[HN Gopher] Digital consumption keeps me from getting better at ...
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Digital consumption keeps me from getting better at my job
Author : siberpunk
Score : 151 points
Date : 2024-12-10 18:46 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sibervepunk.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sibervepunk.com)
| malux85 wrote:
| Then stop consuming! A champion has discipline. A champion
| athlete doesnt grow morbidly obese off pizza and then complains
| it's the pizzas fault - stop, or drastically reduce, eating.
|
| "It's not easy", of course it isn't, all greatness requires
| sacrifice, are you going to go to the gym (learn new programming
| skill) or sit there eating donuts?
| siberpunk wrote:
| I think acknowledging the problem is one of the key aspects of
| focusing on the solution, maybe even the most important one.
| Writing it down in a concrete way that defines and explains it
| made me realize the issue. My next plan is to sign up for the
| gym :)
| svilen_dobrev wrote:
| you still do go away/offhook for a while, and (surely will)
| come back with fresher sight. Towards Different (kind of) gym
| maybe.
|
| do not chase The Solution or that will become your gym..
| siamese_puff wrote:
| This comment kind of nails it. I don't have any social media at
| all and often my friends tell me I live under a rock for not
| knowing the latest meme. The decision is trivial, I just don't
| have social media (except Hackernews which does waste a
| disgusting amount of time).
|
| Anyways - people gravitate toward the simple and assume the
| difficult is impossible. I'm training for a marathon with some
| friends and some are already making excuses to do as much as
| possible that _does not_ involve running (weight lifting,
| biking). I think humans just do the easy thing and complain
| about their situation because it's.. well easy.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Very nicely highlighted in the article:
|
| > You find yourself in a quest for productivity, feeling
| productive because of the quest, but not really doing any
| productive work.
|
| Been there a million times myself, it's such an easy trap to
| fall into.
| butterlettuce wrote:
| this
|
| preach, coach!
| karmakaze wrote:
| I find that I use LLMs now to probe into areas that I'm curious
| about or want to find new hints to follow-up on. That's way
| more instructive and being interactive, more memorable than
| reading endless shallow blog posts. One thing I do is be
| critical of post writings or LLM output. Look deeper until you
| either find weaknesses or internalize its
| correctness/effectiveness.
|
| I still read HN stories to find those once-in-a-while posts
| that are both deep and relevant to my interests or work.
| ggu7hgfk8j wrote:
| To me it seems like you are saying "just stop eating pizza" to
| someone trying to understand _why_ and how the pizza is
| unhealthy and what is a better alternative. Clearly we have to
| eat something, so a bit of understanding is needed.
| Yeul wrote:
| Some people would argue to ban pizzerias.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Often it takes more than willpower and deciding to commit,
| especially if you have ADHD, depression, etc. You often need a
| strategy that directly addresses the reason you are having
| trouble controlling your behavior.
|
| I say this as a person with both ADHD and depression that has a
| successful career as an academic scientist, and has also won as
| a competitive strength athlete, and been competitive
| bodybuilder lean at times.
|
| Discipline and good habits are important, but are often not the
| full picture, especially for people that are not neurotypical.
| Executive function isn't something you can just decide to have
| if you don't have it... and being belittled by people that do
| have it and don't understand won't help either.
|
| I spent a lot of my life trying to figure out why what I wanted
| to do in life still wasn't happening when I felt fully
| committed and like I was trying 100%. Eventually I found other
| people struggling with the same issues and started building a
| toolbox of little techniques that worked for me.
| Swizec wrote:
| What a fantastic essay. Long ago I had the same hunch and likened
| having the internet around me to running with a parachute.
|
| These days I am little better at avoiding consumption, if not
| worse. I think it's inevitable. And I think on net it may be a
| good thing. Yes you lose time and focus by dipping your toes into
| the zeitgeist, but you also make sure you work on things that are
| relevant. The open vs closed door from Hamming's You and Your
| Research.
|
| The closed-door researcher produces more work, but the open-door
| researcher produces impactful work. Who was ultimately more
| productive?
|
| The key, I find, is to do a bit of both. Work on hard things with
| deep focus and validate against the zeitgeist regularly.
|
| edit: Found it. Almost the exact same post (in gist) from 2011
| when I was 24, similar age as OP. https://swizec.com/blog/my-
| ideas-are-shitty-so-im-going-on-a...
| brightball wrote:
| It's actually one of the best arguments for pairing/mobbing
| that people don't like to talk about.
|
| When you are sitting at a keyboard with other people, there's
| no chance you're going to browse. You and everyone else
| involved will be 100% focused on the task.
|
| They actually tested this with brainwave scans and found that
| concentration levels were significantly higher than working
| independently.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Not true. These mobs often become a theater production where
| everyone pretends to be focused but they're just collectively
| pushing along until hopefully someone solves the problem and
| they are released from their torturous exercise.
| skydhash wrote:
| Yeah, software engineering is a collective activity, but
| programming is not. From my limited experience with pair
| programming, it would be faster to design on a whiteboard,
| partition the tasks, and then review each other code.
| brightball wrote:
| That's just how meetings in general often work.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| poorly run meetings that is. This usually indicates the
| process is wrong, or you have wrong people on the call,
| or without preparation.
| exitb wrote:
| Wouldn't that lead to burnouts?
| panzagl wrote:
| You don't pair for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.
| Swizec wrote:
| > When you are sitting at a keyboard with other people,
| there's no chance you're going to browse. You and everyone
| else involved will be 100% focused on the task.
|
| The ADHD community calls this body doubling and yes it works.
| serf wrote:
| the problem being that focus isn't the sheer soul metric
| that establishes productivity, its' field dependent.
|
| similar studies on body doubling also showed participants
| feeling more social pressure to conform to well-established
| methods rather than branching out and experimenting, and
| similarly participants felt more judged whenever they ended
| up taking a risk that either didn't pan out or did so
| differently than imagined.
|
| I don't want every workplace in the world to conform to
| whatever standards produce straight productivity; as a
| human, even one with adhd, I want to feel that there is
| room for cleverness and creativity in the world I work in.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Is there a service/product that does this?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Honestly, that's how AI-assisted coding works -- just
| assume you're sitting there with a fellow human who doesn't
| like their time being wasted.
| Terr_ wrote:
| If only it could return the favor.
| egypturnash wrote:
| cafes, co-working spaces, going in to the office
| grahamplace wrote:
| Check out https://www.flow.club/
| swatcoder wrote:
| > You and everyone else involved will be 100% focused on the
| task.
|
| That's not the strict positive you seem to suggest. In
| creative arts, like many of us practice in software
| engineering, being 100% focused is _not_ the way to get
| things done. Your conscious, focused attention can only take
| you so far, and the best work is often influenced by the
| weird associations and spontaneous insights that come from
| setting the work down and doing other things.
|
| Now, that's not to say there isn't some extreme on the other
| end, where you just never actually sit down and write code or
| whatever because you're _always_ so distracted, but the sweet
| spot you want to aim for is somewhere in the middle. For many
| people, pair (mob??) programming is _waaaay_ too far to one
| side. Although if it works for you as part of a fuller,
| balanced, practice, you wouldn 't be alone in that yourself.
| swatcoder wrote:
| > Yes you lose time and focus by dipping your toes into the
| zeitgeist, but you also make sure you work on things that are
| relevant.
|
| > The closed-door researcher produces more work, but the open-
| door researcher produces impactful work.
|
| These are not real dichotomies.
|
| Without defending the shortcomings of the focused, closed-door
| approach, which you seem to take for granted, chasing the
| zeitgeist and keeping the door open seem to have little do with
| staying relevant or being impactful.
|
| Relevance and impact are hard to come by altogether, and I
| think anyone here can think of far more (innumerable)
| zeitgeist-chasing, open-door-keeping peers who never stumbled
| upon relevance or impact than those that have. And for as many
| as they can identify, they could probably find just as many
| (few) among the focused, closed-door types.
|
| Chasing the zeitgeist might make you _feel_ more relevant, but
| it 's generally deceptive. What happens more often, seemingly,
| is that you get caught up in the countless ephemeral fashions
| and distractions that blip into and out of the social
| consciousness, always finding yourself having _just missed_ the
| opportunity to play some meaningful role in things. Maybe it 's
| because you arrived at the party too late, or you weren't
| prepared, or you bet on in the wrong horse again, or somebody
| else stepped in your way, etc.
|
| Be careful taking for granted that what _feels_ rewarding is
| actually bringing you closer to your goals. When you keep
| getting that wrong in the same way, we just call it addiction.
| switz wrote:
| This post makes a few detours, but the section about their own
| work is always interesting to me. I've always been a "pull on the
| threads and then pattern match"-kinda worker, rather than a
| "productivity-chaser" or "advice-seeker". I just pull on the
| threads that interest me, and over time these threads always have
| a way of coming back together. It's the difference between being
| goal oriented and process oriented. This is a much slower, much
| longer arc to building your taste, skills, and reaching some
| semblance of your abstract goals, but the other way just wasn't
| fun to me.
|
| When I was in undergrad I remember reading a lot of blogs and
| hoping to live up to their idealistic views (shoutout pg),
| because I hadn't quite yet identified what career I wanted to
| lead. I dropped out, and then around 24/25 the desire for those
| goals really shattered. I pursued a very self-directed path that
| has thankfully worked out (so far-still ample time for it to
| falter). As this post points out, the only advice that is
| universal on the internet is that there is no universal advice.
| Find what rings true to you and lean into it.
| markvdb wrote:
| You could do worse than read "The distracted mind", by
| neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley. It gave me deeper insight into the
| human-specific additions to my monkey brain.
| djaouen wrote:
| It doesn't keep me from getting better at mine. Lol
| panstromek wrote:
| I can relate quite a bit. I've experienced this state of
| overwhelm a few times and I developed some interventions for
| myself over time. I wrote post about it, if you want to take some
| inspiration:
|
| https://yoyo-code.com/managing-information-diet/
| dogman144 wrote:
| Good post, fwiw I feel basically similar to what you wrote, and
| this jumped out at me as this has been my main problem point -
| "I relaxed the rules, observed myself increasing the amount of
| content I consume over time, and now I'm back here"
|
| I haven't found a solution yet but how to find one is in a lot
| of my thoughts lately.
|
| I feel similarly as OP it seems that this cycle is actively
| getting in the way of my job sometimes. I can go cold
| turkey/flip phone life and it works as in I don't miss the
| content and adjust, but I work in tech it's hard to not engage
| with the platforms and also do well, engaging in the platforms
| is like being a drug addict at free drug convention with a few
| helpful booths about work, and rinse/repeat.
|
| At periods it's been such that I put some thought into if I had
| undiagnosed ADHD, because some times it veered a bit too close
| for comfort to where I really needed to focus on adult stuff
| and I just couldn't.
|
| But, generally I speculate it's an information diet thing first
| and foremost, but I'd rather sort that out first and see if it
| works.
|
| Tricky topic! Interesting to see discussion on it, it's the
| first I've ran into with similar sentiments as my experiences.
| lying4fun wrote:
| great article. the information debt and budget seem like very
| useful things to have in mind
| squidproquo wrote:
| Excellent blog post. Summed up what I've been thinking for the
| past few years. I find myself endlessly consuming content
| (videos, podcasts, etc.) that I would deem "educational". It
| feels good, like you're learning something new, improving
| yourself. But at the end-of-the day you aren't. Your brain is
| just sitting there passively - not really doing any hard work.
| Instead of your brain generating ideas and solving problems, that
| process has been palmed off to the internet.
| gspencley wrote:
| On the flip side, I do think that passively consuming "edu-
| tainment" content is better than consuming, say, fictional
| sitcoms or dramas that are intended to appeal to the masses.
| Not that there's anything wrong with consuming "mindless"
| entertainment either, just that in a conversation about
| productivity vs non-productivity and "consumption"'s effects on
| it, I think it's fair to rank the content in question.
|
| I watch a ridiculous amount of this type of content. As a
| "maker" myself, I get inspired by watching other people make
| stuff .. and I pick up a few tips and tricks along the way too.
|
| But, the trap here that a lot in the comments seem in-tune
| with, is the trap of deluding yourself into thinking that
| you're being productive by consuming content ... as opposed to,
| well, producing stuff.
|
| My wife and I are part time performing magicians, and when it
| comes to our magic act we fall into this trap a LOT. Because I
| make good money as a software engineer, I wanted to create for
| us a "library" where no matter what we want to write or create
| we will have resources that will empower us with method
| possibilities. Sounds great on paper, until we look back on
| what we accomplished in the past weeks and all we can come up
| with "Well, we read a bunch of books... and some are super
| expensive and hard to find out of print magic books that only
| have < 1,000 known copies in existence ... does that count?"
|
| No, it doesn't. Some of the most innovative inventions and
| artistic creations have been borne from scarcity and
| limitations. An over-abundance of information is not
| necessarily bad it's just that we tend, as humans, to find ways
| to trick ourselves into thinking we're accomplishing something
| when we're really being passive.
|
| To circle back to my original point, while watching "edu-
| tainment" content on YouTube is still being passive, at least
| there is the capacity to gain high-level knowledge that can
| give you a head's start when you're ready to actually start
| diving into doing something.
| bityard wrote:
| Heh, well yes and no.
|
| I feel like if you are the kind of person who builds or fixes
| things, there are certain topics that could be worth watching
| in your free time because they let you look over the shoulders
| of experts to grain some general understanding that you might
| not otherwise get exposed to.
|
| For example, I watch a channel run by a guy who repairs cars
| for a living because he's entertaining to watch, not because I
| want to be a mechanic. Watching his channel is MOSTLY
| entertainment for me but after years of watching, I have
| learned enough about car maintenance that I'd would feel
| comfortable at least attempting a wide variety of repairs on my
| own cars that I would have never even considered attempting
| otherwise.
|
| Often these videos lead ideas or projects that I have
| implemented in real life. I build a bandsaw out of wood, for
| example.
| https://blog.bityard.net/articles/2019/January/i-built-a-ban...
| keybored wrote:
| Reading that post was a waste of my time.
| goodlinks wrote:
| Skim the comments fist, way for efficient to get the meta and
| vibe before investing
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The problem with fast consumption is it's shallow, and the only
| way around it I've found is the 1:3 rule. For every ten minutes
| of information consumption, you'll need at least another thirty
| minutes of tinkering about with your hands, keyboard, pencil and
| paper, etc. to have any chance of really absorbing and
| understanding that information.
|
| However, this is much harder and more demanding of your
| concentration and focus than just passively absorbing some
| interesting online content, particularly if the content relies on
| some background knowledge that you're missing, in which case it
| may take much, much longer to get up to speed on it.
|
| Note that LLMs are an incredible aid to grasping new material.
| Ask any decent LLM "what are the necessary background
| prerequisites for understanding this statement: <HN comment on
| arcane math or tech>" and it will usually point you in the right
| direction.
| skydhash wrote:
| Reflection is key. Books consumption (mostly digital) for me is
| always done in three phases. The first is just reading, no
| note, with only slight highlighting. Then after reflecting (or
| trying to explain) the ideas, I go back and try to do a
| summary. The third part is connecting those ideas to others
| from different books, or using them practically.
|
| Consumption without reflection or doing is mostly
| entertainment, like you would do with a novel or a movie.
| kevinsync wrote:
| _> > Since graduating from undergraduate studies (which marks
| exactly one year as I write this post)_
|
| Author sounds young .. yes, absolutely try to consume less and
| create more, it's way more life-affirming than the opposite
| configuration, but:
|
| Getting better at your job, like everything else in life, is just
| a function of time. Show up, and then show up consistently. Put
| in the time. Be patient. Lead with an open mind and an open heart
| -- opportunities go to those who are present way more often than
| those who aren't. Willingly take on shitty jobs, do them well,
| and you'll find yourself being trusted with bigger and better
| jobs. Learn when to be the worker bee and when to be the queen
| bee. Say "yes" until you're truly able to say "no". Try to accept
| that, at the end of the day, things don't matter as much as you
| think they might -- I'm talking about projects, stress,
| deadlines, shit that floods your veins with cortisol. The only
| thing people will truly remember is how you made them feel during
| a crisis, not the minutiae of what you actually contributed --
| and those personal relationships will be the gasoline in the
| engine of your career.
|
| I really believe people will go far if they focus on this kind of
| stuff, and way less on structured self-improvement, productivity
| hacking, finding "secrets", shortcuts via programs, seminars,
| coaches, and tools, and all that shallow, nutritionless baloney.
| skydhash wrote:
| This. Slow, but consistent is the way to win. Like they say in
| Rally Racing: Slow is fast and fast is slow. There's no
| shortcut other than understanding. Which takes time and good
| input (great books, good mentors, practical experiences,..).
| And everything is driven by social factors, not technical
| prowess. The latter helps with solving problem, but the former
| defines the problem in the first place. Improve your soft
| skills as well as your technical abilities.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| It's not about aptitude it's about the way you're viewed.
| vasco wrote:
| > The only thing people will truly remember is how you made
| them feel during a crisis, not the minutiae of what you
| actually contributed
|
| I agree with most sentiments here except this. Most of what I
| feel towards colleagues and the ones I look back respecting the
| most were the ones that had great contributions, either in
| emergency situations or in the nick of time, or simply good day
| in and day out. Some of them are considered assholes by the
| more softly inclined, but I know proper assholes and those
| weren't it.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > The only thing people will truly remember is how you made
| them feel during a crisis, not the minutiae of what you
| actually contributed
|
| I agree with your general point about relationships being the
| most important, but I disagree that your contributions don't
| matter. You need to have at least some good contributions
| combined with good relationships.
|
| Through my career I've encountered a lot of coworkers who were
| fun to be around but either produced very little or had poor
| quality output. The value of their good vibes declines as the
| consequences of their low output and/or poor code quality
| accumulate on the team's shoulders.
|
| You also see this a lot when vetting employee referrals. A lot
| of people will enthusiastically refer friends and people they
| like being around, but who are not necessarily great
| contributors. These people seek referrals at a disproportional
| rate because, well, they tend to be laid off more frequently
| and might struggle to get through job interviews through normal
| channels.
|
| Employees will refer this people because they want them around,
| but once you start communicating to people that referrals are
| equivalent to personally vouching for their referral's
| abilities, half of the time they start walking back referrals
| or saying that the person needs a good manager and so on.
|
| So agree that relationships matter, but it's going to be hard
| to build a career on relationships alone. You need some
| substance and contributions to build upon.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| +1. A somewhat similar case that is close to my heart is when
| people with good intentions make bad decisions. A bad
| decision is bad, no matter the intentions. If you want to
| change the world, I think you need to be a "good person" and
| _also_ critically evaluate what you do
| fellowniusmonk wrote:
| Totally agree with everything you've said, brain train for the
| actual job by doing the actual job and immersing in it as
| thoroughly and consistently as you can, do things others find
| boring or difficult.
|
| In case the author IS young, I would also add this: Stay away
| from startups with capricious, absentee or already wealthy
| founders, find the most productive, stable environment you can.
|
| If you work in an environment where personal production and job
| security are orthogonal you might find yourself getting rug
| pulled where effort/contribution are _fully_ decoupled from
| reward.
|
| Unless you achieve financial escape velocity or end up in an
| increasingly rare engineering "jobs program" at a large entity,
| you will get rug pulled at some point due to founder/manager
| proclivities or due to other macro economic issues.
|
| You are probably screwed if this happens to you young enough as
| it fucks up motivation, it's why among the older programmer
| crowd you see some former HS dropouts that started professional
| work _way too young_ (in the early days of the digital
| revolution) for a toxic company just completely burn out and
| fuck up their reward circuitry (it 's also part of why 2 round
| leukemia kids have worse longterm outcomes than 1 round or non-
| leukemia kids).
|
| You want to already have experienced patterns of good faith
| behavior and delay your first rug pull as long as possible.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > If you work in an environment where personal production and
| job security are orthogonal you might find yourself getting
| rug pulled where effort/contribution are fully decoupled from
| reward.
|
| This is a great point.
|
| When you find yourself in a workplace where job security is
| based more on vibes than production it creates a false sense
| of security. You think your personal productivity doesn't
| matter and that you can vibe your way into the good graces of
| people making decisions.
|
| When jobs security is decoupled from productivity, the winds
| of the company can and do change frequently. Other people are
| going to be better at playing the vibes game than you are.
| Vibes-based companies are overly vulnerable to politics.
|
| It's good to work at companies where productivity is tied to
| personal performance, even if measuring productivty is far
| from perfect.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > When jobs security is decoupled from productivity, the
| winds of the company can and do change frequently.
|
| But that is always the case, and the
| "productivity=security" environment is artificial and
| unnatural.
|
| The large forces beyond your control dominate the world,
| and the whole companies get hit by redundancies because the
| market changed, AI ate some section of the market, or the
| banks were too busy playing with mortgages and collapsed
| the whole global economy.
|
| My experience indicates that it's more important to be
| working on the right thing, than to be super productive
| working on the wrong thing.
| bityard wrote:
| Couldn't agree more.
|
| Laziness, lack of skill, poor communication, and unexplained
| delays are so much the norm that people who need something done
| are willing to pay top dollar just for the mediocre folks. I'm
| thinking mechanics and home repair contractors as the most
| obvious example but there are white collar equivalents too.
|
| I'm trying to teach my kids that these days, if you are working
| for someone else, literally just showing up on time and doing
| exactly what is asked (and with integrity) will get you to the
| front of the pack easily with no other special effort, skill,
| or intelligence needed. It's been working unreasonably well for
| me, at any rate.
| kmoser wrote:
| Agreed, but want to add that anybody who is good at those
| skills will likely also be good at time management, and thus
| not be burdened by digital overconsumption. In other words,
| good habits breed other good habits.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Getting better at your job, like everything else in life, is
| just a function of time. Show up, and then show up
| consistently. Put in the time. Be patient. Le ad with an open
| mind and an open heart_
|
| This is generic advice. Of course. But the "digital
| comsumption/doomscrolling/etc" eats away from that, even if all
| those other aspects are done...
| peppertree wrote:
| Having gone through it every word here is true. Problem is a
| younger me would have been too busy coming up with counter
| arguments to digest this... Sometimes you just have to make all
| the wrong decisions and draw your own conclusions.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Your advice should only be practiced for about a year or at
| most two at the start of entering the work force in order to
| learn the basic attitudes. After that, the only way to advance
| is by switching jobs all the time. Unless you want to get
| bigger and better jobs, but lower and lower wage.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Yep - I am writing a HN comment instead of doing my work at this
| very moment.
| Timber-6539 wrote:
| I personally find that learning about a subject you're interested
| in with an aim to solving a specific problem takes away the
| mundane part of the learning process. And the more problems I
| discover to solve motivate me to delve even deeper.
| vonnik wrote:
| I'm a big believer in learning tied to projects and goals, at
| least for the consumption that the author is describing. It
| usually feeds back into building, which feeds back into learning.
|
| But more broadly, it comes down to where you draw the line and
| call content distraction, and what you do about digital
| distractions.
|
| https://vonnik.substack.com/p/how-to-take-your-brain-back
| mega_dean wrote:
| > Although it has been on my mind for a long time, I haven't been
| able to read a comprehensive book based on these studies
|
| Deep Work by Cal Newport focuses on these ideas pretty heavily,
| and he cites plenty of studies to back up his arguments. Like the
| author of the blogpost says, "There's no guarantee that what
| works for them will work for you", but I found my productivity
| increased noticeably after I applied some of the advice from the
| book.
| endlessvoid94 wrote:
| I recently did a digital declutter, as described in Cal Newport's
| book Digital Minimalism.
|
| One hobby I picked up much more easily than anticipated:
| microcontroller programming. With the spare energy and mindspace
| freed up from scrolling social media, I'm now expanding my
| skillset and reading far more books.
|
| I'm not claiming to have boosted my skills to an unrealistic
| degree, but the benefits of giving up the dumb online activity
| are very real, very tangible, and very valuable IMO.
| Yoric wrote:
| For what it's worth, I've recently started writing a small open-
| source tool to avoid consuming too much in the way of videos and
| social networks.
|
| https://github.com/Yoric/keep-it-focused/
|
| We'll see whether that works.
| agentultra wrote:
| Also hard to disconnect when these content sites make money from
| you staying glued. From features to trending content; it's all
| designed to keep you moving from one thing to the next, but
| always on the site.
|
| As a software developer there's the added pressure to, _always be
| improving or be irrelevant._ This is on top of the fear of
| missing out from content creators farming engagement. That's a
| lot of pressure to stay engaged and keep watching.
|
| I don't always disconnect myself. But I am happiest when I find a
| better balance between what I consume and create. I feel better
| when I'm creating something. And some times that means I have to
| be more selective about what and when I consume.
|
| Try using playlists and schedules. Allow yourself a space to
| explore and consume. Just be mindful and try not to go over your
| planned time for it. I find it helps prevent me from feeling
| guilty about spending too much time and alleviates the feeling
| that I might miss out on something neat.
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