[HN Gopher] My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment o...
___________________________________________________________________
My awakening moment about how smartphones fragment our attention
span
Author : llui85
Score : 480 points
Date : 2022-06-25 12:45 UTC (1 days 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.
| shrimp_emoji wrote:
| Because computers are for nerds (the bigger it is, the MORE
| computer it is); only boys should be nerds; therefore, girls
| select against using computers. It sucks.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I still find it weird.
|
| Using a mobile is like reading while looking through a
| toilet roll, and typing by using a straw in my mouth :P
|
| I often get questions from people on WhatsApp saying "How
| can you reply so quickly??". Well duh... I use a real
| computer :) Anything I can do on the mobile I can do twice
| as fast on the computer.
|
| For me it just 'hurts' when my brain cycles are forcibly
| wasted. Not just with this, also with those stupid
| mandatory trainings in work where the narrator is so slow
| to make sure even the most mediocre non-native numbnut can
| keep up. It just frustrates me so much when I'm forced to
| listen to that (usually I spend my time looking through the
| javascript to find a way to turn off the non-skip setting
| :P )
|
| I actually got caught out by that once when an intern
| noticed I had only spent 1 hour on a course everyone else
| spent at least 3 hours on :P But I told her I was on a
| plane so when I finished it I was in a different time zone
| :D
| 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.
| jrib wrote:
| Have you tried an e-ink screen like the kindle? It's perfect
| for consuming fiction books
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| Yes, I own a kindle and rarely use it, because i much
| prefer the smaller form factor of phones for fictions.
|
| Technical books are better on larger screens, so the Kindle
| only gets used if I read that kind of book. Though the
| Kindle has way too few pixels imo, so I often read these on
| my desktop or ipad too.
| 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.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Do that in the other 22 hours of the day that isn't dinner.
|
| There's nothing wrong with smartphones per se. It's that
| the smartphones become a crutch to avoid socializing in
| person. All the excuses come out to prevent that crutch
| from being removed.
| rlayton2 wrote:
| Ultimately, if you are using the smartphone for a
| deliberate purpose, that's probably fine. Looking up a
| recipe, contacting a loved one, reading an ebook.
|
| The problem is when you are just "on the phone", not really
| doing anything, not anything you planned to do, and not
| really getting anything done. Even _this_ can be fine, as
| long as you go "I'd like to see whats on twitter for half
| an hour", rather than just opening things up and doing them
| because the algorithm pulls you in.
| 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.
| sdze wrote:
| Following atomic habits for habit forming process: - If you have
| important stuff to do, put the smartphone away in another room
| for example. Out of sight, you won't notice anything missing.
|
| To be honest, since introduction of Do not disturb by Apple
| iPhone, I am very unbothered during working hours.
| 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
| jeffbee wrote:
| One thing the "I used to be able to focus" folks all have in
| common is they're all older now, but this is never mentioned.
| 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:
| markvdb wrote:
| Feature phone user here. I had a smartphone for about a year in
| 2009. I gave it away after seeing four people in a row waiting
| for the train consumed by their pinging devices.
|
| I can't recommend the feature phone experience warmly enough.
| About the only thing I really miss is a decent camera in my
| phone. Lugging a camera along is a bit of a nuisance.
|
| All of this doesn't completely free me from the attention economy
| though.
|
| Firstly, I distract myself. I still read the news more than is
| good for me. From time to time, I'll even play silly computer
| games excessively. FOSS games, but still quite distracting.
|
| Secondly, as the article describes, there's the profound cultural
| shift I have to cope with. Many people, even friends, don't even
| think about asking me for permission to let Siri, Alexa or Google
| overhear our conversations. Just because they want to be plugged
| in.
|
| When we are discussing what year Greg Lemond beat Laurent Fignon
| in the Tour de France, is the goal knowing some useless trivia?
| No, it's the conversation. The social process is the goal.
| 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 :(
| koiueo wrote:
| I did great and finished this only in two sessions
|
| This is a great article.
|
| I learned to disable all but important notifications. But I still
| suffer many symptoms the author has described.
|
| IMO, an overwhelming amount of the content on the internet adds
| nothing on top of its title. You eventually learn to consume all
| the content without putting too much effort, by skimming quickly,
| otherwise it's exhausting.
|
| I don't know what could be a solution here. Some sort of
| filtering for the content is needed, but how to implement it
| exactly?
|
| Perhaps one should put more focus on reading books instead of
| free articles on the internet. But this does not solve the
| problem completely. Many books suffer from the same lack of
| sense.
|
| Does anyone have any ideas or any related experience regarding
| the content moderation for consumption?
| thrown_22 wrote:
| >Last week at work, a colleague asked if anyone might be
| interested in participating in the corporate-wide "Read a book a
| week" [...] For example, I've listened to every book in Lee
| Child's Jack Reacher series, and I eagerly await new ones. But
| when the latest book came out, Better Off Dead, I couldn't make
| it past the first few chapters.
|
| It's kind of astonishing that "read a book" somehow got turned
| into "have a book read to you" and that the author still doesn't
| manage to get it done.
|
| Reading is fundamentally different to listening. One is active,
| the other passive.
|
| Then the ending's conclusion is completely nonsensical:
|
| >Some other challenges I'm still figuring out, like how to
| navigate a city without Google Maps. I bought a handful of paper
| maps and found myself looking at the area, trying to grok the
| logic of the streets and analyzing the area's layout seemingly
| for the first time.
|
| What do the skills of hunter gatherers have to do with clearer
| thinking?
|
| Would life be better if instead of writing on a keyboard you only
| wrote on parchment made from the skins of animals you hunted? I
| imagine the authors writing would improve, only because there
| would be a lot less of it.
| 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]
| Quixotism wrote:
| 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
| k__ wrote:
| I don't want new receptors, I want to undo what social
| media did to them in the last five years.
| 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.
| throwawayarnty wrote:
| Hackernews is also a huge source of distraction, but some people
| here won't admit it.
| Graffur wrote:
| Strange comment. Who doesn't admit it? Everything can be a
| distraction.
| throwawayarnty wrote:
| People think that hackernews is productive won't admit it.
| rhubarbcustard wrote:
| It is but, for me anyway, it's a world away from Facebook,
| Insta and similar sites in terms of quality and usefulness. I
| do find myself opening my phone and having a quick look down
| the HN homepage listing but I'm fairly safe in the knowledge
| that anything I do read will of decent quality and have some
| benefit.
|
| The other big difference is that HN doesn't got out of its way
| to make you consume more or want to constantly come back,
| that's not their business model.
| fprct wrote:
| It's not really about the smartphones, I think. They are just a
| symptom of much more fundamental behavior (which may or may not
| be problematic - depending on how you look at it).
|
| All those 5-10 second breaks -- waiting for a light, waiting for
| an elevator... If it were not for the phone, what would you
| typically do? Focus on some random thought or two. Then snap out
| of it and carry on. The fact that now this is often not a random
| thought but random input from random app doesn't seem to change
| that much - pattern stayed the same, just now you can see it in
| other people from the outside, so it seems more profound.
| iknownothow wrote:
| I think you made a great observation about the 5-10 breaks but
| I disagree with your assessment that we're just replacing one
| random behavior with another.
|
| The fact that I am "compelled" to look at my phone instead of
| staying with my thoughts is not an innocuous pattern. Why do I,
| with perfect predictability, prefer reaching for my phone
| rather than staying with my thoughts? And it's a fact that this
| compulsion to look at my phone exists even when I'm working on
| something important and not just when I'm standing in the
| elevator.
|
| (My tone might be aggressive. I don't mean to offend, I just
| disagree).
| fprct wrote:
| Good point.
|
| Would you say that all your "interruption slots" are taken by
| a need to look at a phone or particular app? Aren't there
| still situations where you break your current focus (be it
| something important or just waiting in the elevator) with an
| actual thought not related to the phone?
|
| I agree that position I've presented probably stands to some
| degree on the assumption that there still is a noticeable
| amount of non phone related interruptions of one's thought
| patterns. Otherwise my claim of equivalence would be stronger
| and require more arguments that I have at the moment.
|
| From my personal experience (n=1) it's exactly the case -
| sometimes it's a phone, sometimes not, so that clearly
| directs my judgement. OTOH I find it unlikely that this is
| particularly atypical.
| 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.
| prashaantt wrote:
| Heh, that's exactly what he did here -
| https://idratherbewriting.com/blog/returning-to-smartphones/.
| 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.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Right? You'd be nuts to have the bird app on your mobile. It
| works perfectly in the browser, and when you close it, it's
| dead and gone! Can't use any battery at all!
|
| Gmail is the same way. Gmail for mobile web is a phenomenally
| good web app, and completely incapable of notifying you of
| anything whatsoever.
| 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.
| Graffur wrote:
| The thing is that people can feel it themselves and see it in
| other people. It would be great if it is studied but there is
| something there.
| blindmute wrote:
| There's simply no empirical evidence that you love your
| wife/mother, so it would be foolish to believe that you do.
| Until a study is funded there's just no way for you to know.
| Trust science
| thrown_22 wrote:
| >There's simply no empirical evidence that you love your
| wife/mother
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2954158/
|
| Cute quip, but wrong.
| 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.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| The printed book which could be shrunk to be carried in a
| pocket.
|
| It was such a disruptive technology it lead to fake news
| plunging Europe into a century of wars and genocides:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion
| permo-w wrote:
| To take a cynical viewpoint, based on the examples given by the
| author, it could equally be that he's just lost interest in what
| I would describe as lowest-common-denominator action novels. He
| was able to fully listen to the book about focus.
|
| I find that I can pay attention to the things I'm interested in
| as well as I ever could, but interests change and develop over
| time. I still avoid smartphones, but I don't think they've
| actually done anything to my attention span
| 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.
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| Holy shit, dude wrote up an entire essay on their journey to rid
| themselves of their phone. Meanwhile, I'm here never had a phone
| and without an essay. The duality of man.
| 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...)
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Any spare or idle moment?
|
| It wouldn't even be that bad if it was just idle moments. If
| you're ever sitting in a cafe or restaurant or at the movies
| look around and see how often people bring their phone out
| during personal conversations or stuff they paid actual money
| to see. It is wild that barely anyone talks about how pervasive
| this is now.
| baby wrote:
| > The crazy part is, not one single person I know thinks of it
| as a bad thing
|
| That's what gets me the most. We all have an insane addiction,
| yet nobody seems to be talking about it. It's completely
| socially accepted.
|
| Interestingly, a lot of weird things are totally socially
| accepted. Religion, alcohol, coffee, etc. (I'm a sinner who
| drinks but still, it's weird)
| mantas wrote:
| Religion/acohol/coffee makes a society work. One gives a
| common background for a community, another gives stress
| relief valve and helps mating, the third one lets people stay
| on the clock and focused.
|
| Meanwhile phone disrupts all of those. Tears apart
| communities into online bubbles managed by algorithms,
| increases stress and prevents mating and shortens attention
| span and disrupts focus.
| allenu wrote:
| It's fascinating because ten years ago, people _did_ talk
| about it. I remember when everybody started getting smart
| phones, when someone whipped out their phone, somebody would
| inevitably comment on it, like "Oh, we're playing with our
| phones out now?" and then would follow suit. (Most likely
| because they wanted to check something on their phone as
| well.)
|
| It was almost a faux pas at first to sneak a peek at your
| phone when having a meal or coffee with someone, but
| nowadays, nobody bats an eyelash. I very much remember people
| consciously trying to put their phones away or face them down
| on the table since it was so distracting to everyone.
|
| I suppose for someone who's 25 years old now, it's not
| necessarily a social transition that they experienced.
| iratewizard wrote:
| For anyone struggling, turning the screen to black and white
| helps. Less dopamine per hit makes it easier to break those
| habits.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Color filters under Accessability, for those on iOS.
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| Same place on Android, incidentally.
| davchana wrote:
| I did that few weeks ago after reading a similar comment here
| on hn. It helped, phone was less interesting; but then monkey
| brain made it a challenge game to assume, guess & fill colors
| in screen display images. More brain taxing, I changed it
| back to regular.
| phonescreen_man wrote:
| Interesting, Set it to find out for myself
| 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.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| I wasn't even aware that's an option.
|
| If nothing else it might make late night usage of the phone
| much less disruptive to sleep.
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I remember one time back right before COVID hit, watching
| this young couple in a restaurant a few tables down from us.
| They were obviously on some kind of date (dressed real nice),
| but their phones were just lighting up constantly. Dinging
| and buzzing and vibrating. Notification here, message there,
| and they kept picking them up over and over and checking them
| every time, like Pavlov's dogs reacting to the bell. I don't
| think they even got through a sentence, let alone a
| conversation. I can't imagine maintaining my sanity in that
| environment. It's like living on the Las Vegas strip all day
| with all the lighting up, dinging and buzzing all the time.
|
| When I originally posted this story with a very critical
| tone, I got downvoted into oblivion. How dare I judge these
| addicts! I think a lot of people here see a little of
| themselves in that picture and rush to its defense.
|
| I've been for about 5 years on DND mode 24/7. No messages, no
| phone calls, no notifications, no needy phone waking up
| wanting me to do its bidding. It's really liberating. I now
| use my device on my own terms not on some app developer's
| schedule. The wellbeing difference is indescribable.
| 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?
| kzrdude wrote:
| I'm wanting to do a phone & computer distraction free day per
| week. I just haven't gotten started.. of course.
|
| Maybe disabling data on the phone will be a good way to do
| it! (I still need to keep it around at work hours for calls.)
| landemva wrote:
| A friend of mine just got a new model candybar phone. Calls
| and texts (w/o pictures).
| 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.
| pastaguy1 wrote:
| For me I think graduating to a smartphone later than
| "normal" had a similar effect. Mid 30s, but I got my first
| smartphone at ~25 instead of ~20.
|
| There's a lot of external pressure to be constantly on your
| phone. People of my age are a little perplexed when I
| explain to them the reason I didn't text back right away
| was because I was outside, but my phone was upstairs in my
| room.
| 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
| landemva wrote:
| That is an easy read, and I liked the examples such as hay
| farming, and 'shallow' v. 'deep' work. People have to be
| willing to prioritize and set down the distractions.
| husamia wrote:
| young generations will have to learn how to adopt to attention
| sucking reality in their own ways
| 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
| Mezzie wrote:
| Can you try to play something that isn't musical and note the
| differences? It might be easier than just turning it off.
| White/brown noise or nature sounds or something.
|
| > 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
|
| Cal Newport's Deep Work goes into this a bit, and I found it to
| a good read for understanding why there were certain things I
| was struggling with in my job at the time.
| [deleted]
| 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.
| butUjust wrote:
| 10x-dev wrote:
| In terms of developing software without distractions, I like to
| recreate airplane conditions.
|
| I load devdocs.io in a persistent tab, get all the software I
| think I'd need for the day/weekend and turn on airplane mode. I
| don't need to Google everything - between devdocs, man pages
| and just figuring stuff out by myself, it can be very fun to
| code disconnected.
| christiangenco wrote:
| I've recently realized I'm uncharacteristically productive on
| airplanes. I did a deep read of the first 8 chapters of a
| book I've been meaning to read on my last long flight. I had
| every intention of continuing at the same pace through to the
| end as soon as I checked into my AirBnB.
|
| The moment I got internet back at touchdown marked the end of
| my progress on the book. This was... four days ago. I think
| some airplane condition replication might be just what I
| need. I'm curious if I could go as far as to get some
| uncomfortable airplane seats and a simulated sky window.
|
| I didn't know about devdocs.io--thanks!
| grogenaut wrote:
| I used to be able to code on airplanes but i just can't
| type in most seats given how cramped they are now.
|
| that said I flew economy plus on lufthansa from seattle to
| frankfurt in 2019 and sat in the front left bulkhead seat.
| Being a premium seat they completely ignored the 3 bags I
| had up against the bulkhead at takeoff (safety rules and
| plastic utensils are for the cattle, comfort and metal
| cutlery are for those who pay). It was great. I had my
| latop comfortably on the folkd out tray, and I watched big
| hero 5 and 2 other shameless airplane movies on the pull up
| tv. I reviewed over 30 docs in offline mode, and was able
| to build a very good root cause and action plan (I was
| doing failure analysis).
|
| A offline/online docs site would be quiet helpful as what
| styimies me from coding is not having that one dependency
| or one doc I need and having to pivot.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| When I want to read, I go to the local park and grab a
| bench. I'm a productive reader when I get away from
| distractions, but not at home. I was able to read
| effectively as a teen, but not since we got super online.
| waplot wrote:
| >Discord and Reddit moderation
|
| BWAHAHAHA
| baby wrote:
| I've been working on an app (for myself, but I guess I'll share
| it if it ends up working for me) that pretty much asks me every
| two weeks to fill two lists: 1) things in my life that I want
| to accomplish (in the next two weeks) and 2) things that I want
| to do more of, or less of. Every two weeks it asks me to
| summarize how I did for every item I had listed, and if I want
| to keep/remove/add more to list 1, and what I want my new list
| 2 to be.
|
| The idea is to make it a browser plugin, that forces me to fill
| that form every two weeks by making every new tab that form
| until I fill it.
| pastaguy1 wrote:
| What's heat based SAD?
|
| I always feel like garbage during the summer, but always
| chalked it up to allergies, some kind of low level chronic
| dehydration, or poor schedule discipline (used to be, when
| classes ended, my bedtime became about 3 am almost immediately.
| I'm older and that doesn't [can't] happen anymore, but since
| the sun sets very late now, I still get a minor version of it).
|
| There are a lot of external factors that I thought might
| contribute also. For one thing, every weekend of the summer is
| pretty much booked up, which becomes exhausting. Back in
| college, I also remember feeling kind of bluesy in the summer.
| I guess I didn't have the <whatever> to activate my brain by
| myself, so I looked forward to fall/learning time again.
|
| I'm rambling, but interested to hear a little more about what
| you mentioned.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| How does reading & commenting on HN fit into that digitial
| detox?
|
| Genuinely curious.
| rchaud wrote:
| I've learned to steer clear of the "hot topic" threads with
| over 200 comments. Usually the conversation has long since
| derailed from the original topic of the link.
|
| There are also smaller, more frequent threads that focus on
| recurring topics such as big tech power, cryptocurrency, Elon
| Musk, H1B visas that also head in predictable directions and
| can be avoided.
| 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).
| D13Fd wrote:
| Why don't you just delete the apps that are causing that
| level of anxiety?
| gombosg 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.
|
| This is so true and so widespread that I haven't even
| realized it's happening. I disabled most push notifications
| on Android and have the phone muted almost all day. Still,
| I'm fighting with attention fragmentation, decreased memory
| etc. Nowadays most apps/web apps you open have a
| 'notifications' tab, menu item etc. creating yet another
| inbox for us. (Which we probably don't need unless it's work
| related or something.)
| nicbou wrote:
| You can block them with uBlock rules. Just right click on
| them.
|
| I silenced a few websites that way. I also removed some
| feeds and distracting elements.
| 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.
| eastbound wrote:
| Stress. Especially on Twitter, every news today starts with
| "NEWS ALERT!" + a boring news or analysis that everyone
| knows. It produces stress. The content of the news is
| always highly disappointing.
| winternett wrote:
| Eventually the overload will destroy itself... Hang in
| there!
| teddyh wrote:
| I fear that the market will stay irrational for longer
| than we can remain sane.
| winternett wrote:
| Me too, these days the greatest days are the ones without
| crisis and when I don't need to do anything productive
| online.
| baliex wrote:
| Not all dings are equal.
|
| If they're replies to messages you've sent (i.e. the
| continuation of a conversation) or your latest instagram
| post getting a like, you're gonna get that hit. Namely, for
| the validation that someone out there is interested enough
| in something you put out there to respond to it.
|
| At the other end of the spectrum it's Uber Eats promos[?],
| news headlines, or Google Maps begging for a review. Maybe
| you'd place them elsewhere on the dopamine-spectrum but you
| get my point.
|
| [?]especially annoying because I want them on when I have a
| delivery coming, but off at all other times!
| 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.
| fassssst wrote:
| I replaced video games with making music. Scratches the same
| itch and is much more rewarding.
| baby wrote:
| Interestingly I've been trying to reintroduce video games
| in my life, in moderation, because video games are fucking
| great and I'm sad that I'm not playing anymore.
| dieselgate wrote:
| I agree with making music scratching the same itch.
| Honestly working as a remote dev sometimes feels like
| playing a video game.
| fsiefken wrote:
| Due to RSI long ago I replaced video games with board games.
| I do play some video games now on occasion, for example
| interactive fiction and VR dance games and The Forest VR.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| If you like The Forest VR (which is excellent) ... I highly
| recommend Green Hell VR (PCVR).
| aagha wrote:
| Due to this same feeling of losing control to my phone, I spent
| the most I've ever spent on Daywise [0] to manage my
| notifications.
|
| I'm not checking my phone one quarter of what I was before.
|
| Notifications throughout the day except for the very important
| things/people I deem are grouped for later viewing if I want to--
| I find at the end of the day I almost always dismiss most of
| them.
|
| 0 -
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.synapse.al...
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Hari's book connected with me in a deep way, which is why I was
| drawn to it, page after page. Hari explains that "wherever my
| generation gathered, we would lament our lost capacity for
| concentration."
|
| As a member of a generation that can still focus, i.e., one not
| born into a world of personal computers, let alone pocket-sized
| ones, nor "tech" hype, I hope the author and his peers^1 figure
| out that this "economy" needs to be "disrupted" sooner rather
| than later, no matter how profitable it may be for a chosen few.
|
| 1. And the other people doing most of the work to "build" these
| distractions and the people being targeted with them.
|
| It saddens me that many members of older generations, who did
| learn how to focus, have decided to go along for the ride with
| the younger ones into this attention span abyss. IMHO there are
| substantial "life skills" that are being lost due to "tech" hype
| and money-making. We cannot expect younger folks to understand
| what they are, as the mindless "tech" hype ceaselessly commands
| their attention above all else. Money-making no matter what the
| cost to society. These disappearing life skills have value, e.g.,
| ability to concentrate, ability to evaluate facts and think
| critically (cf. simply voicing uneducated opinions and
| complaining about anything and everything to the internet),
| ability to deal with conflict, and so on. The OP managed to
| remember the value of concentration, so perhaps anyone can do it.
| Please do not give up. That is exactly what the "tech" companies
| want you to do.
| 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?
| bigmealbigmeal wrote:
| I would argue that people with ADHD noticed this problem before
| anyone else, simply because they were the first to suffer from
| it.
| bigpeopleareold wrote:
| I have not dedicated so much time to video games for years. It is
| probably the same response that some have to smartphones. For me,
| I saw my time being wasted on nothing. While I am good at wasting
| time, it was a particular thing I felt was hard to just timebox.
|
| My vice instead is spending too much time reading or tinkering on
| my laptop in my spare time, even sometimes when I should be doing
| other things (probably like now :) )
|
| I like the smartphone for things that are useful - primarily
| maps, a chat application with my wife, translating words between
| my first and second language that will absolutely plague me if I
| don't know the answer to and looking up some things on the go.
| That's good enough for me with that.
| 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?
| oblak wrote:
| I did but it died on me. I've been with a candy bar ever since.
| Been a decade since I gave up on smartphones. Only took me
| about two months. These days I check my phone once or twice a
| week, sometimes not at all. Good thing the battery lasts for
| many days
| scotty79 wrote:
| Books are slow and often teeming with filler content. Audiobooks
| are even slower than books and practically painfully so. When I
| had to paint walls for few hours I initially listened to
| audiobook but it was tortuous. My own thoughts are more
| interesting and less of a slog than a book read at that pace.
| Audiobook feels like my brain is shoved into a tarpit and held
| there foricbly.
|
| It's really no wonder that your brain rejects all that when it
| tasted variety of information delivered at much higher speeds.
|
| I don't think I wouldn't be able to focus on textbook for
| mathematical analysis that's so dense that reading two pages
| takes an hour ... but books filled with so so many words that
| were just excercise in language use for the author and carry
| barely any information? Mostly, no thank you. It's not a problem
| of focus. It's a problem of rising standards on what feels
| interesting.
|
| Even the author of this essey admits he had no trouble reading a
| book when he finally found one that was actually interesting for
| him (because he felt it was about him and his self-percieved
| plight).
| glorioushubris wrote:
| As a fiction author who spends hours worrying about individual
| sentences and whether they're carrying their weight in the
| overall story--is it advancing the narrative, or deepening
| characterization, or delivering important information, or
| furthering my thematic goals, or (ideally) doing more than one
| of these things at once?--I'm pretty resistant to your claim
| that books are "often teeming with filler content." Possibly
| too resistant; perhaps your attempted reading is biased such
| that this is actually true. Maybe you're trying to make it
| through lots of things that were originally published as
| serials, or lack good editing, or have some other reason for
| the author to have emphasized sheer length over the qualities
| we usually find motivating. Maybe this is an accurate
| representation of your experiences.
|
| But I'd like you to consider the possibility that, rather than
| huge swaths of those books you disparage being pointless, they
| are instead doing things that you have not cultivated an
| awareness for. It may be that, rather than being "filled with
| so so many words that were just exercise in language use for
| the author and carry barely any information," they are instead
| filled with passages offering information that you are not
| currently sensitive to, like music played on a frequency you
| can't hear.
|
| Fully engaging with art requires an active interest. Art is
| generally made by people who are deeply interested in their
| form, and made in ways that reward said interest being matched.
| The less commercial the art form, the more this is true. Even
| within specific art forms, there are distinct traditions and
| modes. Its unreasonable to expect that you will appreciate
| everything about a particular work of art without developing
| literacy in those things.
|
| For example, if I say that I find fighting video games boring,
| that's a perfectly defensible position. But if I say that
| fighting video games are boring because the developers don't in
| enough effort to make something other than a thin story about
| who wins a tournament, then I'm simply wrong. That's a failure
| to engage with the art on its own terms. Fighting video games
| aren't about narrative, they're about zoning and rushdown and
| combos and various other game mechanics. The developers put in
| lots of effort, but their focus was on gameplay, not narrative.
| Expecting the focus to be narrative would be an error on my
| part.
|
| If I made that error, I might also say something like, "Why do
| these fighting games have so many characters? The tournament
| story barely changes no matter who you play as. All these extra
| characters are useless filler." In saying that, I would reveal
| myself to be insensitive to the vastly different move sets and
| mechanical plusses/minuses that are the desiderata for the
| large casts of most fighting games.
|
| (As it happens, I do think fighting games are boring. But that
| doesn't mean the games are flawed, just that not all art forms
| are enjoyed equally by all people.)
|
| (And while the large casts of fighting games aren't filler,
| there are, of course, video games with filler. Triple-A video
| games often have filler, to be able to boast about, say, 100+
| hours of content. Anime series based on ongoing manga often
| have filler, to maintain their viewership without running out
| of material. When things have filler, the reason is usually
| commercial. When _The Hobbit_ was adapted for the screen, it
| wasn 't split into three movies for artistic reasons. Filler is
| all about money. Most fiction authors are not lucky enough to
| have any reason to produce filler.)
|
| A quotation attributed to Lord Dunsany: "I see now that keen
| interest can illuminate anything, and that anything, moreover,
| has something worth illuminating in it, and that without that
| interest gates carved by Benvenuto Cellini from two diamonds
| would merely look chilly."
|
| Things grow in our estimation with the attention we invest in
| them. Your "rising standard on what feels interesting" could,
| instead, be a diminished capacity or willingness to invest a
| keen attention in things that don't immediately capture your
| interest. When all the things you struggle to focus on are also
| things that seem, to you, to be fully without merit, then how
| could you distinguish between those two states?
|
| Perhaps those books you tried are filled with thing that, even
| when engaged with actively, would still not be to your taste.
| But when you say they carry barely any information, it's hard
| for me not to think of "The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster:
|
| _The air-ship was crossing another range of mountains, but she
| could see little, owing to clouds. Masses of black rock hovered
| below her, and merged indistinctly into grey. Their shapes were
| fantastic; one of them resembled a prostrate man._
|
| _"No ideas here," murmured Vashti, and hid the Caucasus behind
| a metal blind. In the evening she looked again. They were
| crossing a golden sea, in which lay many small islands and one
| peninsula. She repeated, "No ideas here," and hid Greece behind
| a metal blind._
| 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?
| alexalx666 wrote:
| I got iPad with Cellular, magic keyboard and the cheapest
| prepaid SIM card with 4Gb of data so I know I can not just
| browse forever. I got Nokia 6510 and I absolutely love it.
| New Nokia feature phones don't have the same level of
| attention to detail and quality of plastic. I don't take my
| iPad anywhere usually. If I want to take photos I use Pentax
| ME Super, for reading - Kindle. For music I got iPod Video
| and upgraded it to 120Gb sd card, new battery, sounds magical
| with Marshal Mode earphones, I also had iPod Classic 7g but
| the sound quality was much worse, its like components of
| music track were decoupled. It sounded consistently worse to
| me for all genres.
| floren wrote:
| > If I want to take photos I use Pentax ME Super
|
| A man of culture!
| 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".
| teddyh wrote:
| Sites get hacked all the time, and some either have bad
| hashing, or get so thoroughly hacked that the clear-text
| passwords get exposed. You shouldn't re-use passwords.
| 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.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| Reels and TikTok is this problem on steroids. Hopefully younger
| generations realize this can be problematic, even though it's
| been ubiquitous for them.
| 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.
| ellopoppit wrote:
| There is no known gene which causes ADHD.
|
| Like all other conditions in the DSM, there is no objective
| biological diagnostic criteria
| kortex wrote:
| There's no _one_ gene, but aside from very specific
| things, there 's hardly _one_ gene for any condition, but
| ADHD is highly heritable, and we already know several
| strong candidates. DRD4-R7, COMT Val158Met, TPH2, a
| couple others have been identified recently. Also, PET
| scans and in some cases high-density EEG can pick it up,
| the thing is, those are quite expensive and don 't really
| even tell you that much, whereas psychological evaluation
| tells you much more qualitatively.
| ellopoppit wrote:
| There is neither one or many genes or any objective
| biological test that is used to diagnose any psychiatric
| condition in the DSM.
|
| "psychiatric diagnosis still relies exclusively on
| fallible subjective judgments rather than objective
| biological tests"
|
| -Allen Francis, Professor and Chairman Emeritus of the
| Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke
| University School of Medicine, chair of the American
| Psychiatric Association task force overseeing the
| development and revision of the fourth edition of the
| Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
| (DSM-IV)
| user_7832 wrote:
| Perhaps specifically saying gene isn't accurate, but adhd
| is highly heritable (anywhere between 40 to 80% depending
| on which paper you look at)
| ellopoppit wrote:
| Indeed, social behaviors are highly heritable, we don't
| need a scientific paper to tell us that.
| 988747 wrote:
| I thought that the researcher that 'discovered' ADHD
| admitted oh his death bed that it was just a scam he
| invented to make money on the drugs to cure it.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Oh, trust me I wish I never could relate to the ADHD
| symptoms, but for better or for worse it exists. Heck,
| the concept of Alzheimer's sounds very suspicious ("How
| do you forget your _name_!? ")... until you see someone
| with it and then it's just sad :(
| kortex wrote:
| Nope. ADHD is a distinct neurological condition that we can
| pick up on with PET scans and the like. It sure as hell can
| be kryptonite for ADHDers - basically limitless novelty on
| tap - but it cannot cause ADHD.
|
| Source: had adhd long before smartphones. Still do.
|
| - written on my smartphone
| ellopoppit wrote:
| Were you diagnosed with ADHD before TVs were invented?
|
| As it stands, psychiatrists do not know what causes ADHD
| (or any psychiatric disorder in the DSM), so its certainly
| possible that social and environmental factors which induce
| ADHD like behaviors could be contributing factors. This is
| in accordance with the biopsychosocial theory.
|
| As for brain scans, those are not considered medically or
| scientifically reliable ways of diagnosing psychiatric
| conditions.
|
| You'll notice that every study which suggests it is, does
| not control for the fact that the psychiatrically diagnosed
| in their study are already under the influence of
| psychiatric medications which have tangible effects on
| brain chemistry; of course a brain on drugs will look
| different than a brain not on drugs...
|
| "psychiatric diagnosis still relies exclusively on fallible
| subjective judgments rather than objective biological
| tests"
|
| -Allen Francis, Professor and Chairman Emeritus of the
| Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke
| University School of Medicine, chair of the American
| Psychiatric Association task force overseeing the
| development and revision of the fourth edition of the
| Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-
| IV)
| 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.
| robocat wrote:
| I would paraphrase the question as: is the ADHD a problem
| with brain chemistrySS, or is it with the contextual
| environment? A common worldview is to split biological from
| environmental - an analogue to nature vs nurture.
|
| I do agree with your definition of clinical. There are a
| lot of signals, even such as the article itself and the
| works it references, pointing towards the problem being our
| modern internet device environment. This article
| https://medium.com/@bradwray/ive-had-enough-of-
| teaching-2bae... is written by a teacher who is quitting
| teaching because most students won't engage at school due
| to their devices (so probably clinical by your definition -
| "work" impacted and I'm guessing household too).
|
| SS yeah, "brain chemistry" is conceptually unsound, but I
| couldn't think of a better physical metaphor.
| jannyfer wrote:
| For Diabetes, there's Type I (genetic) and Type II (caused by
| frequent exposure to high blood sugar).
|
| I wonder if ADHD might have something similar, that we're just
| beginning to notice. The brain's plasticity might be adjusting
| to higher levels of dopamine from our phones.
|
| Anecdotally, I never had ADHD-like symptoms until COVID
| lockdowns. In the last year, I would spend pretty much all day
| in front of a screen and never get much meaningful stuff done.
| Now that I'm out and about more and staying away from phones, I
| feel less ADHD and I'm back to reading full length books and
| picking up hobbies.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Apparently stressful situations (university, becoming a
| parent) can cause folk's lives to fall apart revealing adhd
| that was being till then coped with okay (like in my case - I
| moved to a different continent for my degree). Covid too
| caused a huge shift for a lot of folks who may have been able
| to cope till then. (Personally I don't think ADHD is binary -
| autism is now understood as a spectrum, I think ADHD should
| be too.)
|
| Fun fact, I have diabetes too ;) Fun life lol
| 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.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I don't quite understand your comment, but my comment was
| just talking about how empty I found myself just stuck in a
| loop of attention grabbing activities outside of work.
|
| I believe all lives require work, but not all lives are
| fulfilled by certain kinds of work. Hitting OKRs or KPIs at
| work can be satisfying but ultimately mean nothing when you
| approach retirement age/wealth.
| 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)
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I love the metaphor. I especially love using the Michael
| Pollan quote of "If it's a plant eat it, if it's made in a
| plant, don't" or similar. I think that can be applied to our
| use of technology and especially content/digital consumption.
|
| I'll have to send you an email when I get back from vacation.
| Thanks for the kindness.
| 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.
| bigmealbigmeal wrote:
| Perhaps just to shatter the illusion that one will instantly
| become an enlightened productive person, this is what I did
| when I got rid of screens and books[^]: * Sat
| around philosophising about what to do with my life *
| Walked around philosophising about what to do with my life
| * Walked around discovering abandoned places in the city
| * Played instruments (which I already did when I had screens)
|
| That's about it. It's not a bad way to live, but I didn't get
| any great projects done, or create anything, or build anything.
|
| Instead, I've made the most progress in life by setting myself
| up with social environments that force me to get things done.
| Joining bands and sketch comedy groups has essentially peer
| pressured me into writing and producing a shitload of songs and
| screenplays. I've played more times live than I can count.
|
| I achieved not through ridding myself of the drug of the
| internet, but by supplementing it with the drug of social
| belonging.
|
| Hypothetically, most of our motivation for creating or building
| things comes from wanting to be valuable to our tribe. If we
| have weak social ties, or our tribe doesn't really value what
| we want to do, then motivation will be very difficult to find.
| (I think some people are exceptions to this, where they create
| endlessly in their splendid isolation, but it may be worth
| being honest and asking whether you are one of these
| exceptions, or whether you fit the rule like most of us.)
|
| [^]: Failing to get rid of books meant I just sat around
| reading books all day
| teddyh wrote:
| > _I need to learn how to write code in short segments of as
| little as 15 minutes._
|
| This, i.e. short cycle time, is one of the effects which TDD
| reportedly has. Write a tiny bit of test - write a tiny bit of
| code - test passes - refactor while all tests still pass -
| repeat.
| JoeyJoJoJr wrote:
| There was a time I was productive working on a side project in
| mostly odd segments of time after work, or in moments I was
| waiting for my girlfriend to get ready. There were some factors
| that I see as critical to allowing me to stay productive in
| 15-30 min windows.
|
| - my side project was a game with very few dependencies. No
| other people or large libraries that would complicate things. -
| I already had a solid foundation laid and had already invested
| sufficient time to the project. I wasn't starting from scratch.
| - New features had to fit within my mental model of my
| foundation. I couldn't afford any redesign or experimentation
| of my foundation. - Faith that many small incremental
| improvements would yield a bigger resul - I was very familiar
| with all the tech involved - I had a good set of simple gamedev
| design patterns that I cultivated and experimented with over
| the years
|
| It was a really worthwhile experience and gave me a different
| perspective on how I approach productivity.
| canthaveitall wrote:
| 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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