[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How do you deal with information and interne...
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?
I have noticed that I am getting more and more addicted to
consuming information so I am listening to podcasts while working
and I watch Youtube videos in my free time. This is all fun and
interesting but I feel this makes me want to do things less and
less. Instead of working on my own problems I distract myself by
listening to ever more information. I get a lot of benefit from
this information but somehow it feels shallow. I think part of it
is that my work is quite uninteresting and doesn't really keep my
mind engaged. But the work is tedious enough that I am too tried in
the evening to do something interesting. After a few years
everything feels like it's a repeat. Does anybody else feel that
way? Have you been able to detach yourself from the constant flow
of information and focus on your own stuff?
Author : rqtwteye
Score : 225 points
Date : 2023-02-08 16:52 UTC (6 hours ago)
| coreyp_1 wrote:
| You have 3 options:
|
| 1. Quit it all entirely. 2. Wean yourself down to a lower intake.
| 3. Do nothing and suffer the consequences.
|
| For myself, I still consume a lot of content, but I decided to be
| more picky about what content I consumed. Furthermore, I decided
| to start doing something with the knowledge, the results of which
| you can see here:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqirAnnqaCZ8lT8w7p2P...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Read books (bonus: if you live in a city these are increasingly
| available for free or less than the price of coffee). Use paper
| and pencil to make some notes or work some problems. Have
| designated times/activities that exclude devices.
| snozolli wrote:
| Consider committing yourself to organized things that essentially
| force you to turn that part of your brain off.
|
| Take a yoga class (I found that to be a _huge_ psychological
| relief after years of working in startup stress-land). Take a
| language class. Join a dining event on Meetup.com (I 'm assuming
| that's still a thing).
|
| Obviously this isn't going to help you attain some more
| _personal_ goal, like "read a challenging book" or "work on my
| so-called passion project", but that's kind of the point. You
| need external factors outweighing your habitual behaviors, and
| you'll at least end up feeling like you made some personal
| accomplishment even if it's not some big, personal goal.
|
| There's also a lot of self-gaming and time management that can
| help. Simple tricks like "I don't want to go to the gym today,
| but I know I need to, so I'll just commit to driving to the gym
| and going inside for five minutes". Once you're there, you'll
| almost certainly find yourself sticking around longer, and over
| time this builds a healthy habit. The Pomodoro technique really
| helped me with focus and procrastination. "I'll just spend 25
| minutes on this task with no interruptions". Next thing I know,
| I'm five Pomodoro cycles in and I've made a lot of progress.
| awesome_dude wrote:
| Before the internet (I'm that old :( life was dull and had no
| meaning. I used to pick up trivia (useless facts!) and was
| ridiculed for it (who cares! why do you learn these useless
| things!)
|
| Now that I live inside the biggest library in the world I feel
| alive, any and all knowledge I want is an instant away (so many
| times I liken it to the Matrix scene where Neo downloads new
| learnings and exclaims that he "knows Kung Fu")
|
| I still look at "useless" information, but my interests in
| Politics, Computer Science, and to a lessor extent Economics are
| properly satiated.
|
| It might be an addiction, but it's a hang of a lot better than
| drinking/drugs.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I use NextDNS with liberal blocking policies enabled. Things like
| Reddit and HN get blocked. The work to get around that is just
| tedious enough that much of the time I won't bother. I find also
| that for many of these things, the longer I go without, the
| easier it is to stay away. Definitely true for anything like HN
| that is interactive.
|
| My work computer has DNS out of my control. So here I am. Whoops!
| velcrovan wrote:
| I felt the same way for years.
|
| In general I'm persuaded that the Graph Mind is not evil
| (https://joeldueck.com/graph-mind.html), and that FOMO and being
| plugged in are good, functional instincts. So I don't really make
| an effort to tamp down on my consumption.
|
| However I've also found that using my creativity, making things,
| and being able to share things I've made ARE crucial to how
| rewarding it feels to "be online" in general.
| (https://joeldueck.com/being-in-the-graph-mind.html)
|
| Your consumption probably feels shallow because you don't have
| anything creative to work on that feels more interesting and
| rewarding than whatever else you're doing.
|
| The only way for that to change is to force yourself to start
| working on something. It isn't until you start that ideas start
| to come. But of course, when you're tired, this is EXTREMELY
| difficult.
|
| Here's how I've been able to climb out of that hole:
|
| 1. My kids got old enough to sleep through the night.
|
| 2. Eventually my wife and I had a hard conversation about how
| important creativity is to me and how to make space for it in our
| lives. This unblocked me mentally and creatively quite a lot even
| though nothing materially changed for some time after. Up till
| then I had been silently martyring my personal time for anything
| that came up and never having anything left over. Having the
| issue out in the open and understood by those close to you is a
| huge relief by comparison.
|
| 3. Months before this conversation, we had another hard
| conversation about my work schedule. I'd gotten burned out on a
| huge project, which had finished, but gotten me into the habit of
| leaving work at 6 or 7 every day. Another case of poor boundary-
| setting and not being honest with myself. I stopped doing that; I
| now leave work at 5pm every day. Fortunately I'm in a position to
| be able to do that.
|
| 3. I focused (and still focus) on small, achievable projects
| (example https://dicewordbook.com), where I'd be able to make
| good progress in the one or two hours of time I have in a week
| where I'm both free and have energy.
|
| 3a. Nothing is too small. Anything counts. A well-written tweet
| counts. A handwritten page. Buying an item for a project counts.
|
| Regarding the last one, Robin Sloan just had a newsletter
| (https://www.robinsloan.com/newsletters/sunshine-skyway/) where
| he articulates it very well:
|
| > When you start a creative project but don't finish, the
| experience drags you down. Worst of all is when you never
| decisively abandon the project, instead allowing it to fade into
| forgetfulness. The fades add up; they become a gloomy haze that
| whispers, _you're not the kind of person who DOES things_.
|
| > When you start and finish, by contrast -- and it can be a
| project of any scope: a 24-hour comic, a one-page short story,
| truly anything -- it is powerful fuel that goes straight back
| into the tank. When a project is finished, it exits the realm of
| "this is gonna be great" and becomes something you (and perhaps
| others) can actually evaluate. Even if that evaluation is
| disastrous, it is also, I will insist, thrilling and productive.
| It's the pump of a piston, preparing the engine for the next one.
|
| > Unfinished work drags and depresses; finished work redoubles
| and accelerates.
| ImaCake wrote:
| While this post has many great responses I want to also suggest
| that difficulty with addictions and failure to do what you
| actually want to do are also hallmarks of ADHD. Not everyone with
| these problems has it, but if you do then treating the disorder
| will make dealing with the addiction easier.
| nathias wrote:
| It is shallow, it's infotainment or more like just a background
| noise. Try listening to music instead.
| DevDesmond wrote:
| For technical solutions, I would recommend the plugin DF YouTube
| to remove suggested videos on YouTube. You can search for videos
| but won't have a home page of fun stuff to watch. On my phone I
| have the Google newsfeed disabled. I also have YouTube and Chrome
| disabled and two apps that further block me from simply re-
| activating it, (ActionDash & FocusMe, as well as Google's built
| in time-limit on the app). If I do have to use Chrome I try to
| keep it under ten minutes a day for important things.
|
| I've found that substantial efforts to get off of platforms that
| distract me can work, but it's very difficult and should very
| much be thought of as a hybrid problem of both your personal
| self, and your technological environment around you. If you're
| surrounded by distractions, you will find yourself distracted;
| however, if you simply crave distraction, blocking things will
| only lead to you getting distracted by the next best source of
| entertainment.
| cwoolfe wrote:
| I can relate. I deleted YouTube off my phone. When I'm at my
| best, I plan out my ideal week in 1 hour blocks. Then I try and
| stick to it--staying busy with things my best-self already
| decided would be worthwhile endeavors.
| netsharc wrote:
| NewPipe on Android and ImprovedTube[1], both can be configured
| to turn off the homepage, trending and recommended videos, so
| you watch 1 video and afterwards your eyes don't wander and
| think "Oh, what's that video?".
|
| [1]
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/improvedtube/bnomi...
| qup wrote:
| You plan before the week starts?
|
| How long does it take to plan like this?
| bmacho wrote:
| Immerse yourself in it, until you get sick of it.
| canadianfella wrote:
| [dead]
| orwin wrote:
| To me, it was a protective mechanism to avoid burnout (then bore-
| out at the next company).
|
| Think of this addiction as a mood regulator. You can replace it
| by other type of mood regulation (sport, games, family or
| friends...).
| sharemywin wrote:
| I'm in a similar boat. I work full time but limited in
| opportunity there. spend a lot of time on youtube.
|
| So, I'm working on a personal blog/platform, kind of, exactly for
| what your talking about. I've decided to be more productive but I
| haven't really settled on one idea. So, I'm building
| coolprojectideas.com so that I can blog(tutorials mostly) and
| build side projects. Plus I have like a million ideas and I
| wanted a place to idea vomit.
|
| I think there are 4 phases to being successful on your own.
|
| 1. experiment publicly.
|
| 2. stumble onto something people are into
|
| 3. focus/grow that
|
| 4. repeat
| dmje wrote:
| I'm going to sound irritating and glib, but to stop doing
| something you've got to have the will to stop doing it, and
| then...stop doing it.
|
| Sure there are tools out there to help and techniques and
| blockers - but ultimately there will always be pressures to
| consume and a multitude of opportunities to do so. So ultimately
| it comes down to you: if you want to sort this out, you've just
| got to stop.
| [deleted]
| jedberg wrote:
| > I get a lot of benefit from this information but somehow it
| feels shallow.
|
| I take a longer view to this. For example, a few years ago I read
| about an algorithm to calculate percentiles in real time. [0]
|
| It literally just came up at work today. I haven't used that
| information but maybe two times since I read it, but it was super
| relevant today and saved my team potential weeks of development.
|
| So maybe it's not so shallow.
|
| But to your actual question, I have a similar problem. The best I
| can say is that deadlines help. I usually put down the HN and
| Youtube when I have a deadline coming up. And not just at work. I
| make sure my hobbies have deadlines too.
|
| I tell people when I think something will be done, so they start
| bugging me about it when it doesn't get done, so that I have a
| "deadline". Also one of my hobbies is pixel light shows for
| holidays, which come with excellent natural deadlines -- it has
| to be done by the holiday or it's useless.
|
| So either find an "accountability buddy" who will hold you to
| your self imposed deadlines, or find a hobby that has natural
| deadlines, like certain calendar dates, or annual conventions or
| contests that you need to be done by.
|
| [0] https://github.com/tdunning/t-digest
| notrealyme123 wrote:
| Anecdotal: I found myself in the same situation where i was using
| internet as a means to avoid uncomfortable thoughts. See if you
| can be alone with yourself for some time and how you feel.
| For me it took some time to accept that the only way is giving
| the thoughts and emotions space. You have made a
| really big step by seeing what bothers you IMO.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It's the fear of silence That gives us away. Cause
| when we're alone We have to hear What our aching
| hearts try to say. -- Randy Stonehill
| deck4rd wrote:
| For YouTube, I never actually visit YouTube.com. I view my
| subscriptions via my RSS/Atom feed reader and I watch the videos
| with mpv. This has probably saved me many hours I would have
| wasted clicking through "recommended" videos in the sidebar.
| retrac wrote:
| I don't know about you but I find being alone in quiet
| distressing and I tend to, for example, listen to a podcast just
| to fill the void and feel like I'm at least passively absorbing
| something.
|
| But long stretches of silence are the human norm. Even in social
| situations. I've found when I'm literally spending all day with
| someone, with no media to distract, that the conversation will
| have long lulls in it. I think I first noticed it when I went
| fishing with my boyfriend. Stretches of quiet that will go on for
| ten minutes until one of us thought of something worth saying,
| then some lively talk, then quiet again. And that was okay!
|
| Does the thought of such stretches of emptiness fill you with
| dread? It usually does for me. I think that's where my own
| information addiction comes from. It relieves that discomforting
| sensation. But I have come to believe such experiences are
| essential to mental health, from time to time. I'm ill at ease
| with my own thoughts.
|
| If this sounds familiar in some way, I suggest prayer and/or
| meditation. Though if you want a more practical prescription,
| take a long walk daily without your phone, in a quiet area.
| [deleted]
| raydiatian wrote:
| "Out of sight, out of mind." It's the organizing principle of my
| life, as somebody with ADHD and a slightly addictive personality.
|
| 1. Install App (such as Reddit) before use, delete after.
|
| 2. Scorched Earth Campaign on my Notifications settings on my
| smartphone
|
| 3. Stick to Hacker News, as most of it is boring irrevelant
| drivel these days.
|
| 4. Trained myself to recognize when I was instinctively cracking
| open a news website, or Social Media.
|
| I've realized that my daily tendencies are really just repeats of
| some tendency from days ago, in my mind's helpless attempt to
| stay preoccupied. If those daily tendencies include a habit loop
| like "hey, this sucks, maybe crack open your phone to get out of
| the way of the misery", then as long as my phone is telling me to
| fuck right off, it operates as a reminder that I'm not interested
| in it.
| brazed_blotch wrote:
| I also find access to limitless information addicting, and get
| bored at work sometimes. Practical advice:
|
| 1) Cut internet to your house, or get someone to change the WiFi
| password if you can't do that.
|
| 2) Remove your SIM card and glue it into a dumb phone
|
| 3) Delete social media and things you find distracting (steam,
| instagram, etc.)
|
| 4) Organise your work tasks by priority if you haven't already. I
| use Kanboard for this. Otherwise the former steps will leave a
| void you'll fill by procrastinating.
|
| That is essentially the only thing that worked after trying many
| other solutions over three years. Some people don't have to go to
| that extreme but... different strokes for different folks. One
| year later and I'm still going strong! I now rent in a co-working
| space, but a library was perfectly adequate before that.
| johnvaluk wrote:
| Don't overlook the benefits. Use them to your favor.
|
| Go for a walk. Did you see an interesting bird, insect, or plant?
| Take a picture or commit to memory and try to identify it when
| you get home.
|
| Got any broken stuff? Look up information on how to fix it. Then
| fix it.
|
| Has it been over a year since your last physical? Make an
| appointment with your doctor. Look up any new terminology from
| your visit or test results.
|
| Seek experiences, then supplement them with related information.
| Emphasize quality over quantity.
| UltimateEdge wrote:
| Attending a software conference recently and speaking to
| developers who I admire has inspired me to get off my ass, learn
| and build instead of consuming content.
| milesjag wrote:
| Some of the tools which have helped me rediscover my focus and
| discipline:
|
| * Use the CLI for everything - reduce the amount of time you have
| a browser open
|
| * An egg timer - use this every time a tedious task needs
| completing
|
| * A dumb phone - small and minimal functionality, easy to forget
| about
|
| * A watch - stop using your phone for checking the time
|
| * Cook your own food - excellent use of time
|
| * Exercise - no headphones, a gym provides background music and
| enough human contact to keep boredom at bay
|
| * Long-form media - books, films, music
|
| * Return to things you know you like - 'it is better to know one
| book intimately than to have read one hundred'
| pokler wrote:
| > A dumb phone - small and minimal functionality, easy to
| forget about
|
| This requires more diligence, but can't you create the
| experience you want on a smart phone (no social media, disable
| all notifications, etc.) without giving up utilities that
| provide actual value, such as GPS / navigation?
|
| > Exercise - no headphones, a gym provides background music and
| enough human contact to keep boredom at bay
|
| Interesting. I feel like I am more distracted and unfocused
| when I listen to the gym's music (sometimes their music just
| doesn't match the intensity of the workout) or when I socialize
| between workouts.
| bomdawg wrote:
| > Use the CLI for everything
|
| Interesting, can you explain what this looks like in practice?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Usually a black screen with a bunch of mostly white letters
| :)
|
| Seriously though, I do this a lot too. All my instant
| messaging comes though a text interface, most of my note
| taking and other work. I use the browser a lot still because
| it's sadly unavoidable.
|
| If I really need to focus I even use my old VT520 CRT
| terminal. The soft amber glow really helps to focus <3
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| HACKER MODE ENABLED
|
| PRESS RETURN TO HACK THE PENTAGON
| eunoia wrote:
| Yeah it might sound ridiculous but I do this too...
|
| I wrapped the GPT-3 API in a stupid little CLI the other
| day, just to poke a davinci w/o having to go the browser. I
| like it.
| juujian wrote:
| I know I am very bad at self-control, so I tend to go cold turkey
| whenever I lose control. Recently I decided to leave my phone at
| home whenever I can. I know that seems like a radical step, but
| it has been easier than I expected. I frequently go to coffee
| shops to knock some urgent work out, and since I carry a laptop
| and there is wifi everywhere, I can still check the buss schedule
| etc. when I need to. But the temptation of interrupting what I do
| to spend 20 minutes on the phone is gone.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Yep it sucks. I think it is more insidious than other time
| wasters because we can pretend it is productive.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| _How do you deal with information and internet addiction?_
|
| I give into it and feed it more. I can never get enough
| information. More information has helped me throughout my life to
| make better informed decisions and sometimes the information is
| just interesting.
| jen729w wrote:
| Just try one thing and see how that makes you feel. The feeling
| might then spread.
|
| Example: bored of COVID, on 1 Jan 2021 I stopped reading the
| 'mainstream' (sorry) news. The Guardian, ABC, BBC, whatever it
| was that I'd been looking at: stop.
|
| It helps that I've never watched the TV news. So it wasn't hard
| to just cut this out.
|
| But I did _not_ stop using Twitter or browsing HN or Reddit or
| whatever. Just one thing that I identified as having a definite
| detrimental impact.
|
| I also did not become religious about not absorbing any news.
| Sometimes I overhear news. I see my partner's iPad. The radio
| news might come on. That's okay. But for two years now, I just
| haven't gone to a news site and read the news.
|
| I don't really know what's going on, and my life is better for
| it. My mind is less busy.
|
| Since then, Sam Harris by way of his 'Waking Up' meditation app
| has convinced me of the power of thought. And perhaps because I
| broke one cycle, I now find it reasonably easy to break, or at
| least crack, others.
|
| I listen to way less podcasts than I used to. Every spare moment
| there used to be an AirPod in my ear. Now, I walk to work and
| listen to the city. I hang the laundry out without worrying that
| I'm not spending those three minutes absorbing information.
|
| I no longer use Twitter and barely use Mastodon. But I do use it.
|
| And here I am responding to a HN comment, so I'm obviously still
| here. Like I say, this isn't some religion. It's just a nudge in
| the right direction. You don't solve this overnight.
|
| Pick one thing to start. _Notice_ the results. 'Waking Up' is
| excellent. One month free here, no benefit to me.
| https://dynamic.wakingup.com/shareOpenAccess/af0843
|
| Edit: I should've said by recognising this as a problem, you have
| already taken the first massive step. Well done.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| How I dealt with it is by writing an entire book on my feelings
| about it. I found philosophy to be very helpful to understand
| where my attention was going and how I could focus on being a
| better person each day.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| I try to work in the terminal as much as possible, most of my
| colleagues don't work in the terminal at all.
| 65 wrote:
| It's not that we're all addicted to the internet, it's that
| nearly everything else in life has been abstracted away to the
| point where the only thing the do is use the internet.
|
| It's not a matter of you choosing to use the internet for hours a
| day, it's a matter of society's efficiencies removing any need to
| do things such as:
|
| - Build a house
|
| - Grow crops
|
| - Talk to your neighbors
|
| - Etc.
|
| and therefore your are _forced_ to use the internet.
|
| Can you still do the things listed? Sure. Is society set up in
| such a way that those things are easy and done by the vast
| majority of people? No.
|
| It's like online dating. A modern person is, in a way, forced to
| using online dating because the alternatives are out of fashion.
|
| Software is eating the world, which means it's eating your life.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I haven't found this to be true. When I became unhappy with the
| volume of my Internet use, I made a conscious effort to take on
| physical meatspace hobbies, and found no societal pushback.
| Really the only limiting factors are time and (often) money.
| But, if you pick an inexpensive hobby and deliberately set
| aside time for it, there's nothing stopping you from doing it.
| Nobody is forced to use the Internet.
| 65 wrote:
| No one is forcing you to practice hobbies either. The point
| is the things that were necessary in previous generations,
| like building a house, growing crops, going to the bank, etc.
| are now abstracted away for you.
|
| This leaves a lot of time for you to figure out what to do
| with your time. The internet has a large presence in life
| because everyone is online. You then, in a way, are forced
| online because everyone else is there.
|
| The communities I have found for my various hobbies
| (woodworking, music) are all online. To find other people to
| talk to about the hobby, I need to go online, because that's
| where everyone is.
|
| This isn't going to hard and fast apply to every possible
| scenario in life, but I have found internet networks to be a
| heavy force in my online usage. And because of network
| effects, it creates a feedback loop where you spend more time
| online because everyone else is online.
|
| I'm sure there's a way to break free from the loop, but it's
| not as easy as you mention. Ok, I built a chair in my garage.
| What am I gonna do? Sit in it and call it a day? Build
| another chair? A major part of having hobbies is sharing your
| creation, which ends up being online because that's where
| everyone is. Otherwise building chairs all day long for no
| one isn't very fulfilling.
| milesjag wrote:
| That's scarily intuitive - the sum of smaller efficiencies
| create more significant deficiencies in unintended places
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Yes, I slowly unwound everything over time. Just realize it will
| be a slow gradual process and I think it's best to be patient
| with yourself.
|
| This is what worked for me:
|
| - Every week I unsubbed a subreddit until eventually there was
| only one left. It was so boring I stopped visiting Reddit.
|
| - I installed an extension for Facebook and slowly unfollowed
| every one.
|
| - I stopped posting to Instagram. Eventually stopped posting
| stories.
|
| - Uninstalled Facebook and Instagram from my phone.
|
| - Don't have TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit or any apps on my phone.
|
| - Started using https://www.beeper.com so I can still _chat_ with
| people on Facebook or Instagram.
|
| - I turned off all notifications except vital ones (mentions on
| slack emails)
|
| - I turned on screentime for news, financial stuff, everything
| really. Put it all for only 5 minutes a day.
|
| This all has _dramatically_ helped.
| geocrasher wrote:
| This is a LOT like what I've done. I just stopped reading
| stuff. I uninstalled apps, etc.
|
| Another thing: Spend time outside, sans phone (off or on mute
| is fine). Humans have survived for millennia without the glut
| of information we have now, and they did it by getting outside
| and spending some time with the planet. Try it. It helps.
| ryandrake wrote:
| In addition to uninstalling the apps, I'd recommend changing
| your account passwords to random 64 character strings and
| then throwing those strings away. This prevented me from
| "cheating" by using the web.
| qorrect wrote:
| What do you do with all your free time ?
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I'm trying to read more; as in actual books. I've been
| spending at least an hour a day going for a nice long walk.
| Studying another language and doing at least one hour a day
| with a teacher. Work on a side project. Go explore the city.
| SeanAnderson wrote:
| I'm reading Deep Work by Cal Newport at the moment. It touches on
| this issue directly and offers up a lot of concrete suggestions.
|
| At the moment I'm "stepping down" from my addictions. I created a
| Tampermonkey script which blocks Facebook, Instagram, Reddit,
| Twitter, Coingecko (crypto charts) and porn M-F. I still have
| HackerNews, Twitch, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Discord fully
| accessible, but this is just my first couple of weeks at it. I'm
| going to keep tightening them down and defining smaller windows
| with fewer tools until I actually look forward to the limited
| time I have to interface with them.
|
| There are a LOT of suggestions throughout the book and they are
| quite compelling. Planning your day, reflecting on your values,
| creating pro/con lists of what you want to achieve in life versus
| the benefits these tools provide, reflecting on what sort of
| lifestyle you need to live for personal success. Could you thrive
| with a fully monastic lifestyle like Neal Stephenson or Donald
| Knuth? Or perhaps your lifestyle would better off being cyclical
| on a quarterly basis? Or perhaps you can only afford to weave
| deep work in for hours each day, sporadically, more like a
| reporter or journalist. Depending on your lifestyle your strategy
| for committing to deep work will vary.
|
| I'd give it a read/listen and see what you think!
| dbieber wrote:
| I made a list of my strategies for this:
| https://davidbieber.com/snippets/2022-03-18-attention-strate...
|
| So you don't have to click through, here they are: * Using an
| outliner like Roam Research
|
| * Working with another person (e.g. pair programming)
|
| * Working with another person present (e.g. independent
| coworking)
|
| * Running a "distraction detection" program
|
| * Mentally noting the distraction-kind and returning my attention
|
| * Keeping my phone in my kitchen
|
| * Writing on Go Note Go, my headless keyboard
|
| * Attending meetings/talks in "clamshell mode" (laptop closed, no
| keyboard or mouse available)
|
| * Making TODO lists
|
| * And explicitly writing down the ^^active TODO^^
|
| * Going to sleep at a specific time (e.g. 10:10pm)
|
| * Exercising regularly (or at least aiming to)
|
| * Stopping watching TV in the middle of an episode (ends of
| episodes are more addicting)
|
| * 50 minute working sessions (e.g. focusmate.com)
|
| * Stretching
|
| * Taking short deliberate breaks
|
| * Using Pomodoro timers for working sessions
|
| * Using the "Intention" Chrome extension by DK
|
| * Keeping all notifications on my phone turned off
|
| * Asking the people I live with to get my attention first before
| starting a conversation with me
|
| * Announcing my current active goal publicly (e.g. in a chat
| room)
|
| * "Hide feed" Chrome extension, also by DK
|
| This is all in addition to what I call the "Nike strategy". i.e.
| "Just do it". aka pure will power. But you don't need to rely
| completely on the Nike strategy -- the rest of the list can be
| useful too!
| 58x14 wrote:
| Thanks for turning me on to Go Note Go. I've been contemplating
| a similar system for quite some time.
|
| How often do you review your "Go" notes? I'm finding that's now
| becoming the bottleneck in my mental model - I've reduced most
| of the friction in my output, but now there's more activation
| energy for retrieval.
|
| I've been using Obsidian for a week now, which I hope will pay
| dividends in time. Do you have a particular workflow or stack
| for your "second brain?"
| dbieber wrote:
| I review them frequently -- opportunistically only, but
| frequently nevertheless. I gather I'm unusual in this regard;
| most people I talk to about note taking seem to be "write
| only".
|
| For myself, I write notes on Go Note Go without seeing them,
| but I also use Roam at a computer where I do see my notes.
| When there, I'm often curious to read for the first time what
| I wrote blindly the day before. I also go back through my
| notes looking for ideas to expand on (tagged e.g. #[[Snippet
| Ideas]]), or for TODOs for projects.
| alexpetralia wrote:
| Yes, one of my mantras for 2023 was "consume less, create more."
| Hayarotle wrote:
| Find out if your addiction is because you find the world boring,
| or if you're trying to escape from something you fear.
|
| If it's the former, block the addictive content and replace it
| with other things you find fun (hobbies, books, movies, etc),
| paying attention to how it's more worthwhile to do so.
|
| If it's the latter, find out how to overcome such fear / anxiety
| and to stop using addictive content as a crutch.
| lnsru wrote:
| I show similar bad behavior when I am overtired. It took me a
| while to see the pattern and put my phone aside when I need
| rest.
| rtuin wrote:
| This rings a bell! Thank you for commenting this.
| stonedpwned wrote:
| 100% agree. I happened to do this this morning as I was dealing
| internally with another, somewhat similar, sort of addiction.
|
| Earlier in my life, I was addicted because I was
| fearful/anxious/traumatized. It was a (shitty, yet effective)
| escape.
|
| Now that my life has been stable for a few years the addiction
| came back up. I wondered why, and I realized it was because I
| was bored. It made things more challenging (which was a
| motivation to quit I thought), but it turns out the challenges
| introduced by this addiction actually make my mundane day-to-
| day more stimulating.
|
| Sure is hard to code stoned huh?
| chordalkeyboard wrote:
| here is a website which addresses this: https://defetter.com
| tippytippytango wrote:
| I'd bet your information diet has become mostly stuff recommended
| to you by algorithms. This kills our creativity because we are
| just thinking about the same stuff that every other person is
| getting recommended at this moment. There's no room for us to
| think your own thoughts, we just jump from latest thing to latest
| thing and sound like a twitter summarizer bot at parties.
|
| There's a simple way to solve this. You get to indulge your love
| of information. BUT, only if you searched for it first.
|
| Want to look at twitter? Don't look at the feed, search for
| something relevant to you. Want to watch a YouTube video? Search
| for something you care about, something relevant to your
| perspective.
|
| When you seek out information you are spontaneously curious
| about, it connects to real problems in your life, things you
| might have a genuine opportunity to influence. If you consume
| algorithmic content, your head fills up with problems you can't
| do anything about. It's paralyzing.
|
| It's important to write, take walks or sit and stare at a tree or
| even a wall. That's where the ideas find their space to entire
| your mind.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Feels funny to offer a YT video in response, but I just saw this
| and it spoke to the topic. [1]
|
| It's a search for stimulation, and underdeveloped skill of
| dealing with a lack of stimulation.
|
| For me I've started to focus on just acting. Got the idea to do
| something? Try your best to do it without googling, youtubing,
| listening to pod casts. Just take the next action that seems like
| it might work, and pivot if it doesn't. It adds some adventure
| back into life too.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuHEY7CjjTI
| Pandabob wrote:
| I write a newsletter[0] (in finnish) every weekday that
| summarises what has happened in tech. I've been doing this now
| for two years and its helped me keep my news addiction in check
| (ironically). Forcing yourself to write makes it easier to
| process stuff and during the weekends, when I'm not writing, I
| really don't have the urge to keep checking Twitter or Techmeme.
|
| I've recently been playing around with Midjourney for the cover
| images and that's been a excercise as well.
|
| [0]: https://www.transistori.com/
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| Books. Lots of books. Whether in my area of focus or in history,
| art, and fiction; just feeding the thirst in other ways helps
| tremendously. Also, hobbies that give you a chance to practically
| apply things that you learn. I believe the addiction comes from
| the absence of healthy habits.
| azmodeus wrote:
| Completely agree books keep me sane from digital overload.
| 0r30 wrote:
| Finding meditation away from a screen i've found helpful. A
| combination of risk and speed scratch this itch best for me but
| YMMV. Dirtbikes, mountain bikes, running, skateboarding i've
| found help me process the information i've consumed in the course
| of the day.
| openquery wrote:
| It's definitely a problem. I'm not sure how to fix it.
|
| The crux of the addiction is that doing is hard and consuming is
| easy. I can watch a YT video on homotopy type theory (I'm not a
| mathematician) and feel good about myself and how much I'm
| learning and how I'm going to use this newly found knowledge. The
| reality of the situation is I'm probably not learning very much
| and just procrastinating.
|
| The moment you sit down and try to create, you are almost
| immediately slapped in the face by your own limitations and this
| is an unsettling feeling. You then have a reflex to escape this
| discomfort by opening a new tab and navigating to YouTube and
| sedate yourself with that sweet, sweet content - where anything
| is possible.
|
| If you're an engineer or product person, I would recommend
| perhaps turning this problem into an opportunity. Can you solve
| this problem for yourself as a product or service? If you do I'd
| love to buy it.
| pwuadi wrote:
| This is good!
| jcq3 wrote:
| I think there's a difference between consuming low value
| information like Tiktok content and spending hours on Wikipedia.
| I have the same addiction because my nature is to be curious and
| introspective, I won't get around that. Without internet I would
| be a bookworm and addict to librairies. My hack if it can help
| you is not to consume less information but consume more by filter
| a lot to keep only high value content, using AI to summarize text
| and audio, listening at x2 speed and always taking notes. If I
| don't, I feel my focus was a waste and that I won't ever
| capitalize on this high value information by making it a
| knowledge. We are just world explorers and this game has no end,
| I chose to explore faster.
| nurettin wrote:
| Make a rule of doing something interesting with everything you
| learn. If there is nothing to do, talk to someone about it. If
| there is nobody, write a blog. If you can't write a blog, just
| detail it in a notebook. The point is to make a habit of
| interacting with things. That way you keep yourself engaged, slow
| down your intake, feel a bit more lively and it is overall a good
| habit to have.
| labrador wrote:
| I handle it by collecting quotes that tell me to knock it off.
| I've since started to focus on just the things I really care
| about: The purpose of knowledge is action, not
| knowledge. -- Aristotle Knowledge isn't
| free. You have to pay attention -- Richard Feynman
| "Information is not truth" -- Yuval Noah Harari
| If I were the plaything of every thought, I would be a fool, not
| a wise man. -- Rumi Dhamma is in your
| mind, not in the forest. You don't have to go and look anywhere
| else. -- Ajahn Chah Man has set for
| himself the goal of conquering the world, but in the
| process he loses his soul. -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
| The wise man knows the Self, And he plays the game of
| life. But the fool lives in the world Like a
| beast of burden. -- Ashtavakra Gita (4--1)
| We must be true inside, true to ourselves, before we can
| know a truth that is outside us. -- Thomas Merton
| Saying yes frequently is an additive strategy. Saying no is a
| subtractive strategy. Keep saying no to a lot of things - the
| negative and unimportant ones - and once in awhile, you will be
| left with an idea which is so compelling that it would be a
| screaming no-brainer 'yes'. - unknown
| 50 wrote:
| It seems to me distraction hinges on some imaginative
| falsivity. Kafka, in effect: "Life is a continual distraction
| which does not even allow us to reflect on that from which we
| are being distracted."
| pwuadi wrote:
| I like this, thanks
| aloer wrote:
| In the context of quotes I will throw in what I read on reddit
| the other day: Addiction is giving up
| everything for one thing, sobriety is giving up one
| thing for everything
|
| Unfortunately knowing quotes is not enough to kick the habit.
| Too much time spent on reddit and HN :/
| isthisthingon99 wrote:
| [dead]
| adversaryIdiot wrote:
| It'd be cool if you could provide a brief explanation of what
| each quote means to you. Quotes can sometimes be hard to
| interpret when they're out of context.
| labrador wrote:
| Through self-awareness and self-knowledge comes right
| thinking, and it is right thinking that will bring peace and
| joy. - Krishnamurti
|
| What they mean to me is to focus on the questions important
| to me. An easier way to put it is the example of writing a
| book. For a long time you do a lot of research and collect
| information. At some point you have to start writing the book
| which means turning your collection into a story. Once I got
| in this mode, I stopped "fear of missing out" about things I
| was never going to learn. There's just too much. My mind is
| limited. I'm hopeful that AI will help me with this focus.
| crosen99 wrote:
| Nice list. What helps me:
|
| "A preoccupation with the means is a lack of commitment to the
| end."
|
| In this context, the means is knowledge. And for me, the end is
| building things. So, I try always to be building something (in
| my work or avocationally), and the high I get from that helps
| to resist the craving to know more about how to build things.
| bohemian_hobo wrote:
| those are some potent quotes right there
| zzzbra wrote:
| Thank you for this -- adding these to my quotes Anki deck.
|
| I would also add to these the TS Elliot quote from his work,
| the Rock:
|
| > "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the
| knowledge we have lost in information?"
| dinkleberg wrote:
| I'm curious, how do you use quotes in your anki deck? Do you
| do a card like "What did TS Elliot say about knowledge?" And
| have the answer be the quote?
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| I'm surprised to not see Pascal's quote in this list:
|
| "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit
| quietly in a room alone"
|
| ...but maybe that better sums up OP's issue rather than a
| solution.
|
| Either way you'll need to take steps to make it harder to do
| the things you're currently doing (e.g. get a dumb phone, set
| up a firewall rule to block these sites, set a timer) but there
| might be a deeper underlying issue of having nothing better to
| do.
|
| Perhaps making other aspects of your life more difficult will
| eat up this idle time while also providing more fulfillment.
| I've personally found that riding a bike to get food at some
| place farther away (as opposed to eating at home, ordering
| food, or just driving somewhere) is an excellent way to detach
| digitally, get some exercise, and force yourself to see new
| parts of your town/city. Obviously this doesn't work for
| everyone but the gist of this is to force yourself to take time
| to do something unexpected and difficult and find your reward
| in that instead of reading every HN thread, checking every
| email, and responding to all the memes your friends send.
| labrador wrote:
| > "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to
| sit quietly in a room alone"
|
| I have that one in my quotes file but it's just a big text
| file and not easily searched by subject. I need to add tags.
| endymi0n wrote:
| I like it, will steal some. I followed the same strategy and
| always added relevant content to this doc, then forcing myself
| to read it every day. It's a non-attributed mashup of several
| sources. because it's from my personal notes:
|
| --- Core Question: Is what I'm currently doing helpful to my
| goals?
|
| Get Bored. Get Calm. Enjoy boredness.
|
| Whatever happens on the front page, I'm never involved. It
| seems like the whole thing would work just as well even if
| nobody ever read the Times or watched the cable chat shows.
| It's a closed system.
|
| Breaking News is most often wrong and later corrected by more
| breaking news.
|
| But if that's true on a scale of minutes, why longer? Instead
| of watching hourly updates, why not read a daily paper? Instead
| of reading the back and forth of a daily, why not read a weekly
| review? Instead of a weekly review, why not read a monthly
| magazine? Instead of a monthly magazine, why not read an annual
| book?
|
| Following the news isn't just a waste of time, it's actively
| unhealthy. Edward Tufte notes that when he used to read the New
| York Times in the morning, it scrambled his brain with so many
| different topics that he couldn't get any real intellectual
| work done the rest of the day.
|
| Its obsession with the criminal and the deviant makes us less
| trusting people. Its obsession with the hurry of the day-to-day
| makes us less reflective thinkers. Its obsession with surfaces
| makes us shallow.
|
| I have not followed the news for a long time. My life does not
| seem to be impoverished for it; indeed, I think it has been
| greatly enhanced. But I haven't found many other people who are
| willing to take the plunge.
|
| News makes our inner opinion volcano boil and that is toxic!
|
| Uncontrolled input prevents rest, relaxation and output. All
| this massive time that is lost is ultimately YOURS! I am good
| to myself. I am worth it to myself not to stuff myself with
| poison!
|
| Bad news is toxic for your body:
|
| By consuming all of this news (which is nearly all bad news),
| you're stressing your body out, weakening its ability to fight
| off infection, and potentially causing digestive and growth
| problems.
|
| The really bad news is that news consumption is a vicious cycle
| that's hard to get out of. Stress weakens your willpower.
| Without the willpower to put your phone down or turn off your
| computer, you're likely to consume more and more news. And so
| the pattern continues.
|
| "We are training our brains to pay attention to crap."
|
| The more a person consumes multiple types of media, the fewer
| brain cells there were in the anterior cingulate cortex. This
| is the part of the brain responsible for attention span and
| moral deliberation. You can no longer concentrate on books and
| longer articles. Your mind gives up after just a few paragraphs
| without absorbing any of the content. And you begin to suffer
| from anxiety.
|
| After all, it is also part of freedom of opinion not to have an
| opinion.
|
| Reading the news doesn't help you change the world for the
| better. Ignore it or do something.
|
| You need to make a complete break. The best way to do this is
| to push through 30 days of no news at all. By the end of those
| 30 days, you'll hopefully reach the point where you don't feel
| the urge to peek at the headlines.
|
| What do you REALLY want in life?
|
| To be really successful at something, you need to dedicate
| yourself to it fully. Albert Einstein, Frida Kahlo, and
| Beethoven didn't become greats in their respective fields by
| scrolling through news feeds every few moments. They simply
| couldn't have done, wasting all of that time. ---
| bojo wrote:
| > Uncontrolled input prevents rest, relaxation and output.
| All this massive time that is lost is ultimately YOURS!
|
| Love this take. Thanks for saying it, has enriched my day
| today.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Totally agree. I've also disconnected from everything but the
| tech news and not missing anything. We had a discussion
| recently where people were amazed some hadn't heard of the
| Turkey earthquake 12 hours later. I only learned of it 1 hour
| before that.
|
| But really what does it matter? Anything really important
| will reach me anyway. And there's nothing I can do about most
| of it. I also can't care about every single person in the
| world. Even if I know about bad stuff happening I can't help
| it.
|
| I just read the local paper website once a day now, and
| that's enough. Anything important like this in Turkey will
| show up there too. And most of the local news is about stuff
| that actually affects me.
|
| I also don't have a TV subscription anymore. I don't watch
| anything live, and have zero interest in watching sports so I
| just had no need for it anymore. Same with social media, if I
| could still just follow my friends like they used to offer I
| would, but they don't. They try to make me engage with low
| quality nonsense which pushes me away.
|
| The only interruptions I get now is from instant messaging,
| but most of the people I know and _all_ group chats I have
| muted and I just check in on their chats when I feel like it.
| So no notifications there. Only the most important people get
| through.
| marketdev wrote:
| Thank you.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Sounds like an addictive hobby (:
| antihero wrote:
| "Beware the barrenness of a busy life" - Socrates
| eBombzor wrote:
| Okay... so what about academic research?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| What about it?
| eBombzor wrote:
| What "action" does the knowledge from academic research
| provide to a grad student?
| badrabbit wrote:
| Every addiction, at it's root has an unhealthy relationship with
| your own self.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| I wonder if this can be a good forum for your question. You must
| suspect every answer here simply because everyone here is a self-
| selected group of people idly reading and commenting on Hacker
| News threads. It is like asking your friends at the bar for
| suggestions on how to quit drinking: many there have no interest
| in it, and the rest are interested but have not succeeded.
| 58x14 wrote:
| Several threads here seem insightful, particularly the top
| comment with quotes on avoiding the pitfall of information
| addiction. I often find pragmatic, applicable advice for fuzzy
| mental and emotional problems here, more so than in most other
| online communities.
|
| In the end, it's the poster's responsibility to comb through
| responses to find useful snippets. The cliche of "admitting the
| problem is the first step towards recovery" could also apply to
| asking this question.
|
| Rather than comparing HN to patrons at a bar, I'd counter that
| HN is more like a large courtyard on a tech campus. Sure,
| there's bars, foam pits and foosball tables, but there's also
| chess matches, spirited debate, and plenty of like-minded
| people around too.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Nothing wrong with bars. They're also known for spirited
| debate, like-minded people, and foosball tables, even more so
| than tech campus courtyards.
|
| But you have a point. I'm being snarky, unfair, and, worse,
| unhelpful. One can consume media and also create stuff.
| Hanging out here doesn't mean that you aren't also creating
| neat things, and indeed there are a whole bunch of posts here
| every day showing the insane and wonderful things people are
| out there creating.
| CrypticShift wrote:
| Addiction is a bitch. There is no denying it.
|
| However, there is a paradox: If everyone just stops using
| unmaterial goods (information, software...), who is going to use
| the "stuff" you are supposed to "focus on"?
|
| Watching/listening to tons of Youtube and podcast in the right
| spirit could be better that producing stuff just for the sake of
| doing stuff. It is all about the spirit.
|
| It is like you finally do that "Show HN" and then nobody upvotes
| cause "Who needs Yet another X". If information overload is a
| problem, overproduction is one too (it is even its cause in the
| first place).
| jti107 wrote:
| i'd suggest reading Dopamine Nation, essentially the premise of
| the book is modern society has hijacked our natural reward system
| and we havent figured out how to moderate ourselves. author
| suggests 30 day dopamine detox so whatever you think you're
| addicted to (social media, sugar, sex, news, drugs, alcohol,
| etc.) force yourself to not use it for a couple of weeks and see
| how you feel. you should go thru intense withdrawal but in the
| latter weeks you're body and mind should be reaching a new
| equilibrium. she also mentions usinng challenging things (cold
| showers, exercise, etc) to reset your hormonal reward systems
| dandanua wrote:
| Practicing self-restrictions is a good advice in general, but I
| wouldn't equate the addiction problem with dopamine levels.
| There is a meaning in everything you do, including your
| addictions. Sometimes this meaning is very deep. And you won't
| solve the problem without understanding roots of it.
| jti107 wrote:
| Yep totally agree, you will need need to solve the root issue
| at some point. The detox is just to meant to give you a
| chance to look at the situation clearly and hopefully put you
| in the path to addressing the root issue. which hopefully
| means you won't need to medicate thru ur addiction
| rejectfinite wrote:
| I don't. I let it consume me.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| You describe the feeling very well. I feel exactly the same way
| and have to actively make an effort to avoid getting distracted.
|
| All "bad habits" I've been able to combat has been with some
| mechanism where I can stop the temptation from growing in my
| mind. Nip it in the bud, as they say. I lost a lot of weight by
| killing any thoughts about snacking with the mantra "no eating
| anything you didn't plan to eat, ever for any reason" for
| example.
|
| Thinking to myself "focus means saying no" has recently helped me
| close a few background-opened tabs without reading the genuinely
| interesting articles hiding behind them, but I have found no
| silver bullet. If I let myself go one night, I'm at 20 wikipedia
| tabs and 12 HN tabs as bedtime approaches, easy. :)
| pkghost wrote:
| A 6-minute Bob Newhart clip from MadTV that is guaranteed[1] to
| fix all your problems:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0lr63y4Mw (tl;dw: stop it!)
|
| > But the work is tedious enough that I am too tried in the
| evening to do something interesting.
|
| Same; sounds normal.
|
| > Have you been able to detach yourself from the constant flow of
| information and focus on your own stuff?
|
| I put the xbox in the closet for while and made it just a little
| harder to indulge the impulse. Don't tell yourself you have to
| swear off podcasts or HN or whatever forever--just ask yourself
| if you'd be willing to try a brief but significant break, and
| make sure you have some ideas for what you'll replace it with.
|
| I also rarely spend free time programming. Once in a while I'll
| get an idea and the motivation to do so, but I find that if I
| spend a significant chunk of my productive/creative energy during
| the day on work, I'm much happier if I then spend the rest of the
| day socializing, exercising, doing stuff around the house--
| basically anything not in front of the computer.
|
| Habit change can be daunting, but the hardest part is often
| recognizing something that you want to change, and you're already
| there! Good luck with the rest :)
|
| 1) Not.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Using a timer to restrict online time is a possible approach.
|
| The science fiction novel "The Ringworld Engineers" by Larry
| Niven (1980) features one Louis Wu, who at the beginning of the
| story has become a 'wirehead' (wireheading being "the act of
| directly triggering the brain's reward center by electrical
| stimulation of an inserted wire, for the purpose of 'short-
| circuiting' the brain's normal reward process and artificially
| inducing pleasure.") He manages it by use of a specially designed
| timer which requires several hours of painstaking work to reset.
| gabythenerd wrote:
| Putting aside some time to do non-tech stuff is a good idea,
| things like going to the gym, reading books, going out and
| walking around, etc.
|
| Also as an experiment I deleted Twitter which I used to
| mindlessly scroll, put HN on no procrastination mode and stopped
| reading digital news except for two sites that I trust and read
| sporadically about two years ago. It might sound strange but I
| ended up feeling a lot happier on the regular as a result.
|
| Spending some time curating what you consume or limiting the
| amount of time a day could also be a good idea.
| mike_mg wrote:
| > Does anybody else feel that way?
|
| oh yeah, sure!
|
| 2 actionable things that changed my view on this things
| completely:
|
| 1) Huberman lab podcast on dopamine: https://hubermanlab.com/how-
| to-increase-motivation-and-drive.... It's not some self help BS,
| all based on science, backed by publications.
|
| TL; DR, you might be riding too high on dopamine / layering too
| many dopaminergic activities. You might need to lower your base
| dopamine level.
|
| 2) for dealing with youtube specifically, block youtube
| recommended. Like youtube becomes only search bar, no
| recommended, no follow up videos etc. Complete game-changer for
| me.
|
| https://pawelurbanek.com/youtube-addiction-selfcontrol
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29485064
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pawurb
|
| @pawurb, thank you for changing my life by unlocking youtube for
| me, without the addiction. I am very grateful.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| I think I've ran into some criticisms of Huberman for often
| citing animal studies as equally applicable to human studies.
| Tbf, I like Huberman generally, but I do also think he's very
| good at making every single thing he says "science based" as if
| the existence of a single finding from a one-off study on mice
| is somehow iron clad confirmation and proof in favor of his
| specific recommendation.
|
| But his general recommendations are usually pretty good and he
| has good guests sometimes.
| mike_mg wrote:
| Indeed, citing animal studies for humans is a classic bio
| meme: https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice
|
| I haven't seen huberman accused of this yet, interesting.
| Innocent until proven guilty?
| officeplant wrote:
| A podcast would come up in a discussion about addiction to
| podcasts and other media.
|
| But also thanks I'm gonna add this to my list as well.
| drivers99 wrote:
| Start applying the information, don't just take it in and/or save
| it.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| That's the problem. Applying information is hard, taking in
| information is way easier.
| digitalsanctum wrote:
| Tape my eyes open
| wkat4242 wrote:
| We had a discussion here a few days ago about the Turkish
| earthquake and people not knowing about it yet.
|
| I'm the same, I hardly follow news or social media. Never
| podcasts, rarely any YouTube. Just doing it frees up a lot of
| headspace.
| mindwork wrote:
| In order to change the behavior, first you need to grow the
| context and understanding of why you want to do this, what are
| downsides, what tropes do you want to avoid.
|
| I recommend reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport and
| Essentialism by Greg McKeown.
|
| First understand the problem and all the aspects of it. Then
| action will foolow
| [deleted]
| rchaud wrote:
| For me, it was something I aged out of.
|
| In my 20s, I was an information sponge. In my 30s, I realize
| information is commoditized, and the signal-to-noise ratio is
| very low. Even after I scaled back my consumption to only
| 'serious' publications and podcasts, I realized they have a ton
| of fluff too.
|
| So now I primarily restrict my internet use to addressing
| questions that I personally have. No more opening a podcast app
| just to see who's on what this week.
|
| The downside of this is that I'm not as interested in broadening
| the scope of my knowledge as I used to be. That's the point of
| taking a focused approach over time, but it's also bittersweet
| because I am intentionally narrowing my fields of interest to the
| essentials; I discovered a lot of cool stuff in my 20s that I may
| not in my 40s.
| ge96 wrote:
| I also constantly watch/listen to something. But I think it's
| just because I spend most of my time alone. I can't handle
| silence.
|
| I do still work on my projects though. I listen to the same
| music/stuff I've heard before while working.
| jakear wrote:
| Coming on HN to ask that is about the same as going to the liquor
| store to ask how to give up drinking. You want real answers go to
| places where people don't have internet, then ask what they do.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-02-08 23:00 UTC)