifetime is a curse more than a blessing.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >The crazy part is, not one single person I know thinks of it
| as a bad thing
|
| I bet they don't think of it at all. It's addiction. It's a
| habit that sneaks up on you.
|
| I'm not attacking you, but have you mentioned it to them as a
| bad thing, or challenged them to not do that?
|
| I say this as a 30-something that does the same, but today
| installed minimalist.phone to work on the struggle.
| dudul wrote:
| I remember the elevator thing hitting me pretty hard back
| around 2010/2011 when I had a job on the 9th floor of an office
| building. I realized that almost every single person stepping
| into the elevator would immediately pull out their phone and
| start playing with it. Even for a 3 floor ride that would take
| literally 5 seconds. They genuinely couldn't bare to not be
| entertained for 5 seconds.
|
| I assume things are even worse nowadays.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I pull out my phone even though I know there is no signal and
| that nothing will load. It's more to avoid interaction with
| anyone else than entertainment.
| oifjsidjf wrote:
| I never developed phone addiction in this way because I always
| had mobile data disabled.
|
| I only enable mobile data when I need to sync calendars.
|
| That being said: on PC and too often check hacker news and
| similar sites: I'm trying out Krishnamurti's "observation":
|
| Can you catch yourself the VERY MOMENT you wish to go to some
| website (NOT after you already did: but when you wish to go:
| what kind of pressure/frustration is building up in you?
| codemonkey-zeta wrote:
| This is exactly the same reason I didn't develop an
| addiction. Being forced to be disciplined about data seems to
| have had a knock-on effect of lowering my dependence on the
| phone in general.
| codemonkey-zeta wrote:
| Will definitely check out "observation", sound interesting!
|
| I feel like the next step after recognizing and
| slowing/stopping the problem is with filling that void with
| meaningful work. For this I recommend "Deep Work" by Cal
| Newport. I felt like that book gave me the tools I needed to
| not just stop the bad habit, but replace it with constructive
| ones
| tester756 wrote:
| When I was writing my thesis I told myself to get separate room &
| computer without all those distractions like discord, hn blocked,
| etc.
|
| so I can perform context switch easier
|
| 95% of the work was coding and it actually helped me to sit for
| 1-3 hours per two weeks and do solid step ahead
|
| Unfortunely now I do not have such privilege to have separate
| room to learn :(
|
| I believe environment may make things way easier.
|
| Also I feel like I'm music addicted, very often the very first
| thing that I do on my PC is start playing some music. I do wonder
| how it affects e.g learning, focusing and similar.
|
| I did notice that in competitive video games I play worse when
| listening do music, and when it's "spiky music" e.g some
| Disturbed's song, then I play riskier.
|
| ___________
|
| I do wonder whether there is some "distraction meter" for
| workplace - e.g 3 meetings a day (all of them with 2h gaps) +
| scrum + 5 emails that require at least 5 minutes of attention =
| not much can be done
| xerox13ster wrote:
| I did a digital detox in July of 2020, I had become overwhelmed
| with Discord and Reddit moderation and trying to Keep Up. I
| burned out hard. I turned off all electronics for a month and
| uninstalled the apps and restricted my phone use to calls and
| responding to 3 close friend's texts at a set time each day--I
| didn't keep it on me at all. No video games, no TV, no watch or
| music streaming. I had my library of local music loaded to my
| trusty Zune and used that exclusively for music as the only
| device I carried with me.
|
| I read through the entirety of the Percy Jackson books and the
| Heroes sequels, the Mortal Instruments, the Seven Realms Novels,
| and the complete unabridged HHGTG. All it took to get my book-a-
| day self back was bringing myself back to my teen years when I
| wasn't allowed on the computer with access to the internet and my
| texts cost .3 minutes to read or send and I only got 100/mo. I
| was averaging roughly 350 pages per day.
|
| When I wasn't reading I was drawing or writing or outside being
| active when it was cool enough which improved my mental health
| even in spite of my heat based SAD.
|
| At the end of the month I had the attention span when I got back
| online to attend to a cross country move and secure a job and an
| apartment by the end of August. I had been intending to move for
| the 3 years prior.
|
| I wonder how I could go about taking advantage of the burst of
| creativity and focus while still being online enough to develop
| some of the software ideas I have that I never follow through on
| without getting overstimulated and distracted.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| How much did the benefits continue past the end of your detox?
| npteljes wrote:
| I've heard that reading from a novel daily, with a large
| continuous story, increases empathy. This effect is said to
| last for 5 days after the last reading session. Unfortunately
| I can't find the source, but I think that this is a helpful
| data point. With the moral of the story being that it's
| something to continuously keep up, to have the benefit.
| hackernewds wrote:
| Amazing story and anecdata. It seems almost impossible to
| attain this today since real-life events require being online -
| Airbnb requiring Facebook login, needing WhatsApp, Instagram
| DM, messenger to keep in touch. And Facebook for real-life
| events. Of course have to use instant msging now through Slack
| (email used to set the right expectations)
| nequo wrote:
| > Airbnb requiring Facebook login
|
| Hard to eliminate smartphones in day to day life but no need
| for Facebook to use Airbnb. You can sign up with your email
| address
| winternett wrote:
| Now that app makers have realized we're muting our phones and
| disabling app notifications, they're doing them within the
| apps... It creates dependency and anxiety. The best way I've
| found to deal with the constant prodding is to simply leave my
| phone at home or in the car nearby whenever I want to enjoy a
| day or moment. It's a device I paid for, it shouldn't cause me
| stress.
|
| Google and Apple can easily set up reasonable standards for app
| makers, but they chose not to, because they themselves are tied
| to the constant financial greed of the ecosystem. There is now
| no way to buy a highly useful device that isn't laden with
| advertising capabilities, and robust enough for you to disable
| tracking... The only way to limit all of that is to simply
| leave the devices and step away from them for sanity.
|
| Talking to real people creates more dopamine for me than the
| Internet does now, it's a gift... We shouldn't ever take our
| ability to talk in real life with people for granted, because
| the Internet is turning fast into a distorted reality bent on
| spamming us for profit and scams now more than ever, and no one
| there cares about the damage they do until it shows up in their
| own households (far too late to fix the problems they caused).
| rapind wrote:
| I recently find that anything on my phone or computer that
| tries to grab my attention, whether it's in an app or on a
| website, produces immediate annoyance from me. Even some
| genuinely helpful (but unnecessary) notifications. Popups,
| badges, dings, etc.
|
| I hear about how "people" get a dopamine hit from the dings
| or whatever, and meanwhile I'm basically the opposite.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| I know of someone who has undergone a similar detox. From what
| I've heard it's been somewhat life changing (in a positive
| way). I don't necessarily think it's lead to more _material_
| success, but they seem happier and more positive generally.
|
| I'm trying to do a light version of this. I'm not sure I can
| ever completely give up the internet and video games. They're a
| big source of enjoyment for me. How much of that enjoyment is
| rotting away at my ability to focus and do great work for long
| periods of time? I'm not sure... but I'm also not sure I'd want
| to give up the things that I really enjoy, just to work more?
|
| I'm trying to just find a balance in life. I don't necessarily
| need to be producing code 24/7. I just want to enjoy myself the
| times when I am working, and feel positive at the end of the
| day that I wasn't ultra distracted and fragmented.
|
| Regarding reading ...
|
| I have been reading a lot more lately, but I'm not sure I could
| ever reach 350 pages a day. I just get bored after a while. I'm
| sure that's directly related to a life of internet + gaming,
| but, I have a super hard time believing I will EVER find books
| as interesting or engaging as the internet and video games.
| That cat is out of the bag. So I can give about an hour or two
| a day to a book, but then I'm pretty much disinterested and
| find myself "reading" but not actually paying attention.
| csydas wrote:
| Articles like this are interesting for me because I have trouble
| relating to "feed addiction" and the attention issues often
| associated with social media. I understand how it gets the way it
| is and I can imagine how it must feel, but I just haven't really
| experienced it, and I don't think that it's quite the drug it's
| made out to be.
|
| My work makes me eager to throw my phone/laptop away as soon as
| possible; I'm definitely a workaholic and rather dangerously at
| that, so maybe I'm getting the same result via a different means;
| but there is almost always a point at the day when I just need to
| zone out on a dumb show I've watched a ton of times or just take
| a run with a bit of music or a nice walk and zone out on some
| music or even just the sounds of the city for awhile.
|
| My work more or less has roped me into social media to some
| degree for some part of the day, and I really don't like social
| media at all; I don't dismiss it, it's just not the way I like
| communicating and because I deal with a lot of awful customers
| via social media (often fruitlessly) I have a very dour
| understanding of it as the same communication mechanisms that the
| awful customers implement are what I see elsewhere. When I do see
| non-negative/complaining content on social media, it's just not
| that interesting, and I'm more relieved that it's not some non-
| sense I have to deal with than I am interested in what someone
| has to say.
|
| For me, modern social media even makes it easy for me not to get
| into it. Instagram floods sponsored objects when I just want to
| go and like my friend's pictures/stories. Reddit kills itself for
| me with its comment/voting system and the efforts to make it
| readable in a way I like just isn't worth it for the content I
| find. Twitter is the best at keeping me out of social media as it
| actively does its best to ensure I can't read Twitter content
| without signing up and giving a bunch of information I don't want
| to give, so I don't even have a chance to get hooked on something
| before the login modal hides the content. The less said about
| Youtube and its social media aspect, the better but it's
| absolutely unintelligible; even trying to follow older
| conversations (less than a month) is impossible sometimes as
| there are so many orphaned responses that you can't follow the
| context of a given answer as it was deleted or hidden somewhere
| else or someone changed their username(? I'm not sure if this is
| a thing but it's one of the only other ways I can understand what
| I see).
|
| I can at least respect TikTok in that you can access everything
| without an account or even an app, and more or less it's the same
| experience, but there is so much repeat content that it's just
| not interesting.
|
| When I want to check something nowadays, I just check it. If I
| want to go for a walk and just think for awhile, the most
| distracting thing is just that I'm processing too many
| projects/problems from the week, and I need to physically move a
| bit to calm down a bit. Cooking, running, reading articles,
| taking a crack at some code project, it's calming because it's
| easy to focus on, and the only challenge I have is just
| exhaustion most of the time.
| drewcoo wrote:
| Tom Johnson appears to be the poster child for ADHD.
|
| He's been so busy noticing everything else that he didn't bother
| to pay attention to the hugely disruptive distraction everyone's
| been talking about for over a decade now.
|
| And then he blames his inability to focus on some externality
| instead of realizing it's his condition.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| >He's been so busy noticing everything else that he didn't
| bother to pay attention to the hugely disruptive distraction
| everyone's been talking about for over a decade now.
|
| What?
| aliswe wrote:
| ironically my attention span didn't let me finish the article.
| kiernanmcgowan wrote:
| One thing that I have done to help keep focus is to turn off as
| many notifications as possible and put my phone out of sight when
| I need to focus on something. The goal is to claim agency around
| where I put my energy. Conversely, if I'm bored and have a few
| minutes to kill I don't beat myself up about scrolling twitter.
|
| You can control what takes your attention, but at the same time
| everything is _designed_ to take your attention. Ad blockers are
| an example of this sort of exercise - you can limit what tries to
| take your attention, but it requires action.
| jb1991 wrote:
| Anyone here try switching to a flip phone?
| hettygreen wrote:
| TL;DR. Can someone summarize this for me?
| karmakaze wrote:
| I did find it ironic that this is a long form essay that would
| be of most value to those with limited attention spans.
|
| I agree with the content, though I've never had a problem with
| mobile devices as they're for zombie content scrolling rather
| than creating that takes a normal OS and program distribution.
| i.e. I can forget my phone somewhere all day no problem--not
| sure I'd easily make it through a day without my primary (or
| secondary) personal laptop.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| This piece was written as if it had lived a year in my mind.
|
| Every time I take a vacation, I spend much less time plugged into
| the world. Each time, I come back refreshed and more in touch
| with myself.
|
| The phone and our collective reliance on them is not healthy. It
| will take some collective effort for me, and some of my friends,
| to try to plan events more regularly, in order that I am not
| feeling the need to have my phone with me so much.
|
| I'm also going to make a few more MP3 discs for my car, which
| thankfully has a CD player (2014 model).
|
| I can't emphasize enough how important it was for me to read this
| article. At least I know I'm not alone.
| [deleted]
| alexalx666 wrote:
| Quitting Facebook and Instagram as well as getting Nokia phone
| from 90s + iPad was the best decision of 2022
| asdfqwertzxcv wrote:
| which phone did you get? Do you tether the ipad to it when out
| and about?
| wwilim wrote:
| Judging by the article I'm not doing terrible at all for someone
| under 30, despite the fact that I use my phone for continuous
| glucose monitoring, which means I can't live without it in a
| nearly literal sense. I can't remember what it was like 3-5 years
| ago though, it was probably worse, but after reading a few
| articles about the attention economy I started paying much more
| attention to what I was doing.
|
| The most terrible thing for me is 2FA, especially at work. If I'm
| focused on something and I have to open the notifications on my
| phone in order to complete the demanding task, I'm at high risk
| of an attention lapse. I wish there was a 2FA app that functioned
| entirely within the lock screen or even the Always-On Display.
| tempasdf wrote:
| On Android, you can enable Do Not Disturb, then configure your
| 2FA app to override Do Not Disturb in the global notification
| settings. If you're getting text messages instead, you may be
| able to override on a per-number basis as well.
| schw1804 wrote:
| I just wish organizations would quit pushing two-factor
| authentication on people who don't want it. If I have a
| 30-character passphrase (inspired by "correct horse battery
| staple") that I'll never need to write down, then do I really
| need additional protection for my accounts? (...yeah, probably
| I do and I'm just being naive; maybe someone will look over my
| shoulder in a coffee shop.)
|
| I miss the good old days when there weren't ads between posts
| on Instagram, and just having a password was enough, and
| websites forced cookies on you without asking permission, and
| the YouTube subscription button was yellow. And I'm only 24.
| I'll make a great crotchety old man someday.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| At least the 2FA solutions are pretty much all open; it would
| be much worse: "please install our proprietary app available
| only for these two proprietary systems".
| luxurytent wrote:
| Had a coworker who lived life the old way, distinct online and
| offline modes of operation. His phone was a classic flip phone.
| During the day, he'd be online working his software engineering
| job. Outside of that, he may stay on the computer some more, but
| if he stepped away from the office, there was no other device in
| his home to that'd allow him back online.
|
| We discussed it a few times, and my belief is that small amount
| of friction, entering a particular room to go online, was enough
| to help him get more intentional about how he spends his days.
|
| Needless to say, the man had a lot of interesting hobbies and was
| well read.
| milosmns wrote:
| Similar here. Mine was also very socially challenged, so to
| speak.
| mawise wrote:
| Another relevant book in this space is How To Break Up With Your
| Phone [1]
|
| [1]:
| https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21618775W/How_to_Break_up_wi...
| MrYellowP wrote:
| to the author of this:
|
| Well done!
|
| You still have a lot ahead of you.
|
| Next step: Avoid any and all background noise. Chatter and music.
| Chatter is _worse_ than music, but music is still bad. In
| contrast, sounds of nature are absolutely fine. If you don 't
| like those, then there's something wrong with you.
|
| Assuming you're used to background noise you _will_ hate this,
| though, but if you can muster up the discipline and get over
| yourself, you won 't regret the increase in your cognitive
| abilities, once they push into your awareness.
|
| Most people have no idea of what's there to explore.
|
| You're welcome. :)
| eikenberry wrote:
| I went through what I'd consider my version of this with RSS blog
| feeds back in the 00s. It wasn't a problem with notifications
| distracting me, it was the constant feeling that I wasn't keeping
| up with the feed (and I wasn't). Took a while to notice the
| stress it was contributing to my life but eventually it dawned on
| me and I had to drop the RSS feeds all together to get rid of it
| (every feed was to important to cut). So I switched to a
| different medium (reddit + hn) where there wasn't that feeling of
| a feed to keep up with.
| user_7832 wrote:
| At the risk of sounding repetitive, this can also be a classic
| case of ADHD. If you also resonate with the post, ask yourself -
| do you have issues planning and completing long projects? Time
| management and procrastination issues? Lacking motivation?
| (Dis)organization problems? (Bonus: frustrated with yourself/your
| progress!)
|
| If (like me) you say "damn that's a lot of things I have to a
| significant degree" then you should
|
| a. read up on executive (dys)function, and
|
| b. Ask your GP/doctor if you may have ADHD*
|
| * - often CPTSD, physical brain trauma etc can also cause similar
| symptoms, as they can also cause physical changes in the brain
| similar to ADHD (There's a _lot_ more of nuance and stuff that
| can be discussed, I 'll try my best if anyone has any questions)
| ellopoppit wrote:
| Could it be that smartphones and TV can cause ADHD?
|
| Before such electronic media, books were the main media, and
| inherently required and trained users to concentrate on one
| thing at a time for extended periods.
|
| TV and smartphones do the exact opposite
| user_7832 wrote:
| Unfortunately I'm not a doctor or researcher to be able to
| give a definitive answer, but I don't think these things can
| _cause_ ADHD - though they can likely worsen symptoms, for
| both people who have it and those who don 't. But I suspect
| such an effect would be reversible, unlike (genetic
| components of) ADHD.
| graeme wrote:
| How would you distinguish between ADHD vs modern
| distractability?
|
| Especially if someone showed no ADHD symptoms before
| smartphones
|
| Everyone has some distractability so curious about threshold
| user_7832 wrote:
| To add on to the other answer, for folks with ADHD symptoms
| it was likely there before smartphones too - you/they just
| didn't realize it (like I didn't myself). A doctor however is
| far more capable of this judgement.
|
| Another simple test - after a week long (say) tech detox, do
| they (permanently) improve, or are the benefits very little
| (tending to perhaps even being distracted during that week)?
| kqr wrote:
| When it makes you effectively mentally handicapped (you
| literally need environmental adjustments in order to
| function) in at least two areas of life (work, relationships,
| household), it's clinical.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I had a similar awakening moment about 5 years ago. Felt like I
| wasted my 20s on consuming content and only playing video games
| outside of work.
|
| I had a similar journey. I'm even writing a book on it.
|
| I have found that the one thing that has helped bring
| enlightenment to this problem is reading books and thinking each
| day on how to apply them or just simply observing those around me
| instead of being glued on a device.
|
| I'm a bit further in that journey than the author and there are
| some great premises out there about the damage tech and our
| fragmented attention causes to our lives.
|
| There are even great titles mentioned in this blog bringing
| awareness to them, but some of the more old and interesting
| perspectives are those of Thoreau(Walden) and Emerson(Self-
| Reliance).
|
| While there's a number of titles talking about internet or tech
| addiction, all we're doing is pointing out a problem rather than
| taking actual steps to improve our character to rid ourselves of
| these things to begin with. This problem is only going to get
| harder for the individual, and it's up to each one of us to
| battle our own battles. No amount of reform will solve it for us.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| > outside of work
|
| Why did you feel this pressure to meet some self-defined
| obligation outside of work? Were you missing something in the
| work itself that you felt you had to recover in the time
| outside of it?
|
| In my experience, if I feel the value of my work output itself
| is meaningful, then I don't need to worry about what I'm doing
| outside of it. If you start a business or work for yourself,
| then your career goals "at work" and "outside of work" are
| equivalent, thus freeing that time "outside of work" for you to
| make progress toward non-career goals (or to simply relax and
| recover).
|
| I've always found discussion of side-project optimization to be
| silly, because it's missing the forest for the trees. The
| optimization is to take the risk and work on it full time.
|
| If you want to maximize the meaningful activities you do in
| your life, then it makes sense to start with the category of
| activity you spend the highest percentage of time performing.
| TheFreim wrote:
| > observing those around me
|
| Most days within the last few weeks I've been leaving my phone
| at home. Not having one on me makes me actually look around at
| my surroundings more. It takes a bit of getting used to but
| after a while it no longer feels bad during downtime, just
| normal.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > I had a similar journey. I'm even writing a book on it.
|
| I'd be interested to hear more. Do ping me if you have time.
|
| > While there's a number of titles talking about internet or
| tech addiction, all we're doing is pointing out a problem
| rather than taking actual steps to improve our character to rid
| ourselves of these things to begin with. This problem is only
| going to get harder for the individual, and it's up to each one
| of us to battle our own battles. No amount of reform will solve
| it for us.
|
| You might be interested to read Digital Vegan [1]. The food
| metaphor goes quite a long way. I really see it as a public
| health issue.
|
| [1] https://digitalvegan.net (can send you a review copy of you
| like)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm developing a personal opinion that being on a phone all the
| time is like being high all the time.
|
| Eventually you look back and see thousands of hours you could
| have spent building something or learning an instrument or
| whatnot.
|
| Instead you just kinda pissed it away on gossip and getting
| anxious about events you have no control of.
|
| My most productive time on this phone is when I'm learning new
| stuff here on HN. But even that can probably be curbed a lot.
|
| I'm thinking about how I break this cycle. One main issue is that
| I want to create using a laptop. But I have young kids who
| rightfully demand my attention often. That's why social media
| fills the thousand little gaps so well.
|
| I'm thinking I need to learn how to write code in short segments
| of as little as 15 minutes. At work I need to build up context
| and state in my mind. But I can't do that in such short bursts.
| So I need to learn how to do "stateless programming" per se.
|
| This leads me to wondering: if I had the memory of a goldfish,
| how would I go about writing an application? Some way to spend 15
| minutes breaking a big problem into self contained 15 minute
| tasks. I'm convinced the software architecture will reflect this
| and as a result I'll discover different paradigms for how to
| write software.
| swayvil wrote:
| I think that smartphones merely illuminate a pre-existing
| problem.
|
| That problem is that people, as a rule, live in a dream-world.
| The smartphone just provides the most convenient exterior
| manifester of dreams that we've invented so far.
|
| The cellphone is a dream-amplifier. The natural evolution from
| books, radio and tv.
|
| But the central problem isn't the phone. It's our habitual-
| dwelling-in and preference-for the dreamworld. The phone is just
| the enabler.
| hirundo wrote:
| I fight this with the pomodoro app on my smartphone. Starting a
| "tomato" gives my subsconscious the permission it needs to ignore
| distractions for a small window. I can't say that this completely
| offsets the distraction, but it does mitigate it.
| remoquete wrote:
| Worth noting that Tom has since returned to smartphone usage
| (with some interesting tweaks):
| https://idratherbewriting.com/blog/returning-to-smartphones/
| themadturk wrote:
| At this point in my life, digital detox is an alien concept to
| me, and I say that as a boomer who gets antsy when he's more than
| ten feet away from his phone. Yet, according to my reading diary,
| I've started over 30 books this year, finished 22 of them (a
| couple I'm in the middle of, several I've abandoned already), and
| I still occasionally check in on Reddit, have a bunch of email
| newsletters and a number of RSS feeds (including some people I
| follow on Twitter, meaning I don't have to actually open
| Twitter).
|
| I've read a lot ever since I was a kid, and a couple of years ago
| when I felt I wasn't reading books as much as I used to I decided
| to turn the habit around, with what I consider minimal change in
| _what_ I followed, instead changing _how_ I followed. More than
| anything it 's a matter of ruthless curation. I think it helps
| that I have a Kindle and the Kindle apps on my tablet and phone.
| I'm literally never without a book.
| digitcatphd wrote:
| This is precisely why I haven't purchased a smartwatch. These
| devices decrease our ability to solve problems that require
| analysis for extended periods of time.
| allenu wrote:
| I feel the same way. I found it interesting that when
| smartwatches came out, people were excited about being able to
| see text messages or other notifications on their wrist.
|
| As someone who felt the need to be on top of things, receiving
| notifications was slightly stressful as it meant something I'd
| have to evaluate and make a decision on "right now".
| (Obviously, feeling like I should react to things immediately
| was something I had to work on in myself, but the phone didn't
| help.) Feeling a notification buzz on my phone gave me slight
| anxiety as I'd immediately react with, "oh, what is this that I
| might need to take care of?" Putting the phone aside for
| periods helped, so the idea of not being able to escape it with
| notifications on my wrist was a little terrifying.
|
| In the last few years, I've set my phone to always Do Not
| Disturb mode, so it doesn't vibrate or even light up when a
| notification comes in. I do the same on my Mac. It's helped
| quite a bit with my stress levels. I just manually check
| periodically to see if there's a notification instead of always
| feeling like it could go off any minute.
| graeme wrote:
| I've found the opposite. The apple watch isn't distracting at
| all if you turn off notifications
|
| You can do some things quickly without sinking into the
| infinite scroll of the phone. I.e. you can check your calendar
| and that's it
| user_7832 wrote:
| If you are interested, watches like the Amazfit (Bip) or
| perhaps Garmin are low-ish tech while still giving health
| information/basic alarms etc.
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