Biggest quality of life benefit I've given myself in the past two months:
Turn off the news.
If something is actually important, you'll hear about it anyway. And if you don't hear about it, it wasn't actually as important as the reporters made it out to be.
Plus in all likelihood the events being reported on are thousands of miles away from you and have zero impact on your daily life.
Obviously this pairs well with cutting out all the nonsense on your social media feeds.
Reddit honestly killed news for me because of the trump presidency. For years I thought he'd be removed from office. Turns out redditors blew unbelievably small things out of proportion to the point that many including myself just ignored it cause it would change anything.
Getting off reddit has been one of the best things in my life. Discord has helped find more positive outlets for me to waste my time.
But lastly, get a hobby that isn't just working on getting better at something. It's cool if you can do like 30 different things, but that's hard. Know your limits and budget screw around time to help unwind.
Your comment reminds of something Douglas Adams once said:
>> * In this century (and the previous century) we modelled one-to-one communications in the telephone, which I assume we are all familiar with. We have one-to-many communication - boy do we have an awful lot of that; broadcasting, publishing, journalism, etc. - we get information poured at us from all over the place and it's completely indiscriminate as to where it might land. It's curious, but we don't have to go very far back in our history until we find that all the information that reached us was relevant to us and therefore anything that happened, any news, whether it was about something that's actually happened to us, in the next house, or in the next village, within the boundary or within our horizon, it happened in our world and if we reacted to it the world reacted back. It was all relevant to us, so for example, if somebody had a terrible accident we could crowd round and really help. Nowadays, because of the plethora of one-to-many communication we have, if a plane crashes in India we may get terribly anxious about it but our anxiety doesn't have any impact. We're not very well able to distinguish between a terrible emergency that's happened to somebody a world away and something that's happened to someone round the corner. We can't really distinguish between them any more, which is why we get terribly upset by something that has happened to somebody in a soap opera that comes out of Hollywood and maybe less concerned when it's happened to our sister. We've all become twisted and disconnected and it's not surprising that we feel very stressed and alienated in the world because the world impacts on us but we don't impact the world. Then there's many-to-one; we have that, but not very well yet and there's not much of it about. Essentially, our democratic systems are a model of that and though they're not very good, they will improve dramatically. *
It's not black and white. You don't have to turn off all news to avoid the junk. There are still people who serve meaningful news; you just have to know where to look.
People mean very different things when they say news, I've found. Most of what people think of as "news" is human interest story garbage churned out as quickly as possible to get the most number of eyeballs. This category includes even a lot of supposedly reputable newspapers, unfortunately. This is great if you are looking for lunchtime gossip or just something to distract or entertain yourself with. Not so good if you want to learn something or expand your world view.
The way I see it, good news
- gives historical context,
- dives deeply,
- covers the entire globe,
- discusses incremental changes and not only big events,
- reflects on multiple perspectives,
- doesn't overemphasise human interest stories, and
- provides you with actual data.
Good news, ironically, ages well.
There are still some people that work with real news. There was a recent Ask HN about favourite magazines and journals[1], where some of the comments mentioned The Economist[2] (a long-time favourite of mine) and Delayed Gratification[3] (which I can't personally vouch for but I admire their goal.)
My possibly better option: choose a boring news service. Deutsche Welle, for instance. You learn of important news, but it is not written in a way to make you emotionally light up like a Christmas tree.
Did a similar thing over a decade ago - I don't even own a television anymore.
What I spend most of my days, weeks and months on is largely unrelated to what's happening in the world (and the news' bias towards the negative subset of that). Not following the news thus removes a lot of the sensationalist and negative stream, and saves a lot of time (including possibly worrying on what I just saw/read). If it's really important, I'll hear it anyway.
Recently, I did start a subscription on a national newspaper though, but it allows me to a) select what I read, b) skip over things I'm not interested in (even throwing away the whole paper if I don't want to read it that day). I happen to like some columnists and the variation of daily puzzles.
I did this years ago and it has made my life better and stopped me stressing about many things over which I have zero control
I used to listen to a news radio show called Morning Ireland while eating breakfast. That was the first thing to go. A few years later I tuned into it one morning, and they were pretty much saying the exact same stuff as they had been 3 years previously. This encouraged me to continue ignoring it
Shortly afterwards I was having dinner in a friend's house, and related the above, and it turned out one of the other dinner guests was (and still is) one of the presenters on Morning Ireland :/
My problem with this is really simple: You do see the scaling effect in stuff like corona or on a sunny sunday:
Suddenly everyone is going to the park.
What if suddenly everyone stops looking at news? Acting and reacting?
What if the stress i get through the news will never be necessary but what if there is another regime and we need everyone being on alert and standing up and knowing whats going on?
Yin and Yang, finding the balance in our generation is not easy. I get that, i see that, i experience it myself but while i'm sometimes ready to not care i'm worried that i might not react correctly anymore when it counts.
> Plus in all likelihood the events being reported on are thousands of miles away from you and have zero impact on your daily life.
In some sense, the quoted statement is obviously right.
But in another sense, it's wrong. To cite just one particular example which is dear to my heart because I work closely with school children and students: News about the climate crisis typically originate in some far-away location. But to fight the climate crisis, we have to get organized in every single city, including the city you live in.
You can to learn to read the headlines without investing an emotional response in reaction to them.
This makes it much easier.
Look at it like more being curious about what kind of a world we must be in, rather than what you are supposed to feel about it (rather, what they want you to feel about it).
Also when you can plainly identify the calls to emotional action in the headlines, then you're free to ignore it; and can just take away what actual content may or may not be there.
“If something is actually important you’ll hear about it” basically means you have resigned to believe the corporate/government spin on everything.
By the time you “hear about it everywhere” because it’s important, it has already been twisted and distorted, and given the party-line spin.
Which is a valid choice, of course - but you should be aware of that, and — if you care about facts rather than narrative - ignore the stuff when you hear about it as well.
I highly recommend turning off all audible/vibrational alerts on your devices, allowing exceptions for channels that are only used for true emergencies.
After that, try not using your phone at all for 24 hours, laptops/desktops still allowed.
If everyone does this doesn’t it become a problem that no one is being informed? How can we vote or make decisions on trends if everyone is only reacting to major events?
But I do agree, my stress goes down when I tune out the news.
Disagree here. Lots of news can have profound impact on your life, if missed on time.
For instance, I never heard of the temporary +0.5% to mortgage refinancing, that lenders will have to pay to federal banks starting Dec 1st, until an article few weeks ago here. This was planned back in June, but now it is too late to act on.
I've never been a huge news guy. The day the election was over I quit reddit. I don't miss it at all. I use twitter and hackernews. That is it. I've saved so much time over the last few weeks.
"I start my day full of enthusiasm for the eternal verities which life has to offer. The momement I open a newspaper I am immediately dissillusioned and wrecked" Patrick Kavanagh ~1960s.
I've changed the time-of-day that I consume news/social media. I find if I do it at night before bed, it significantly limits the amount of distraction I have during the day - and often I just forget to look.
It's those little 'hacks' I use to trick myself into managing my emotional state.
After 40 years, I've found that the most effective way to manage myself is to treat myself as a toddler.
If i had done this i would miss the covid19 pandemic in france. In france in the begining it was always : "It's nothing, it will never come in france, it's just a common
influenza nothing important. Even when china contained a whole town ...
By passing one hour per day to read news i was able to predict the containment in france and to prepare myself and my familly ...
We stopped news and newspapers around 2010-2011. Neighbors, friends, and relatives are surprised when we have no newspapers at home (Newspapers are still an in-thing in India). My wife started subscribing to Newspaper now just so she can wrap her wet-garbage in it. I’m still looking for a bio-degradable solution to store wet-garbage for at-least 24-hours.
I stopped all unscheduled phone calls except from a “!DND” group for the past many years and I love it. In-fact, when iOS 14 changed the interface for phone calls, I was dumb-founded few times before I realize the tiny notification like thing on the top is the phone reject/accept interface. Anyone can lead a distraction free phone life[1].
I disabled almost all forms of notifications a while back and I’m super happy with that decision. My default when adding any new App/Program to my toolset is to start by turning off notifications[2].
I do something similar with my phone. Android phone set to "do not disturb" permanently. The only exceptions calls/texts from starred contacts which include only my immediately family, work when I'm on call (and only then), and I'll temporarily add a starred contact if I'm expecting a call (eg I've called a tradesperson leaving a message and expect a call back).
And even my immediate family talk to me primarily via chat apps that aren't covered via starred contacts. Therefore I know when my phone makes a sound it is something I need to respond to in a timely manner.
Everything else causes a notifications pulse, with different colours for different apps (purple for a chat app, yellow for work email etc). It's so unobtrusive I don't notice it unless I deliberately look at it.
I've been shooting short clips from interesting moments of my day. I've accumulated enough that I can go back to previous year and see what I was doing that day.
I rollerblade a lot, so I have a large amount of these clips. And overall, I seem to do a lot of the same things over and over. I don't know if thats good or bad, but these clips definitely point out the patterns in my life. The interesting part I found looking them over is the day by day change of seasons. I now have a record of when the leaves fell off the trees, and when the first snow fell in my region. So I'm more aware when these changes will happen this year. I also seem to be fixing things a lot. So it made me more conscious of buying so many things, that will just break.
Birthdays, and family dinners stand out as happy moments.
I'm building something around this general idea. I found that my photo timeline gives me a good idea of what's going on in my life. I'm now extending that timeline with geolocation history, social media posts, calendar events, expenses etc.
I'm curious to see what sorts of patterns will crop up.
My girlfriend has done this for the last 5 years using the App "One Second Everyday".
She's super disciplined to make sure she gets one everyday, and it's awesome being able to watch back days, and remember things that you might never have committed to memory. Nice little moments that pass you by.
Highly recommend. We store the end result on some hard drives (locally) and also on google drive. And then they are also uploaded to some hosting sites (I believe Youtube atm).
I love this approach. Have you considered the longevity aspect of it? Do you think you will have a device that can play the video formats of today 10–20 years from now? Is that even something that you care about?
I've been thinking of a similar approach but recording audio of important events in my life instead, with the thought that audio formats might be slightly more stable than video formats. But I'm not sure.
Have a look at “one second a day”. I’ve been taking videos everyday for 6 years with the intention of creating a movie later on. One year will take around 6 minutes.
Csikszentmihalyi says that attention "is an energy under our control, to do with as we please".
If only it were true that we have attention under our control. There are so many things we can pay attention to, and so many people whose job it is to distract us, that we can rarely direct it as we want. And biologically, we're set up to be distracted by threats and unexpected phenomena.
That's not to say we don't pay attention. As he points out elsewhere, Csikszentmihalyi identified 'flow', which is when we get into a nice state of focus on something positive.
Luckily, we're finding out more about how to pay attention to things we want to pay attention to. Prioritising, dividing tasks into chunks, getting enough sleep, choosing what we attend to more wisely are all helpful.
Bit of a meta question: is linking to Substack posts in this way equally as viable as linking to a standalone blog?
As in, the advantages of Substack are clear, but are there any distinct disadvantages to using it as both a blog (exposure, discoverability) and a newsletter (reader retention) at the same time?
Anything about it that limits it in ways in which a standalone blog wouldn't be limited, e.g. analytics?
What exactly is Substack? I asked a few weeks ago if it was the new Medium, and that was apparently the wrong way to ask the question because it got downvoted through the floor.
Not me. All that time freed by not-commuting and all those ten minutes spent de-focusing from work have been very productive for me: I've been able to fix things around the house, clearing a 3-year backlog in just six months.
I'm now at a point where I can realistically start planning for the future again, instead of feeling weighed down by things that should have been finished already.
One of the best things I’ve done recently has been using huggin.
In terms of news I have a bunch of RSS feeds for my industry and use huginn to do two things:
1. Filter them, to increase signal:noise
2. Set a schedule so that I get a “morning briefing” with industry news.
This way I’m not inundated throughout the day.
I do the same thing with hn and other personally interesting sources, but have those delivered Friday afternoon
I still skim hn (why I’m here now) but mostly looking to see if there is anything I want to comment on. If I see a neat headline I know I can read the details later.
I also read the economist (a weekly) and listen to and read books to stay more generally aware of the world
Getting away from a continuous feed has been really great
>Everything has to be a choice, or else it’s a form of addiction. I always want to 'choose' to use my phone because otherwise, it might be equivalent to doing nothing.
This is so true. "Using" instead of "choosing" to use your phone and scrolling endlessly is simply being on autopilot mode. I have all the notifications blocked that saves me a great deal of time.
In this age of political drama, if we choose to spend our time in a more practical way rather than bashing everyone on social media without following that pyramid of "how to debate online" (iirc), there'd be a lot of essential time saved on our sides.
And the more you practice directing your attention, the better your skills of awareness become! You can choose positivity over negativity, joy over anger, love over hate.
This article feels all over the place. It starts with the premise of teaching you how to be productive, then says that you are what you do, then goes to talk about how and why to be nice, then several ending notes describing mindfulness.
It also says doing a something without being mindful is the same as doing nothing.
The conclusion is:
> What you pay attention to is going to be your life. It's so basic that it hits me.
But at the same time, there are tons of book that promote automation, see Atomic Habits, which makes it clear that good (automated) habits make your life easier and more productive.
So if you spend 50% of your day, doing automated tasks (going to the gym, learning to play the piano, showering, watering the plants, cleaning up your room, etc.) does this mean that you did nothing the entire time?
Also, you can both do an automate task and pay attention to it (be mindful) or think of something else (plan things, dream about stuff, get new ideas, etc.).
This interestingly is similar to having a mindfulness practice, making sure to set your intention to be aware of things in and around yourself, rather than autopilot
Good read for a Sunday night! Definitely important to pay attention to and be gentle with the things we think - particularly towards ourselves but also as an affect. I
[+] [-] war1025|5 years ago|reply
Turn off the news.
If something is actually important, you'll hear about it anyway. And if you don't hear about it, it wasn't actually as important as the reporters made it out to be.
Plus in all likelihood the events being reported on are thousands of miles away from you and have zero impact on your daily life.
Obviously this pairs well with cutting out all the nonsense on your social media feeds.
[+] [-] MeinBlutIstBlau|5 years ago|reply
Getting off reddit has been one of the best things in my life. Discord has helped find more positive outlets for me to waste my time.
But lastly, get a hobby that isn't just working on getting better at something. It's cool if you can do like 30 different things, but that's hard. Know your limits and budget screw around time to help unwind.
[+] [-] justforfunhere|5 years ago|reply
>> * In this century (and the previous century) we modelled one-to-one communications in the telephone, which I assume we are all familiar with. We have one-to-many communication - boy do we have an awful lot of that; broadcasting, publishing, journalism, etc. - we get information poured at us from all over the place and it's completely indiscriminate as to where it might land. It's curious, but we don't have to go very far back in our history until we find that all the information that reached us was relevant to us and therefore anything that happened, any news, whether it was about something that's actually happened to us, in the next house, or in the next village, within the boundary or within our horizon, it happened in our world and if we reacted to it the world reacted back. It was all relevant to us, so for example, if somebody had a terrible accident we could crowd round and really help. Nowadays, because of the plethora of one-to-many communication we have, if a plane crashes in India we may get terribly anxious about it but our anxiety doesn't have any impact. We're not very well able to distinguish between a terrible emergency that's happened to somebody a world away and something that's happened to someone round the corner. We can't really distinguish between them any more, which is why we get terribly upset by something that has happened to somebody in a soap opera that comes out of Hollywood and maybe less concerned when it's happened to our sister. We've all become twisted and disconnected and it's not surprising that we feel very stressed and alienated in the world because the world impacts on us but we don't impact the world. Then there's many-to-one; we have that, but not very well yet and there's not much of it about. Essentially, our democratic systems are a model of that and though they're not very good, they will improve dramatically. *
Link: http://www.biota.org/people/douglasadams/
[+] [-] kqr|5 years ago|reply
People mean very different things when they say news, I've found. Most of what people think of as "news" is human interest story garbage churned out as quickly as possible to get the most number of eyeballs. This category includes even a lot of supposedly reputable newspapers, unfortunately. This is great if you are looking for lunchtime gossip or just something to distract or entertain yourself with. Not so good if you want to learn something or expand your world view.
The way I see it, good news
- gives historical context,
- dives deeply,
- covers the entire globe,
- discusses incremental changes and not only big events,
- reflects on multiple perspectives,
- doesn't overemphasise human interest stories, and
- provides you with actual data.
Good news, ironically, ages well.
There are still some people that work with real news. There was a recent Ask HN about favourite magazines and journals[1], where some of the comments mentioned The Economist[2] (a long-time favourite of mine) and Delayed Gratification[3] (which I can't personally vouch for but I admire their goal.)
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25159931
[2]: https://www.economist.com/
[3]: https://www.slow-journalism.com/
[+] [-] llarsson|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jschulenklopper|5 years ago|reply
What I spend most of my days, weeks and months on is largely unrelated to what's happening in the world (and the news' bias towards the negative subset of that). Not following the news thus removes a lot of the sensationalist and negative stream, and saves a lot of time (including possibly worrying on what I just saw/read). If it's really important, I'll hear it anyway.
Recently, I did start a subscription on a national newspaper though, but it allows me to a) select what I read, b) skip over things I'm not interested in (even throwing away the whole paper if I don't want to read it that day). I happen to like some columnists and the variation of daily puzzles.
[+] [-] circlefavshape|5 years ago|reply
I used to listen to a news radio show called Morning Ireland while eating breakfast. That was the first thing to go. A few years later I tuned into it one morning, and they were pretty much saying the exact same stuff as they had been 3 years previously. This encouraged me to continue ignoring it
Shortly afterwards I was having dinner in a friend's house, and related the above, and it turned out one of the other dinner guests was (and still is) one of the presenters on Morning Ireland :/
(he was good-humoured about it, in fairness)
[+] [-] Rillen|5 years ago|reply
Suddenly everyone is going to the park.
What if suddenly everyone stops looking at news? Acting and reacting?
What if the stress i get through the news will never be necessary but what if there is another regime and we need everyone being on alert and standing up and knowing whats going on?
Yin and Yang, finding the balance in our generation is not easy. I get that, i see that, i experience it myself but while i'm sometimes ready to not care i'm worried that i might not react correctly anymore when it counts.
[+] [-] IngoBlechschmid|5 years ago|reply
In some sense, the quoted statement is obviously right.
But in another sense, it's wrong. To cite just one particular example which is dear to my heart because I work closely with school children and students: News about the climate crisis typically originate in some far-away location. But to fight the climate crisis, we have to get organized in every single city, including the city you live in.
[+] [-] platz|5 years ago|reply
This makes it much easier.
Look at it like more being curious about what kind of a world we must be in, rather than what you are supposed to feel about it (rather, what they want you to feel about it).
Also when you can plainly identify the calls to emotional action in the headlines, then you're free to ignore it; and can just take away what actual content may or may not be there.
[+] [-] beagle3|5 years ago|reply
By the time you “hear about it everywhere” because it’s important, it has already been twisted and distorted, and given the party-line spin.
Which is a valid choice, of course - but you should be aware of that, and — if you care about facts rather than narrative - ignore the stuff when you hear about it as well.
[+] [-] b215826|5 years ago|reply
Related: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
[+] [-] trevyn|5 years ago|reply
After that, try not using your phone at all for 24 hours, laptops/desktops still allowed.
[+] [-] cyberlurker|5 years ago|reply
But I do agree, my stress goes down when I tune out the news.
[+] [-] lostmsu|5 years ago|reply
For instance, I never heard of the temporary +0.5% to mortgage refinancing, that lenders will have to pay to federal banks starting Dec 1st, until an article few weeks ago here. This was planned back in June, but now it is too late to act on.
[+] [-] maurys|5 years ago|reply
Are there any tools that help limit bumping into news?
I've also been trying to reduce casual news consumption.
[+] [-] AlwaysRock|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irthomasthomas|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koheripbal|5 years ago|reply
It's those little 'hacks' I use to trick myself into managing my emotional state.
After 40 years, I've found that the most effective way to manage myself is to treat myself as a toddler.
[+] [-] bussiere|5 years ago|reply
By passing one hour per day to read news i was able to predict the containment in france and to prepare myself and my familly ...
[+] [-] sleepysysadmin|5 years ago|reply
I bet virtually none. The news isn't about you or me. It's about controlling you and me. It's about propaganda.
[+] [-] Brajeshwar|5 years ago|reply
I stopped all unscheduled phone calls except from a “!DND” group for the past many years and I love it. In-fact, when iOS 14 changed the interface for phone calls, I was dumb-founded few times before I realize the tiny notification like thing on the top is the phone reject/accept interface. Anyone can lead a distraction free phone life[1].
I disabled almost all forms of notifications a while back and I’m super happy with that decision. My default when adding any new App/Program to my toolset is to start by turning off notifications[2].
1. https://no.phone.wtf
2. https://brajeshwar.com/2014/missing-step-productivity-activi...
[+] [-] AndrewDavis|5 years ago|reply
And even my immediate family talk to me primarily via chat apps that aren't covered via starred contacts. Therefore I know when my phone makes a sound it is something I need to respond to in a timely manner.
Everything else causes a notifications pulse, with different colours for different apps (purple for a chat app, yellow for work email etc). It's so unobtrusive I don't notice it unless I deliberately look at it.
[+] [-] dheerajvs|5 years ago|reply
I'm using Shalimar compostable garbage bags available on Amazon.in. They claim to be CPCB Certified as per IS/ISO 17088:2008 [1].
[1]: https://cpcb.nic.in/openpdffile.php?id=UmVwb3J0RmlsZXMvTmV3S...
[+] [-] christophilus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dukeofdoom|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicbou|5 years ago|reply
I'm curious to see what sorts of patterns will crop up.
[+] [-] Sholmesy|5 years ago|reply
She's super disciplined to make sure she gets one everyday, and it's awesome being able to watch back days, and remember things that you might never have committed to memory. Nice little moments that pass you by.
Highly recommend. We store the end result on some hard drives (locally) and also on google drive. And then they are also uploaded to some hosting sites (I believe Youtube atm).
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kqr|5 years ago|reply
I've been thinking of a similar approach but recording audio of important events in my life instead, with the thought that audio formats might be slightly more stable than video formats. But I'm not sure.
[+] [-] emrehan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidvaughan|5 years ago|reply
If only it were true that we have attention under our control. There are so many things we can pay attention to, and so many people whose job it is to distract us, that we can rarely direct it as we want. And biologically, we're set up to be distracted by threats and unexpected phenomena.
That's not to say we don't pay attention. As he points out elsewhere, Csikszentmihalyi identified 'flow', which is when we get into a nice state of focus on something positive.
Luckily, we're finding out more about how to pay attention to things we want to pay attention to. Prioritising, dividing tasks into chunks, getting enough sleep, choosing what we attend to more wisely are all helpful.
[+] [-] shadowmore|5 years ago|reply
As in, the advantages of Substack are clear, but are there any distinct disadvantages to using it as both a blog (exposure, discoverability) and a newsletter (reader retention) at the same time?
Anything about it that limits it in ways in which a standalone blog wouldn't be limited, e.g. analytics?
[+] [-] war1025|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trevyn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luismmolina|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] carlivar|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pelario|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kuu|5 years ago|reply
My 2020 in one sentence.
[+] [-] tremon|5 years ago|reply
I'm now at a point where I can realistically start planning for the future again, instead of feeling weighed down by things that should have been finished already.
[+] [-] loughnane|5 years ago|reply
In terms of news I have a bunch of RSS feeds for my industry and use huginn to do two things:
1. Filter them, to increase signal:noise 2. Set a schedule so that I get a “morning briefing” with industry news.
This way I’m not inundated throughout the day.
I do the same thing with hn and other personally interesting sources, but have those delivered Friday afternoon
I still skim hn (why I’m here now) but mostly looking to see if there is anything I want to comment on. If I see a neat headline I know I can read the details later.
I also read the economist (a weekly) and listen to and read books to stay more generally aware of the world
Getting away from a continuous feed has been really great
[+] [-] altStoner|5 years ago|reply
This is so true. "Using" instead of "choosing" to use your phone and scrolling endlessly is simply being on autopilot mode. I have all the notifications blocked that saves me a great deal of time.
In this age of political drama, if we choose to spend our time in a more practical way rather than bashing everyone on social media without following that pyramid of "how to debate online" (iirc), there'd be a lot of essential time saved on our sides.
[+] [-] bradknowles|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aclissold|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ben_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] XCSme|5 years ago|reply
It also says doing a something without being mindful is the same as doing nothing.
The conclusion is:
> What you pay attention to is going to be your life. It's so basic that it hits me.
But at the same time, there are tons of book that promote automation, see Atomic Habits, which makes it clear that good (automated) habits make your life easier and more productive.
So if you spend 50% of your day, doing automated tasks (going to the gym, learning to play the piano, showering, watering the plants, cleaning up your room, etc.) does this mean that you did nothing the entire time?
Also, you can both do an automate task and pay attention to it (be mindful) or think of something else (plan things, dream about stuff, get new ideas, etc.).
[+] [-] ben_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianai|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lokethien|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]