1) Mindfulness training so I could see myself in the moment NOT concentrating and stop myself. Still not at 100% with this but have been getting a lot better since I first took https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/mindfulness-wellbeing-pe... a couple of years ago.
2) Thinking of my mobile in the way marketers think of it. As a cache for mobile minutes. Each marketing dept is like a little gnome each trying to get at my treasure. So I cut them off. I deleted all apps with ads and made an effort to block all ads or suggestions for new content across the digital things I use via everything from Greasemonkey to plug-ins to switching providers of services. So now distraction from my digital browsing is significantly diminished.
3) Re-reading this Michener essay about once a year: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~xs3d-bull/michener.html. It reminds me that it takes long periods of time and discipline to create great things. Else they are easily achievable and don't IMHO qualify as great. This includes everything from putting tons of time in for Ironman training (quite the physical achievement) to writing a book (look at Michener's books and how crazy-well-researched and expansive they are) to having a good relationship with your mate to writing quality code for your most recent idea. The more the gnomes pick at your little time treasure, the less time you have to achieve great things.
Deep Work (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracte...) concisely sums up many feelings I've had about distractions and how this always connected world affects the way I think. I believe the teachings of this book are especially applicable to knowledge workers.
Piggy-backing off of this to add the things I find useful:
- Mindfulness medidation, same as you. It is hard and when you first try it feels like you are failing. But Yoda is wrong: trying is very valuable and builds the mindfulness muscle.
- Website blocking software like SelfControl.app and Freedom.io —- some might ridicule these as being a crutch, but that is a silly reason not to use them. If you are trying to change your diet, don’t keep cookies on your desk.
- working with a therapist to improve my self-confidence — one reason I was distracted so much is that I didn’t have a strong belief in my right to decide how I spend my time. Combined with mindfulness meditation, I now have a much stronger internal voice that says “I had decided I wanted to relax and read this long history article so that is what I’m going to do.” Or “this bit of life-administrivia is really frustrating and scary, but I do need to do it and have set out this time for it.”
- A belief in “setting myself up for success” in tasks — when I feel like I don’t know how to do something, it is much better to trust that intuition, dig into it, and flesh it out into an explicit list of resources to acquire rather. If instead I say “I should believe in myself* and buckle down and do the work.” Then my sense of not doing the right thing will stick with me. For instance, I am someone who is much more effective at building things when I know how my tools work.
* (This is perhaps very idiosyncratic to me, but I absorbed from a young age that I could do anything I set my mind to. When you don’t know how to set your mind to things, This turns out to be a less-than-useful belief, especially in response to a not-well-articulated need for resources. Example: I once tried to write code against an api whose docs were in Chinese —as a non-Chinese speaker. )
- Sleep, Food, Exercise — I am a sack of meat. The thinking bits of me are also made of meat. Thinking meat, if you’ll believe it. In order to think well, I need to give my meat what it needs on a habitual basis.
————-
One interesting thing about being more mindful and less distracted is that it reveals some underlying discomforts that I was distracting myself from. For instance, I didn’t have any friends as a child and I just don’t know how to lead engaging conversations or how to keep conversations going when they fizzle out. But now that I’ve repeatedly noticed that, I can make it a goal to find ways to learn it (suggestions very welcome) and confidently pursue that goal.
The Michener essay is a great read. Thank you for the link.
It has made me think about a problem, though: how to select that huge task in which to pour your energy. For him, it was his novels; but being in a 9 to 5 office job like I am, I'm wondering what are my options.
It seems like nowadays, we wring our hands about the effects of constant access to the internet on a near-daily basis. And isn't it kind of odd that the people working on these products in an 'individual contributor' capacity are often the same ones encouraging others to stay away from their platforms?
Maybe that should tell us something. Anecdotally, most of the things that this article recommends are things that I wholeheartedly enjoyed several years ago, but tellingly no longer have time for despite a similar schedule.
Reading for pleasure took the biggest hit - I can just listen to an audiobook or podcast during the commute, right? But it does also feel like I've gotten worse at persisting in tedious tasks after being interrupted, exercise feels more like wasted time, and even my breathing exercises are getting shallow and rapid these days.
What is going on? It's not that thumbing through the news feels like an accomplishment, and I know that I'll look back on these years and shake my head at how terribly I'm wasting my time - it's already happening - but this is a comfortable lifestyle and I just keep on doing it. That does sound like an addiction, right?
I don't know. But I do know that I've had enough, and I'm coping with it by planning to spend a couple of years on the road in the hopes that things blow over and the people of 202x will have this all figured out. And hey, maybe I'll feel better after forcing myself to be bored for several months.
Because these issues seem so massive and unapproachable that I can't think of anything to do besides throwing up my hands and leaving. I can't even talk to other people about it because everybody's noses are in their phones everywhere. Is that weird?
I interviewed at Facebook and when I realized that the whole interview was about finding ways to make people spend as much time possible on Facebook and Instagram (which I use in moderation, I love to share a good pic of myself), I ran for dear life. Then, when they asked me how I would convince Mark that a certain experiment is needed, I ran faster. Bad vibes overall, Blade Runner was more cheerful.
A large part of this is how one choses to use their smartphone.
By default, it's a device that's receives a million notifications, but I've turned off most of them, so it's back to being a tiny computer that's helpful to look stuff up with. I only get notifications on four things:
1) phone calls - it's still a phone
2) "texts" (SMS/WhatsApp/iMessage/Line) - I disable Slack because it's too noisy aside from one "emergency" channel for work
3) one email account that notifies me of new gmail logins, foreign transactions, bank withdrawals, etc. to keep the junk mail away, i use filters on my other accounts to forward emails to this one special "notifications" account
4) financial ticker (which is set to only notify when something drops more than 5%)
Sure, I might miss some chats and I'm always behind on Twitter, but so what?
Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig.
You seem like you're trying to get back in touch with the idea of 'Quality' as it applies to life, and he does a good job at walking a reader through it. I won't bother going into what I got out of it, as most philosophy is best experienced without preconceived expectations
Nowadays, you have to slow down. Most tech businesses thrive on shallow thinking to drive engagement, and try to tweak every little heuristic to "get a click" to justify their own existence.
By all means, take a break, but understand as well that as a practitioner you are part of the problem every time you refuse to say no to some dark pattern B.S.
I've started measuring every software pitch against my first set of Encyclopedia of the Natural World CD's from back in the 90's.
No phoning home. No ads. No engagement metrics
No dark patterns.
Just an encyclopedia of 0's and 1's.
It is amazing when you look at most software nowadays, and realize that a large proportion of it (especially on mobile) is trying to convert user->value instead of providing value->user.
Yes, I think it's weird. Both because you notice it and because it is happening. I feel your frustrations with this hyper-connected life because this certainly feels like an addiction. I've worked through deleting social media. I've deleted apps off my phone. I've moved my phone outside of my bedroom. All of it seems to help a small amount, but not enough to keep me from moving to something else. Throwing up my hands and leaving seems to be a good solution as well, but not the whole world or my job, just the digital world, as much as I reasonably can. I miss having the ability to focus and remember, and I feel as if the only way I can accomplish my goals is to regain those skills.
but this is a comfortable lifestyle and I just keep on doing it. That does sound like an addiction, right?
I have similar traits that I am actively working to wear off. My only addictions are Twitter, Hacker News and Yahoo Finance. I spend at least 4 hours in a day flipping across these. I must admit Twitter is quite helpful because my feed is well curated. YF is a total waste of time - I don't know why I keep checking the stock prices when I know for a fact I won't sell anything. It satisfies some part of my brain to keep watching the tickers. What a fucking waste. Hacker News is useful too. What has helped me in the beginnings of my de-addiction is measuring how much time I am wasting and writing it down. It's kind of a slap in the face to get up in the morning and see that you wasted 4 hours the previous day.
I can't even talk to other people about it because everybody's noses are in their phones everywhere. Is that weird?
Perhaps hanging out at an old fashioned bar might not be bad. Not the ones with fancy music but the ones that remain somewhat rustic, where you can just have a beer and a random conversation.
I think a big contributor to these types of feelings is the fact that a lot of us don't know how to spend our time meaningfully. When enjoyment isn't a means to an end, we dismiss our usual pastimes in favor of something with impact. The thing is, a lot of us don't know what will have impact and eventually everything seems like a waste of time.
I believe a side effect of this connected world is making everyone seem unspectacular, and therefore everything we do (compared to what we observe around on the net) unspectacular. Maybe the real detriment of the internet's influence is that it makes everyone feel like we're wasting time when their may not be a way to spend it in a way that makes us happier.
Remember how stats used to say the average american spends 5 hours per day watching television?
Now they do that with The Internet.
Before telly that it was radio and newspapers. Before even that it was books.
The more things change the more they stay the same. Is it possible humans simply aren’t meant to be totally productive always on all the time and that we crave time wasting on a fundamental level?
After using facebook for 8 years, I had reached a point where I stopped posting content but couldn't stop consuming the content posted by others and also logging into facebook without even thinking. I tried multiple times to deactivate the account but it always resulted in reactivating it. The two main reasons for it was the herd mentality and the FOMO.
I needed a new approach, I started by unfollowing people and pages that made me react. I realized the most important part of facebook for me was keeping in touch with people and not the posts that they share so decided to unfollow everyone which includes pages and groups too. The annoying part is that it is not easy to unfollow everyone and you have to do it one by one. I found a post with some js code that helped in achieving this and it worked, don't know if it will work now - https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-unfollow-everyone-on-Facebook...
After about 8 months of using facebook this way,I checked how many conversations I had using the messenger which turned out to be in the lower end of the single digit. Finally, I decided to go ahead with the deletion of facebook after backing up all my data. Once you hit delete, it gives 14 days of thinking time in case you decide to change your mind. After deleting the account, it took me almost 2 months to stop my reflex action of going to facebook login page.
Its been more than 6 months I've deleted facebook, I'm not missing it, I hardly think about it and quite happy that I'm out of it.
> After using facebook for 8 years, I had reached a point where I stopped posting content but couldn't stop consuming the content posted by others and also logging into facebook without even thinking. I tried multiple times to deactivate the account but it always resulted in reactivating it. The two main reasons for it was the herd mentality and the FOMO.
I'd argue that deeply reflecting on this offers a huge potential for personal growth. Why the fear of missing out? To me it seems more and more clear that the only thing to miss out on is the present moment as it is for me right here and right now.
> The annoying part is that it is not easy to unfollow everyone and you have to do it one by one. I found a post with some js code that helped in achieving this and it worked, don't know if it will work now
I guess with Facebook and its siblings this is an uphill battle as they will always try to come up with new ways to prevent you from pursuing precisely those kind of goals.
> Its been more than 6 months I've deleted facebook, I'm not missing it, I hardly think about it and quite happy that I'm out of it.
One of my biggest distractions for years has been email. I just have to have my inbox at zero and used to check my email religiously, from every few minutes to every few hours. I'd check email in the bathroom, in bed, at the table .. it was getting ridiculous. The things is, I never got any interesting email worth checking - it was always the same pattern: swipe - delete. So I decided to do something about it.
I figured checking email once or at most twice per day would be enough so I took took a few steps to accomplish this:
1. Moved the email icon from my phone into an obscure folder hidden on the very last screen on my phone. Now, instead of clicking it right away I have to actively find it which is kind of a pain.
2. Installed SelfControl for Mac and added gmail.com, facebook (yes I still have a shell account I use to check one group), reddit, ycombinator, twitter and a host of other news sites I may occasionally visit to the black list. The first thing I do in the morning is set that timer for almost the entirety of the day and hit start. Now everything is literally blocked and I cannot access it without turning off SelfControl which I have yet to do. Some days I make an exception and leave hacker news off the list.
What I really want now is a product, app or SOMETHING that just turns off everything, including notifications at a click of tap of a button - across all devices simultaenteouly. Turn of all notifications, popups, alerts, all the garbage that comes up through the day including phone calls, messages, Facetime.. just everything. I don't care if it's an emergency, I don't care if someone died, I don't care if checking the phone will save my life. Just turn it all off, but give me access to the apps I still use.
For me it seems that in times of instant messaging email is the saviour in personal communication - not in professional context though (I still prefer an email over being called many times over). When it comes to private messaging people tend to write mails more with a mindset of writing a letter. Full sentences and the entire communication structure seems to be aimed at being complete and more thoughtful. IMing often feels more like ping pong than actually conversing.
CGP Grey discussed this on a recent Hello Internet episode [1], that he was concerned by his inability to maintain focus on a single task (such as reading a book) for more than several minutes. He specifically notes that Reddit and HN were major contributors to this.
Distraction is not new. We love doing things with instant gratification and anything of great value comes from deep work.
What it is new today is that people are fighting against a football team of Doctors in Psychology, experts manipulators that have sold their soul to the "Man", Google, Facebook... in order to enslave people following their primal impulses for the benefit of those Juggernauts, and the manipulators themselves, pretty happy to receive a fat check for their services.
The first thing you need to do in order to become free of their extensive web of control is to be conscious of their unfair game.
If you try to fight , alone, you will lose. Those guys know much more about you and humanity that you could ever grasp. Theoretically they hire experts in human behavior. In practice they know what thousands of millions of people do for real. They hold the emails, they have cameras and microphones on people's rooms, they follow your GPS signal on real time.
If you want to be a creator, free of distraction, the winning strategy is not to play. Use digital services that you pay and own, and associate with other creators because alone you are too weak.
Thank you very much. I find this very insightful and eyeopening. What are resources that I can pay attention to in order to be "conscious of their unfair game"?
Will wholeheartedly appreciate it. Thank you once again.
I often felt that I was getting distracted way too much, but I couldn't stop it.
About a year ago when my depression got back on track I just shut myself off of every service I had. I quit facebook, deleted all unnecessary apps from my phone, muted it completly and turned off the thing that the display lights up if you get a new message. I even let my phone at home when I was not expecting any major call. If people called me I just called them back when I was at home and had time for it.
All of this went out way better than I ever would've thought. I feel super relieved and relaxed nowadays. Because I started a new job I carry my phone with me now most of the day, but it is still muted most of the time. It is even fun to see if there is something new on the internet without getting notified about it instantly. Now I decide when I want to take a break and what I want to look for, not my Smartphone or something else.
People have short attention spans. It was not so very long ago (and indeed it is still quite common today) when the standard way that one "lived" their life was to spend 8 hours a day at work and then most of the remainder watching television.
Yes, compared to the ideal, having your nose in your phone to the detriment of all other activities is undesirable, but compared to the actuality of what came before it might be an improvement.
That's it, I'm deleting my hacker news bookmark. I've been on a good kick lately looking at old illustrations in books on archive.org. I've started reading around them and there is some pretty neat stuff written by people who never logged on.
It's hard to take these articles seriously. Do these psychologists think that the average person's issue is they get distracted 60 times a day on their weekends? Who cares about that???
My problem is that I get interrupted 160 times a day in my workplace!!! How do these suggestions help me in my workplace? Shall I tell my boss that I can't reply his email right now because I am counting back in sevens from 1000 or what???
My best strategy is to avoid the distractions from the get go.
I don't browse the web until I finish my workday.
If I need to look up something (which must be work related) I just browse the minimum needed to get the answer. I don't browse to the related links.
With my smartphone is the same. I turn off all notifications and leave it in my bag (if I'm at office) or in another room (if I'm working from home).
My focus, calmness and confidence skyrocket when I do this.
I rediscovered(after 10 years or so) a half-solution the other day: any activity that requires focus but is done offline(so not programming nowadays, unless you have your docs/tutorials/etc offline).
In my case it's making music. The product is obviously crap and takes a lot of time to create, but it has done wonders to my ability to focus.
I typically think of this as a unique advantage that programmers have. In almost every other industry I see, I see people who never get the chance to focus all their attention on intellectually challenging tasks for hours without break, and a lot of them seem super distracted and like their brain have been negatively affected by this absence. But programmers seem like the rare species that actually do get this privilege, and this is usually the reason I prefer intellectual conversations with coders than almost anyone else (even when the topic is something other than engineering).
I agree with you. But lately I've been noticing myself being distracted a lot and finding it hard to concentrate... for example I have a hard problem in front of me and in the momment something goes wrong I just switch task and go on hn/reddit/mail etc...
Might be coming across as an asshole but it's not that hard for me to ignore digital things. Sure i have a bad habit of looking to my phone and opening HN but... When i'm at home i will leave phone sitting somewhere (forgot where i left it) for hours and ignore people. I can run and exercise and listen to the sounds of nature. The problem I have is that at work you are plugged into the browser 8-10 hours a day and instantly searching everything. When you get home it takes a bit of focus to just live and not be staring at a screen. It is possible though.
I have a cell phone plan with limited data. At first it was just a frugality thing, but it's also done wonders for attention/mindfulness. I tend to listen to podcasts instead of mindlessly FB/Redditing. Not only does it clear my mind, but listening to the news instead of constantly refreshing a news site throughout the day saves time and decreases stress and "FOMO" (fear of missing out). I know I'm missing out - I've chosen to! :)
As a tech fanatic here is my way of dealing with it:
- no smartphone
- as little social media as possible (yes, I know)
- when with family or others the phone is on silent and I won't answer or text
- adblockers and privacy tools used to the max to get rid of advertising
- no TV
- no radio
Between all those tricks I can get a half decent day's work and still spend time on others, though I have to admit that the better the business is doing there is still pressure there that will need to be relieved somehow.
[+] [-] octygen|7 years ago|reply
1) Mindfulness training so I could see myself in the moment NOT concentrating and stop myself. Still not at 100% with this but have been getting a lot better since I first took https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/mindfulness-wellbeing-pe... a couple of years ago.
2) Thinking of my mobile in the way marketers think of it. As a cache for mobile minutes. Each marketing dept is like a little gnome each trying to get at my treasure. So I cut them off. I deleted all apps with ads and made an effort to block all ads or suggestions for new content across the digital things I use via everything from Greasemonkey to plug-ins to switching providers of services. So now distraction from my digital browsing is significantly diminished.
3) Re-reading this Michener essay about once a year: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~xs3d-bull/michener.html. It reminds me that it takes long periods of time and discipline to create great things. Else they are easily achievable and don't IMHO qualify as great. This includes everything from putting tons of time in for Ironman training (quite the physical achievement) to writing a book (look at Michener's books and how crazy-well-researched and expansive they are) to having a good relationship with your mate to writing quality code for your most recent idea. The more the gnomes pick at your little time treasure, the less time you have to achieve great things.
[+] [-] tiniuclx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afarrell|7 years ago|reply
- Mindfulness medidation, same as you. It is hard and when you first try it feels like you are failing. But Yoda is wrong: trying is very valuable and builds the mindfulness muscle.
- Website blocking software like SelfControl.app and Freedom.io —- some might ridicule these as being a crutch, but that is a silly reason not to use them. If you are trying to change your diet, don’t keep cookies on your desk.
- working with a therapist to improve my self-confidence — one reason I was distracted so much is that I didn’t have a strong belief in my right to decide how I spend my time. Combined with mindfulness meditation, I now have a much stronger internal voice that says “I had decided I wanted to relax and read this long history article so that is what I’m going to do.” Or “this bit of life-administrivia is really frustrating and scary, but I do need to do it and have set out this time for it.”
- A belief in “setting myself up for success” in tasks — when I feel like I don’t know how to do something, it is much better to trust that intuition, dig into it, and flesh it out into an explicit list of resources to acquire rather. If instead I say “I should believe in myself* and buckle down and do the work.” Then my sense of not doing the right thing will stick with me. For instance, I am someone who is much more effective at building things when I know how my tools work.
* (This is perhaps very idiosyncratic to me, but I absorbed from a young age that I could do anything I set my mind to. When you don’t know how to set your mind to things, This turns out to be a less-than-useful belief, especially in response to a not-well-articulated need for resources. Example: I once tried to write code against an api whose docs were in Chinese —as a non-Chinese speaker. )
- Sleep, Food, Exercise — I am a sack of meat. The thinking bits of me are also made of meat. Thinking meat, if you’ll believe it. In order to think well, I need to give my meat what it needs on a habitual basis.
————-
One interesting thing about being more mindful and less distracted is that it reveals some underlying discomforts that I was distracting myself from. For instance, I didn’t have any friends as a child and I just don’t know how to lead engaging conversations or how to keep conversations going when they fizzle out. But now that I’ve repeatedly noticed that, I can make it a goal to find ways to learn it (suggestions very welcome) and confidently pursue that goal.
[+] [-] tostadora|7 years ago|reply
It has made me think about a problem, though: how to select that huge task in which to pour your energy. For him, it was his novels; but being in a 9 to 5 office job like I am, I'm wondering what are my options.
[+] [-] pablode|7 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html
[+] [-] raffael-vogler|7 years ago|reply
https://palousemindfulness.com/
[+] [-] leggomylibro|7 years ago|reply
Maybe that should tell us something. Anecdotally, most of the things that this article recommends are things that I wholeheartedly enjoyed several years ago, but tellingly no longer have time for despite a similar schedule.
Reading for pleasure took the biggest hit - I can just listen to an audiobook or podcast during the commute, right? But it does also feel like I've gotten worse at persisting in tedious tasks after being interrupted, exercise feels more like wasted time, and even my breathing exercises are getting shallow and rapid these days.
What is going on? It's not that thumbing through the news feels like an accomplishment, and I know that I'll look back on these years and shake my head at how terribly I'm wasting my time - it's already happening - but this is a comfortable lifestyle and I just keep on doing it. That does sound like an addiction, right?
I don't know. But I do know that I've had enough, and I'm coping with it by planning to spend a couple of years on the road in the hopes that things blow over and the people of 202x will have this all figured out. And hey, maybe I'll feel better after forcing myself to be bored for several months.
Because these issues seem so massive and unapproachable that I can't think of anything to do besides throwing up my hands and leaving. I can't even talk to other people about it because everybody's noses are in their phones everywhere. Is that weird?
[+] [-] borroka|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] et-al|7 years ago|reply
By default, it's a device that's receives a million notifications, but I've turned off most of them, so it's back to being a tiny computer that's helpful to look stuff up with. I only get notifications on four things:
1) phone calls - it's still a phone
2) "texts" (SMS/WhatsApp/iMessage/Line) - I disable Slack because it's too noisy aside from one "emergency" channel for work
3) one email account that notifies me of new gmail logins, foreign transactions, bank withdrawals, etc. to keep the junk mail away, i use filters on my other accounts to forward emails to this one special "notifications" account
4) financial ticker (which is set to only notify when something drops more than 5%)
Sure, I might miss some chats and I'm always behind on Twitter, but so what?
[+] [-] salawat|7 years ago|reply
You seem like you're trying to get back in touch with the idea of 'Quality' as it applies to life, and he does a good job at walking a reader through it. I won't bother going into what I got out of it, as most philosophy is best experienced without preconceived expectations
Nowadays, you have to slow down. Most tech businesses thrive on shallow thinking to drive engagement, and try to tweak every little heuristic to "get a click" to justify their own existence.
By all means, take a break, but understand as well that as a practitioner you are part of the problem every time you refuse to say no to some dark pattern B.S.
I've started measuring every software pitch against my first set of Encyclopedia of the Natural World CD's from back in the 90's.
No phoning home. No ads. No engagement metrics No dark patterns.
Just an encyclopedia of 0's and 1's.
It is amazing when you look at most software nowadays, and realize that a large proportion of it (especially on mobile) is trying to convert user->value instead of providing value->user.
[+] [-] bradhoffman|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deepGem|7 years ago|reply
I have similar traits that I am actively working to wear off. My only addictions are Twitter, Hacker News and Yahoo Finance. I spend at least 4 hours in a day flipping across these. I must admit Twitter is quite helpful because my feed is well curated. YF is a total waste of time - I don't know why I keep checking the stock prices when I know for a fact I won't sell anything. It satisfies some part of my brain to keep watching the tickers. What a fucking waste. Hacker News is useful too. What has helped me in the beginnings of my de-addiction is measuring how much time I am wasting and writing it down. It's kind of a slap in the face to get up in the morning and see that you wasted 4 hours the previous day.
I can't even talk to other people about it because everybody's noses are in their phones everywhere. Is that weird?
Perhaps hanging out at an old fashioned bar might not be bad. Not the ones with fancy music but the ones that remain somewhat rustic, where you can just have a beer and a random conversation.
[+] [-] derangedHorse|7 years ago|reply
I believe a side effect of this connected world is making everyone seem unspectacular, and therefore everything we do (compared to what we observe around on the net) unspectacular. Maybe the real detriment of the internet's influence is that it makes everyone feel like we're wasting time when their may not be a way to spend it in a way that makes us happier.
[+] [-] Swizec|7 years ago|reply
Now they do that with The Internet.
Before telly that it was radio and newspapers. Before even that it was books.
The more things change the more they stay the same. Is it possible humans simply aren’t meant to be totally productive always on all the time and that we crave time wasting on a fundamental level?
[+] [-] jhabdas|7 years ago|reply
https://hackcabin.com/post/become-digital-nomad-bali/
[+] [-] samzer|7 years ago|reply
I needed a new approach, I started by unfollowing people and pages that made me react. I realized the most important part of facebook for me was keeping in touch with people and not the posts that they share so decided to unfollow everyone which includes pages and groups too. The annoying part is that it is not easy to unfollow everyone and you have to do it one by one. I found a post with some js code that helped in achieving this and it worked, don't know if it will work now - https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-unfollow-everyone-on-Facebook...
After about 8 months of using facebook this way,I checked how many conversations I had using the messenger which turned out to be in the lower end of the single digit. Finally, I decided to go ahead with the deletion of facebook after backing up all my data. Once you hit delete, it gives 14 days of thinking time in case you decide to change your mind. After deleting the account, it took me almost 2 months to stop my reflex action of going to facebook login page.
Its been more than 6 months I've deleted facebook, I'm not missing it, I hardly think about it and quite happy that I'm out of it.
[+] [-] raffael-vogler|7 years ago|reply
I'd argue that deeply reflecting on this offers a huge potential for personal growth. Why the fear of missing out? To me it seems more and more clear that the only thing to miss out on is the present moment as it is for me right here and right now.
> The annoying part is that it is not easy to unfollow everyone and you have to do it one by one. I found a post with some js code that helped in achieving this and it worked, don't know if it will work now
I guess with Facebook and its siblings this is an uphill battle as they will always try to come up with new ways to prevent you from pursuing precisely those kind of goals.
> Its been more than 6 months I've deleted facebook, I'm not missing it, I hardly think about it and quite happy that I'm out of it.
Congratulations on that!
[+] [-] woogiewonka|7 years ago|reply
I figured checking email once or at most twice per day would be enough so I took took a few steps to accomplish this:
1. Moved the email icon from my phone into an obscure folder hidden on the very last screen on my phone. Now, instead of clicking it right away I have to actively find it which is kind of a pain.
2. Installed SelfControl for Mac and added gmail.com, facebook (yes I still have a shell account I use to check one group), reddit, ycombinator, twitter and a host of other news sites I may occasionally visit to the black list. The first thing I do in the morning is set that timer for almost the entirety of the day and hit start. Now everything is literally blocked and I cannot access it without turning off SelfControl which I have yet to do. Some days I make an exception and leave hacker news off the list.
What I really want now is a product, app or SOMETHING that just turns off everything, including notifications at a click of tap of a button - across all devices simultaenteouly. Turn of all notifications, popups, alerts, all the garbage that comes up through the day including phone calls, messages, Facetime.. just everything. I don't care if it's an emergency, I don't care if someone died, I don't care if checking the phone will save my life. Just turn it all off, but give me access to the apps I still use.
[+] [-] raffael-vogler|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] organman91|7 years ago|reply
1. http://www.hellointernet.fm/podcast/108 (about the 1 hr 15 min mark)
[+] [-] hevi_jos|7 years ago|reply
What it is new today is that people are fighting against a football team of Doctors in Psychology, experts manipulators that have sold their soul to the "Man", Google, Facebook... in order to enslave people following their primal impulses for the benefit of those Juggernauts, and the manipulators themselves, pretty happy to receive a fat check for their services.
The first thing you need to do in order to become free of their extensive web of control is to be conscious of their unfair game.
If you try to fight , alone, you will lose. Those guys know much more about you and humanity that you could ever grasp. Theoretically they hire experts in human behavior. In practice they know what thousands of millions of people do for real. They hold the emails, they have cameras and microphones on people's rooms, they follow your GPS signal on real time.
If you want to be a creator, free of distraction, the winning strategy is not to play. Use digital services that you pay and own, and associate with other creators because alone you are too weak.
[+] [-] tangaye|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mario0b1|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|7 years ago|reply
Yes, compared to the ideal, having your nose in your phone to the detriment of all other activities is undesirable, but compared to the actuality of what came before it might be an improvement.
[+] [-] jsemrau|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reasonablemann|7 years ago|reply
I spent an hour listening to this podcast I'd downloaded a week earlier: https://fs.blog/naval-ravikant/
And then spent a few hours thinking about what was said.
It was the most peaceful evening I've had all year.
[+] [-] hiei|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moltar|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsimpson|7 years ago|reply
[0] https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrasti...
[+] [-] flycaliguy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sundvor|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fogetti|7 years ago|reply
My problem is that I get interrupted 160 times a day in my workplace!!! How do these suggestions help me in my workplace? Shall I tell my boss that I can't reply his email right now because I am counting back in sevens from 1000 or what???
[+] [-] gfs78|7 years ago|reply
I don't browse the web until I finish my workday. If I need to look up something (which must be work related) I just browse the minimum needed to get the answer. I don't browse to the related links.
With my smartphone is the same. I turn off all notifications and leave it in my bag (if I'm at office) or in another room (if I'm working from home).
My focus, calmness and confidence skyrocket when I do this.
[+] [-] Tade0|7 years ago|reply
In my case it's making music. The product is obviously crap and takes a lot of time to create, but it has done wonders to my ability to focus.
[+] [-] agumonkey|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tw1010|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] random_kris|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brootstrap|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clubm8|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|7 years ago|reply
- no smartphone
- as little social media as possible (yes, I know)
- when with family or others the phone is on silent and I won't answer or text
- adblockers and privacy tools used to the max to get rid of advertising
- no TV
- no radio
Between all those tricks I can get a half decent day's work and still spend time on others, though I have to admit that the better the business is doing there is still pressure there that will need to be relieved somehow.