[HN Gopher] Why do you waste so much time on the internet? ___________________________________________________________________ Why do you waste so much time on the internet? Author : memorable Score : 746 points Date : 2022-05-06 15:00 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (zan.bearblog.dev) (TXT) w3m dump (zan.bearblog.dev) | pythonb3sss wrote: | I wouldn't say I'm addicted to them, but when I find myself | bored, I open a meme site (which shall remain unnamed) and just | look at mildly popular memes. Doesn't matter what they're about. | I just like the occasional laugh I get out of them. I also like | social topics being turned into dark, twisted humor which is | sometimes captured perfectly in memes. | | But when I was going through a rough patch of my life | (depression, suicidal tendencies), I would doom scroll said | website every free second I could. I just didn't have anything in | my life that gave me joy, apart from dark, twisted memes. I'm | doing much better now and even though I am an extreme introvert | with social anxiety, I find that I have replaced my time that I | would spend on that site with time I spend with my colleagues. I | still don't have friends, but Rome wasn't built in a day. | | Why did I waste so much time on the Internet? If I hadn't, I | wouldn't be here. It gave me that much needed laughter every once | in a while that kept me from going over the edge and I would just | keep scrolling, looking for one more laugh that will make my day | a bit more bearable. | | Just my experience though. IMO, generally speaking, people are | spending more and more time on the internet because the products, | or rather the content factories, have become so good at capturing | and keeping our attention on them, that in comparison the real | world seems bleek and bland. | | EDIT: Fixed some grammar. English not native language | s5300 wrote: | > Why did I waste so much time on the Internet? If I hadn't, I | wouldn't be here. It gave me that much needed laughter every | once in a while that kept me from going over the edge and I | would just keep scrolling, looking for one more laugh that will | make my day a bit more bearable. | | Battling long term physical illness here that is an absolute | fucking slog. Can very much relate to this sentiment. | davesque wrote: | Well said. Internet is a very good coping mechanism. | darioush wrote: | Usually this happens when I am bored or blocked at work or I am | in a meeting where there is nothing for me to say or do 90% of | the time. | | Slack creates a culture that is built around response time but | often topics on slack are low urgency and of little long term | value. Heavy use of slack requires people to be around | synchronously and inevitably people will be blocked on others. | This is inefficient. | | Daily stand-ups are a similar routine that provides not much | value in terms of unblocking people. | | I greatly look forward to tech companies who prefer written | documentation (eg, Notion) over Slack. | satsuma wrote: | > I greatly look forward to tech companies who prefer written | documentation (eg, Notion) over Slack. | | this is (at least how i'm reading it) a similar issue i've seen | in hobby spaces that have moved from forums to platforms like | discord for support. discord is great for right now | collaboration but the archival process is like pulling teeth. | it leads to repeated questions being asked because threads | aren't often used and one problem's solution is mishmashed in | with ten other conversations. | | sometimes there are links to a wiki in the discord, which is | nice. but it's still only sometimes, and if you have a problem | that hasn't come up yet, you're stuck navigating discord. | minroot wrote: | For having zero people to spend time with | paulcole wrote: | Got nothing better to do. Don't care about being "productive." | Get through the other things I want to do - exercise, eating | healthy, watching TV, reading, and then internet is left. | | It's not wasting time, it's how I choose to spend my time. | spir wrote: | I am addicted to twitter and reddit. Especially reddit. It often | takes the place of reading, hobbies, quiet moments, improving my | home, talking with my spouse, and playing with my baby. | | When reddit records a click or an upvote, it thinks it has been a | Good Product, and created Engagement. Reddit then takes those | feedback loops and tunes the algorithm and feedback loops to | create further engagement. | | But in reality, there's almost no positive relationship between | my engagement with social media and my personal human | flourishing. I think these products are mostly poison for my | soul. | vorpalhex wrote: | I would encourage you to not think of this in an addiction | framework. Instead think of this as a self medicating | framework. | | Why are you choosing reddit over spending time your baby? Do | you fear handling the baby? Does handling the baby make you | feel uncomfortable thoughts or feelings? | | Is there something, like ego, that reddit gives you? | | This is a good problem for self journaling, working with | someone, or whatever your preferred form of self introspection | is. | blacksmithgu wrote: | Chronic media consumption is not always based on avoidance. | It is very easy to open social media during genuine downtime | "for 5 minutes" only for an hour to pass before you know it. | That is just bad self control due to dopamine addiction. | bogwog wrote: | I had a similar addiction to reddit a couple of years ago, | especially while I was in college. It just became something I | did as part of my routine. In hindsight I don't know why, since | I rarely had a good time on there. It felt like everyone was an | asshole, the content was all repeats of the same shitty jokes | and fake stories from people desperately trying to farm | internet points. It all felt pathetic, and I knew it at the | time, but something kept bringing me back. | | So one day I decided to just delete my account, and that was | it. As soon as the account disappeared, so did my interest in | the site. It was like a switch flipped in my head. I guess it | was the internet points that were tickling the addiction part | of my brain? | | Next time I find myself wasting too much time on a social | network, I'm just going to delete the account and move on. | Unfortunately, I don't think HN lets you delete your account, | so I'll need to get creative if I decide to drop this site too | (maybe do something to get myself banned?) | Crabber wrote: | >In hindsight I don't know why, since I rarely had a good | time on there. | | Someone told me once that addiction is built more strongly | with _negative_ experiences and it blew my mind. I think it | 's probably true. | | Addiction isn't built by you getting a reward, it's built by | you desperately chasing a reward you never quite reach. We | call a book a "page turner" not because it's a satisfying | book, but because every chapter ends in some bullshit cliff | hanger. Same applies to TV shows. | | I would suggest that maybe you weren't addicted to reddit | because it was actually giving you what you wanted, but | because you were chasing some satisfaction that you never | quite got. Satisfied users leave a site happy after 5 minutes | and get on with life. People who have spent 2 hours opening | 200 threads and still haven't got the happy feeling they came | there for stay around to open "just one more thread" another | 50 times. | ravenstine wrote: | > But in reality, there's almost no positive relationship | between my engagement with social media and my personal human | flourishing. I think these products are mostly poison for my | soul. | | This is why "engagement" is something only corporate f---splats | say under normal circumstances. Either they secretly know it's | a form of psychological enslavement or they're oblivious to the | problems inherent in trying to measure it. | tayo42 wrote: | my problem with reddit (and here i guess?) is idk what else to | do with like 5-30minutes of down time. I dont really have my | life optimized for constant activity and idk what else to fill | that with now. | psyc wrote: | I'm the same, and I've been struggling with it for a couple of | years. I've even addressed it in therapy, and it hasn't helped. | The only thing that has helped at all is a site blocker. | | Twitter and HN _mostly_ fill me with frustration, loathing, and | angst. Like the cigarettes I smoke fill me with tar and | carcinogens. Reddit at least I occasionally find something | interesting, due to carefully curated subs. | | It's just addiction, nothing more. | darkerside wrote: | Unfollow everybody on Twitter. | | Why does HN bother you like that? | chrsig wrote: | There are a lot of incredibly frustrating, problematic, and | exasperating opinions and personality types to be found on | HN. The particular members of any of those sets will differ | based on the eyes of the beholder. | | There's no shortage of passive aggression, angst, | oneupsmanship,virtue signaling, dogwhistling, etc. It just | so happens that there's a sufficient about of incredibly | useful opinions and comments from subject matter experts | that make it worth consuming in spite of the fact that it's | a forum on the internet, and all of the baggage that | entails. | | (side note: this isn't intended as a dig on HN moderation - | you probably all do a better job than most other venues. | kudos.) | darkerside wrote: | I find HN with its moderation to be night and day | difference from many other forums. | jansan wrote: | Site blocking helps. For about two weeks. I do not even | remember why I removed twitter again from my router's | blacklist. | IntFee588 wrote: | For me, reddit is the one that gets me angry. It's addicting, | but also seems like teenagers and bots arguing with it each | other. Instagram is increasingly inundated with ads, but at | least I get to see thirst traps and cute animals. | | Youtube is the only social media site that I think is a net | positive on my life, because I learn so much, but I've | started going for runs again because I really need time away | from a screen and the constant dopamine hits. | rvbissell wrote: | I almost never regret time spent reading a book. But I | frequently regret time spent on Reddit/Youtube/Twitter, even if | I enjoyed the content at the time. | wrycoder wrote: | I'm more likely these days (as the decades pile up) to | deliberately stop reading a book, if it hasn't engaged me by | the time I've read 20% of it. Of course, many never get | started, once I do a quick scan. | | I estimated how many more books I would likely read before I | die, and it's a shockingly small number, even though I read a | lot! So - choose wisely. | codq wrote: | I am absolutely caught in a loop between refreshing reddit, | hopping to twitter, hopping to Instagram, and then back to | reddit -- a cycle that takes just long enough for all three | platforms to re-popluate with more content. | | It's not healthy, and I feel bad about it. | | They have got me exactly where they want me. | | And like you, it's very clear that this is not conducive to | human flourishing. Unfortunately, I've been caught in this, and | similar loops for so long that I have a hard time knowing what | flourishing even looks like anymore. | | EDIT: One thing that did help me, for a time, was finding a | REALLY good book, one that completely sucked me in--in this | case it was David Mitchell's latest, 'Utopia Avenue'. It's been | a long time since I found a really fantastic book, when you do, | there's nothing better. | | And I realized that the next morning, when you wake up after a | long evening of reading a good book, you remember it. You | remember it as being a great use of time, something you can be | proud of. | | An evening spent scrolling through social media is _never_ | memorable. It 's never something you're proud of, something you | want to tell people about. | | A good night with a good book is a good use of time. | | I need to remember this more often, myself. | nvusuvu wrote: | As a married husband (almost 20 yrs) and father of five kids, | allow me to share some wisdom. Spouse time is vital to a | healthy, strong, vibrant, lasting relationship. Reddit doesn't | care about you like your spouse does. And kids grow up way too | fast. Treasure every moment. | v-erne wrote: | >> Spouse time is vital to a healthy, strong, vibrant, | lasting relationship | | Hear! Hear! This cannot be overstated. | | >> And kids grow up way too fast. Treasure every moment. | | And this on the other hand ... works only if You somehow like | children (and who does not like small psychopats with | dictatorial aspirations). For the others (I believe most of | people who lives in my housing estate can be counted) I | observe that the moments they really treasure are those when | their children are is safe distance from them taking care of | themselves. | b555 wrote: | could not agree more with this. social media exists out | there, but spouse and kids are right in front of you each and | every day. when done correctly, seeing the growth of your | family and spending time with them can be extremely | rewarding, even more than the dopamine produced by | interacting with the social media | pde3 wrote: | A possible experiment to try: what happens when you only browse | Reddit through an anonymous, not-logged-in browser and IP | address? And then only use your account when you are actually | sure you want to post something? | recursive wrote: | For me, it's enough just to log out. The friction of logging | in is just the right amount of friction. | tayo42 wrote: | I do this,I find my self scrolling a lot still. Though its | helped avoid alot of the stupid back and forths I used to let | me self get into. | bvinc wrote: | Everyone else replying to you is trying to convince you with | arguments that reddit isn't a good use of your time. As you | already know, this won't work. You're already convinced. | | The only thing that works is a site blocker. It actually works. | Convince yourself that the block is permanent. Delete the app. | This of course won't completely stop you, because you could | always unblock yourself. But it'll stop you from mindlessly | pulling up reddit. | swayvil wrote: | everybody likes to put their reddit down. | | but we are just good friends. | | reddit man. | operon wrote: | I am compulsively curious. | bricemo wrote: | The simple answer is machine learning algorithms. AI are very | effective at this, it is the same thing at YouTube, Instagram, | Tiktok. They will optimize to get you to want to come back | whycombinetor wrote: | I read another techno-dystopian rambling within the last 24 hours | that this text strongly reminds me of. It even has spelling | mistakes too (stratergy). | | "i swear its always the days where i cannot help but fall asleep | during the day, which always starts as a nap that is supossed to | take no more than 20 minutes but ultimately takes more than 2 | hours, where i learn something great about myself and feel giddy | and silly the rest of the day or utterly destroyed by my own | previous obliviousness.... i gott lucky today i took a nap today | and feel extremely silly, goofy, and content, the euphoric high | of a drained and noided individual..(corny i know but whatever) i | swear all the computer generated music and single-wavelength | light i see looks and sounds a bit better today.... i think the | zuck has infiltrated my brain but i kinda like being online idk | about yall... i think i have reached the zenith of what consumer | culture and the mall aesthetic inspires in people... i feel as if | i have traveled back to the extremely-early 2000s and also | simultaneously 50 years in the future..." From the description of | this youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCSMaKWzz8Q | davesque wrote: | I love how this very rough but very honest and relatable | expression of despair over the loss of self control has won out | over all the other tech news right now. That says a lot. | neriymus wrote: | I have the EXACT same problem. Constantly refreshing and | refreshing insta, reddit, hackernews, etc etc. Shameless plug, I | built this to try to curb my addiction -> | https://github.com/neriymus/Fetcher, maybe it'll help someone | else. | albertTJames wrote: | Because I have absolutely nothing else than work in my life. | Staying connected constantly is the only way I excape the dread | of the abyss. | andi999 wrote: | It just makes you feel slightly better. Same reason why the TV | was on 15 years ago. Or the radio 40 years ago. | mescaline wrote: | Ads, mostly. If you work on ads, or support ads, fuck you. | sys_64738 wrote: | It's when you have an power cut for a number of hours do you | realize what a waste of time it is. When you have no electric | then there's many other things to think about. | willchis wrote: | I downloaded Duolingo and now every time my finger itches for | reddit/instagram/YT at quiet point, I force myself to do a few | exercises on Duo instead. I'm not going to master a language like | this, but it feels a bit more worthwhile. | juanani wrote: | kshacker wrote: | Why do we? | | I am currently in a 25+ people weekly sync up that is completely | meandering. I can't do anything productive since it is hard to | focus but I can read hacker news or Reddit because it does not | strain the mind that much. | | Do this 9 times a week, and pretty soon it is a habit. | galgot wrote: | I think there is a kind of zapping effect with that. The internet | is a constantly changing thing with informations constantly | added, and our brain is rewarded with a bit of dopamine each time | we find a new interesting stuff for us (even very small, and can | be completely unconscious) . Not that we will keep our attention | to the new found stuff very long, it's just the fact of finding | something new that becomes an unconscious reward, thus this | endless zapping. | johnvega wrote: | Attention hijacking becomes micro-habbits that become a rourtine. | After just a few days, it becomes very difficult to undo, even if | being aware of what's going on. This is what I understood from | Tristan Harris several years ago and it's still happening today. | mensetmanusman wrote: | We are sensory creatures. The brain used to have to move the body | along to see new things, but now it has realized that it is far | more efficient (calorie-wise) to sit and bring sensations to the | eyes (mind's eye as well). | | If you weren't reading/viewing with your eyes/ears, what are you | missing? | | Taste, but you can eat while viewing. | | Touch, this is missing, but the negative survival/health feedback | loop is slow, so we ignore the loss of touch i nour lives. | | Smell, this is missing, but we can smell our food. | | Basically it is inevitable that the future of humanity will spend | more and more time stationary while enjoying the internet. | gerash wrote: | The Tiktok, Instagram feed or YT feed (or even HN feed or any | other news feed) feel like snack food. They taste more delicious | than other food but at the same time we aren't evolved to consume | them in huge amounts so too much consumption is harmful. | | So we always need ways to constrain the amount of snack food and | snack media we consume | lazyjones wrote: | Because you don't have important goals and the discipline to | focus on them. | | If the Internet didn't exist, it would be TV or something... | antipaul wrote: | I have started hiding my personal laptop behind a drawer. Phone | too | oldinternet wrote: | The internet is where we learn, create, express, communicate, and | be. The internet is the most interconnected part of our world. | micromacrofoot wrote: | Because large companies have built the most popular places on the | internet to intentionally be addictive (but call it engagement | instead). | | Their massive wealth relies on converting engagement into ad | spend. | thenerdhead wrote: | Addiction. I've been addicted to the internet since a teen. I | have worked to moderate my time on it for the last 5 years and | have changed my life significantly. | | Technology is beautiful, but there's more to life than sitting in | front of a screen doing exactly what the author mentions. | | I'm writing a book right now that is talking about this challenge | and the various things I had learned to find balance. | FoolishOne wrote: | Because it sucks my brain away from the real world to the virtual | world! | chrsig wrote: | The author's post aligns with a lot of ADHD narrative. If the | author is reading, consider getting evaluated. | | That said, why do we spend so much time not being productive? | Because we're not obligated to be productive 24/7. It's ok that | you're browsing youtube instead of being productive! | | You're demanding too much from yourself -- not because you can't | live up to it, but because the expectations are too damn high. | mrkramer wrote: | I spend many hours on the internet because it is endless source | of information plus I listen music when I'm doing research. I can | also say I'm not enjoying it 10/10 but I'm addicted to | information and I'm in pursuit of knowledge. | qiskit wrote: | Why not? What should we waste our time on instead? | 29athrowaway wrote: | RSS was better. You could mark feed items as read and save time. | Feeds that do not implement mark as read are an waste of time. | davesque wrote: | I think we'd all be spending more time doing things that are | "worthwhile" if we felt like they were worth the while. As it | stands, I think the vacuousness of modern day life is hiding in | plain view. Why put more effort in at work if it just amounts to | a lifetime of toil for only the chance at a few years of rest far | outside of your prime? Why bother learning something when you | have the keen sense that a thousand other people are already | working on it who are more talented and resourced than you? Long | story short, we live in a world now that doesn't much value | people but rather strives to capitalize on the value that people | represent. Corporations and institutions have been given | relatively free reign to kick people below the belt of their | attention and to try and squeeze another ounce of effort, however | misdirected, out of them. It's all a numbers game. | dcatx wrote: | The folks building the internet are very, very good at exploiting | our weak points to keep us scrolling. | | I've recently gotten way more aggressive about managing my screen | time because I realized I had become incapable of just sitting in | silence and peacefully focusing on a single task -- even while | working I was constantly using my phone to open Reddit or Twitter | or Discord, for reasons that I couldn't explain. My brain needed | constant dopamine hits to function and spending more than a few | minutes on any particular task was extremely difficult. | | I've had a lot of success recently by leaving my phone in another | room and replacing as much of my non-work screen time as possible | with slow, screen-less activity -- writing in a notebook, reading | real books, walking through the neighborhood (with my phone left | at home), gardening, cooking. Basic stuff, but all things that | had gradually disappeared from my life as my smart phone and | laptop took over every part of my brain. | | The first few weeks of this were pretty tough, I was constantly | looking to where my phone normally would have been and I had to | relearn how to just focus on one thing at a time. Now that I'm in | the groove my brain feels dramatically more clear and calm and | the urge to grab my phone every 30 seconds has mostly faded away. | I'm getting more comfortable feeling "bored" again. As a bonus, | I've regained my ability to read novels -- I've read more fiction | this year than I did in the last 10 years combined. | ggregoire wrote: | Broader questions for the author: | | - Is entertainment a waste of time? | | - What's "too much" when we talking about entertainment | consumption? Where is the limit? | | - Do you consider YouTube/Instagram a form of entertainment? If | not, why not? | inafewwords wrote: | 1024core wrote: | My habit of scrolling through my FB feed endlessly went away | after I unsubscribed from every "friend"'s feed. I had random | people in there, people I had met just once, or people I had | dated just once, or even one-night stands and FWBs. | | One day I scrolled through the feed and for every item in the | list, I clicked "unfollow". Soon, my feed was practically empty, | except for the feeds of a couple of cooking pages I follow, and | friends who rarely post. | [deleted] | juanani wrote: | ahallock wrote: | The why is easy. I mean, you basically have infinite | entertainment and information at your fingertips. And it's all | tailored to your interests. This is unprecedented. I don't think | anything comes remotely close in human history. | coolhoody wrote: | My excuses: | | 1. No free will. | | 2. Bad parenting. | | 3. Witches. | lowbloodsugar wrote: | Right now it's because I don't want to go and do the thing that | makes me sad to even think about. Sometimes it's because I am | frustrated with the thing I'm supposed to be doing. Well, now I | will go make food and tell myself I will do the sad thing | afterwards. | fabk wrote: | There is something in the animal brain that enjoys _variable | reinforcement_ more than other kinds of behavioral reinforcement. | | I am not an expert, but if something gives you a reward | _partially randomly_ -- e.g., the one cool (or otherwise | captivating) post on Facebook that sometimes comes out of the 200 | you scrolled through -- this kind of reinforcement produces the | behaviors most resistant to extinction. | | See "Effects of different types of simple schedules" on | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement. | chefandy wrote: | This sounds like a major depressive episode. A very experienced | psychologist recently told me that even folks with no hint of | mental health trouble started having a hard time with motivation | and mood in the pandemic, but many with existing tendencies | towards depressive states were plunged straight into oblivion. | Talk therapy and medication can be a big help, but CBT exercises | can also help if you're against using medication and can't | imagine going into a deep dive about your feelings with a | therapist. Even if it's not depression, this poster should talk | to a psychologist. They're not able to right the ship themselves | which doesn't bode well for it improving on its own. Finding a | therapist sucks but telemedicine is more accessible than ever at | this point. | | As an aside-- folks love dismissing mental health concerns by | saying things like "everybody has a hard time getting motivated." | That completely ignores the scope of the problem-- it's no | different from telling someone their motorcycle accident is no | big deal because kids fall off their bikes all the time. There's | a boatload of peer reviewed research out there that discusses the | debilitating effects of depression. Go read it if you're | skeptical-- I'm not your research assistant. | motoboi wrote: | For those who didn't get the memo: | | Be warned, folks! Depression is not about sadness, but about | not being able to do things. | | If you are feeling incapable of doing things, like physically | siting in front of the computer and not being able to do any | work, you are probably depressed. | | Sometimes you'll sit in front of the computer, try to start | some task but somehow end opening hackeer news, digg, youtube. | | Seek help as soon as possible, do not wait until you are fired. | 331c8c71 wrote: | > Sometimes you'll sit in front of the computer, try to start | some task but somehow end opening hackeer news, digg, | youtube. | | I have to strongly disagree. | | If that kind of behavior gets out of control it sounds like | typical adhd. One still wants to do stuff but unable to get | oneself into actually doing it. | | Depression IMO is when one starts losing motivation and | ability to derive pleasure from activities that were normally | pleasant. | hypefi wrote: | What about "Depression" is a sign that something deep down | is shifting or needs changing. After introspection, my loss | of motivation is a lot of the times me knowing that I want | to work on problems that I dare worthwhile for the future | of humanity and earth like climate change, environmental | work, planting trees and social work..., and being obliged | to not work in that triggers the lack of motivation unless | obliged by survival. I am very skeptical of medication to | solve these kind of issues. | | 'Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct | your life and you will call it fate.' | 331c8c71 wrote: | I think that the issue of deriving meaning from one's | work (and life) is as old as humanity. | | It looks to me also that there's a bit of idealization | going on on your side. In any case you'll work with other | people and I bet you won't feel too good if you'll be | doing env. work with total assholes. So I would also look | at that angle -- being among people you like/appreciate | and who reciprocate also kind of eases that existential | thing (IMO). | | Now I am working in the field and organization which | definitely are worthwhile / good cause (imo). But it | comes at a price, I wouldn't mind to work in a less | meaningful place (subjectively) for a few years with a | significantly higher comp. | | Also good cause is a motivator but the not the most | immediate one. Used to work in a slightly dysfunctional | company but my responsibilities were (mostly) so well | defined and managed day-to-day that just getting stuff | done was satisfying. | chefandy wrote: | It's not that cut and dried. Comorbidity of ADHD and | serious depression or anxiety is something like 80%. | Depression also affects your ability to focus. Either way, | you should get help if it's negatively impacting your life | in ways serious enough that you've made concerted efforts | to stop. That's especially true if you haven't been able to | improve it yourself. | statquontrarian wrote: | I'm taking intermittent internet & phone fasts. | leodriesch wrote: | Could you expand on that? | | Does it mean you don't use your phone till 10AM or not after | 9PM or something like that? | statquontrarian wrote: | I'm still experimenting; so far, it includes: | | 1. Turning off my phone at night. This removes the risk of | looking at my phone in the middle of the night after going to | the bathroom. | | 2. Consciously waiting to turn on my phone until I'm ready, | which usually means after breakfast. I want to lead my phone, | not the other way around. | | 3. Intermittent fasts of addictive computer behavior; in | particular, I found I was checking news sites and HN | addictively throughout the day, so I take some days off from | that, completely. | praptak wrote: | "Procrastination Monkey" series from waitbutwhy is the best | treatise on this that I know. | MilnerRoute wrote: | A big part of the problem: brain plasticity. (Which, ironically, | I read about on the internet....) | | But the idea is if you're doing a lot of one thing, your brain | adapts. So if that one thing is "quickly scrolling headlines" or | "consuming bursts of updates," over time your brain just atunes | itself to that form of stimulation. | | If that's true, who knows how far it will lead? I was on jury | duty, and spoke to the prosecuting attorney afterwards. And his | complaint was that over the years, "juries have gotten dumber" -- | that he'd consistently seen the attention span of a typical juror | getting shorter and shorter.... | danenania wrote: | The positive side of plasticity is that your brain can also re- | adapt fairly quickly to a lower (healthier) level of | stimulation if you can get over the initial hump. | | My understanding is that most of this is regulated by dopamine, | and your dopamine system needs time to reset in order to adapt | to new patterns. In the meantime, it's normal to feel bored or | lacking in motivation; that's part of the reset process and you | just need to wait it out. | | Personally, I've found it's easiest to change habits and | patterns via some sort of healthy distraction that takes my | mind off whatever I'm trying to change. Travel, getting into a | new hobby/project, or starting a really good book are all great | for this. | | Andrew Huberman goes into this stuff in depth in his podcast, | especially this episode: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmOF0crdyRU | [deleted] | pigtailgirl wrote: | it's cheap - i could go for a walk - go to the gym - call my | mother - clean the house - na - clicking the same 3 buttons in a | different order on youtube - hoping for something new and | amazing-- is "cheaper" - it's easy - & very occasionally - I win | something amazing- | | think this has always been true tho - mum used to buy the sunday | times then read the same pages multiple times throughout the week | - not sure she thought she would get something new out of them | each time - it was just something cheap to do - | stnmtn wrote: | > clicking the same 3 buttons in a different order on youtube - | hoping for something new and amazing-- is "cheaper" - it's easy | - & very occasionally - I win something amazing- | | You just made me realize that these algorithmic feeds are quite | literally a skinner box because you're exactly right.. once in | a blue moon there is a recommendation, a video, or a tweet, | that really is amazing and can change your perspective or give | you huge amounts of enjoyment | | So we click on, waiting for that next payout of gold. | pigtailgirl wrote: | and if that is indeed true - do we control the algorithm - or | does the algorithm control us? :=) | davesque wrote: | Feels kinda pathetic to lay it out like this, but the one thing | I wish I could do is call my mom. But she's gone. | shrimp_emoji wrote: | That's the last thing I wanna do, and she's alive (and calls | me). D: | burntoutfire wrote: | ... what else there is to do? The days are 14 hours long | (assuming healthy 10 hours of sleep), but I have energy for maybe | 4-8 hours of activity on average. Rest of the time needs to be | filled with some form of "time wasting". | layer8 wrote: | It's an addiction. The internet works like loot boxes -- the | randomness with which you find something that gives you a quick | dopamine kick keeps you scrolling/refreshing and keeps you coming | back. | XCSme wrote: | > Why do you waste so much time on the internet? | | Because our brain doesn't like to get bored. We need to | constantly do things. Also, the brain doesn't really like to | start doing the right thing because that feels too much like | work, even though once we start being productive we do feel good | and enjoy it. | jbjbjbjb wrote: | Unless you're at work, on vacation or meant to be spending time | with others at dinner or some social event it's ok to waste time | on the internet. | | You were not going to do something useful anyway. Before the | internet people watched too much tv, played video games, read the | newspaper, watched the news on repeat, read crappy books, ate | crap, drank, smoked. We need downtime stop the self-flagellation. | tester756 wrote: | Partly? | | because I feel like I should learn stuff, get better at computers | and then translate it to bigger total compensation - I'm young, | later I will have less desire to put effort into that or other | things like kids and stuff | | but very often it ends on HN/9gag or similar :D | carlgreene wrote: | For me it's a busy brain with any information it wants to consume | at my finger tips. This is something I'm working incredibly hard | to combat, but my brain is constantly going a million miles a | minute with the most meaningless and out of my control crap. The | way I can "close" the thought is by looking stuff up on the | internet related to that thought, or just distracting myself with | some garbage. | | A calm mind to me at this point is one of the most valuable | things. I seldomly experience it, but thankfully it's been | happening more often lately now that I'm conscious about it. | peter_retief wrote: | You need more coffee. | mikewarot wrote: | Recovering from eye surgery. Nothing else I can do. | twobitshifter wrote: | Has anyone tried?: | | * Using an apple cellular watch and leaving your phone at home | | * Using a smaller phone like an iphone mini | | * Using a lower tech feature phone | | * Using screentime | | And found success that way? | dbalatero wrote: | Yes, I use an Apple Watch for maps/subway directions and a flip | phone for my phone. Works well, best of both worlds. Apple | Watch is hard to waste time on due to the cramped UI. | criddell wrote: | Do you also have an iPhone that you just leave at home? | [deleted] | Tade0 wrote: | My previous phone died on me suddenly and at that time I didn't | have spare cash for another one, so I got an old Nokia 3600 | classic from a friend and spent 9 months using it while I was | working my way to get my finances in check. | | The moment I bought a new phone all the old habits came back, | so I guess the answer is "nope". | windowsrookie wrote: | I tried an Apple Watch. It had a couple of issues that | prevented it from working for me. When it's on LTE the battery | only lasted me about 5-6 hours. It's just not designed to be | used away from an iPhone for more than a couple hours. So you | have to carry an Apple Watch charger with you, and it can only | charge if you take it off your wrist. Also while iMessages | would come thru, text messages would not reliably get sent to | the watch while it was on LTE only. Another issue is you can't | send/receive messages from social media apps like | instagram/snapchat. 80% of my communications with friends is | through Snapchat. Maybe there's a Facebook messenger or | telegram app for the watch but I don't use those apps. Also, | there's no way (that I know of) to stream music to your car | radio from the watch, streaming music over LTE to your | headphones drops the battery life to 2-3 hours. | | I then tried the light phone 2. https://www.thelightphone.com | | Similar to the Watch it has short battery life. Maybe ~8 hours | with sending some texts and listening to an hour long podcast | or music. It uses Micro-USB so you have to carry one of those | around because everything is USB-C now. It can receive texts | but no images. So anytime someone sends you a picture in a text | you have to ask them what it is. Again no way to send messages | in social media apps. Also there is no way to stream music from | any streaming service. | | I then tried an iPhone SE. It can do everything you need, but | not very well. It's screen was often too small, and too dim | outside. Compared to high end phones the camera sucks, and | again it has bad battery life. I eventually came to the | conclusion that if I'm going to carry a full smartphone It may | as well be a good one. | | So after all that I'm back on an iPhone 13 Pro Max. Not using a | smartphone for a few months did seem to "reset" my brain tho. I | don't really use any Apps on the iPhone aside from safari, | camera, YouTube music, and Snapchat for messaging. Having a | good camera on you at all times is really hard to give up. | [deleted] | stevecalifornia wrote: | Install a scheduled host blocker and block all your time wasters | until the hours of 10PM until midnight. | | Don't be afraid to admit that the moment you feel a touch of | boredom you reflexively type 'reddit'. Tools like 'Freedom.to' | block these time sinks and you don't even realize how frequently | you visit these sites until you get the block notification. | | After a week or two your cured. | laurex wrote: | I think an underappreciated aspect of this phenomenon is | loneliness. | | Many of the things that suck us in (including HN) have this | aspect of being with other people, though they don't actually | lead to us feeling actually known or cared about in the same way | as our bodies/minds evolved for. | | Thus, it's very easy to feel an ambient loneliness, go online | where there are other people saying things, sharing things, | sending us emails (even if they are not actually "to us" like | newsletters) and getting sucked in, then feeling like "where did | that time go" because it was not really an investment in any of | those top-of-pyramid needs, but instead 'empty calories' of | socializing. | kabdib wrote: | A week ago I deleted my Twitter account. Today I'm deleting my | Reddit account. I'm keeping Facebook simply to stay in touch with | family and a few friends, otherwise it would _definitely_ go. I | 'm on the fence about HN, but it will probably go as well. | | These online communities are a net negative in my life, and I'm | done. | b555 wrote: | when folks talk about going cold turkey like this, I have a | question for them - do you think they were a net negative or | our capability to moderate our use of these social media was | not controllable? | sarsway wrote: | Because we humans have a lot of idle time. | | We feel like we're wasting it, and we feel we should instead | spend time archiving goals, to better ourselves, to do something | more meaningful. But that is not how life works. You are just | unnecessarily burden yourself with guilt. Thinking you should be | doing something else. There are so many things to learn about, so | many things to experience, right? We fear on missing out on life, | chasing something, but what exactly we don't really know. | | But maybe you just don't need to? Most of us are exactly fine | with where we are. Of course you should always strive to improve, | but truth is "killing time" is a big part of life. Especially for | top of the food chain animals like humans. Watch some livestreams | of lions on youtube, what do they do? 99% of the time they just | sit under a tree doing absolutely nothing, and I bet they don't | feel guilty about it. People used to walk labyrinths for hours | and hours, just to kill time. | | This whole notion that you need to make the most out of every | moment, live life to the fullest, see all the places, chase the | uncomfortable! - I don't think it's necessarily the best advice, | the happiest people I've met tend to have very simple boring | routines. | frankus wrote: | I think most people would like if they could be productive 24/7 | (or more realistically, consistently productive during their | waking hours), but I think there is some amount of "waking | rest" that humans need, or at least that modern human existence | makes it hard to avoid. | | This same post could have been written 30 years ago, but it | would be about mindlessly switching channels on the TV, | watching vapid sitcoms interrupted by a handful of commercials | you've seen dozens of times. | | Maybe before that people would read the local fish-wrap | newspaper or same stupid book they've read dozens of times. | pugets wrote: | Maybe that's true, but it doesn't provide me with any comfort. | I'm only going to live once. When I'm old and bound to a chair | (hopefully due to frailty and not because a psychiatrist | strapped me to it), I want to feel like I achieved something | more than a passive human existence. | | All these hours spent consuming forgettable garbage on Reddit, | YouTube, Facebook, and in video games... these are hours not | spent learning recipes, making music, writing programs, lifting | weights, or practicing Spanish. If I could channel my energy | towards these things, then the long-term payoff would be much | more enriching. Not only that, but I'd probably be a happier | person if I was disconnected from whatever daily drama social | media wants me to care about. | | If I spend the next 10 years of my life the way I spent the | last 10, I'll approach my midlife with no discernible talents, | ambitions, or meaningful lived experiences. | Daishiman wrote: | > All these hours spent consuming forgettable garbage on | Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, and in video games... these are | hours not spent learning recipes, making music, writing | programs, lifting weights, or practicing Spanish. If I could | channel my energy towards these things, then the long-term | payoff would be much more enriching. Not only that, but I'd | probably be a happier person if I was disconnected from | whatever daily drama social media wants me to care about. | | I do all those things and I still waste a ton of time on | Youtube. | | And it's fine; your brain cannot dedicate all of its waking | time to high-intensity intellectual endavours, you just end | up burning out. | | I worked full-time and studied for a few years. Remarkably, I | still had a share of free time, but I couldn't do anything | "productive" with it as I had no mental energy to do perform | these tasks. You _have_ to just hang out and do nothing. | | The most productive people I know waste a ton of time outside | of their chosen specialty, and it's not a coincidence. | minroot wrote: | > People used to walk labyrinths for hours and hours, just to | kill time. | | I walk and ride bicycle just to kill time to this days | Sujeto wrote: | I agree with this. Not to mention that being idle still | involves complex thought processes, like treating traumas and | understanding concepts. | 331c8c71 wrote: | Excellent points and a fresh perspective. | | We should be happy we have a few hours to "waste". Enjoy it | instead of punishing yourself pointlessly. | | If you wish to force yourself into a habit of doing something | else instead -- take steps but also question the intent. | Crabber wrote: | >Watch some livestreams of lions on youtube, what do they do? | 99% of the time they just sit under a tree doing absolutely | nothing, and I bet they don't feel guilty about it | | Lions are at peace with the world. They sit around with clear | minds, watching nature go by. They are content with the world | and their place within it. | | This is absolutely not the same as a human who spends 4 hours a | day doomscrolling through twitter and reddit and can't help | checking their phone every 5 minutes. | soared wrote: | The point is that lions are chasing down prey 100% of the | time, and so humans also don't need to be actively doing | something 100% of the time either. Doomscrolling isn't a | great example, but is comparable to the leisure of lions. | Crabber wrote: | The point I was trying to make is that even within | "unproductive time" there are extremely healthy, and | extremely unhealthy ways to spend it. | | Someone introduced me to the idea of "mental diet" a while | ago. I find it to be an interesting concept. We know not to | spend hours of our time eating junk food because it's not | good for our physical health, why do we never consider our | mental health in a similar way? | | Doomscrolling is just filling your brain up with mental | junk. Most content on the modern internet is just mental | junk honestly. And spending hours reading and getting | invested in all of this crap really does affect your | headspace for the rest of the day. | | Lions, by comparison, have a very pure and healthy mental | diet. | rchaud wrote: | > Lions are at peace with the world. They sit around with | clear minds, watching nature go by. They are content with the | world and their place within it. | | Maybe for an adult lion at the peak of its powers. An elderly | lion will end his days alone, cast out from the pack, | surviving on its fading wits until.... | goy wrote: | And here we are, wasting time to write for the n-th time 'if feel | the same". Someone even write it's refreshing ... | senjin wrote: | I know exactly why I do it and it feels impossible to stop. I | scroll endlessly to avoid the pain of everything else in life. | Doing work, doing chores, doing hobbies, talking to anyone, | making decisions even about projects I'm excited to work on, it | all causes a small hit of emotional pain. I don't really know | where this pain comes from either. Maybe some childhood trauma | that I can't even remember? I don't know. | | The 2nd part that cements this into what feels like an | unbreakable habit is that I feel like I'm constantly learning. | It's partly true, I'm constantly learning about things that have | even benefited me and my team at work, but in general it's low | quality garbage I'm learning about or just the surface of a | good/useful topic. | | Like the author I have recognized this and done research on it | and have no idea how to fix it. I remember finding the word | akrasia [1] years ago that has stuck with me since but no help | actually getting past it. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akrasia | drpotato wrote: | Mate, if you haven't already, go talk with a therapist. I've | struggled with avoidance my entire adult life - avoiding | awkwardness, pain, risk, "bad"emotions, difficult | conversations, conflict - and talking with a professional has | really helped me. | rchaud wrote: | Much like making new friends past university, therapists are | a crapshoot. Some simply aren't a good fit or have poor sofa- | side manner or fail to develop a sense of trust. | | If the therapy is part of an employer funded benefit, you | also only get a limited number of sessions, and only with the | employer-approved provider. | qiskit wrote: | > I know exactly why I do it and it feels impossible to stop. | | The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind commands | itself and meets resistance. | jordanpg wrote: | I believe the sociologists of the future are going to look back | at this era and cite the manifest lack of meaning in human life | as the ennui that is the subject of this thread. | | For a long time, religion filled this void, but for almost | everyone, it no longer does. I don't even think most people who | hold themselves out as religious _really_ find any significant | meaning there -- not doubting their sincerity, only the | compatibility of those beliefs with modern secular realities. | | It is simply true that it is a simple matter to learn enough | about what we know about the universe to know, somewhere in the | back of your mind, consciously or unconsciously, that none of | this means anything. And the rest follows. It is garden-variety | Camus' Sisyphus. | | I believe this results in a void in our primate brains that is | inadequately filled by anything yet available. We are in a | transitory period where we are looking for true secular meaning | to replace what we evolved with. | benlivengood wrote: | To put a fine point on it, the problem is not that life is | meaningless but that it has significant meaning and value and | also death exists. Death is the antithesis of most human | values and we're so far powerless to deflect it on a long- | term basis, while religion gave hope or belief of | circumventing or ameliorating death. | | I scoff at all of the "accept it as part of the natural | order" rationalizations; death is the enemy and my goal is to | push it as far toward the heat death as possible. That final | end will be a defeat, but much less of a tragedy than the | ~120 years we get now. If meaning and memory can exist for | 10^100 years instead then that's a prize worth fighting for. | | I think all the proof anyone needs of this is the joy of | children; death is unlikely and far from them and so they | have nearly boundless ability to enjoy life and its meaning. | rchaud wrote: | > For a long time, religion filled this void, but for almost | everyone, it no longer does. | | Did religion actually fill this void? Or did enough people | simply go through life not voicing any of their troubles for | fear of exclusion or even institutionalization in a religious | and highly superstitious society that didn't understand | mental health? | | Religion didn't prevent alcoholism, out of wedlock | pregnancies or domestic violence. It did however force | families to take brutal measures to keep their missteps a | secret from the rest of society. | JackFr wrote: | No. I think you misunderstand. | | When you tell people there is nothing transcendent, that | life is indeed meaningless - sometimes they believe you. | JackFr wrote: | From a philosophical perspective that Wikipedia article covers | a lot. I truly want to do A, but I do B instead. How is that | possible? | | The Wikipedia article offers a couple of classical and modern | takes on the problem but I'd offer one more. That we | misunderstand our own intentions. When I say "I'd like learn to | speak Italian" that's not what I mean at all. What I mean is | "I'd like to be able to speak Italian." and I haven't even | considered the work involved. | 411111111111111 wrote: | Because I don't have a life. | djsamseng wrote: | Find something better. | | Don't quit social media. Don't restrict yourself by setting rules | you'll break a few days later. Why? Because it doesn't work. | | Life can be and will be about what you are passionate about. | | So sure go ahead and enjoy wasting time on the internet. But | after 15-30 minutes when it's no longer enjoyable but rather you | are seeking that enjoyment you first had, get up and try | something new. It might be awful (so one and done), but it also | might be amazing. It might just become the activity you wake up | excited to do every day that social media/web scrolling doesn't | even compare to. | aantix wrote: | I wonder if this is because we're lonely..? Just wondering out | loud here. | | E.g. Twitter - feels like many of the "thought leaders" I follow, | their "friends" are also on Twitter. And they tweet/respond so | much I often wonder if they're really ever "building a business". | And are they ever interacting with their real-world friends or | family? | | Or if their lives just consist of a constant refresh of their | feed. Even at dinner, I wonder if they're even present? | | And I wonder if that's why podcasts have become so popular - it's | someone talking to you. Someone having a conversation, albeit | one-sided, but usually it's pretty interesting. | | For the same lonely reasons, I wonder if this is why public radio | has been so popular with long haul truck drivers. Everyone wants | to hear a human voice once in a while. | | The constant reading, listening and entertaining videos... The | voice in your head generates a discussion, with itself. At least | it's something. | | We work from home. It's quiet. With no one around. We're looking | for a preoccupation. | | We're just desperate for any type of human interaction. | | "Likes", hearts, thumbs-up, upvotes, +1, PR merge, etc. - are we | just clinging to anything that acknowledges our existence and | humanity. | pchristensen wrote: | I miss working with you, Jim! | aantix wrote: | You're the best Peter! :) | tayo42 wrote: | I think pod casts just replaced radio. I don't think that's as | interesting of a phenomenon as youre suggesting. | agumonkey wrote: | i don't know why everything old feels like it had more flesh, | even with the limitation and flaws (conflict of interests | etc) | reggieband wrote: | People often say they will keep old TV shows like Friends, How | I Met Your Mother or The Office on in the background. I think | it simulates the feeling of having familiar social connections | in ones life. | | In Fahrenheit 451, the protagonist's wife Mildred "finds | herself more involved in the "parlor wall" entertainment in the | living room - large televisions filling the walls" [1]. She | frequently calls the entertainers that appear on the screen her | family. So this satirical observation is at least as old as | that fiction. | | I frequently wonder how AR/VR will play in this particular | space. Cynically, I believe there is a killer app to be had | there. | | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451 | Terry_Roll wrote: | > In Fahrenheit 451 | | The rewriting of online history is going on right now, its | like Fahrenheit 451 is a blue print. | drivers99 wrote: | I got really into watching Twitch for a while in 2020 | (especially IRL content such as a mechanical watch repair guy | (relevant to yesterday's top post about watches), musicians, | and other small streamers I could get to know and they'd | recognize my name) and that scene often came to mind. | reggieband wrote: | I wanted to keep my post short so I didn't list all of the | ways I feel we express this tendency. Others mentioned | podcasts and talk radio but Youtube and Twitch are great | examples. There is no denying that people who watch | creators like Mizkif are feeling like they are part of a | group of friends. Ludwig called it out most famously in his | parasocial video [1]. It is so well known it is already a | hackneyed meme. | | Sometimes I feel smug looking down on people who become | obsessed with the latest Kardashian drama or the British | Royal Family or whatever celebrity culture. But then I turn | a critical eye on myself and I'll realize I spend a lot of | time watching YouTube videos on woodworking, small engine | repair and outdoor activities. I don't do any of these | things and I tend to watch the same creators over and over | again. | | Some people want to feel like they have hyper-crazy friends | like Jake Paul who live wild fantasy lifestyles. I'm not | certain that is different than me watching videos of some | guy quietly building a log cabin on his own in the woods. | | 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzyQbfh4t_8 | pigtailgirl wrote: | the risk is also low - you can feed your lonely without much | risk of damage - the real world is harsh - the world you curate | for yourself can be as you please - given we tend away from | difficult human interactions[1] - this cure of the lonely is | easy and "safe" - however - more difficult to assess - is this | making us more or less lonely? | | [1] | https://www.google.com/search?q=books+about+difficult+conver... | seydor wrote: | Many youtubers use youtube to reach out to friends or make | friends. For younger generations using the media as antidote to | loneliness is more common. Unfortunately all the media rot | after a sweet period | acwan93 wrote: | I've read that the decline of religion also plays a role here. | Aside from the religious aspect, the sense of community and | regularity you get meeting the same people on a regular basis | is lost. | | It's kind of the mix of a loss of "third place" (institutions, | coffee shops, etc.) and the increase of social media bubbles | that pushes us to be more polarized, I think. | ehnto wrote: | The only place I've gotten the regularity feeling of a third | place was a really specific gym I used to both work and train | at. Everyone knew who I was even if I didn't train with them, | because I also worked there, so when I trained there it was | my third place as well and I was always having great | conversations. | | I haven't had anything like it since, and I've been | relatively proactive too. I have hobbies, go to meets, and go | to the same coffee shops and restaurants so often that they | know my order, but there is always this barrier between | everyone, like no-one needs eachother because they have their | phones. I ride the same bike park twice a week and go to the | gym every couple of days, but I moved on to a 24/7 gym and | everyone is buried in their phones, and I don't see the same | people twice at the bike park. Me and the cleaner always have | a great yarn though, I appreciate that. | Aromasin wrote: | I always say to people that CrossFit is my church, and | while I say it with mild sarcasm, internally it is true. | Everyday I turn up, see the same people, build a community | to the extent we do socials, help each other out with all | manner of things, and honestly it gives me fulfilment more | so than anything else I do. | acwan93 wrote: | Maybe that's why places like SoulCycle, Barry's Bootcamp, | or yoga studios have also sprung up. People _do_ want | connection, just not in the way it was before. | 331c8c71 wrote: | I know next to nothing about crossfit and it definitely | looks like religion to me. I'm not even sure where this | impression comes from but it's probably first or second | thing that comes into my mind when I hear "crossfit" (the | other thing is that someone I vaguely know does it to | keep in shape -- but we never discussed it in any | detail). | ehnto wrote: | There is a level of passion and commitment to crossfit | that other disciplines don't always have, and due to the | way it's practiced it's really beneficial to have your | own space for it so crosfit tends to happen at crossfit | only gyms, at scheduled times amongst regular | practitioners. | | To keep riffing on the religious theme, there was a fair | bit of controversy around crossfit when it first arrived | on the scene, to the point where even other fairly | similar gym disciplines were pushing it out of their | gyms. That kind of criticism tends to drive you back into | your group (the same way door-knocking drives evangelists | back to the warm embrace of the parish), and I almost | never see crossfit happening in regular gyms, just | crossfit gyms. As above that's partly practicality, but I | think it's also fair to say it wasn't received well at | first and that likely drove people to those specialized | gyms instead of practicing it at their local. | | I do powerlifting/strength training and powerlifters had | the same issue in mainstream gyms, and there are | powerlifting specific gyms around. But that's gotten | better over time with mainstream gyms having | powerlifing/olympic lifting gear more often than not now. | jumpkick wrote: | On of the best "third place" locations I've had was a gym | as well. This was about 15 years ago, before iPhones and | Airpods, etc. existed, or were as prevalent, so it was easy | and common for gym regulars to strike up conversations and | get to know each other. | | I don't go to the gym anymore, but a few years ago when I | resumed for a bit, everyone was on their phone, or dead- | eyed while listening to music or a podcast, etc, and not | interested in talking to anyone. | NaturalPhallacy wrote: | Boxing/mma gyms are good for this. Can't really keep | headphones in if you get hit in the head! | organsnyder wrote: | The community of my church is probably keeping me there more | than my faith is. | ryandrake wrote: | I'd probably be more into church if it was just a social | club and didn't come with that expectation that you'd be | worshiping an invisible sky daddy, adopting questionable | morality/philosophies, and attending what's basically a | Republican political rally every Sunday. My wife goes to | hers and it's nice, socially for her, that it comes | prepackaged with a ready-made group of friends, but as soon | as the Bibles and Trump flags come out, I bounce. | arcticfox wrote: | That's a really good point... These days a lot of us work- | from-home or independent contractor types don't even have | much of a _" second"_ place. | the_only_law wrote: | > I wonder if this is because people are lonely..? Just | wondering out loud here. | | Discord has propped up my social life for years now. And I mean | outside of the internet as well! I also engage in independent, | more traditional social engagement and it usually ends in | nothing more than a hangover. | | Not unexpectedly, the internet makes it easier to bring people | with similar interests/believes/personalities together. There's | also some weird demographic issue where apparently the internet | is the only place where people my age seem to exist. I meet a | ton of people irl m, mostly much older, with some only several | years younger or several years older. In the past year for | example, I've met maybe 2-3 people who were within a year of | myself. | | Also I often find myself mindless swapping discord channels or | refreshing HN or Twitter constantly, when I'm bored and want to | talk/argue/whatever, typically at night. | Der_Einzige wrote: | Discord is most likely the most phallocentric large scale | platform ever made. It is an abysmally terrible place to go | to meet people, and particularly to go argue. Ever seen what | the most popular politics server on discord looks like? 4chan | is tame by comparison... | gigaflop wrote: | Deep rock Galactic is a video game that actually has a | decent Discord integration, to the point where I feel like | I gain value from being there. | | The general chats are whatever, but having a collection of | people who may respond to an LFG call is great for when I | want a higher-quality batch of compatriots for the more | 'hardcore' parts of the game. Plus, they have a bunch of | pre-made voice pods that cap at a game's player limit, and | have built support for direct-in-Discord lobby invitations. | ehnto wrote: | The issue isn't discord, discord is in essence just IRC | again. IRC wasn't exactly a bastion of intelligent | conversation in all corners, but one of the biggest issues | I think the internet currently faces is that everyone is | here now. Every brain with a thought no matter how vapid or | vile is now joining the conversation. | | But just like with IRC, it's all about the specific | community you've joined, not the platform. You can | definitely find good communities on discord. | the_only_law wrote: | Cry about it somewhere else. Most of the servers I'm in are | private servers with small amounts of users and a pretty | good gender balance. | Aurelius3 wrote: | It started out as a pc gaming type thing, so yeah, most of | it is men, but the choice of server matters and they have | expanded and rebranded a lot. If you are going on political | servers it's already not worth it and you missed the point | with discord, stick to small servers made by friends, | people to play games with, or communities dedicated around | 1 thing like open source projects or some specific media, | etc. Once servers become too general or inclusive the | system breaks, but even then on large servers (political or | not), 4chan is not tame in comparison. | ehnto wrote: | I have found that people who grew up on the internet tend to | have a "third place" that's online, which it sounds like for | you is discord. That kind of makes that your priority over a | real-life third place like a pub or something, since it's | where all the people you are super familiar with are it's | easier just to stick around that. | | For me all my online third places disappeared (specific IRC | chats and forums), and I never really found another. I'm on | discord but they're very shallow places for me now. I spend | most of my time online just on YouTube, and the rest of my | time at work, with my partner or family, and doing hobbies. | It's a very reasonable offline-life but I do find myself | missing a third-place. Maybe I need to join a gaming clan or | something. | gigaflop wrote: | It feels like a semantically-strained take, but I think Twitter | is more of a place for people to say things, than it is for | having conversations. Most people seem to use the site to | broadcast something to their audience without really engaging. | specialist wrote: | FOMO | amelius wrote: | Solution: every day, make a list of stuff you found on the | internet that you couldn't possibly live without. | | Chances are your list is empty all the time. | georgia_peach wrote: | Dear Bearblog, | | Coffee. Stimulants. | | A M P H E T A M I N E S ! | | You're welcome. | | -GP | jmrm wrote: | No one mentioned, but when we are here, looking anything at the | screen, we aren't thinking about those thing we don't want to do, | and this could be a coping mechanism to avoid doing those things. | | After a severe burnout I would also say that we need some time | everyday to not do anything who require some mental or physical | energy, and that could be browsing the internet, watching the TV, | or just laying in the sofa looking at the ceiling. | roguas wrote: | The algorithm. It can offer you a very decent local maximum. So | you keep riding the wave of decent local maximum. If you stray | from this path you might find a better value but you also may | find (more often than not) no progress at all. For the bigger | journeys "career" and what not I do not recommend to follow local | maximum paths you will go very on the surface and true fun is in | the depth. | adra wrote: | If you have social media apps, TURN off notifications, block them | forever! | | I also tried using greyscale screen modes in accessibility and I | found it cut my phone usage in half. Definitely a cheap win for | me to the point that I barely ever use my phone for "idle" time | anymore, and certainly not "the" place I go to satisfy my need to | spend time. | 331c8c71 wrote: | I don't get how people could have them on. I have a tendency to | put my phone in absolutely silent mode so it's a pain to find | at home -- simply calling doesn't work))) | dailyplanet wrote: | If it annoys you, then you're probably an extrovert. | | I am an introvert and I like being alone and being able to choose | how much I self-express and communicate. In person, I do not have | as much choice about my time and energy commitment in front of | company if I want to be polite. It's just easier for me to manage | my social bandwidth while being on the internet. | II2II wrote: | I am also an introvert and the computer is an easy escape after | a day of what I can only describe as sensory overload. That | said, the author's point was more about productivity than | socialization. There, I can only agree. | | To offer a couple of personal examples: I have to actively | avoid certain types of games since it is far too easy to | explore virtual worlds, gather virtual resources, and build | virtual things when I would feel more productive doing | something real. That something real may be as mundane as | learning how to develop software more sophisticated than toy | projects, simply because the product is reflects reality rather | than fantasy. | | The other example is my tendency to watch other people do real | things, like embedded development or repairing electronics. I | have the interest and I even have most of the tooling. Still, | consuming is easier than creating. That is especially true | after a mentally exhausting day. | | I can only conclude that technology has made some things easier | than others, and that it doesn't necessarily correlate with | what people value. It doesn't even matter whether those values | are social or asocial. | jansan wrote: | I think he is more annoyed of being unproductive, i.e. wasting | time on social media instead of getting work done. I am more of | an introvert and love working alone, but I hate looking back at | a day and realizing that I spent most of my time lurking on | certain wensites instead of implementing that undo | functionality which I had originally planned. | Havoc wrote: | I've personally focused on improving the quality rather than | trying to push down the time. | | i.e. browse more /r/selfhosted and less /r/ukpolitics | | Leaves me in a slightly better mental state - less continuous | outrage vibes. | | And same for twitter - I never post, and follow a handful of the | hn gang basically. | | Not perfect but adjusting reddit subs and follows is a mechanical | actionable action you can take and get done today where "spend | less time" is a vague aspiration for the future that requires | continuous motivation | petercooper wrote: | It's so often expressed it feels like a universal, but I don't | feel like I do, at least. I spend a _lot_ of time on the Internet | but I don 't think it's a waste because there's nothing else I'd | rather be doing. Now, maybe my ambitions and dreams are set a bit | low, but that's a different matter ;-) | HoraceSchemer wrote: | zackmorris wrote: | For me it's because I come up with roughly 10-100 ideas per day | that I'd like to do, but there is (and will never be) enough time | to do them all. | | So I live vicariously through all of the other people doing the | tiny handful of things that they manage to do in their entire | lives. | | This brings me down periodically, but then I remember that time | is an illusion, and our perception that we're wasting time on the | internet would seem comical to people who had never seen it (as | recently as 1995) and will be remembered with fondness when we | near the singularity (as soon as 2035). | | Practicing non-attachment and understanding that this is not | forever has really helped me rise above the downward spiral of | depression, back to the upward spiral of gratitude for being here | as part of the human experience. | kurofune wrote: | >sometimes i wonder why do i waste so much of time on internet | | I enjoy my time on the internet and I treasure it as a tool for | reaching new intellectual heights but not in a straightforward | fashion. I speak two languages more than my own native one thanks | to the time "wasted" on the internet shitposting on imageboards & | forums, watching JP vtuber clips and anime, playing CRPGs or | MMORPGs, etc... and that's just the one quantifiable metric I can | offer, cause to me it's pretty clear I would be a worse, less | polished version of myself if I hadn't spend so much time on the | internet running in circles. | | >not even doing productive work >back to that unproductive and | mindless pithole | | What a tragic and servile mentality to think we are always meant | to be productive to deserve enjoying our time on this Earth; | guilt-tripping yourself back into the cog in the machine mindset | to force yourself to become something you don't really want to be | seems a terrible choice. That path will only lead to wearing you | down, eroding your actual capability to be productive in the | process. | | PS: Try to improve your experience on the internet by constantly | filtering your information sources until you find you stay here | useful. | bradstewart wrote: | I don't think OP is implying _all_ time on the internet is | wasted. Or that we are meant to always be productive. | | Speaking personally, I think all of the time I spent gaming and | "hanging out" in specific internet/gaming circles when I was | younger was hugely valuable. I think some portion of the time I | currently spend reading HN is valuable. | | But there are absolutely times where I _want_ to be doing | something productive, to be accomplishing a task, but I | mindlessly browse the internet instead. | oliv__ wrote: | This link should be pinned to the top of HN permanently: what a | time saver! | | I've impulsively opened up HN at least 5 times today, then closed | the tab feeling shamed by this link haha. | praptak wrote: | HN has built in antiprocrastination controls. | rambambram wrote: | Do you even lift? I mean that seriously. | | Lifting heavy weights helps one get rid of all that mental | bullshit. It's a cornerstone habit. So lifting can form a base | for all other beautiful stuff in your life. | | It's hard to care about trivial shit on Youtube or Instagram when | you just lifted dumbbells until fatigue and did some good squats. | keenmaster wrote: | Or browse the internet between sets. It's big brain time. I'm | not even joking, if you're going to waste time at least | multitask and get stronger/healthier in the process. | emadabdulrahim wrote: | For that reason I never take my phone to the gym. I just | enjoy resting between sets. I also try to make my workout as | efficient as possible. | gigaflop wrote: | This is the sole reason I use reddit on my phone. I keep a | tab for AskReddit, open something for later if the title | seems interesting enough, and at least skim the thread within | a few days. No app, no login, old-style UI. | | Since my brain is usually disengaged when lifting (gotta save | those calories for what matters), I rarely bother with | anything 'deep' between sets. | | One potential upside of this is that the threads are usually | a few hours or days old before I actually read them, which | means that I can expect no new content from them once I have | my fill of a thread. | almost_usual wrote: | Or you start worrying about RPE / programming and comparing | yourself to others. | | At least that's what happened to me. Got very strong over the | years, didn't get much happier, and then would stress out about | losing any gains that were made. | | Eventually I quit caring and started walking more. I feel the | same. | blueflow wrote: | Might be some kind of addiction. I suspect because smoking works | for me as substitute. | PeterStuer wrote: | As opposed to wasting so much time on ... ? | gcheong wrote: | " I even made a stratergy to stop this, but no matter what I do, | it just...doesn't work. I will follow that thing for 2-3 days | then back to that unproductive and mindless pithole. " | | You could view it as a failure or you could view it as something | that worked for 2-3 days and go from there. | terr-dav wrote: | Like any other addiction, it's a way of coping with painful | emotions that you (and I) are hiding from (consciously or not). | I've been in therapy for several years now and I'm still | struggling. | dudeDDRrulez wrote: | Top answer IMO. | | Substituting drugs, alcohol, shopping, cutting yourself, etc, | it's all the same root cause which is hiding somewhere deep | inside yourself. Either do the work to find out what that root | cause is or be held hostage by it. Took decades for me to | figure it out for myself. Well, the process took decades to | play out. Once the root cause was dealt with, improvement was | instantaneous. | geniium wrote: | So I can reply to that kind of question | dcolkitt wrote: | > Its not like I enjoy them 10/10. So why do I do this? | | I'll push back on this. I think we have such a deep inbuilt | instinct to lie about the things we enjoy that we often delude | ourselves. Humans are social creatures, and the things we say, | especially the things we say about ourselves almost are heavily | biased by what we think will make others like and respect us. | | You know this as well as I do. When people ask you what your | favorite music, movies or foods are you'll almost always | prominently declare the high status things you want and omit the | low status. It doesn't even feel misleading. Of course my | favorite food is sushi and not french fries, even if truth be | told and I spent a minute introspecting I'd have to admit that in | the moment I probably enjoy McDonalds more than Nobu. Why would | it be any different about the moment-to-moment activities we | enjoy? | | Note this is very different that what produces a sense of | fulfillment on a broader, zoomed-out level. If I think of any | abstract weekend a year in the far future, of course my far mode | self-image tells me to say I'd prefer to spend it doing a cool | hobby like hang gliding than binge watching reality TV. And | afterwards, I'll have fonder memories of the hang gliding | adventure than the 9th season of The Bachelor. But in the actual | day itself, I'm almost certain binge watching is more enjoyable | on a moment-to-moment level than hang gliding. | | There might be some short exhilarating intervals that slightly | edge out the dopamine peaks of the reality TV reveals and drama. | But the day of hang gliding also involves a ton of boring | monotony and sweaty gruntwork. The medians and especially the | lows are much more enjoyable vegging out on the couch. | | What even is the point of driving this home? Because I think the | lying is counter-productive to actually changing the behavior. | Like the drunk who paints a romantic narrative about how the | reason he drinks is to numb the pain, when in reality he's just | lazy and undisciplined and really genuinely enjoys getting | loaded, especially compared to applying to jobs. | | If you've deluded yourself into thinking you don't even like some | habit, then you've also deluded yourself into how easy you can | change that habit. "I don't even like endlessly mindlessly | scrolling through my YouTube feed, so all I have to do is build a | better system and remove the triggers and it will be a problem". | But if you really, really enjoy mindlessly scrolling YouTube, | that won't work. Little, arbitrary barriers aren't going to stop | you. The only fix is to do the deep psychological work it takes | to build discipline and impulse control. | zelias wrote: | Hits a little close to home. I'm sure I'm not the only one, and | anyone who speaks out about this should be applauded. | | Years from now we will still be examining the after effects of | years spent at the mercy of addictive user engagement algorithms. | dan12ha wrote: | Well done, you have condensed and encapsulated the problem into | a single line. This is evil corps motto, "Keeping you at the | mercy of our addictive user engagement algorithms since 20xx". | ruined wrote: | sometimes i wonder why do i waste so much time high, not even | doing productive work. Just drinking and smoking and sometimes | doing lines. Its not like I enjoy them 10/10. So why do I do | this? I even made a stratergy to stop this, but no matter what I | do, it just...doesn't work. I will follow that thing for 2-3 days | then back to that unproductive and mindless pithole. I haven't | achieved anything in life, but i want to, i want to own | things...i want to have friends...i want to have fun....but | this....something is just holding me. I could simply just say i'm | lazy, but is that a good reason..why would i even need a reason. | | I would like to think its not laziness, but then what even is it? | And again i will search on the internet about this, find some | videos that talk about this, then some people in the comments | will say the "i suffer from the same things",,,and then? then i | will feel better that there are people that are similar to | me....and? guess what? back to the same routine. I am sick of | this...its like i know i will not have these comfortable days, | these days where i just sit down and stay sober. But what will be | at the other side of it? A person who i would envy and want to be | like or someone who no one cares about and is pathetic | DerekBickerton wrote: | I'm not sure about wasting. Most of my surfing consists of | unearthing gems, and I have to wade through a lot of noise and | muck to find those gems, but the gems are there. If I could | automate it, I would, but it wouldn't be the same. | | A piece of code that crawls the net looking for something I would | really enjoy is a hard problem, and I would have to code in my | own biases to the program to make it work properly, and this | means I couldn't share the program with others since it would be | very personal and context specific. | | I am aware of confirmation bias and filter bubbles, but it | doesn't mean I don't like my own bubbles. It's just plain | psychology afterall and we're all human, although I do try to | break out of my comfort zone in terms of what content I consume, | and regularly scout for different places to get my content | besides The Bird Site, Reddit, FaceBuck etc | IntFee588 wrote: | The quality to noise ratio on mostly social media platforms has | become obscenely low over the past three years or so. I do | think social media can be a force for good but it seems like | the algorithms are best at perpetuating the lowest effort, | spamiest content. | medicalman wrote: | Completely agree with this - it's those gems that keep us | addicted. If the internet were 100% time wasting garbage, I | think it would be easy enough to quit completely. But that tiny | percentage of good content, which can often be _very good_ | (some of the best and most worthwhile writing I have ever | encountered has been posted on obscure forums), keeps you | searching for the next "hit." | | Personally, I would love to subscribe to a paid service that | would produce a "daily briefing" of sorts with well curated | highlights of the internet. Content aggregators have tried to | get at this, but the signal to noise ratio is still way off. If | someone could produce this product, I actually think it could | be quite successful. | Tade0 wrote: | Can you give an example of such a gem? Normally I just rely on | HN to provide me with interesting links, but lately it doesn't | seem to give me the same kick it used to. | mdoms wrote: | I'm not the person you asked but I try to keep my gems in | bookmarks, would love to share some. Obviously I don't know | your interests so take it for what you will. I have many more | than I'll post here if you want some. | | Some of this came from HN, some from elsewhere. | | This website lists the first references to some cultural | icons on Usenet (for example the first time AIDS was ever | discussed, first mention of a new TV cartoon "The Simpsons", | etc.) http://www.eightyeightynine.com/culture/80susenet.html | | The Public Domain Review, a collection and analysis of | interesting stuff in the public domain | https://publicdomainreview.org/ | | David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. I have spent many | hours browsing the incredible content here. | https://www.davidrumsey.com/ | | Artvee. Free, high quality art. https://artvee.com/ | | Restoration Mustang. A high quality long term journal of the | restoration of a classic Mustang. Think like an /r/diy | project but with way more detail and over a longer time | scale. https://restorationmustang.com/ | | The Renegade Gardener. Highly opinionated no-bullshit | gardening advice. I especially love the "Don't Do That" | section. https://renegadegardener.com/ | | Garden Myths. There's a lot of misinformation and old wives' | tales in gardening, this website cuts the crap. | https://www.gardenmyths.com/ | | Million Short is a search engine that lets you cut out the | million (or 10,000 or 100,000) top results from a search, | really good for finding gems. It also has an option for | removing e-commerce websites from search which is a godsend. | https://millionshort.com/ | | This one is relevant if you live in New Zealand and love the | outdoors: Can I Light a Fire? | https://www.checkitsalright.nz/can-i-light-a-fire | DerekBickerton wrote: | Sure. Some links I just bookmarked and will use: | | https://highbrow.se/ (Alternative search engine) | | https://cora-pic.com/en (Meme generator) | | https://www.mightyapp.com/ (New upcoming cloud browser) | | https://ossdatabase.com/ (Database of OSS) | gpm wrote: | My own list, which is pretty different in character than | Derek's. | | Gankra's work on a useful rust memory model is both | fascinating and useful: | https://twitter.com/Gankra_/status/1509335163045650436 | | This tool to convert low-complexity rust tests to proofs is | interesting and something I'm glad I know exists: | https://model-checking.github.io/kani-verifier- | blog/2022/05/... | | I'm using this code I found out about via reddit in a side | project, probably less interesting to you though: | https://github.com/setzer22/egui_node_graph | | (Warning, videos from here on out): | | Cool product demo of a futuristic debugger: | https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/debugging-by-querying-a- | datab... | | These people also have a cool demo of splitting a single | program across two different computers (frontend and backend | webserver in their case). Maybe a bit less convincing than | the previous one, but something I intend to watch: | https://www.hytradboi.com/2022/uis-are-streaming-dags | | These people have some really cool work on automatically | solving physics problems (just linking to one of their talks | as an example): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHhDgxkiR9c | shortstuffsushi wrote: | > code in my own biases to the program to make it work properly | | Isn't this, in theory, what the "algorithms" are trying to do | for you? They see what you interact with and try to optimize | for "similar" content to surface these gems for you | automatically, since it will keep you in their platform longer. | eimrine wrote: | Where to spend my time else? | daenz wrote: | I waste time on the internet when I am "compiling" My thoughts. | Being in knowledge work, like many others here, means that most | of the work is performed by thinking about a problem. After the | problem has a good solution or set of solutions, there's only so | much active thinking you can continue to do about it. I like to | take a break and screw around while the solutions percolate some | more. I usually see something I didn't afterwards. | sdo72 wrote: | I think the internet just feeds what most people want or our | minds want. It can be in a form of happiness, agreement, | entertainment, etc... It's just part of spending time on things | that we like to do. It may be considered as wasteful to some, but | may not since that's what we want. | | There are many people who have tried to quit and eventually | gotten back because life out there may be boring, at least to | their mind temporarily. | | Until there're some serious conditions that cripple our physical | bodies, then we consider some changes. | | I think it's all a part of living things. We don't normally say | "why does human waste so much time on earth?" | lbriner wrote: | I suspect lots of different reasons but for me I think it is | simply catharsis to engage with something that doesn't require | effort or reaction unless I want to, I can just consume. This | helps my brain recover from the focussed deliberate work I do | during the day. | | Of course, this does beg the question, if we took steps to stop | doing it, would it give us more time to do useful focussed work | or would we instead just watch TV, read a book, go to the part or | whatever. | gravypod wrote: | Well if you want friends the first step is to find them. Wish | there was an easier way to do this but messaging people from | HN/Slack/Discord has been a great option | modinfo wrote: | Honestly I have the same problem, but I found a very simple | solution to be productive. | | The problem is not the internet itself, but a fast internet that | allows you to watch videos. | | A simple and yet very effective solution is to have 64kbps | internet, at first sight it sounds absurd, but actually it's a | very good solution for people who want to be productive, with | such internet you can easily browse the most important sites like | Stackoverflow/GitHub/HN, download packages from npmjs or use | IRC/SSH. | | I've been working on 64kbps for two years now and if it wasn't | so, I wouldn't get as much as I did thanks to the low speed | internet. | thingification wrote: | The mechanism of https://www.beeminder.com/ is unreasonably | effective at limiting this kind of thing. | hussainbilal wrote: | It sounds like their habits are influenced by your environment. | Just tie the habit to a new productive habit. Make it work for | you. | | Example 1: start learning a new natural language, and also switch | all your social media feeds to only provide content in that | language. You'll either lose interest in learning the language | and start withdrawing from social media, or your unbreakable | habit will sustain your new language learning habit. | | Example 2: I listen to a lot of music. I don't feel right unless | it's running in the background. So I tried learning french and | listen to only french pop. It worked for a few months, but then I | hit the problem of not being able to pick up spoken (not written) | french and parse its grammar while also trying to pick up the | phonetics of native speakers. But I then learned about creole and | its more flexible and simpler grammars and phonetics. I was able | to start thinking in the language using french vocabulary. So I | pivoted my habit to learning Haitian Creole and listening to | Haitian music. | hawksprite wrote: | This sounds like a methodology I'd like to try. I've not heard | of it before. Do you have any suggested Haitian musicians or | artists? | | Thank you for sharing. | nonstickcoating wrote: | Another key factor is, that YouTube interleaves really well made | educational content with fun and stupid videos (these have their | own merit, of course). I think this leads to people hunting for | new videos about topics that really interest them, those can be | insightful and stimulating. At the same time, the next 20 minute | TikTok compilation is one click away, as well as numerous click- | farmy videos with no real substance but the appearance of depth | and knowledge. This is simply not possible if you, for example, | get your knowledge and entertainment from e.g. books. To click a | funny video after watching a good video essay or educational | content is somehow simpler than putting away your textbook and | searching for your favorite comic in your bookshelf. | llaolleh wrote: | It's the hedonic dopamine treadmill. It's not the content that | drives this endless dopatrain, it's the nice UI and interactivity | of the spinning window and flashing pages. | NanoWar wrote: | Really: What can you do? | [deleted] | scubakid wrote: | It's almost like the platforms were designed and optimized to | keep you on them ;) | [deleted] | est wrote: | I am so used to Internet since young, and sometimes feel guilty | of the time wasted on it. So I spent sometime completely cut off | from the online world, go back to books and in-person | interactions. | | Ironically, books and people kept telling me: why r u hearing | this now? It's already _all over the Internet_. | coldtea wrote: | > _why do you waste so much time on the internet._ | | Because it's better than your regular life and what you have to | do at work. And nothing realistic will give you the means to go | beyond those. | caffeine wrote: | There is a great episode of Jocko podcast with Andre Huberman | that just came out where he carefully addresses this specific | issue. Worth listening to (it's in the first hour or so, I | mention it because it's 5 hours long!!) | oicU00 wrote: | Because my career has curved away from solving problems to | find/replacing parameters in template repos | uvu wrote: | I am also in similar situations. Currently, I stopped using all | social media. This video help me https://vimeo.com/97415346 in | some way as well. I think its a habit and addiction combination. | danuker wrote: | Relevant: http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html | | > Societies eventually develop antibodies to addictive new | things. [...] It took a while though--on the order of 100 years. | | > Most people I know have problems with Internet addiction. We're | all trying to figure out our own customs for getting free of it. | Apreche wrote: | Just speaking for myself, I've noticed that my habit is to eat | what is in front of me, and clean my plate. I mean this both | literally and figuratively. | | If I have dessert in the house, like a bag of chocolate, then I | eat one after dinner. If I don't have it in the house, then I | just don't eat dessert. | | If I have a social media feed full of content, then I'll scroll | through all of it until there's nothing else that's new. | | So what I've been doing is not entirely quitting Internet stuff, | but instead I just massively unsubscribing, unfollowing, and | filtering all the feeds. Sort of a Marie Kondo thing. I go | through every subreddit I'm in, every RSS feed, every account I | follow on Twitter, and i strongly consider "is this really | providing lots of joy and/or value?" If not, it gets the chop. | | I've cut out at least 2/3s of the stuff I was following since the | peak, and it's only going down. Now when I doomscroll it's only | for a few minutes. I hit the end of new content very very | quickly. When that happens I start to look elsewhere. I've been | reading a lot more actual books, done more chores, and been more | productive overall. | | As for the things I unfollowed? They clearly had no value because | not only do I not miss them, I can barely even remember what they | were. | fma wrote: | Switching Twitter to timeline mode rather than their poor | excuse of an algorithm helps. Learned that from HN....but I | have a browser plug-in that also removes all their recommended | and "Joe also owed this tweet" junk. | warkdarrior wrote: | Which browser plug is this? It sounds amazingly useful. | fma wrote: | https://github.com/insin/tweak-new-twitter/ | | If you need it for mobile, on my mobile (Android) I | downloaded Kiwi Browser so I can install that plugin. | Braini wrote: | Funny enough I have the opposite opinion regarding twitter: | If I use it in timeline mode I have the urge to read through | all of it until where I stopped last time as the OP described | (same with my Feedly RSS feed) In algorithm mode its more | like a "don't care, its garbled anyway, just a sea of stuff". | That being said I am still mostly using timeline mode. | dclowd9901 wrote: | In weight watchers (yes, weight watchers), we classified | certain foods as "red flag foods"; these were foods that we | _knew_ we could not control ourselves around. The kind of food | where you have one, and then suddenly you've finished the | bag/box. | | I tend to agree with you: if it's there, you're going to go for | it. We all have things like this. "Cleaning your plate" is a | good metaphor, but I'm betting you don't "clean your plate" | when it comes to exercise or other things that may be less | enjoyable. | | Identify the things in your life that are red flags, and | consciously keep them out of your life. It's hard at first, but | soon, you don't even miss them. | lowbloodsugar wrote: | So many threads on HN are basically "What does neurodiversity | look like?" | grvdrm wrote: | Are there entire feeds that you've deemed too wasteful? I get | that you can slash much of what you look at on Twitter and | still get what you want. | | But what about things like Instagram, TikTok, etc. - did you | delete those apps altogether or also aggressively trim (if you | use them)? | SamBam wrote: | I cut out Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. | | Facebook I left a decade ago, for its ethical issues. | Instagram I left because I felt the performance aspect was | unhealthy: even in my only-friends-and-family circle, I'd | still care too much about picking out the perfect photo of my | kid or wherever. | | For Twitter I realized it was way too easy to get sucked down | political/angry feeds. One day Twitter said my account has | suspicious activity (maybe a bot tried to log in) and I | needed to reply to an email to re-enable it. I never replied | to the email. Somehow this meant that _every time_ I followed | a Twitter link, I 'd get that alert, so I could never see | content. I felt so much happier. | RC_ITR wrote: | I think a corollary to this is the relatively modern idea that | life needs purpose in the form of measurable accomplishments. | | Looking back at how most people lived their lives, it was | sustenance, interspersed with things like family, religion, and | friendship (if you were lucky). Nearly nobody owned much, | nearly nobody 'did cool things,' nearly nobody was famous. | | They all just had a part of life (surviving) that they knew was | bad and hard work, then they tried as hard as they could to | escape that briefly. | | Now, we expect work to be fulfilling _and_ non-work to be | fulfilling. For the majority of people where that isn 't true, | it feels really depressing, which is compounded by the fact | that society pushes you to spend more time on improving the | work side of things (which again for most people will not be | intrinsically fulfilling no matter how hard they try), so they | end up feeling lonely and sad. | hinkley wrote: | In the world of food it was a watershed moment for me in | controlling my waistline when I stopped checking the unit price | on items at the store. | | The brain invents its own portion sizes that are more dependent | on the size of the container than the total supply. I don't | know how you introduce portion control to the Internet, but we | definitely need it. | | Some people have strategies for avoiding a shopping cart full | of junk food. I wonder how far you can stretch that into media | consumption before the analogy tears. | number6 wrote: | Interesting, I had the same thought about the size / price | ratio recently. I want most bang for the buck but it kills my | waistline | jimbokun wrote: | There was a study with a soup bowl that would automatically | refill, and found people ate a lot more than they would if just | given a regular soup bowl. | | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15761167/ | | It strikes me the Internet is now a bottomless soup bowl of | content, and we have know indicators to tell us when we should | stop. | spupe wrote: | It's a good analogy, but that study was retracted: | https://www.theguardian.com/science/head- | quarters/2018/feb/1... | [deleted] | barbazoo wrote: | This is great advice. Unsubscribing, especially from the stuff | that triggers me, helps me not to waste too much time. | VBprogrammer wrote: | Yup, dashcam videos / crashes is a huge time sink which I | have to ruthlessly unsubscribe from. It's one of those things | where you can feel your blood pressure increase as you watch | it. | dotnet00 wrote: | I noticed the same about myself and have been doing something | similar. I haven't been as focused on cutting down things I | follow (actually even increasing), instead just paying | attention to what I find valuable and aggressively cutting out | everything I either dislike or find superfluous and spammy (eg | if I see the same post multiple times on my reddit feed, I'll | quickly check the poster's profile, if they spam the same | content on several subreddits regularly I'll block them even if | the content is something I enjoy). | baby wrote: | On the other hand I started following only "teaching chinese" | accounts on instagram. Whenever I go on instagram I just watch | stuff to learn chinese because it's in my feed. | fdsfdsafds wrote: | You're on the path, and the end is almost inevitable - no | social media accounts at all, and no smartphone. It's | wonderful. | 331c8c71 wrote: | Haven't been using social media for more than five years and | it doesn't feel like I'm halfway there. | | Now I am using my smartphone pretty much in the same way I | was using my PC when smartphones didn't exist (e.g. 20 years | ago): quite a bit of browsing and few comments here and | there. | | It's not that I can't do without smartphone: on holidays I | can totally avoid using it for browsing. But that inevitably | comes back to "normal". | | And I'm pretty sure I was distracting myself with literature | in a similar way when I was even younger (e.g. 25 yrs ago). I | read very fast and hardly retain anything:) Is it in any way | healthier? Not so sure, it feels like binge reading is as | addictive and unsatisfying -- I do that nowadays (rarely) | too. | Vladimof wrote: | > If I have a social media feed full of content, then I'll | scroll through all of it until there's nothing else that's new. | | I could never do that with Facebook as it is mostly all useless | crap and ads | gigaflop wrote: | I used to spend a lot of time on youtube, in part because I had | the free time to spend on it, and had gaps in my schedule that | were convenient for watching certain content creators. | | Since moving into the workforce, my free time is no longer | segmented into so many pieces. I don't get as much value as I | used to from 10 to 15 minute chunks of entertainment, so I stop | keeping up with the sources, and just lose touch. | | It isn't that the content I'm leaving behind is bad or 'cheap', | it's just that I don't have the time and attention to keep up | with most of it. My entertainment time is better spent on stuff | that takes longer to engage with/consume, since those bigger | things are often more valuable as entertainment. | uoaei wrote: | I'm coming to a realization across all facets of my life, | where I am interested or engaged in many more things than I | have time for. I am starting to prepare myself for the | uncomfortable process of sacrificing a few (in fact, many) | things I've previously mentally and emotionally invested in, | but I know it's going to be a big shift and the dread causes | my feet to drag. There's just not enough time... and I don't | believe that the solution is "improve focus and productivity" | because that's a fast track to burnout and disengagement for | all but the most obsessive of minds. | gigaflop wrote: | Curiosity can be a curse, and has killed several cats. | | I may have been on psychedelic mushrooms at the time, but | something I took away from the trip was an acknowledgement | of a feeling of 'shedding' in life, in terms of hobbies and | interests. | | Stuff will get boring and be forgotten, or fall to the side | and be ignored while it collects dust. This is something | that I should expect to happen, and be prepared for. So | long as you derived some value from those once-great | things, it hasn't been a waste, and is just a symptom of | time passing. | | Maybe you pick those things back up later, and maybe you | don't. For myself, I think my 'best life' would be one | where I had the space and tools to be able to pick up or | put down whatever ideas come to me. | uoaei wrote: | > I may have been on psychedelic mushrooms at the time, | but something I took away from the trip was an | acknowledgement of a feeling of 'shedding' in life, in | terms of hobbies and interests. | | I had a very similar feeling in a similar setting, like a | large part of the process of life is scrubbing crusty | exteriors off so that new capacities can emerge. Like | continuous molting. | | Thanks for the reminder. | u2077 wrote: | > my habit is to eat what is in front of me | | This! I often let my phone run out of battery and avoid | plugging it in so I can do other things. | | From a similar thread, someone mentioned that phones are only | good for content consumption. When I'm on the computer, I'm at | least somewhat productive and the distractions aren't quite as | strong. | haxiomic wrote: | It's what's keeping me running an old phone; short battery | life has its advantages! | Dave_TRS wrote: | I'm the same way, keep me away from buffets, cupboards | containing sweets, and any newsfeed. | | One thing I've founds success with was getting a digital | Economist subscription (confession, just a shared password). | Having a steady stream of high quality content without paywall | nonsense helped me replace my regular trolling around internet | with something more useful and less addictive. Perhaps paying a | bit for something high quality can help fill void for those | dopamine seeking internet impulses. | BolexNOLA wrote: | >I just massively unsubscribing, unfollowing, and filtering all | the feeds. | | Nothing has been more effective for me than this, as well | unfriending/following people or accounts that actively make me | angry. Had to unfollow like 10 people tops and the quality of | my feeds got noticeably better. | uoaei wrote: | "Out of sight, out of mind" works great for me too. It's | staying occupied so that your thoughts don't meander back to | that thing, that makes the trick. | toyg wrote: | A lot of addictions are borne and sustained out of boredom. | When you find something else to fill time, they can be | removed relatively easily. | haliskerbas wrote: | Thought this was just me and it's so refreshing to hear. I can | never eat just part of a bag of chips. Or save the really good | sandwhich for later. Or not drink another coffee because I | already had one. Etc. etc | | Do lots of other folks experience this? I seem to only have | self control when it hurts my job or income, and even then, | barely. | skocznymroczny wrote: | An easy way to have self control is to switch to a keto-like | diet. You don't even have to count calories and carbs in most | cases. There's a variant called lazy keto, where you just | stick to approved foods and don't need to count. It's | surprisingly hard to overeat on things like cauliflower and | pork chops. | | Be wary however of the more "extreme" advice on keto-like | diets. You don't have to stuff yourself with fats, or put a | stick of butter in your coffee. | thoughtpeddler wrote: | 100% this. People often ask me "How do you stick with keto? | It's such a strict diet." I always answer: "It's actually | one of the easiest diets: the answer to most 'can I eat | this?' question is 'no'." | | There isn't a persistently high cognitive load on deciding | what you can eat, once you master the foundational | knowledge of eating low-carb. | riekus wrote: | I really want to follow it, but what about the bad | breath?! | | It's definitely a thing, you can smell when people are in | ketosis | jjtheblunt wrote: | isn't that ketoacidosis not ketosis? (i'm genuinely | asking ) | uuyi wrote: | This is terrible advice. Any fads are. Ketogenic diets are | not good for you in any way. | | Bad behaviour starts with acknowledgement and the best way | to do that is to track what you eat and learn to adapt | slowly and develop self discipline. Use a tracker app and | set a reasonable daily break even nutritional target and | start thinking about what you eat. Slowly substitute better | choices in. Eventually you will develop self control. | | People want quick fixes but keto just breaks other things. | dawidw wrote: | What is so bad about keto diet? | reportingsjr wrote: | The key thing you do in a keto diet, entering a state of | ketogenesis, can cause massive complications for diabetic | people due to ketoacidosis. | | Unfortunately a lot of people who would be interested in | dieting and trying out a keto diet are diabetic. It's not | always dangerous, but it's generally not a good diet for | diabetic people because of this. | tomca32 wrote: | This is incorrect. I'm a Type 1 Diabetic and in my | opinion keto diet is probably the healthiest diet a | diabetic can be on. | | Ketoacidosis is a result of extremely high blood sugar | for a prolonged period of time combined with ketosis. The | reason this happens is that without insulin your body | cannot use the sugar in your blood so your blood sugar | keeps going up and your body doesn't get any energy out | of it. | | What happens when your body is out of fuel for a couple | of days? It enters ketosis and starts to burn fat. Ketons | mixed with sugar in your blood will acidify blood, this | is ketoacidosis. It's an extremely dangerous condition. | | However, if a diabetic is on keto diet they will have low | blood sugar and their body will enter regular ketosis | almost eliminating the need for insulin and ensuring a | stable healthy blood sugar. | | In other words, a diabetic will end up in ketoacidosis if | they're bad at controlling their blood sugar, regardless | of their diet. However, if they are on keto diet the | chance that their blood sugar will be very high is | extremely small. High blood sugar is the killer, not | ketosis. | | I've been doing a keto diet on and off for a number of | years. When I'm in ketosis my blood sugar is steady in | 80-100 range and I don't need almost any insulin. | uuyi wrote: | Not going to list them here but I suggest you go and do | some research of the side effects and risks from actual | medical research not HN users. | | For me it ended in a few days in hospital. | incrudible wrote: | How? | aurizon wrote: | https://www.ndtv.com/health/top-10-reasons-why-you- | should-no... | incrudible wrote: | This is a very low effort, unsourced listicle, that is | probably wrong on several points. Disregarding that, I | was more curious about how this particular person managed | to get hospitalized. | scruple wrote: | > Do lots of other folks experience this? | | I don't think we're alone but I doubt that we're "normal." | newbamboo wrote: | I'm normal. | doubled112 wrote: | Anybody want to define "normal" ? | scruple wrote: | I'm Joe, nice to meet you. | steve_adams_86 wrote: | I think a lot of people with ADHD would relate, or have been | able to at some point. | evergreyskies wrote: | ADHD here. Kids are ADHD. My Malinois has to be ADHD. Being | ADHD like I am with almost two decades of IT under my belt | has felt weird. I crave my YouTube channels and certain | news sites since the content creators I watch/read put out | daily content. Ditto my insane amount of caffeine and | nicotine consumption, which I learned from having my kids | diagnosed, is me self medicating in lieu of something | pharmaceutical. I'm also OCD, so that doesn't help. People | with ADHD/OCD need closure something fierce, so when I feel | like I'm not getting it, I feel the world is not right. | | On the professional side, my ADHD/OCD makes for some clean | code and pedantically-set up servers. Nothing says ADHD/OCD | like taking two days to crank out code which some of my | colleagues can crank out in half the time. I'm told I'm too | pedantic sometimes. Too much of a perfectionist. ADHD can | do that to you. I'm happy with my lot in life. | jotm wrote: | I don't know why this comment feels like a punch in the | face... I have severe ADHD, it's been getting worse and | only medication helps, and I cannot get it. | | I have failed my whole life, I cannot start shit, I | cannot finish anything, I'm just an impulsive monkey who | is unfortunately aware of their own situation, stuck | inside a body, forced to watch a deadly trainwreck in | slow motion. | | The little I've achieved has taken me 10x as much time as | it would've a normal person. And I'm pissing it all away | anyway. | | This is hell. | | And then I see "everyone in my life is ADHD lolkek" "I'm | happy". | | Sorry. Glad your case is mild enough. | tlokas wrote: | I don't have ADHD, but I have family with ADHD. | | Wouldn't you say that ADHD affects the person, and | therefore the type of personality would change the | outcome? (In contrast to ADHD defining the person) | | Edit:spelling | s5300 wrote: | Why can't you get medication? Is it because of the | country you live in? | XCSme wrote: | It's common. | | We tend to keep doing what we are already doing (an inertia | of sorts). If we are eating, we keep on eating (even if we | are not hungry anymore) until an external factor stops us | (e.g. the food is over). | | Changing states (starting/stopping) is the hardest part, but | if you trick yourself somehow to stop it's easy to just put | the food aside. The question that remain is how do you stop | yourself from doing what you are currently doing? Some people | use an "1,2,3 technique", where you just count to yourself | and once you reach three you start doing what's needed. | Mindfulness also helps, where you take a breath and think | exactly what you are doing and why (I am eating, I am putting | my hand in the bag of chips, I am bringing the chip to my | mouth even if I am not hungry and don't even enjoy it that | much, this would just make me feel fat afterwards). | sgtnoodle wrote: | I think it's pretty common. I personally call it "Goldfish | syndrome", although apparently that's caught on with another | informal meaning according to the internet. | | Eating and drinking delicious high calorie things rewards | your brain. On an evolutionary time scale, delicious things | were relatively rare and often required expending a lot of | energy to acquire. In the last 100 years or so, modern | technology has shifted the typical diet to be primarily | cheap, processed high calorie foods. | | If you want to change your behavior, I would suggest calorie | counting with a phone app. Do it every meal or snack, before | you eat it. Even if you don't restrict yourself, it will make | you consciously aware of your intake. You'll naturally start | thinking in terms of energy intake rather than sensory | intake. You'll also start to be able to correlate your | emotional state to your current level of hunger rather than | the other way around. "I am so hungry I could eat 300 | calories of potato chips!" I did that for a few months | recently and lost 8 pounds. I stopped doing it more recently, | and have gained 3 back. | | If you're a hipster at heart and have free time, you could | also start doing more of your own food processing at home. | Rather than order a pizza ever again, learn how to make a | really good hand stretched pizza dough from scratch. If you | really like good coffee, buy a hand grinder and whole beans, | or figure out how to roast your own beans. | | If you think you're eating unhealthy and having external | pressure would help with your self control, maybe just go see | a primary care physician and request a cholesterol check and | to be screened for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. If you | have indeed been too indulgent and lethargic over an extended | period of time, your cholesterol will probably read high, and | you probably have fat in your liver that may be causing | slightly elevated enzyme levels. A Dr. telling you to try to | eat healthy may not be motivating, but quantitative data may | be. | crdrost wrote: | If you want an altogether nerdier name maybe call it | Wittgenstein syndrome? | | Drury reports a conversation with the famed philosopher: | | > So the next day when we were alone I asked Wittgenstein | to tell me more about Kierkegaard. Wittgenstein: | "Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker of the | last century. Kierkegaard was a saint." He then went on to | speak of the three categories of life-style that play such | a large part in Kierkegaard's writing: the asethetic, where | the objective is to get the maximum enjoyment out of this | life; the ethical, where the concept of duty demands | renunciation; and the religious, where this very | renunciation itself becomes a source of joy. Wittgenstein: | "Concerning this last category I don't pretend to | understand how it is possible. I have never been able to | deny myself anything, not even a cup of coffee if I wanted | it. Mind you I don't believe what Kierkegaard believed, but | of this I am certain, that we are not here in order to have | a good time." | ricardobeat wrote: | > Rather than order a pizza ever again, learn how to make a | really good hand stretched pizza dough from scratch | | This is good for different reasons, such as less additives | in your food which might be healthier in the long term, | taste, and the pleasure in the activity itself, but is | unlikely to help with weight loss. There is little | difference in calorie content between two similar pizzas, | home made and from a restaurant (assuming you're not eating | Domino's cheese-stuffed crust style pizzas). | nebulous_two wrote: | If you compare the same pizzas restaurant vs. homemade | then sure, but learning to do it well allows you to | modify everything to suit your needs. A really nice thin | crust can be made with quite a bit less dough, which may | then need a lot less cheese to saturate the dish. Just | like that you've knocked down two of the most calorically | heavy parts of a pizza! | [deleted] | criddell wrote: | For me it depends on how my day is going. | | When I first read about willpower being an exhaustible | resource, it totally aligned with my experience. A few years | later I read that those ego depletion studies had been | invalidated and that surprised me. Running out of willpower | seems like something I experience. | tlokas wrote: | That is my experience too. | | But it might be something that is subjectively felt, and | people then attributed it to be something that depletes. | Even if the depletion is invalidated, the subjective | feeling might however still be valid. --- If I should | suggest another possibility on the spot, I would suggest | mental fatigue. You get tired of denying yourself things | the same way you get tired of denying your kid pestering | you for a treat. | | It's not directly depletion, but I could subjectively | describe it as a resource getting depleted. | nebulous_two wrote: | It might be worth thinking about what it is that is being | depleted, exactly. When I "run out of willpower" it | doesn't really feel the same as when I "simply cannot do | it anymore". If I lift a weight enough times, eventually | I simply can't anymore, no matter how much I will it. | It's not a decision, like a decision to stop working on a | problem. That would be a lack of willpower to | continue...? | | Is there really a mental equivalent to physical | exhaustion that leaves us beyond the ability to make a | decision? Is that what running out of willpower would be? | riekus wrote: | This is me so bad. I have it in the good and bad ways. | | In the good I will run couple marathons a month and in the | bad I will eat whatever I can find. | | I always felt like an outcast, good to hear I am not alone :) | | For media consumption it is exactly the same. The good is | that I get to the nitty gritty of technical problems. But I | also read the unless crap till no end. | | I have been able to ditch Twitter, reddit, Facebook and | Instagram but I just substitute it with hackernews and | YouTube. | xkbarkar wrote: | Haha. Same here. I have gotten back into reading though. | That took a while because I lost the ability to concentrate | on books as I grew more dependent on streaming and social | media. Its been about a year now, since I left all the | major social media hubs, got incredibly selective on daily | news (only one local media outlet and a couple of polar | opposite international ones that I pay for) and cut down on | watching streaming services, that I started to be able to | concentrate on reading books again. I grew up reading | everything I could get my hands on. I missed it terribly. | | HN and youtube still stick. Mostly tutorials, workouts or | info videos ( Andrew Huberman, justforfunc, 3blue1brown | etc. ) on youtube though. | joaomacp wrote: | It may be a common trait in programmers, since we're rewarded | by getting to the bottom of things: "why is this function | failing? who calls it? in which possible states?" | | Most programmers have experienced being so immersed in code | that we don't notice time is passing, forgetting to eat or | sleep. | | It's similar with immersion in social media / food / | whatever. We become lost in the activity and lose our sense | of self. | | I've recently heard of the concept of conscientiousness as a | personality trait. People with low conscientiousness tend to | procrastinate more, and it's tied to ADHD. Apparently it can | be trained. I'm trying (though not really succeeding) to make | pauses, take a deep breath and think about "what am I doing | right now? What should I be doing instead?". Seems so basic, | like I've regressed to being a child who has no self | control... | trash_cat wrote: | It's worth mentioning that conscientiousness is a | personality trait that's part of the "big five" | personalities traits. It's a personality trait brouping | that is supported by evidence [1] unlike Myers Briggs [2]. | | [1] https://www.simplypsychology.org/big-five- | personality.html | | [2] https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain- | flapping/2013/mar/... | bityard wrote: | I identify with all of this, but this: | | > to make pauses, take a deep breath and think about "what | am I doing right now? What should I be doing instead?". | | this too can have its pitfalls. In my case, I always feel | like I have BOTH too many things that I WANT to do and too | many things HAVE to do and whenever I step back and try to | look at the bigger picture, I realize that I don't feel | like I'm making tangible progress on any of them. And then | the anxiety sets in and I feel like, "well, if I'm working | this hard and not even keeping up, why am I working at | all?" And so I sort of "give up" for a few days or a week | and feel even MORE guilty because literally nothing is | getting done and I'm getting even further behind. | | A lot of the comments I write here may sound like I really | have my shit together, but that's just because I have a lot | of generalized experience that just basically comes from | lots of introspection and time being alive. But I have yet | to figure out the one weird trick to being both productive | (making progress toward future life goals) and happy | (enjoying what I have in the present). | billti wrote: | I joke about my procrastination with my team: "I looked | at my TODO list for the day and there's no way I can get | to 90% of it, so I might as well just not get to 100% of | it". Sometimes there's a lot of truth to the joke, | however. | | As much as I know I should prioritize it based on | urgency, highest impact, what I could delegate etc., if | the willpower required to do that is more than the | ramifications or not doing it, it can be a losing battle. | | On days when I push through a ton of work, I'm energized | at the end of the day. Compared to the feeling of guilt | that I just wasted a day when there's so much to do and I | achieved little. Yet knowing that still just doesn't | provide the necessary motivation some days. I've yet to | figure out a reliable solution for it. | [deleted] | stult wrote: | Yes indeed, many of us do. Nearly everyone I've ever dated | gets mad at me at some point because I can't keep cookies in | the house or I will eat them all. You are far from alone, and | in fact I suspect the overwhelming majority of people are the | same. Hence the obesity epidemic. | | Personally I find that my self-control is limited to the same | extent that my time and energy are limited. If I'm tired, | it's harder for me to be disciplined, and the place that I | most often tired is at home at the end of the day, when | temptation to over eat is at the greatest. I believe there is | a fairly substantial body of evidence that shows I am not | unusual in this regard. This phenomenon is why groceries | stores put candy in checkout lanes, when you are mentally | tired from exercising discipline by not picking up the | delicious-looking tray of cupcakes in the bakery aisle and | thus are most susceptible to temptation. | | I think some people can just use willpower to maintain their | discipline in every situation, but those people are extreme | outliers. Like Navy SEALs or Olympic athletes or other | extreme high performers, and not even all of them. Those who | can are experts at delayed gratification and are able to | visualize what they want and then never deviate from their | plan for how to achieve it, regardless of their current | emotional state or energy levels. But that is vanishingly | rare and often their behavior is a result of some deep trauma | (eg someone who is super disciplined about their diet because | their dad died early from an obesity-related illness) rather | than a positive focus on a certain outcome. The truth is that | the vast majority of people just follow their natural | inclinations and do whatever is easiest for them. The path of | least resistance. | | As one such weak-willed person, my approach has been to | structure my life to remove temptations, much as the GP | comment above described their approach to curating their | internet content. For example, I have lived almost | exclusively in big cities for my entire life until the last | year, when I moved to the middle of nowhere. Which means I | can't get takeout food delivered and it's much harder to go | out and get ice cream on a whim. Compared to living in a | major city where I could get Michelin star restaurant food | delivered in a matter of minutes, the temptation is just | much, much less powerful. I order my groceries online too, | which also dramatically reduces the tendency to impulse buy | anything unhealthy (I get to skip the checkout lane with the | candy, for one thing). On the other side of the caloric | equation, I set up a home gym so that travel time to the gym | doesn't become an excuse not to exercise. Basically I add | barriers for bad choices and remove them for good ones. I am | in the best shape of my life as a result. | | I guess what I'm saying is that most people achieve good | behaviors in part because of their intentional discipline and | in part because their environment is conducive to those | behaviors. The real trick is figuring out how to | intentionally structure your environment to match whatever | behaviors you want. It's effectively borrowing motivation | from your peak-energy level periods to provide discipline | during periods when you don't have the energy to generate it | yourself. It can be incredibly hard to figure out, because | you need to know how to change your environment and how you | will actually react to that new environment, which isn't | always predictable. | [deleted] | eterm wrote: | I'm similar, but I'm far from neurotypical, so I can't say | whether it's typical or not. | hemreldop wrote: | bsder wrote: | > I can never eat just part of a bag of chips. | | To me, part of it is being _mindful_. Don 't open the bag of | chips and then watch a movie or surf the net while munching | on them. You will eat the whole bag. | | If I mode change from sitting in front of the computer to | standing in the kitchen eating the chips and then mode change | to back in front of the computer, I don't _mindlessly_ | consume the whole bag. But I will still sometimes consume the | whole bag. | | One thing I have also tried to do is differentiate between "I | want chips because I'm hungry" vs "I want chips because I'm | craving _salt_ ". It's not easy for me to tell the | difference. I coat some baby carrots in salt or Old Bay | seasoning and munch a few--if that keeps the munchies away, | my body wanted salt. If I'm hungry again 15 minutes later, | well, my body wants calories. | | Nevertheless, I'm mostly in the camp of "Just don't have | chips/cookies in the house". It also helps that I learned to | bake as a child. I like _tasty_ desserts, and most of what | now exists is mostly sugar overload with no flavor. So, a | dessert easily sets off my "Is this dessert tasty enough to | merit skipping two entire steaks <or insert whatever main | course you like> to compensate?" And, if my that activates, | the answer is almost always a resounding "No." and I skip | dessert. | | Unfortunately for me, I found a middle eastern place that | does homemade Baklava with a cream filling. It's right next | to a Mexican restaurant that I also find quite nice. This is | a bad thing for my waistline. | amelius wrote: | > If I have dessert in the house, like a bag of chocolate, then | I eat one after dinner. | | I think for most with social media the equivalent would be to | eat the entire bag. | helpm33 wrote: | Yes, he eats one. Bag :) | kixiQu wrote: | https://tokimeki-unfollow.glitch.me/ | | Presents the Twitter accounts you're following so you can | decide whether they "spark joy"... pairs well with | | https://opml.glitch.me/ | | Which looks at the accounts you're following, looks at the | links in their bios, sees if there's an RSS feed indicated at | that link, and puts the whole thing together into an OPML feed | (the standard XML-of-RSS-feeds format used for RSS reader | import/export, among other things). | dewey wrote: | I just spend the past 20 minutes in the unfollow tool. Thanks | for helping me waste so much time on the internet! | higgins wrote: | this tool is great, thank you! | | i would love if a tool like this were made based on | interactions I've had with authors. generally, i like comment | or retweet content that "sparks joy". | | would be a good first pass filter | kixiQu wrote: | Glitch will let you fork ("remix") and modify -- I don't | know if the Twitter APIs are real friendly anymore for that | open-ended of use, but it'd be worth trying :) | jbverschoor wrote: | We are just monkeys smashing buttons in front of us | leodriesch wrote: | Doing the same, but this does not really apply for algorithmic | feeds. | | When you open YouTube the recommendations are always the first | thing you see, same for TikTok and Twitter (although at least | you can configure it there). | | Sure you can say "just don't use recommendation systems" just | as you can say "just don't go on YouTube". | eimrine wrote: | > When you open YouTube the recommendations are always the | first thing you see | | There is a brilliant hack to YT's urge to show you some BS. | Make a bookmark of YT submissions on HN. Clear cookies. Click | on any few random vids. Voila! Now YT considers you enough | smart person to be shown a decent recommendations!!! (But the | magic quickly disappears if you will click any BS from main | because my hack does not affects the main page). | eulgro wrote: | I just block the recommendation and comments section with | uBlock. No dessert, no temptation. | NoLinkToMe wrote: | True, but I exclusively watch YT on laptop and have the link | to my subscriptions. It really does help. | kradeelav wrote: | You can follow Youtube channels via RSS feeds, though, which | removes the issue with recommendations. | alexktz wrote: | This is the way. | | https://github.com/tubearchivist/tubearchivist | madars wrote: | I use the following user stylesheet to hide YouTube | recommendations for exactly the reason you mention: | /* hide main page */ ytd-browse[page-subtype="home"] | { display: none; } | evergreyskies wrote: | Nice. I'll have to incorporate this little gem for the | Linux laptop. Thank you. When I'm home, I primarily watch | YouTube on my TV, but I don't use YouTube. Rather, I use | SmartTubeNext, which grabs the same videos as YouTube, but | has no ads, tracking, kills sponsored content in the video, | as well as no YouTube recommendations. I'm very happy with | it. I run it off my Amazon Firestick. If you're interested, | here is the how-to: https://troypoint.com/smarttubenext/ | strifey wrote: | I find it relatively easy to use YouTube without exposing | myself to their recommendations (not that they're ever | particularly good, in my experience). | | My bookmark for YouTube is directly to my subscriptions, and | it's also possible to create a android shortcut link directly | to subscriptions. Occasionally, a flow will direct me to the | homepage, but that's rare and I usually organically bounce | back to my subs without even thinking about it. | | There's always recs below a video, but again, those are | rarely very interesting to me or they're things I've | subscribed to anyway. | cturtle wrote: | I've been using a really nice extension the past couple | months called unhook [0] that gives a lot of control over | the YouTube UI. I've disabled shorts, the homepage, related | videos, comments, etc. and now I only see videos I have | subscribed to. Much more useful (I subscribed for a | reason!) and much less time wasted. Just thought I'd share | in case it helps anyone! | | [0]: https://unhook.app/ | phatfish wrote: | That looks good, thanks. | | I block recommendation sections on some site with the | ublock element picker (like the "recommendations" | stackoverflow puts in the right column from their other | sites, completely unrelated to the current page or search | terms). | | I never got round to trying that with Youtube, this seems | a better solution. | [deleted] | aeternum wrote: | The recommendation algos can be quite good but you need to | give them good signal. I doubt many people do this, but | clicking 'not interested' on the clickbaity vids and thumbs- | up high-effort content can very quickly tune your | recommendations to be very high quality. | orbit7 wrote: | I recall life before smart phones either feeling bored or being | looked at strangely for sitting on a laptop at a bus stop, not | that I cared. | ge96 wrote: | Can't afford to move out to some place with land yet. | | Otherwise I'd spend a lot of my time tinkering with stuff | outside. | | I always have something playing whether it's music or tv (form of | YT or some Netflix-type place mostly YT though). Also my friends | are not in the same state as I am so I don't really have a life. | omalleyt wrote: | Variable reward schedules. Like slot machines. | taurusnoises wrote: | I'm repeatedly amazed by what makes it to the front page on HN. | I'm not judging, really I'm not, but this is the first post on a | blog (so, basically unknown) and is essentially two paragraphs | asking "why is it so hard to not stare at the internet all day?" | I'm stoked for the author to be getting some HN love, but what | about this deserves such an esteemed placement on HN??? It's | literally the same question every single person is asking and has | probably posted a thousand times before. | metadat wrote: | We like thought provoking discussion. | [deleted] | taurusnoises wrote: | As do I. I'm just genuinely curious how this caught people's | eye. There's no way through the sea of "content" that these | two paras could stick out without an artificial boost. | epalm wrote: | Something that really helped me with YouTube was installing the | Unhook browser extension https://unhook.app/ | | Unhook can remove all 'suggested' videos. The home page will just | be blank, and when watching a video, there will be no other video | links on the page. This means I can still use YouTube, but I have | to search for what I'm looking for. This alone has completely | solved the endless video merry-go-round sessions. | ericskiff wrote: | Thank you! Just installed | epalm wrote: | No problem! | | The real problem is "The Feed", the never ending infini- | scroll. I don't think it's a coincidence that usually the | item you're looking at in The Feed is shorter than the frame, | so you can always see at least part of the next item, and | when you scroll, you see part of the next item, and so on. | | I need Unhook for Facebook and Reddit. | Decabytes wrote: | I waste so much time on the internet because it's easier than | doing anything else. Binging YouTube videos and peoples post | mortems gives me a dopamine hit akin to being productive without | actually putting any work towards my goals. I hate it. | belkarx wrote: | The modern internet, with ever-refreshing recommendations, is | fully intended to be addicting. Possible mitigations: make it | very inconvenient to repetitively view social media. Examples: | | - Create UBlock rules to remove recommendations, only keeping the | search bar on the youtube home page so if you want to watch a | video you have to explicitly seek it out | | - Redirect an address like reddit.com in /etc/hosts so it is | inaccessible | | - Seek out more productive forms of social media, and set loose | timers for accessing them so you don't get caught in infinite | scrolling | | - Do not have social media apps on your phone | | - Turn off internet when doing productive work if possible. Or | employ context switches - one browser for fun, another for work. | [deleted] | cute_boi wrote: | Same here :(. I understand the consequence, but still I spend all | my time watching useless news, reddit & hackernews. IDK why I am | getting so much addicted on internet... And, I believe this is | also why I haven't been able to achieve great things in my life. | mikotodomo wrote: | I only use it for 1 or 2 hours a day. But this was one of my | worries about becoming a programmer. Will it cause me to spend | ten hours a day on the computer? | MisterBastahrd wrote: | When I was a child, my father decided to convert from Catholicism | to Evangelical Protestantism. For reference, both sides of my | family have been Catholic going all the way back for at least 300 | years. So a schism occurred. My dad dragged me to his church | services and wasted my entire Sunday mornings, and my sisters | remained in the Catholic faith. My mom told me on the day that I | was to first go to his church service that if I went with him, | that she was not my mother anymore. So I went with my dad, | because even at that age, I didn't do emotional terrorism. | | Because this was in the 80s and we only had one television, books | were my refuge. I was a voracious reader. In standardized | testing, I went from having a 1st grade reading ability in 1st | grade to college level by 3rd grade. That tapered off because I | wasn't a huge fan of reading fiction and I had basically read all | the interesting non-fiction in the local library by 5th grade. | Being an 80s kid, I had a lot more personal autonomy than kids | since and started spending a ton of time outdoors, riding my bike | to go fishing and playing sports outdoors. When it got really | cold, I'd write code in GW-Basic, but that was mostly to enter | competitions to miss school (state science fair for the win). | | So then I got to college, and was able to browse the web on NCSA | Mosaic. And there was just TONS of new things to read. My ADHD | went full blast reading article after article and my grades | suffered a bit. Every new day is an attempt to avoid falling down | the rabbit hole. | rocky1138 wrote: | I experience this and go through periods where I get away from it | all by setting Reddit and other sites to 0.0.0.0 in my hosts | file. | mrwnmonm wrote: | Feeding your identity? | u2077 wrote: | Stress for me is an equation. | | When # things I need to do > # things I want to do, I become more | stressed. | | Although each task has a weight to it as well. Needs are weighted | on importance and wants are weighted on desire. | | This allows the "stress scale" to tip with many tasks or a few | larger tasks. | LeoPanthera wrote: | I'm approaching my 50s, and for me, it's because I am still | astounded by the achievement of a global, low-cost, | communications network. | | When I was a child, international phone calls were still rare, | expensive, and unreliable things, and if you left your home | country, staying in touch mostly involved getting newspapers from | home (24 hours late), or maybe getting lucky and receiving | shortwave radio broadcasts like the BBC World Service or Voice of | America. | | First getting internet access seemed amazing, and for me it's | _still_ amazing. Even when you were first tethered to a copper | phone line, that line seemed like a pipe to the entire world. | Cellular internet blew my mind, and satellite technologies like | Starlink are blowing my mind again. | | What an absolute privilege to be living in an age of almost | universal global communication. | ineedasername wrote: | Yes, I remember that early thrill of a chat room or forum where | I was communicating with someone on the other side of world. | And not only that, the marginal cost to do so was practically | free once I already had a cheap second hand computer and a | dialup connection, and during college my school ran a free | dialup ISP for times when I was at home. | | The shine has worn off though. The fact that you might be | 10,000 miles away or even typing you comments from the | International Space Station no longer thrills me. It's all | become mundane. (Well, if it was the ISS then I suppose that | would still be pretty awesome) | whoomp12342 wrote: | grayscale your phone. Its subtle psychology that keeps you coming | back | spark3k wrote: | When I was a kid my parents had a big physical encyclopaedia set. | I used to lose myself in those things just as much as I scroll | through stuff now. Just because in both instances, it's | "interesting". | | But my brain doesn't necessarily discern between "good" | interesting and "bad" interesting without me trying to work it | out and guiding it. | | Which I normally fail at. | sedatk wrote: | Dopamine addiction. Thank you for attending my TED talk. | abramN wrote: | I've been around since the birth of the internet, and just have | been amazed with how much stuff there is to do and see and learn. | Granted, there's a lot of cesspools, but lots of good wholesome | stuff too. I mean, think about it - when in the history of | mankind have we had so much information at our fingertips? | sidcool wrote: | I think it's akin to addiction. Internet secretes the pleasure | chemicals in brain. And it's fun. | tOUSSia wrote: | finally a hackernews article I feel qualified to have an opinion | on... | dcchambers wrote: | My completely unprofessional opinion is that almost everyone that | uses the internet throughout the day has developed some form of | undiagnosed ADD/ADHD. | | The modern internet has broken our slowly evolved brains. We are | not built to cope with these types of attention destroying | activities and media. At least 20 years ago you had to sit down | at a specific place and use a chunky computer. Smartphones have | made it 1000x worse. | | There's no easy solution. I don't think becoming a digital | luddite is the answer...but we all need to be more intentional | with our time. | | It's not the only answer, but Cal Newport's book Digital | Minimalism^1 is a good read for anyone that finds themself | feeling this way. | | [1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40672036-digital- | minimal... | the_only_law wrote: | I remember years ago being a teenager and having limited access | to computers and the internet so when I did have them I used my | time to learn as much as I could. | | When I didn't, I got bored, and I picked up books. I remember | reading books on history, biology, psychology, electronics, | programming, etc. and learning from them, often just by | flipping pages and reading passages that looked interesting. In | fairness, even nowadays, it's not uncommon for me to have a | dozen Wikipedia tabs opened about random stuff that piqued my | interest. | | Nowadays I can't get bored anymore. My phone is rarely out of | arms reach and I own every steam game I ever wanted and a | computer that can handle them. | | Recently, I recall trying to work on a side project when I got | stuck on a design aspect. My power went out later and with all | my devices dead and I remember being bored to death, pacing | around the apartment when the solution came to me. | Crabber wrote: | Someone introduced me to the same idea a few years ago and it | really stuck with me, "the only time people in the modern | world experience boredom is in the 15 seconds before they | pull out their smartphone". | | It's in moments of boredom that you start having deep | thoughts about the world, start thinking through solutions to | problems you have, start thinking about changes you can make | in your life. | | I got rid of my smartphone and now the 20 minutes each day on | the train where I'm "bored" are one of the most valuable | parts of my day. And my mind feels much fresher after it, | rather than being crammed with 20 minutes worth of mental | junk food from the internet. | v-erne wrote: | >> I got rid of my smartphone and now the 20 minutes each | day on the train where I'm "bored" are one of the most | valuable parts of my day. And my mind feels much fresher | after it, | | Thats interesting - I think I lost ability to be bored even | if I do not reach for phone immediately. My mind somehow | switches to a strange mode where I reply random events from | my life and try to come out with different plays for each | interaction. And I cannot do this if I feel discomfort - | its too hot or too cold etc. And I used to think that this | was boredom but now I think this was because I was | distracted by environment. The real boredom is something | that I vaguely remember from my early childho hit`od and I | cannot get there now - my mind is to full of past | interactions. The smartphone age can be somehow at fault | here - maybe my brain thirsts for dompamine hit so much | that it creates its own mental junk. | 30944836 wrote: | >I got rid of my smartphone | | Teach me! How do you keep in touch with people on the go? | This is the only thing that has stopped me from dumping my | iPhone altogether. I sometimes leave home without it but I | end up relying on others for coordination, etc -- which | means I haven't liberated myself so much as fobbed off the | responsibility to others. | | I don't have social media (besides HN), so my main contact | with people who aren't in my immediate vicinity is through | sharing photos directly on iMessage and the odd article- | inspired rant. | Crabber wrote: | I just use a PS15 nokia phone (they still make them). It | calls, texts, and plays snake. | | Texting on a T9 keyboard is slow but I've come to | consider that a feature. Before I had a smartphone I | would just text everyone, now that texting takes actual | effort I find myself calling people more, or asking to | meet up in person. And I find myself forming much deeper | personal connections with people as a result. | olah_1 wrote: | > The average shot length of English language films has | declined from about 12 seconds in 1930 to about 2.5 seconds | today | | https://www.wired.com/2014/09/cinema-is-evolving/ | 30944836 wrote: | I think it's much shorter now, that article is almost 8 years | old. With the ubiquity of digital cinema, I suspect the | average shot length is 1.x seconds. | muwtyhg wrote: | What movies are these? An average shot length of less than | 2 seconds sounds like it would give me a massive headache. | 30944836 wrote: | Here's a list I stole from Quora: | https://www.quora.com/What-films-have-the-lowest-average- | sho... | | ASL 1.55 - Doomsday (2008) : 4052 shots over 105 minutes | | ASL 1.72 - Transporter 3 (2008) : 3360 shots over 96 | minutes | | ASL 1.73 - Domino (2005) : 4046 shots over 116 minutes | | ASL 1.83 - Quantum of Solace (2008) : 3198 shots over 98 | minutes | | ASL 1.84 - Crank: High Voltage (2009) : 2718 shots over | 84 minutes | | ASL 1.92 - Transporter 2 (2005) : 2524 shots over 81 | minutes | | ASL 2.01 - Band of Ninja (1967) : 3424 shots over 114 | minutes | | ASL 2.01 - Moulin Rouge! (2001) : 3594 shots over 120 | minutes | | ASL 2.03 - Gamer (2009) : 2502 shots over 84 minutes | | ASL 2.03 - The 6th Day (2000) : 3418 shots over 116 | minutes | | ASL 2.08 - Hot Fuzz (2007) : 3304 shots over 115 minutes | | ASL 2.10 - Dark City (1998) : 2982 shots over 104 minutes | | ASL 2.15 - Armageddon (1998) : 4025 shots over 145 | minutes | | ASL 2.17 - The Transporter (2002) : 2420 shots over 87 | minutes | | ASL 2.17 - The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) : 2910 shots over | 105 minutes | 331c8c71 wrote: | Not exactly. It's definitely not ADHD if there's no prolonged | and debilitating impact. Being distracted an hour there and a | couple there is not like ADHD. | | ADHD would be like more like falling in a pit where one | basically cannot do anything meaningful for days and days | despite willing to do so (if the motivation is lost, in turn, | we are talking about depression-like states). | | I doubt that many of normal smartphone users get into such pits | despite they appear distracted and might have an urge to get | into one's smartphone. | tobylane wrote: | Agreed. We may have a lack of practise/comfort with the | slower pace, but I think it call it ADHD is to understate the | disorder. | ketzo wrote: | ADD/ADHD are very much a spectrum. If someone is having | trouble focusing for a few hours a day, even if it's not | literal days on end, I don't think it's crazy to investigate | ADD/ADHD as the cause/name of the problem. | 331c8c71 wrote: | Agreed. Especially if slacking for days would quickly lead | to negative consequences. ADHDs are often distracted until | the very last moment when the failure becomes imminent -- | and then work to avoid it. | 30944836 wrote: | I found Newport's book to be so surface level for anyone with | even a passing familiarity with the problem that it wasn't | worth my time. | | What really helped me was these two books: | | (1) The Attention Merchants by Tim Wu (2) The Age of | Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshanna Zuboff | | and the nextdns.io installed on all my devices. I literally | blocked Reddit, et al to break the cycle of "I just woke up so | I'mm scroll until I'm fully awake" and then oops -- an hour | went by. | | The thing that ended up motivating me to change was reinforcing | for myself the fact that I'm in this mess because very smart | people have designed systems to exploit me. Fuck that. I'm in | control of my attention. | jordanpg wrote: | See also Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention by Johann | Hari. | almost_usual wrote: | I would not be surprised if we have permanently damaged our | brain's reward centers. | AnonC wrote: | I'd also recommend Nicholas Carr's 2011 book "The Shallows: | What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains". I read it a long | time ago and was impressed with its insights on attention (or | the lack of it) and the usage of the Internet. | iamhamm wrote: | I have diagnosed ADHD and I can waste just as much time on my | amateur radio as the Internet. I guess we get a pass due to the | technical neediness, but I spent 3 hours yesterday listening to | static trying to hear a specific station... | agumonkey wrote: | There were a few points in my life where: | | - I forgot how time could pass outside of internet. Days were | flying in-house.. yet everytime I walked to anything 5mi away.. | suddenly I felt like I lived a whole life yet only 1 hour had | passed. | | - It reached a point where when my ISP was failing, seeing the | internet box being solidly offline dilated time in the blink of | an eye. I had a giant "oh god yes." screamed by my brain | because I felt free.. no more F5/refresh of stuff that only | satisfied me shallowly and forbid mind wandering or in-depth | activities. Stunning effect an electronic pipe.. | senectus1 wrote: | information/stimulation addiction is a thing.... | vorpalhex wrote: | No, it's not. This "X is addictive" where X is | porn/videogames/making popcorn view is based on a flawed | understanding of brain circuitry. | ChrisFoster wrote: | ADHD is a developmental condition which is highly genetic and | relates to neurotransmitter brain chemistry (Dopamine / | Norepinephrine). People with ADHD have it their whole life, | it's not something you can develop in adulthood. However, | people can be (commonly are) diagnosed in adulthood, especially | for the inattentive subtype which has less outward symptoms. | | What _can_ change or develop over time is the life | circumstances that a person with ADHD finds themselves in. | Circumstance can make the difference between ADHD being a | disorder with significant impairments vs a joyful and creative | existence. | | Situations which demand executive function, like putting down | that mobile phone or closing youtube in favor of doing | something more productive are _much_ harder for people with | ADHD. The market built by the tech industry to transact human | attention for profit certainly hasn 't helped here. | | Here's a good brief overview of ADHD: | https://www.adhdbitesize.com/post/understand-what-adhd-is-re... | | Or a bite-size youtube version | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMWtGozn5jU | | An online ADHD test which is relatable and seems fairly | accurate: https://totallyadd.com/do-i-have-add/ | alisonkisk wrote: | is it ADD or is it just a common pattern of human nature? | | Is eating sugar when it is offered a disease, or an environment | that is toxic to instincts that usee to suit us well? | dcchambers wrote: | > Is eating sugar when it is offered a disease | | It's not, but it will lead to some (obesity, diabetes, heart | disease, etc). | | In the same way, consuming infinite amounts of quick-hitting | and dopamine-inducing social media is not a disease, but it | can damage our brains and lead to "disease" in the same way | that sugar damages the rest of our body. | | Again, I'm not a doctor and I have no facts/evidence to | share. Just my own thoughts on how things are going. | brimble wrote: | I'm reminded of Scott Alexanders musing re: whether someone | "has ADD" if they have trouble focusing on things that are | simply boring as fuck, like looking at spreadsheets (or | code...) all day every day, week, after week, after week. | | But then if all their peers are in fact outperforming them, | because they're _already_ all self-medicating for ADD | symptoms, or have a prescription for ADD meds, so they can | focus on something that _most_ ordinary people would have | trouble focusing on... what then? | | What's normal in a work environment that's fundamentally and | extremely _not normal_? | makeworld wrote: | Got a link to that post? | cipheredStones wrote: | Not the GP, but it's | https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/12/28/adderall-risks- | much-mo... | jeffreyrogers wrote: | Given enough time abnormal becomes normal and everyone who | couldn't fit in is selected out. Several thousand years ago | agricultural societies were abnormal, but they allowed high | population densities and were better at war so they | dominated (except on the steppe). | | When Henry Ford popularized the assembly line he had | extremely high employee turnover. People didn't like | working that way. | dbetteridge wrote: | The spice is life... | elihu wrote: | I think the last couple years have been especially bad. We've | had a pandemic that isn't 100% over that removed a lot of the | non-Internet interactions from most people's lives, we have a | major land war in Europe now that could turn into a | civilization-ending nuclear war at the drop of a hat, we had a | contentious election in the U.S. about a year and a half ago | that culminated in the Capital being ransacked, we've had | ongoing droughts, wildfires, and heat waves that will probably | just keep getting worse, we have supply chain disruptions, and | so on. | | It's really no wonder people are paying attention to the | Internet, because at any moment some new calamity will be upon | us. (It was kind of also true for me during the Trump | presidency: I felt compelled to check the political news | multiple times a day as if somehow my personal supervision and | online comments would keep Trump from doing anything too | crazy.) I've started to wonder if I'm exhibiting ADD-like | symptoms, and I'm also wondering if it's not just me, that it's | happening to most people at the same time. | | Maybe things will go a little bit back to normal as in-person | social interaction ramps back up. (I'm in the Portland area. | Here, Covid restrictions are basically over but a lot of people | are still operating in a pandemic mode. We've just now been | allowed to work from our cubicles again, and only a couple of | my coworkers actually do it on kind of a once-a-week cadence.) | I don't think things are going back to anything like what I'd | like to think of as normal, though. The world's just a really | turbulent place right now. | pde3 wrote: | Split this into two questions: | | (1) Why do we procrastinate? (2) What is it about various | Internet platforms and patterns that makes them so addictive, and | good for procrastination? | | For me, (1) turned out to be about not having a clear picture of | what exactly I needed to do next for my goals, and sometimes not | having enough social reinforcement and accountability for the | things I'm working on; (2) there are lots of tricks and accidents | that have made modern platforms really addictive, but one of the | big ones is uncertain reward. I reload all sorts of things hoping | for something new and interesting. Noticing that pattern is the | first step to damping it. | smeej wrote: | I had to reach a point where I admitted to myself that, as much | as I may wish I were a person who could handle having a | smartphone in my pocket, I'm not. If I have one there, it will | suck up time I don't want to give it. I tried putting all kinds | of guides in place until I just...got a flip phone that, yeah, | can run Android apps, but absolutely sucks to use. It doesn't | have a touch screen, so I have to navigate with a D pad and type | with T9. It's awful. | | That's paired with a color eInk device that can also run Android | apps. It's wonderful for reading things that have discrete pages | (ebooks), but awful for anything that moves or requires | scrolling. | | My personal computer sucks too. This happened totally by | accident, but I wound up with a machine that won't sleep | properly, so I have to shut the thing all the way down every time | I'm done using it. It's a pain to use. | | When I reached the point where I actually wanted to change, I had | to make it suck to do the things I used to enjoy. I kind of envy | the people who can add smartphones to their lives and have their | lives get better. Mine got worse. | | But at least now, when I'm looking at some free time, I don't | want to pull out my phone (I hate using my phone), I might want | to read an ebook, and I don't want to pull out my computer. I | wish it didn't come to this, but at least it works. | el_benhameen wrote: | I am much the same way. I use more of a half measure than you, | which is to physically remove the phone from my proximity as | much as possible unless I'm intentionally trying to zone out. | So if I'm working, the phone is in another room on silent. When | I'm done with work, I do a hard "screens off" time for family | time from 6-9 or so. That, combined with deleting fb/ig and | logging out of twitter (still sometimes useful for news so I | haven't deleted it), has helped me exercise more control over | my habits versus just sheer willpower. | smeej wrote: | I think you're in that category of people whose discipline I | envy/admire! Half measures are so much better at mitigating | the downsides of any tradeoff. I totally recommend them for | anyone who can use them and make them work! | [deleted] | [deleted] | nolist_policy wrote: | What phone do you have and can it run osmand? There aren't many | android flip phones... | Crabber wrote: | I agree completely, the only reliable way to quit using a | smartphone is to stop carrying one. | | I don't know why we apply such different thinking to digital | addictions than physical ones. | | You would never tell someone who was trying to quit smoking | "just carry a pack of cigarettes and a lighter everywhere but | don't use them". | Invictus0 wrote: | Because we still need certain utilities on our phone, like | Maps and Music and Search and Camera. Those aren't the | problems--we still want those things, which are not addictive | and fruitful, but we want less of things which are addictive | and fruitless, like Twitter and Reddit. Cigarettes have no | such essential and positive utility. | smeej wrote: | That's why I like this phone that _can_ do those things, | but I really have to be sure I want to do them. | | It's surprising how often I actually don't, though. Rarely | am I going anywhere I actually don't know how to go. Rarely | do I actually _need_ to take a photo of something (though | to be fair, I 've never really been into photography; this | would be different for people who are). I prefer quiet to | music (although again, admittedly, I know I'm not the norm | here). And not being able to search the answer to any old | thing whenever I want? Turns out I forget most of those | things by the time I get to a computer, so I guess they | weren't terribly important. I make more of a point of | trying to learn things now. | | I don't distract myself as much as I used to. I feel like | I'm actually more present when I'm present because I don't | have anywhere else to be. | | YMMV, but there's no perfect solution. Everything has | tradeoffs. You just have to choose which set you care about | most. | Crabber wrote: | >though to be fair, I've never really been into | photography; this would be different for people who are | | Anyone who is seriously into photography will be carrying | a proper camera. The idea of professional photographers | using smartphone cameras is just pure marketing bullshit | IMO. Smartphone cameras are severely limited by physics | and always will be. | | As someone who used to be heavily into photography, my | smartphone may as well have not even had a camera because | if I wanted to go out and take pictures I would bring my | DSLR. | Crabber wrote: | >Because we still need certain utilities on our phone | | You don't "need" any of those things, humans got on with | life just fine without them for 100,000s of years, | smartphones have only existed for the last 15. | | >Maps | | Look it up on a computer before you go, or ask someone on | the street for directions. The only "benefit" having maps | on a phone gives you is that you can completely avoid | talking to people and just stare down at a screen instead. | | >Music | | MP3 players still exist. Or just ditch the music and be | present in the moment. | | >Search | | I have never spontaneously needed to search something that | couldn't wait 30 minutes until I was back at a computer. | | >Camera | | If you're going somewhere you know you're going to want to | take pictures then take a proper camera. Otherwise you | probably don't need one. I can't think of a single instance | in the past 2 years where I needed to take a picture of | something that actually mattered without knowing | beforehand. | cecilpl2 wrote: | Randomly reinforced dopamine hits. | | Same reason some people play slot machines all day. | dgunay wrote: | For me it feels like at some point, I stopped feeling like I | could throw myself into hobbies that require real engagement. | Long video games, deep dive coding, instrument practice sessions, | etc. | | Once I got a job, partner, and pets, at any moment something can | demand my attention. Enough times of having to abandon a | multiplayer game, break concentration, break my flow, and at some | point I just started choosing to do things that have zero | commitment. I still play games, but only ones that I feel I can | drop at a moment's notice and don't require practice. Music is a | faint echo of the presence it used to be in my life. The only | thing I still get to do every single day is code, because I have | to do it in order to live. | | I also feel the loss of the "third spaces" in my life. It used to | be a few select hangout spots with my friends, then it was the | rest of the college campus. I've lived in a car dependent | hellscape my entire life and it only got worse when I moved to | the US capital of suburban sprawl for work. None of my friends | live within ten miles of me anymore. | annadane wrote: | I think the problem is I don't waste enough time on the internet | (where 'waste' is a loaded word) - there's so much on there and | yet I'm relegated to the same 5 or 10 pages I always go to | 65 wrote: | If you live in the boring suburbs where you have to drive | everywhere to do things and see people, then yeah there's | basically nothing to do except watch television and browse the | internet. | | My general theory of existence is that your environment makes up | a huge portion of your overall wellbeing. Boredom, happiness, | depression, anxiety - it all comes from your environment. | | If you set your life up in such a way that the only thing to do | is browse the internet, then yeah... you're going to waste a lot | of time on the internet. Trying to block the sites, to resist the | temptation, etc. is not going to work if there's nothing else to | fill your time with. | rakejake wrote: | +1. I came to the same conclusion. The pandemic sped up the | timeline of my mental processes and illustrated all the holes | in my model of the world. That way, I am glad this lockdown | happened before I made any life-altering and hard-to-reverse | decisions. | davesque wrote: | This comment sums up what I was trying to say in another | comment quite nicely, except in a more direct and practical | way. Sometimes, I feel like this boring dystopia you describe | is found in so many places as to seem inescapable. It's | something intrinsic to modern life. Every building looks the | same. Every road looks the same. Everyone's clothes and | haircuts look the same. Everyone has the same attitude. Why? As | Steve Ballmer would say, "Corporations, corporations, | corporations, corporations." What do we get when the entire | world, both physically and mentally, is shaped by the same | style of hierarchy whose sole purpose is to extract human | effort from the population for cash while ignoring the long | term cost? | leodriesch wrote: | I've been thinking about this for some time, since so many people | (including me) seem to struggle with this, even while being | completely aware of our behavior. | | I think legislation should force social networks to: | | - have a reverse chronological timeline for your network | | - optionally disable any algorithmic recommendations | | Social Media companies are mostly unrestricted in the current | legislation system while they are trying their hardest to | maximize user engagement. | | Just like the use of certain drugs this something some people | can't responsively deal with themselves, hence it should be | regulated. | | And probably my idea is not very fleshed out, but I think | something has to be done, and it has to come from states as the | companies themselves can't be held responsible. | greggman3 wrote: | I find myself wasting too much time on the internet and I don't | spend any of it on social media. I waste most of it on HN. | ngamboa wrote: | escapedmoose wrote: | I used to spend an embarrassing amount of time on the social | media, not really enjoying myself. I tried taking breaks for a | month or so at a time, but would get sucked right back in because | of some dumb meme or hype train or something. | | Then after a while something snapped. I realized everything I saw | online was extremely boring and shallow, and I had no desire to | see it. I didn't log out of any of my socials, and I still have | the apps installed, I just have 0 desire to use them. Same goes | for news sites and blogs (I used to read an article or two a day | on at least a dozen sites). I don't know what in my brain | changed, but I'm glad it did because now I get about 4 hours of | every day back. | | Most of what's online is just so pointless, but even worse, it's | not very enjoyable, and is often anxiety-inducing. I'd rather | literally stare at the ceiling and just let my mind wander. | Hacker News is the last site I still frequent, but even this has | seemed extremely dull lately. | swah wrote: | Do you still have interest in other things like reading, movies | or exercising? Or its a general dullness? | bloaf wrote: | Why do you feel like not being productive all the time is a moral | failing? | kataklasm wrote: | For me at least I feel like there's a difference between being | unproductive due to doomscrolling $socialMedia and being | unproductive due to a more 'traditional' way of "wasting" (as | in not being productive) time. Spending time on a grassfield in | the sun is just as unproductive as doomscrolling, yet it feels | a whole lot different. One feels abusive and abrasive to the | soul; the other is relaxing and soothing. All while being | unproductive. There may be a lot more layers to this | productivity conundrum than being just a productivity boolean. | LigmaYC wrote: | Do you not feel bad when wasting time? Especially if you're | just refreshing youtube and instagram, as the blog states. | hintymad wrote: | The cure does not come from discipline but from finding things | that are more fun to do. | | I'd rather read a book or tinker with a program instead of | wasting time on the internet, but somehow my phone alone still | recorded at least more than three hours of use and usually | sometimes more than four. Reflecting upon this, I identified two | reasons for such irrational behavior. First, I was afraid of | getting carried away from reading a book, while checking timeline | of twitter seems non-committing. Second, this little dose of | dopamine from reading a short update from the internet seems | really addictive. | | Luckily, I find a treatment that seems working: | | 1. I realize that reading a book or a long article is not as | addictive as before, for whatever reason. In addition, I use a | timer to remind myself just in case. | | 2. I surround myself with many types of books, videos, articles, | magazines, and some exercise routines and equipment. Whenever I | have an urge to take a break, I first ask myself if I really need | to get distracted. It's amazing how awareness itself can reduce | the urge to check updates from the internet. If I do want to take | a break, I pick the book/video/article/exercise that's most | appealing at the moment. This little trick works quite well. My | phone usage has been consistently below 2 hours, with nearly half | of them coming from reading Kindle and Apple Books. I finished | multiple books in the past few months, including tombs like | Programming Rust, and Isaacson's Leonardo Da Vinci. | | I wish I could spend even less time on social media, but at least | I can see concrete improvement now. | holyknight wrote: | Everything on the internet is made to be as addictable as | possible. Anyways i don't "love" social media, but I just want to | have free time to spare, but between my job and my wife only | Friday nights are the only time i can really enjoy and i mostly | don't enjoy it as much because I'm exhausted from the week and I | just want to sleep. I use social media in between my daily life | as a guilty pleasure to feel free to waste some time in some | mindless shit without having to plan anything. | DanHulton wrote: | I'm surprised nobody's mentioned ADHD yet. It's not clear-cut or | anything, but I recently just went through diagnosis and testing | and mentioned this behavior. For me, I tend to resort to this | behavior when I can't summon the focus to work on things I know I | SHOULD be doing, so I end up scrolling for hours instead, because | there's so much less inertia to overcome there. | | It may be worth talking with your family doctor about. If so, | there's medication and/or targeted coaching that can help | significantly. | devmor wrote: | I am addicted to absorbing information. Always have been. I had | textbooks about random subjects as a kid (my favorite was a | geology book mainly on Groundwater), and my most used computer | program before my family got internet access was an interactive | encyclopedia. | emadabdulrahim wrote: | I'm curious, do you feel the motives for your voracious | information digest are positive or negative? By that I mean, do | you feel you're making up for something by wanting to learn as | much as you can about different subjects? perhaps some kind of | insecurity? Or is it just good old curiosity about the world | and trying to be less ignorant each passing day? | grappler wrote: | I set a points threshold on what hacker news stories I see. This | article broke through that threshold even though it is not worth | my time, so the thing I'm going to do immediately after posting | this comment is raise the threshold some more. | | That's the action that should always follow, any time something | gets through the filter. Make the filter more restrictive. Over | time, that should clear out the low value things. | ineedasername wrote: | Out of curiosity, what's your threshold? | goldenshale wrote: | I wonder if this is why the internet hasn't led to the dramatic | increase in productivity that one would have predicted a global | communications network would have produced? Instead we are | turning ourselves into mice with a dopamine feed on tap. | | Maybe we need to find ways to value creation far more than | consumption. Missing new and cool ideas is peanuts in comparison | to creating something from nothing, whether that be art, | technology, or friendship. | trophycase wrote: | Addiction/Coping Mechanism | swayvil wrote: | Sometimes I have intelligent conversations about stuff that | matters to me. I really like that. | | Admittedly, it can be like sifting a public beach for pennies. | | And 99.999% of the time I end up talking to people who can't see | a paving brick if it's wedged under their eyelid. | | But I suspect that a really eloquent style can penetrate even the | thickest. Well, I suspect it less lately. | | And I just like talking to people. | fleddr wrote: | When you're past the denial stage, you're already halfway there. | Glass half full and such. | | From the blog it is clear that the real problem is a lack of a | meaningful physical/social life, as the person indicates they | have no friends, hobbies, etc. | | Therefore, none of the tips on cutting down screen time are | likely to address the fundamental issue. If you free up time this | way but have no better purpose for this time, you still end up in | the same spot. | | So you need to rebuild your physical/social life and I have a | solution at hand: volunteer work. | | An animal shelter is incredibly fun and rewarding work. Another | thing I tried is to help out the elderly. Where I live you can | volunteer to "walk" them. You can chose the commitment in hours | per week. These people are very old, typically lonely, and | immobile. So I go outside with them, push the wheelchair whilst | chatting with them. | | I figured this would actually kind of suck, a job nobody wants to | do. I was totally wrong, it's awesome. They are so incredibly | grateful and the chats are tons of fun. They're full of stories. | In case you're socially awkward (I personally am not), this is a | safe way to practice just making casual conversation. | | The great thing about volunteer work is that you will be | universally accepted and LOVED, there's no anxiety of being | rejected like you might have in making new friends. | | The reward is infinite. I'm a stoic but truly there is nothing in | this world more rich and rewarding than the response you get from | helping others. You can see it in their eyes. This tiny | commitment from your side means the world to them. A beacon of | light in darkness. | | Your work changes lives and you get to feel good about yourself. | Your time has meaning and you have meaning. Volunteer work is | also a great proxy to get to know the community, make new | friends, etc. | | Do it. Look it up in the local directory and just try it. | rossjudson wrote: | During the pandemic I realized that I love power outages, and we | should have more of them. Make them long enough that all the | phone batteries run out. | notreallyserio wrote: | I waste time on the internet because I don't have enough | contiguous blocks of time to do anything productive or | interesting outside of work (which is boring and repetitive and | not automatable). I'm hoping to retire early so I can spend time | on better things. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-05-06 23:00 UTC)