[HN Gopher] Attention is your scarcest resource
___________________________________________________________________
Attention is your scarcest resource
Author : adambyrtek
Score : 358 points
Date : 2020-09-06 14:46 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.benkuhn.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.benkuhn.net)
| elxavit0 wrote:
| a key insight for me in this article is this one: "In order for
| bullshit not to distract me for the rest of the week, I try to
| minimize my number of "open loops"--projects or processes that
| I've started but not completed."
|
| I hadn't realized that I probably keep way too many "open-loops"
| in my life. And they are draining away my attention-currency.
| sova wrote:
| "everything is downstream from controlling attention" - Joscha
| Bach on the Lex AI podcast
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM&t=3s
| biddit wrote:
| That's an amazing observation. Can you point to roughly where
| in the video he says this? Thanks!
| heed wrote:
| It's about here (2:03:40):
| https://youtu.be/P-2P3MSZrBM?t=7420
| sova wrote:
| 2:03:00 begins a discussion on meditation and at 2:03:45 he
| says "everything is downstream from controlling attention" --
| toward the end of the segment labeled "AI simulating humans
| to understand its own nature"
| [deleted]
| einpoklum wrote:
| Ah, the irony of saying this to people like us, wasting our
| attention like there's no tomorrow on the odd news story on HN
| :-)
| crehn wrote:
| What is it about HN that makes it feel much more productive
| than other similar sites?
| hinkley wrote:
| Lower troll ratio perhaps?
| einpoklum wrote:
| Perhaps: More intelligent and engaging trolls? :-)
| inetsee wrote:
| The promise of "The Silver Bullet". You'll find an article
| that will tell you how to be more creative, more productive,
| happier. You'll create the next unicorn business, get filthy,
| stinking rich, and have everyone wanting to be your friend.
|
| Of course, your best bet for achieving these goals would be
| to spend less time reading HN and more time actually "Doing
| the Work".
| nullsense wrote:
| I found a silver bullet here once. Read an article about
| The DAO and smart contracts. Led to making 100k.
|
| You're so right though. It is the allure of potentially
| finding a silver bullet. Combined with the great community
| and thoughtful discussions.
| kempbellt wrote:
| An ironic post indeed. There's a valuable message here: Give me
| your attention for a moment so I can teach you to protect your
| attention.
|
| Like a move baddie saying, "Trust me when I tell you: Don't
| trust anyone" <- this the bad guy right here. You don't need to
| watch the rest of the movie.
|
| TLDR: If you value your attention and want to respect the
| intention of the article, don't read it ;)
| asimovfan wrote:
| What is mindfulness (smrti)? It is non-forgetting by the mind
| (cetas) with regard to the object experienced. Its function is
| non-distraction.
|
| - Asanga, from Abhidharmasamuccaya
| taway738039 wrote:
| the article does mention "TIMEBOX BULLSHIT"; anyone has had
| success with that, or has tips for the same? the reason I'm
| asking is, I've tried in the past at the cost of not looking at
| "bullshit", but it just keeps getting piled up to a point where
| people start making mountains out of molehills.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| Time boxing is when you spend X amount of time to either get it
| done or get it off your plate. If it's piling up, then you're
| not really time boxing. Push back on whoever wants you to do it
| if it's really bullshit or hand it to a report or coworker if
| you still have to do it.
|
| If you can't do either then you have to treat it like a
| priority and not something that can be time boxed.
| kirillzubovsky wrote:
| Opened this in my 64th browser tab.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I have ~150 open.
| awinter-py wrote:
| switch to chromium in ubuntu snap -- crashes at ~ 30
| nullsense wrote:
| My brain has too many tabs open.
| maitredusoi wrote:
| I have 500 opened(and some never closed since 2 years ...)
| ineedasername wrote:
| I'd say it's time, not attention that is most scarce, but they
| are highly correlated so I suppose attention is a reasonable
| proxy for time.
| hooch wrote:
| Time cannot be controlled. Attention, however?
| [deleted]
| chrisweekly wrote:
| cool blog; author Ben Kuhn founded the Harvard Effective Altruism
| group, and wrote an amusing bit about "giving games"... etc
| hh3k0 wrote:
| > It took a while for me to train my friends not to instant
| message me [...]
|
| Ha. I hope said friends are not reading his blog.
| ehnto wrote:
| I feel like it's the wrong approach anyway. Just keep the
| instant messages on silent, and check them when you have some
| personal time. Training people to never message you is a good
| way to lose some of the spontaneity of friendship.
|
| I say that as a massive luddite in this regard, I hate always-
| on culture. But I learned you have to make some concessions,
| because your friends will use what's convenient to them and the
| harder you make it the easier you disconnect them from you.
| Real friendships aren't built in a day, and you'll be stifling
| every relationship you try to build if you don't meet them
| half-way.
| aquajet wrote:
| Attention is all you need
| JimboOmega wrote:
| (*: For clarity - EM = Engineering Manager, IC = Individual
| Contributor)
|
| I recently transferred to a team with an explicit intent for me
| to be an EM on that team. A few months down the road they said I
| wasn't meeting expectations because of my "time management" which
| had too many meetings and lacked focus time for IC work - which
| definitely was not my 50%+ focus. I'm "winning" the resulting
| political war (my last 1:1 left my lead in tears), but only in
| the limited sense that I'm not getting fired; it's been a bit of
| a disaster for everyone.
|
| The unclear expectations of what gets someone an EM role and what
| is expected of that role is the root of my problem, some of the
| author's, and a lot of the industry's as a whole.
|
| Leaders are picked from those that are truly focused on tech and
| truly excel at it... and then told not to do that. How can
| somebody be "intuitively, emotionally invested in the outcome" of
| tech work and then suddenly be expected to stop doing it?
|
| I should have been that rare counter-example in that I got picked
| for this role because of my very visible leadership in other
| areas. However, when it came time to give me the position
| formally they fell back on code output and found it somewhat
| lacking (specifically, the number of commits I made while
| onboarding was less than those of my established teammates).
|
| There's a school of thought that switching back and forth between
| IC and EM tracks lets you build a lot of knowledge and be both
| better manager and IC (the author evidently did). While I do
| think experience with each helps you do the other, there is a
| cost to that focus shifting. This isn't like the cost of only
| being able to code in 45 minute blocks. It's the cost of shifting
| the things you care most about entirely.
|
| Most managers fail to ever make that shift. Even if they manage
| to hold themselves back from coding (not all do), their heads
| remain in the code. One sign is when, in response to impossible
| expectations from above, they try to come up with technical
| solutions (e.g., if only we redesigned this module we could meet
| these impossible deadlines). If your mind is focused on tech,
| it's the tool you use to solve every problem. Another example is
| when team members have no idea how to move their careers forward
| and don't know expectations. A tech focused lead won't be
| thinking about how a new project is actually the perfect
| challenge for a more junior employee; their head will be figuring
| out the best way to solve the task technically.
|
| An EM is not a tech lead. It's not just a different skillset, but
| a mindset change.
| hinkley wrote:
| I'm going to see how far I can get never trying to get promoted
| above lead developer. Or more to the point, trying not to get
| promoted above lead developer.
|
| Sounds like some of your coworkers thought an EM role was [a
| lead developer], which it is not. As a manager, being an IC
| leads to a bunch of structural problems with the code and
| therefore the team.
| JimboOmega wrote:
| This is another big part of the problem. While at my current
| company management is a separate track on paper, many still
| view it as a promotion (including my lead). But if that's not
| the "promotion" you give them, what is it?
|
| Even if you make it a separate track, it's hard to define
| what the promotion looks like for more senior engineers,
| especially at successful companies. When you have $2M of cash
| in the bank thanks to stock, does a 10% pay bump from senior
| to staff matter? Does the title bump matter? How can you
| reward a long-standing successful senior engineer in a way
| that seems meaningful?
|
| This isn't a question I have an answer to, but "make them a
| manager" is definitely the wrong one. The majority of my
| managers have told me how jealous they are that I get to code
| all day. More than one has told me straight up they do not
| want to manage. I've watched several teams implode under
| managers like that.
|
| I think it's completely valid to not want to manage.
| Hopefully your lead doesn't pressure you to take such a role
| in the future. But have you thought about what success would
| look like in your career otherwise?
|
| It is also valid to not be particularly ambitious, to enjoy
| the craft of software engineering until you retire, and spend
| the mental energy you would spend on getting promoted on
| hobbies, family, advocacy, or whatever else brings value to
| your life... though it can be hard for those of us who are
| more ambitious to realize that.
| hinkley wrote:
| I didn't figure out the public school system until the
| middle of third grade. By then the era of gold stars had
| passed me by, so any motivation I found was going to have
| to be intrinsic, not public accolades.
|
| I had a boss who was being weird about making me a lead for
| the first time. I needed him to make it official, not fret
| the title. I told him I didn't care what he called me as
| long as people did what I asked them to do.
|
| If you want to stay an IC, I can not recommend loudly
| enough that you learn to manage your finances and your
| consumption. Managing your "needs" makes your savings last
| longer. Getting a raise just lets you build your savings
| faster, which might not be the same (especially since your
| needs will be inflation adjusted but your savings will
| not).
|
| It's harder to maintain the courage of your convictions
| when you are in debt than when you are doing okay.
|
| If someone makes you work for a promotion, they are
| manipulating you. That could be good (in a mentor) or bad
| (in a labor exploiter). But you are being manipulated, and
| it's better if it's really your choice, not your mortgage
| or your kids' braces.
| JimboOmega wrote:
| I am financially comfortable (though not at 'fuck you
| money'), but also, personally, really want to be an EM.
| My passion has been people, process, and management for a
| decade or more at this point (I had my first tech
| internship 20 years ago, and have been full time in the
| industry for 15).
|
| I initially didn't care about titles, but they do
| constrain what work you can do. The reality is that if
| your title is one of an individual contributor, even if
| you lead culture change at the company level, they will
| always look for the code. If they don't find it, you will
| be in trouble.
|
| One thing I have learned over the last year of my life is
| that being "Shadow lead" - the one actually pulling the
| strings and making things happen, with no formal
| title/recognition - is the worst spot to be in. The work
| you are doing doesn't match what you should be doing on
| paper, so you are very vulnerable if somebody decides to
| take a closer look.
|
| It's "glue work" but on a larger scale. It's important,
| but will go unrecognized. It's emotionally exhausting to
| build a team and get a head pat and told someone else
| will lead that now, thanks, and by the way how much code
| did you write recently?
|
| Though I do wonder what you mean by "official" but
| without the title. It might be the case that "everybody
| knows" what you do, but if your lead is replaced or just
| changes their attitude, suddenly your IC work is under
| the microscope, and could be found lacking.
| hu3 wrote:
| What's EM and IC?
| JimboOmega wrote:
| Engineering Manager / Individual Contributor.
| [deleted]
| binbag wrote:
| Quick, someone post this article to LinkedIn.
| [deleted]
| 50 wrote:
| From Rebecca Rozelle-Stone's _Simone Weil and Theology_ : "For
| Weil, attention is the decreative release of self to receive the
| world in all its reality. Paradoxically, this (passive) letting
| go of self and accompanying control is simultaneously a
| "creative" action: attention sees what is invisible (as the good
| samaritan saw the bleeding, anonymous, dirty man in the ditch)
| and hears what has been deprived of a voice because the din and
| smog generated from our maintenance of control has finally
| cleared."
| unsatchmo wrote:
| 50% of your time and energy seems like an impossible bar. At 16
| waking hours, we are talking about 8 hours spent entirely on
| focusing on some task. That's like the hyper optimistic
| assumptions of time spent that lead to bad estimates in software.
| I would say even the 10x engineers I met only focused for 5-6
| hours a day max, so 30% focus.
| burlesona wrote:
| I think the most salient point of this blog is pretty much buried
| as the closing thought. It's pretty hard to be a good engineering
| manager when you also have programming responsibilities (IC
| work). Sure, you can debate about what the different hacks are to
| try and work around this and do a good job in spite of the
| difficulty, but it's a lot easier to just go full-time managing.
|
| In my experience it takes six or more people to fully occupy a
| manager. Ten seems to be about perfect. You can go higher than
| that (and many do) but at a certain point you're not evenly
| investing in all your people anymore, you're mostly focusing on a
| few at a time.
|
| Obviously the hardest part of this is if you don't have 6+ people
| to manage. My answer to very small teams is not to have a manager
| at all, just have a technical lead and trust that a group of 1-5
| people can work out their own crap.
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| > In my experience it takes six or more people to fully occupy
| a manager. Ten seems to be about perfect.
|
| Aha, so it takes one full-time manager to manage one 10x
| programmer ...
| alexchamberlain wrote:
| Is that a team of 10 without the communication overhead?
|
| In all seriousness, is it time to get rid of the 10x meme?
| People have strengths and weaknesses; people have areas
| they've experienced before and things they've never done.
| Some people are going to work faster than other people on
| certain tasks - that's life.
| harryf wrote:
| 10 is already too many. 8 is the limit before you get
| diseconomies of scale. This was already well described over
| 40 years ago in the mythical man month
| https://torchbox.com/blog/40-year-old-lessons-and-
| mythical-m... ... there's also a ton of writing on ideal
| Marine squad size that tells the same story
| cschep wrote:
| Is it time? Absolutely, yes. Will it die? Unfortunately,
| never.
| techbio wrote:
| There are still plenty of places with 1/10X programmers.
| aynsof wrote:
| I've worked with at least three people who were -x
| programmers. That is, they produced negative value to the
| organisation.
|
| They did this by breaking systems (DNS, build pipelines,
| etc), producing code so bad that it had to be rewritten
| from scratch, and distracting everyone on the team
| through drama.
|
| They also did it through endless requests for help - not
| the kind where they learn from it, though. The kind where
| they ask the exact same question next week of someone
| else. They would cycle through asking everyone on the
| team about the minutiae of their job, because they had no
| idea how to do it themselves.
|
| I realise that the idea of the '10x rockstar' is an
| unpleasant one. But I also know that the best people I've
| worked with over the years were at least ten times better
| than the worst.
| jrvarela56 wrote:
| Why is this 'myth' talked about here in negative terms?
|
| From my professional experience, it's obvious that there
| are coworkers that can output even 100x impact qhen
| compared to peers. When judging entrepreneurs it's
| visible some people's multiplier/productivity is in the
| million-times compared to others.
|
| Given automation is at the core of our work as devs, why
| do some people think 10x isn't credible?
| fxtentacle wrote:
| As long as some companies can get away with replacing an
| entire team (including managers) with 1-4 highly skilled
| developers, the myth will remain.
|
| As a practical example, consider 4 people beating Windows
| Mobile with what later became Android.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| This is for programming (only). In other areas (GRC/security)
| the 10x is cumbersome/impossible.
|
| Especially in many mega-big organizations, in non-dev depts,
| the "Manager" is also tasked to: build and perform analytics,
| do VERY HEAVY ad-hoc reporting (aka Directors bombarding you
| with 10 different mini-projects weekly) and at the same time
| you have to run the projects with 5-10 people, meaning
| driving the ship, having huddles, handholding, coaching,
| mentoring, reviewing, be present in 40% of the meetings, etc.
|
| I don't know how much hands-on is a programming 'boss' of 10
| people. But if it's no coding at all, I am happy for you and
| I wish the same for me.
| qznc wrote:
| > It's not uncommon to find engineering managers with 30 direct
| reports. Flatt says that's by design, to prevent micromanaging.
| "There is only so much you can meddle when you have 30 people
| on your team, so you have to focus on creating the best
| environment for engineers to make things happen," he notes.
|
| Source: How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management
| https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-man...
| justicezyx wrote:
| Agree
|
| The more I move away engineering, the more I feel the
| unreliability of human beings, and its stark contraction to
| machines.
|
| Of cuz, machines, when sufficiently complex, becomes unreliable
| as well. But by operating still within that boundary, one can
| already do exceptionally things.
|
| People managers essentially are dealing with a completely
| different entities than machines. Rarely one can operate on 2
| different entities and still perform exceptionally.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| Y'all might not be machines but you're definitely cogs.
| justicezyx wrote:
| I dont think human are cogs, at least not swes, they are
| more like little electronic controller...
| cheschire wrote:
| And a sigmoid function isn't a boolean switch but you
| still get more or less the same result regardless of how
| complex the definition is.
|
| Ultimately employees move the company machine, whether
| their job is to code, sell, manage, or clean toilets.
| sandermvanvliet wrote:
| From experience I'd say it's near impossible to combine the two
| roles. Especially if the company is small there is just too
| much: "we just need to get this done yesterday", but at this
| point I guess that's startup life. Yes you could argue that
| it's about priorities and that's true. However I do find that
| this only works when you don't have people sick, on holiday or
| whatever. The ideal situation just breaks down way too quickly
| lumost wrote:
| no manager management works ok at a small company without
| career progression options. But in any shop where there is a
| standardized performance review you'll need a manager who can
| represent the team and individuals.
| andrejserafim wrote:
| I also find that 100 things to do as a manager is a
| misconception. Doing 100 things well in a day is impossible.
| Picking the 3 to do super-well and doing those. Yields the best
| results.
|
| Especially because those 3 are unlikely to come back.
| roughly wrote:
| I found being really clear with myself about the things I was
| _Not_ going to take care today was really valuable - it made it
| much easier to pull my focus back to what I was working on if I
| knew the other stuff was "scheduled" for another day.
| ehnto wrote:
| Likewise, it's very freeing to completely rid yourself of a
| task mentally so that you can focus on the tasks at hand.
|
| Part of it is trusting that future me can get it done
| properly. A trusting partner with which to delegate the task
| to.
| aliceryhl wrote:
| I'm really curious about the tungsten cube it mentions. Anyone
| who tried one got some experiences to share?
| robocat wrote:
| I noticed there is a heavy 4 inch version for $2500:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Tungsten-Cube-Biggest-Size/dp/B07WK9W...
| komali2 wrote:
| https://thume.ca/2019/03/03/my-tungsten-cube/
|
| Looks like it's just a heavy cube to use as a fidgit toy? I
| wanna play with it now too lol.
|
| Edit: I don't know how to link directly to a single amazon
| review but holy shit read the one from Richard , it should be
| the first https://www.amazon.com/Tungsten-Cube-1-5-One-
| Kilo/dp/B00XZBI...
| OakNinja wrote:
| It's the best Amazon review I've ever read.
|
| "... I have carried the tungsten with me, have grown attached
| to the downward pull of its small form, its desire to be one
| with the floor. This force has become so normal to me that
| lifting any other object now feels like lifting cotton candy,
| or a fluffy pillow. ..."
| kilroy123 wrote:
| Link to the review:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/B00XZBIJLS/RZKKKAM6FE5AI
| bilater wrote:
| 'Attention is your scarcest resource'
|
| _Clicks on link_
| realYitzi wrote:
| underrated comment
| hinkley wrote:
| My most plausible scenario for the Singularity now is someone
| figuring out how to augment short term memory with implants.
|
| I think we are going to find that attention is dominated by
| working set memory, and people who can juggle even twice as much
| stuff are going to operate fundamentally differently than those
| who can't afford or won't have the surgery. And past 5x it may
| become difficult to even communicate, much less compete.
| ncmncm wrote:
| I can't say whether more short-term memory would make us
| smarter, but I can say that when I had a short-term memory
| problem, I could do everything except program.
|
| This dependence on short-term memory is why I find Rust's
| borrow checker intolerable during exploratory programming.
| Whatever coding bugs it prevents have to be strongly
| outnumbered by design errors it causes by stealing attention
| from the most critical activity at that time.
|
| The borrow checker would deliver 100% of its value if it
| limited its enforcement to release builds, and just reported
| numbers otherwise.
| notemaker wrote:
| This is touched upon in [1]. Great book.
|
| [1]
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Vernon%20Vinge+A%20Deepness%20in%2...
| hinkley wrote:
| Those people were scary. I had blotted them out.
| ehnto wrote:
| I think you are right for deep work, but in my opinion it's
| getting to deep work that is the problem most people face.
| Having a deep work switch would be life changing.
|
| Once I get into a deep work state, the ability to hold and
| reason about more of the problem would definitely be helpful.
| minitoar wrote:
| Imo one of the biggest issues with "deep work" (aside from
| motivation) is loading everything into short term memory.
| Maybe if my short term memory was enhanced to be reloadable,
| or maybe if I had enough short term capacity that I could
| retain the working set needed for deepness and be interrupted
| by a coworker for something unrelated.
| hinkley wrote:
| And not letting someone who wants to know if you are going
| to the meeting later upset the entire house of cards.
| acituan wrote:
| > I think we are going to find that attention is dominated by
| working set memory, and people who can juggle even twice as
| much stuff are going to operate fundamentally differently
|
| I would be careful equivocating working memory, attention and
| processing power. Attention is much more complicated than what
| one can juggle in mind actively, what is chosen to enter and
| leave it also matters, just as the shape and form of the task
| it conforms to. There is no singular unit in brain that
| "creates" attention, it is best thought as an emergent property
| of several, if not all, parts working together.
|
| Besides that, even if we assumed a von Neumann architecture for
| human cognition, an increase in memory wouldn't have expanded
| total processing capacity unless it was starved of it. I don't
| think that is the case for humans, if there was a selective
| advantage to having more working memory as general problem
| solvers, we would have had it already. Granted, the types of
| tasks we undertake today can be different in shape, but not
| completely; still need to survive a physical world, still need
| to have successful relationships, still have to manage
| emotions, still have to do all of these while doing our
| specialized abstract cognitive tasks.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Working memory is probably closer to cache than main memory,
| and it's imo extremely limited and slow to warm up. Imagine a
| CPU with just 6 cache lines for non-OS code...
|
| Although your argument of "if it brought such an advantage,
| we should have evolved into it by now" does hold water too. I
| suppose it hinges on how much of an evolutionary advantage we
| actually have from excelling in the kind of deep abstract
| thinking that some jobs require nowadays, vs. how much this
| improvement would've been worth in past centuries.
| kanzure wrote:
| Interesting concept. One of my favorite mutations in humans is
| a single nucleotide flip that confers 19% improvement in
| working memory capacity. Substantially underrated. Would only
| work on embryos, of course.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| Which nucleotide site is that?
| graeme wrote:
| He mentions timeboxing. Does anyone know of a good way to do this
| on ios with certain sites?
|
| The built in blocking with downtime is nowhere near granular
| enough, and it is rather easy to turn off. Do any third party
| browsers or apps have schedules for viewing certain sites?
|
| Eg on mac I have an app, coldturkey, which blocks certain urls
| during the workday.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I recommend the Forest app. It works on both desktop and mobile
| and allows you to block sites as well as apps and sync your
| preferences between accounts. I will usually set a 2 hour timer
| while I need to focus.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/forest-stay-focused/id86645051...
| https://www.forestapp.cc/
| graeme wrote:
| It still just blocks everything, right? Like, all or nothing,
| no way to make a calendar appointment or send a message, but
| keep web blocked.
| elliekelly wrote:
| It's not exactly what you're looking for but you might like
| FocusMate[1] which sets you up with a (mostly) silent video
| chat partner to work for an hour and then report back what
| you've accomplished. You won't want to be the dingus who
| reports back that you've done nothing but screw around for
| hour. I've found it's helpful in getting me started on
| something and then once the session is over I'm able to keep
| going.
|
| [1]https://www.focusmate.com/
| Insanity wrote:
| Does anyone else have experience to me? It sounds odd to me
| but might work.
| adav wrote:
| I use NextDNS on my iPhone to block distracting sites (and
| privacy stuff etc). It's quick enough to disable briefly for a
| false-positive but annoying enough to stop me mindlessly
| browsing Hacker News on the toilet all day...
| graeme wrote:
| Thanks! Is that something you have to configure on a mac/pc?
| I see no website blocking options on iphone.
|
| Edit: nevermind, found it. You configure a custom id on their
| site, then enter that in the app
|
| There aren't any scheduling features, correct?
| eloff wrote:
| I tend to use /etc/hosts to block sites on my desktop, like
| YouTube or HN. YouTube DNS itself is somehow special because it
| stays cached for new browser windows. So I further cripple it
| with ublock origin by disabling JavaScript.
|
| I can undo these things easily enough, but it's sufficient that
| my monkey brain can't just open a tab and go there without my
| conscious permission ( which disturbingly is how habit forming
| these sites are for me.)
|
| I keep them available on my mobile, but I have an old, slow
| phone and I never keep it on my desk, I put it out of reach and
| with notifications on silent.
|
| For things like Facebook and Instagram my solution is simply to
| delete my account and never let that abomination steal precious
| minutes of my life. I don't miss them at all.
| dllthomas wrote:
| I use a tiling window manager called ratpoison. Much like
| tmux or screen, there is a single key that says "I am talking
| to you, WM" and then the next key is looked up in a key map.
|
| Something I've done is bind a key that changes my top-level
| key map to a pared down version that only has meta, a command
| to tell me the time, access to my music controls, and a way
| back to my main key map. Of course I can still get to
| anything on my computer with just a little effort, but the
| additional friction is sometimes useful for staying on task.
| rement wrote:
| PSA: /etc/hosts does not work on Firefox unless you turn off
| the "DNS over HTTPS" setting [0]. Spent a good hour trying to
| figure out why Firefox was ignoring my /etc/hosts file one
| day.
|
| [0]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-dns-over-
| https
| eloff wrote:
| Thanks for the tip.
| baby wrote:
| I do the same, but recently I've tried something else that
| actually works! I turn the Wi-Fi off on my laptop. It's such
| a stupid trick, as I can just turn it back on, but it usually
| is enough of a friction to make me think twice "wait, am I
| ready to procrastinate?"
| eloff wrote:
| Yeah, that's a good one. I need constant internet access
| for my work though (software engineer) for slack, for
| testing, for docs, so it wouldn't work for me.
|
| Anything that introduces enough friction that you stop and
| make a conscious decision will do the job.
| baby wrote:
| I need this as well but I try to get that stuff offline
| so that I can stay productive as long as possible without
| needing to go back online.
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