Last year I took a smartphone holiday for 4 months (switched to a dumbphone). It was a fantastic time and I regret "falling off the wagon" and getting a smartphone again.
I noticed a huge number of benefits, but one of the most surprising was that it forced me to confront a number of difficult decisions.
There were a few times in which I was bored (waiting at the passport office, sitting on a plane) in which I started to think about decisions I had to make that were very difficult in ways that caused me anxiety: firing a person I'm good friends with, shutting down a company, stuff like that.
I realized that ordinarily I would simply refuse to engage with the decision: I'd get on my phone or "get busy" somehow and so simply postpone thinking about the issue indefinitely.
But when you're stuck at the passport office for 2 hours with nothing to do, you can't but help think about the thing that is top of mind, anxiety be damned.
For someone that is prone to anxiety around certain topics (conflict avoidance, "disappointing" people, etc) having times in which I was forced to engage with the topic had truly enormous benefits.
> you can't but help think about the thing that is top of mind, anxiety be damned.
This really captures what I think is the main problem with our state of being constantly distracted: it feels at first like a relief from anxiety, but ultimately results in even small anxieties never properly being dealt with. The end result is a vicious cycle (or I guess virtuous if you sell online ads) of becoming more and more anxious causing us to rely more and more on the screen to distract us, which in turn only increases that backlog of anxiety.
I see this happen in a lot of younger people that are constantly on screens: they frequently mention their need to "chill for a bit" and yet spend most of their time doing nothing but staring at a screen. It's clear that they are living in a lukewarm vat of anxiety that they can't face while staring at a screen, but also one which causes them immediate stress when they do look away.
I came to the very same conclusion - I need "empty time" to reflect, and prepare myself for my own life. For me, it was not smartphones, it started with books when I was a child, and continued with music players and alcohol later. Everything to keep the unwanted thoughts and feelings at bay. I am an excellent daydreamer as well, at times of stillness, I find something to "work on" in my mind.
What I ended up with is literally a time of day where I "sit with myself" and just think about things. I just sit down for some minutes and try to get my bearings on where I am in life right now. Also, I eliminated a lot of background noise and music - I often do menial things without any other distractions for example. Good opportunities to think about something deep.
I absolutely hate running, my cardio sucks and I like to lift heavy multiple times per week.
But when I run I don’t bring anything, no music no phone just a watch to track speed and time.
I get all my best thinking done during those runs. I run slow and it hurts and it never improves but I go for 1-2 hours just so I can get more disconnected thinking done
A couple of times recently when I've not pulled out the phone, I've ended up having an interesting chat with somebody nearby.
Be open to having others talk with you by having an inviting look. And perhaps recognize when others are being inviting and feel out if they seem keen on yakking.
Imagine a subculture developing where some people just recognize other sociables. Maybe we need masonic-like rings or something else to identify us as welcoming random conversion.
Concentrating on your phone is as much of a conversation stopper as headphones.
I think it also encourages socialization. Chatting with someone instead of being engrossed in your phone.
I did a screen time detox a few years back. After hearing a similar idea about needing to get to boredom sometimes and not just escaping to a device. Only used a computer for work and exclusively worked on it, then no screen time whatsoever. Maybe lasted 3 weeks or so and made me more interested in stuff like reading, drawing, etc.
I've tried this a couple of times, and the only things I miss are:
- Navigation (can be solved with a dedicated device, but it's a lot less convenient)
- A good camera at all times (I used to not care about this, but it's become more important now I have kids)
- Mobile payments (pretty essential in my country, not all places accept cards or cash)
In every other aspect, it was a net positive in my life to get rid of my phone.
I’d like to inform you that I share your same anxieties. I read a book called “Difficult Conversations” (Patron, stone, heen). It didn’t remove all the anxiety, but it gave me A framework to lean on to get started, which was half of the stress. I think it will always suck having to fire people you like.
I just had a day "off" because of some work on the 5G tower nearby. I can feel my brain chemistry change when the line is off. I don't feel the need to constantly check. There was a limited service bandwidth but it was too unreliable for my brain to want to wait for its dose of webpage refreshing. It sucks the long term / in-depth brain states .. it's so weird.
Do you ever have trouble falling into past decisions, and over analyzing them, and doubling down on your anxiety?
I would love to get rid of my smart phone, but the problems I dwell on are very rarely present or future decisions, and realistically what is top of my mind anxiety be damned is useless energy, it's like running a wind turbine off the grid, and forcing it to spin as if it were a big fan instead of running the grid off wind turbines. The thoughts are more like did I disappoint that friend last weekend, or did I dissapoint that coworker at the Christmas party 6 months ago, or did I do <x> that definitely didn't create <y>, but did I do <x> that made <y> happen?
I use chess apps on my phone to at least put my brain off those thoughts entirely because I have a different problem to solve, and that is magnificent, and if If I didn't have that I don't know what I would do. I know there's something probably not quite right, but I'm wondering how much time you end up spending on problems that "can't be solved," and how much is time spent actually solving problems in your life. If that makes any sense.
Is it good to have anxiety over things you have to do where there really aren’t options. Unless you’re saying you figured out better decisions due to the additional thinking. But if the end result was simply more anxiety — mine being distracted on the phone.
This is a self-reinforcing concept as well; I haven't read the other book mentioned (The Anxious Generation, I put it on my wishlist) but I'm convinced that it makes mention of this as well, that is, not being on your phone in these interstitial moments is in itself a cause of anxiety, not so much because of the places your mind wanders but because of its constant presence and repeated mini dopamine hits. Addiction, basically.
I've got a vacation planned, I should make a point of it to leave my phone alone for distraction / entertainment / interstitial moments.
Why didn't you list the downsides, what you missed from not having a smart phone? Was it because there weren't any or because you thought they were obvious?
Having a mobile, networked computer with us at all times has been a huge benefit in many ways and I find it hard to believe people would chuck it all due forming habits they don't like. Habits can be molded pretty easily if approached in a conscious way.
I find that daydreaming is absolutely critical for coming up with good strategies. Otherwise I can default to just do the next obvious thing, which isn't always the most strategic if you can take in the full picture, or at least consider alternatives well.
The two ways I get to strategic reflection are really:
- Doing lego. I find thhat doing lego is actually really good at helping me consolidate thoughts and ideas. It takes up just enough mental energy to not get bored, but it lets me think about things with an unstressed mind.
- Walks. The other way to generate new perspectives is to take a walk at lunch though non-interesting territory. I really do not find walks in a busy downtown to be relaxing, too much activity intruding on me to actually be low stress, but if it is in a forest or even just a long parkway that works for me.
The absolute worst way to come up with new ideas is in front of my computer trying to work. Good for doing the next obvious thing, but really hard to think outside of the box.
You really do need a mix of the two, otherwise you are either doing the obvious or never actually doing anything.
This is the most important and impactful decision that an average person (i.e. all of us here) will make regarding the quality of his mental life.
This week I ordered a SIM card compatible with my Nokia dumb phone. I have a smartphone for work, and I intend for it to be off and in a drawer when I get home in the evenings.
I’ve realized also that having a dedicated space to do computing activities, the kind encouraged by having an immobile desktop computer rather than a phone, tablet or laptop, is immensely important for my mental integrity. I’m bringing that back too.
Only recently, like in the last year, have I found my phone just sucking me in. I am mindlessly browsing whatever (TikTok, Xiao Hong Shu, Reddit) and then suddenly my time has slipped away. The thing is, I'm not young by any means. I figured I was aged out of the risk that the phone could devour my time but I was so mistaken in thinking that way. Compared to how I felt my time went and was spent when I was younger (pre-internet days) this feels awful and draining and so damn easy to slip into. Feels like life is on pause yet time is still slipping away as fast as ever.
A few years ago I was having dinner with a 70y old pastor and his wife. Obviously both extremely engaged with the community etc. Totally tripped me up to realize the wife had become addicted to YouTube. She almost started playing a video at the table as we were having desert.
Doom-scrolling and short-form videos seem to not discriminate by age. I know lots of middle-aged to elderly people who can sit on their phones and scroll for hours on end every day.
My phone is decent enough to read books... the large iPhone is not so far different in size than the paperbacks I used to enjoy reading when I was younger. And, in a pinch, I can use it for important things. To send a message to someone I care to communicate with or to look up something urgently, or maybe the maps app if I need to go somewhere. But for all other purposes it is worthless to me. 6 months ago I was debugging my furnace and I had a Youtube video to help with that... and it's just unwatchable on the tiny screen. I found myself going back to my desk to watch it on the big screen. Though, even on that, Youube is very unappealing unless I'm looking for something specific.
On the computer monitor(s), I could lose the entire day here on HN or (less often now days) reddit. I still can't understand the appeal of gluing my eyeballs to a phone screen.
Lucky for me, I could never get used to the small screens of mobile phones as a serious computing or web browsing device. While I still rely on my mobile phone for basic tasks like making calls, sending messages, and on the rare occasion, reluctantly typing emails when I don't have a laptop handy, my primary computing and web browsing device remains my laptop, with Emacs and Firefox as my main tools.
Surprisingly, the one thing that occasionally manages to distract me is this very forum - Hacker News! :) If I observe myself spending too much time on Hacker News, I block it at the /etc/hosts level. I have a little shell script to point news.ycombinator.com to 127.0.0.1 when I don't want to be browsing HN. HN provides a nifty solution of its own too in the form of the "noprocrast" setting in your HN profile page. If you haven't checked it out yet, it is definitely worth considering.
Apart from that, I think I've been able to escape the traps of modern social media. Also, I still depend quite a bit on physical textbooks, a rollerball pen, and a stack of plain A4 paper for most of my learning, thinking, and exploration activities. This routine has helped me to stay away from modern social media too. So, fortunately, I still have the luxury of boredom in my life which I find to be an essential ingredient for digesting new knowledge as well as finding creative solutions to difficult problems. I've found that letting my mind wander aimlessly sometimes leads to new insights when I least expect them. I think it also helps with creativity and reflection, in general, which is likely a nice bonus too.
`noprocrast` has one upside over /etc/hosts though, which is that when you've hit the limit you can not just go and disable it, you have to wait for the timeout. Definitely one of the features I'm very grateful for on HN.
Ha yeah, when people talk about "smartphone addiction", I don't relate
I can relate to INTERNET addiction, but not phone addiction
Because I always found that phone UI is a frustrating bottleneck. The rate of information flow is not very high, with the small screens and the limited keyboards (although I can type long chats just fine on phones now)
I was a slightly late adopter of smartphones, and I also don't use social media apps. I use them on the web on my desktop, not on my phone
---
Though a caveat is that HN does look reasonable on a phone's web browser, and it loads quickly, so it's an exception!
Even short day dreams can be incredibly productive which is why I keep my phones in the other room away from me.
This forces me to get up and walk into the other room every time I have to do 2FA at work which has a ton of benefits. I'll bring dishes or cups to the kitchen on the way, very frequently have useful thoughts about whatever I'm working on, get up out of my chair more frequently, and look at things farther away than my screen which relaxes the eyes.
In general, I advocate for avoiding any product with an infinite scroll as I find them detrimental to my own health, extremely addictive, barely rewarding, and frequently enriching to people I barely have any good impressions of.
>>>>When you are daydreaming (or mind-wandering, as it is referred to within scientific circles), memories that you thought were lost forever can come to the surface again.” >>>
I have been thinking about this lately. Not just in the context of smartphone use but being devoted to some mind consuming endeavour like building a startup.
I have been building and operating company for over 15 years now (I am 43 now). During those years I had amazing quality of life due to success of the business. However, at the same time I spent most of my daydreaming hours on thinking how to grow my business. Now when business is about to be sold and I don't think about the growth that much I am starting to realise I don't remember as many things from my childhood as most of people around me. I keep wondering whether this is common to other people who have been obsessed about something for many years and forgot to daydream about their earlier years.
Before smartphones existed, I used to carry a book with me everywhere. Or a comic. Or a notebook. Or a puzzle. When a situation got boring or unbearable, I'd pull out whatever I had in my bag and occupy myself with it. But it was cumbersome: a book is heavy, a puzzle breaks, pencils fall out, and so on. So sometimes I had no choice but to look at anything in my surroundings that was more interesting than what was currently happening.
Because the world is interesting, yes, but only in spurts, and only for some people.
It's been this way before and after the arrival of smartphones. Some of us have always felt the need to disconnect from what didn't interest us. But it's never been as easy and convenient as it is now. In a second, you can access all of human knowledge, record a memory, see where you are on a map, or simply entertain your brain with a game. Everything we used to carry in a bag now fits in the palm of your hand.
Maybe I'm just rude, but if someone snatched a book from my hands just because I wasn't enjoying a sunset, I'd be mad. If they then called me a slave or a zombie, I'd throw the book at their face. Or the puzzle. Or the iPad. Well, maybe not the iPad, because it's really heavy and expensive, but you get the idea. Why? Because I decide what to dedicate my mental resources to at any given moment.
I decide when to pay attention.
There will be times when I want to share a look with the person I'm with, and others when I simply won't have anything to say or do. And still others when I'd prefer to be far, far away, somewhere else entirely. My mind is like that: it wanders and rebels. Perhaps others prefer to cling to the apparent certainties of what's in front of them; I don't dislike that, but I can't and don't want to do it constantly. Nobody can.
"What is life is full of care, we have no time to stand and stare" - William Henry Davies
ON Saturday was waiting to meet people on a road that had just been reopened after a May Day (traditional British style with May Queen etc.) parade. Other people were doing the same.
I looked around and noticed people (some still in costume etc. so interesting crowd) and looked at buildings (its a pretty street, even though I know it well) and was quite happy.
One thing I noticed was the everyone else who was waiting for people was on their phones, almost all the time they were there.
Obsessive business is the opposite of mindfulness.
It also kills casual social interaction. Talking to someone who is standing next to you.
I was one of the first persons with mobile devices on me (dell axim s51 (or something like that)) before mobile phones were a thing, but since then, which was like over 20 years ago I do daily walks - 60 minutes+ through the local woods - with my dogs where I forbid myself in using my phone.
I do active thinking about projects I have, I recapitulate human interactions and reweight my decisions, I decide stuff that is going to happen. Someimes I do nothing, its not like I plan this stuff. I just plan not using any devices. (I also dont listen to music).
A friend and me worked for like a year back to back on a project and I like forced him to split work-time and come with me with the dogs. He absolutely loved it and said recently that he still forces himself to take a longer break for walks because that just makes him more productive.
>before mobile phones were a thing, but since then, which was like over 20 years ago
20 years ago was the mid 2000s, and I had a cell phone for 7 or 8 years at that point. Also, the Palm Pilot (1997) had been around for about 5 years before the Axim (2002).
I've been almost completely off social media (and candy - potentially a larger problem in the past for me) for a month other than to check once or twice a day to see if somebody has messaged me (rarely) and it really has been rather profound to experience life with the lack of regular hits of dopamine. It is such a subtle "drug". I've still been on a computer and surfing the web but not nearly the same amount of time as I was spending on my phone and social. I sat a ten day Vipassana course in 2016 - a profound experience that was at least an order of magnitude more impactful with regard to being off of "screens". There's definitely a cost that accompanies any perceived benefits of social media interaction. As in all things - balance!
While I generally appreciate this advice to allow yourself to be bored for all the creative benefits that come with it, I also resent it. When large portions of my life were outside of my control due the 8 hour workday, I felt like I don't want to squander what little time I had to myself while commuting daydreaming. I try not to judge people who are glued to their phones, they could be scrolling TikTok, or they could be reading great literature.
I do not know about this. As in, I do not doubt that necessity of daydreaming, and I do not doubt something is being lost. However, I think daydreaming can also be dangerous in of itself. There is even a term for it called, "maladaptive daydreaming."
Obviously, that is the extreme on the opposite side of the spectrum. But from what I recall reading, daydreaming, evenly moderately, can be somewhat unproductive. I mean that in the sense that daydreaming can provide the brain with a shortcut to a feeling that would be better served if an action provided it.
For example, one can daydream about going to the gym and becoming more healthy. One can follow the daydream all the way through. However, at least in my case, I have caught myself enjoying the pleasurable feelings and the "one day, I will..." too much to the point that I never go to the gym.
I think my brain has learned that I can quell whatever feeling I am having in the moment by daydreaming. It's my brain's shortcut. It's as if my mind say, "Why spend the effort to do something when we can just imagine how it feels and enjoy the reward now?"
Like anything in life, the key is balance. However, creating that balance is not easy in my experience.
I am an avid hiker now but grew up in the suburbs. Going out to the backcountry for the first time was a life changing experience for me and allowed me to connect to nature in a way I never did before. Having such beauty around me was the catalyst and disconnected me from everything. It gave me a real perspective of looking at my life as a whole. Appreciating the people in my life, my love for them and what my aspirations are. It isn't all perfect though. There are these little hells too cycling around my brain but they were there to begin with and something I am forced to face. As someone who has done mental health work I am allowed to sit with my feelings and discern them, which is a large part of the process. In the past two years I have asked myself, "what are you getting out of the time sinks on your phone?" Not a whole lot. I never go on social media unless occasionally to see what people are up to and I force myself to eat and sometimes wait for things without being on my phone.
I have no good story and also no excuse: I'm too online, like most people. I feel like my mind is usually "on rails". That's what it feels like, always staring into a computer or a phone.
I think having time and opportunity to be bored is actually a luxury that many have nowadays. Growing up in a village where my grandma was basically doing subsistence farming, I recall that she didn't have that moment to daydream. This was not uncommon some time ago, as this great post from last week about labour movement was mentioning [1].
Given this, I find that daydreaming is in a way an expression of a freedom and luxury that we have. I find myself starting to think deeply about some topics in those moments. Spending that time on a smartphone/social media is wasting a freedom that we have. I used to check news or watch something more frequently before I had this realization and not doing that has greatly improved my state of mind.
American parenting does not value boredom anywhere near enough. It's a valuable part of being a smart human. Society needs to value boredome more highly.
As a parent I highly value boredom. At ages 6 and 8 electronics limited to 30 mins per day.
Parent of 5 and 3 year-olds here - absolutely. We don't own a tablet and the most my kids really know how to do is turn the TV to a show or two they like (relax, everyone, I'll be teaching them how to use tech when their lives actually warrant the need). They're wonders at restaurants, can sit there for an hour plus without any screens and they're great - hell, I went to a pretty nice spot for my birthday recently that took 2.5 hours and they crushed it, we all had an absolute blast.
Our phones stay in my wife's home office during the day, since we want to model not staring at them.
They come to my work sometimes, and I've had a few people express how they're impressed when they watch them entertain themselves, and my response is always, "They have to learn how to be bored".
Had a kid recently and didn't like how often I was on my phone around her. I bought one of those phones that looks like a 90's/early aughts 5GHZ phone, but rather than being attached to a lan line, it's BT paired to my smartphone. So I leave it charging in a drawer and if someone really needs to get a hold of me, they call and the BT phone rings. There might be a way to configure text messages to make it ding too, haven't looked into it.
> These moments used to be given over to silent reflection or conversation with whoever is around. Now, for most of us, nearly all of them are grabbed by our phones.
Maybe this is true for the author, but before smartphones I wasn't just chatting up strangers while I waited for the elevator or reflecting on my life. I was staring at the elevator light getting angry that it was taking too long.
I spent a lot of time being bored and being angry that I was bored. Now I can consume information and learn new things ALL THE TIME. It's amazing!
[+] [-] elbasti|10 months ago|reply
I noticed a huge number of benefits, but one of the most surprising was that it forced me to confront a number of difficult decisions.
There were a few times in which I was bored (waiting at the passport office, sitting on a plane) in which I started to think about decisions I had to make that were very difficult in ways that caused me anxiety: firing a person I'm good friends with, shutting down a company, stuff like that.
I realized that ordinarily I would simply refuse to engage with the decision: I'd get on my phone or "get busy" somehow and so simply postpone thinking about the issue indefinitely.
But when you're stuck at the passport office for 2 hours with nothing to do, you can't but help think about the thing that is top of mind, anxiety be damned.
For someone that is prone to anxiety around certain topics (conflict avoidance, "disappointing" people, etc) having times in which I was forced to engage with the topic had truly enormous benefits.
[+] [-] crystal_revenge|10 months ago|reply
This really captures what I think is the main problem with our state of being constantly distracted: it feels at first like a relief from anxiety, but ultimately results in even small anxieties never properly being dealt with. The end result is a vicious cycle (or I guess virtuous if you sell online ads) of becoming more and more anxious causing us to rely more and more on the screen to distract us, which in turn only increases that backlog of anxiety.
I see this happen in a lot of younger people that are constantly on screens: they frequently mention their need to "chill for a bit" and yet spend most of their time doing nothing but staring at a screen. It's clear that they are living in a lukewarm vat of anxiety that they can't face while staring at a screen, but also one which causes them immediate stress when they do look away.
[+] [-] npteljes|10 months ago|reply
What I ended up with is literally a time of day where I "sit with myself" and just think about things. I just sit down for some minutes and try to get my bearings on where I am in life right now. Also, I eliminated a lot of background noise and music - I often do menial things without any other distractions for example. Good opportunities to think about something deep.
[+] [-] r0fl|10 months ago|reply
But when I run I don’t bring anything, no music no phone just a watch to track speed and time.
I get all my best thinking done during those runs. I run slow and it hurts and it never improves but I go for 1-2 hours just so I can get more disconnected thinking done
[+] [-] robocat|10 months ago|reply
Be open to having others talk with you by having an inviting look. And perhaps recognize when others are being inviting and feel out if they seem keen on yakking.
Imagine a subculture developing where some people just recognize other sociables. Maybe we need masonic-like rings or something else to identify us as welcoming random conversion.
Concentrating on your phone is as much of a conversation stopper as headphones.
[+] [-] nonethewiser|10 months ago|reply
I did a screen time detox a few years back. After hearing a similar idea about needing to get to boredom sometimes and not just escaping to a device. Only used a computer for work and exclusively worked on it, then no screen time whatsoever. Maybe lasted 3 weeks or so and made me more interested in stuff like reading, drawing, etc.
[+] [-] sspiff|10 months ago|reply
- Navigation (can be solved with a dedicated device, but it's a lot less convenient) - A good camera at all times (I used to not care about this, but it's become more important now I have kids) - Mobile payments (pretty essential in my country, not all places accept cards or cash)
In every other aspect, it was a net positive in my life to get rid of my phone.
[+] [-] snoopertrooper|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] timeinput|10 months ago|reply
I would love to get rid of my smart phone, but the problems I dwell on are very rarely present or future decisions, and realistically what is top of my mind anxiety be damned is useless energy, it's like running a wind turbine off the grid, and forcing it to spin as if it were a big fan instead of running the grid off wind turbines. The thoughts are more like did I disappoint that friend last weekend, or did I dissapoint that coworker at the Christmas party 6 months ago, or did I do <x> that definitely didn't create <y>, but did I do <x> that made <y> happen?
I use chess apps on my phone to at least put my brain off those thoughts entirely because I have a different problem to solve, and that is magnificent, and if If I didn't have that I don't know what I would do. I know there's something probably not quite right, but I'm wondering how much time you end up spending on problems that "can't be solved," and how much is time spent actually solving problems in your life. If that makes any sense.
[+] [-] therealdrag0|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kenjackson|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|10 months ago|reply
I've got a vacation planned, I should make a point of it to leave my phone alone for distraction / entertainment / interstitial moments.
[+] [-] twic|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] namaria|10 months ago|reply
Long walks help. No music or podcasts, just me, my mind and the city.
[+] [-] eikenberry|10 months ago|reply
Having a mobile, networked computer with us at all times has been a huge benefit in many ways and I find it hard to believe people would chuck it all due forming habits they don't like. Habits can be molded pretty easily if approached in a conscious way.
[+] [-] bhouston|10 months ago|reply
The two ways I get to strategic reflection are really:
- Doing lego. I find thhat doing lego is actually really good at helping me consolidate thoughts and ideas. It takes up just enough mental energy to not get bored, but it lets me think about things with an unstressed mind.
- Walks. The other way to generate new perspectives is to take a walk at lunch though non-interesting territory. I really do not find walks in a busy downtown to be relaxing, too much activity intruding on me to actually be low stress, but if it is in a forest or even just a long parkway that works for me.
The absolute worst way to come up with new ideas is in front of my computer trying to work. Good for doing the next obvious thing, but really hard to think outside of the box.
You really do need a mix of the two, otherwise you are either doing the obvious or never actually doing anything.
[+] [-] tines|10 months ago|reply
This week I ordered a SIM card compatible with my Nokia dumb phone. I have a smartphone for work, and I intend for it to be off and in a drawer when I get home in the evenings.
I’ve realized also that having a dedicated space to do computing activities, the kind encouraged by having an immobile desktop computer rather than a phone, tablet or laptop, is immensely important for my mental integrity. I’m bringing that back too.
[+] [-] gaoshan|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] athrowaway3z|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] bityard|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] NoMoreNicksLeft|10 months ago|reply
On the computer monitor(s), I could lose the entire day here on HN or (less often now days) reddit. I still can't understand the appeal of gluing my eyeballs to a phone screen.
[+] [-] aDyslecticCrow|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] susam|10 months ago|reply
Surprisingly, the one thing that occasionally manages to distract me is this very forum - Hacker News! :) If I observe myself spending too much time on Hacker News, I block it at the /etc/hosts level. I have a little shell script to point news.ycombinator.com to 127.0.0.1 when I don't want to be browsing HN. HN provides a nifty solution of its own too in the form of the "noprocrast" setting in your HN profile page. If you haven't checked it out yet, it is definitely worth considering.
Apart from that, I think I've been able to escape the traps of modern social media. Also, I still depend quite a bit on physical textbooks, a rollerball pen, and a stack of plain A4 paper for most of my learning, thinking, and exploration activities. This routine has helped me to stay away from modern social media too. So, fortunately, I still have the luxury of boredom in my life which I find to be an essential ingredient for digesting new knowledge as well as finding creative solutions to difficult problems. I've found that letting my mind wander aimlessly sometimes leads to new insights when I least expect them. I think it also helps with creativity and reflection, in general, which is likely a nice bonus too.
[+] [-] Etheryte|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] chubot|10 months ago|reply
I can relate to INTERNET addiction, but not phone addiction
Because I always found that phone UI is a frustrating bottleneck. The rate of information flow is not very high, with the small screens and the limited keyboards (although I can type long chats just fine on phones now)
I was a slightly late adopter of smartphones, and I also don't use social media apps. I use them on the web on my desktop, not on my phone
---
Though a caveat is that HN does look reasonable on a phone's web browser, and it loads quickly, so it's an exception!
[+] [-] codyb|10 months ago|reply
This forces me to get up and walk into the other room every time I have to do 2FA at work which has a ton of benefits. I'll bring dishes or cups to the kitchen on the way, very frequently have useful thoughts about whatever I'm working on, get up out of my chair more frequently, and look at things farther away than my screen which relaxes the eyes.
In general, I advocate for avoiding any product with an infinite scroll as I find them detrimental to my own health, extremely addictive, barely rewarding, and frequently enriching to people I barely have any good impressions of.
[+] [-] forcer|10 months ago|reply
I have been thinking about this lately. Not just in the context of smartphone use but being devoted to some mind consuming endeavour like building a startup.
I have been building and operating company for over 15 years now (I am 43 now). During those years I had amazing quality of life due to success of the business. However, at the same time I spent most of my daydreaming hours on thinking how to grow my business. Now when business is about to be sold and I don't think about the growth that much I am starting to realise I don't remember as many things from my childhood as most of people around me. I keep wondering whether this is common to other people who have been obsessed about something for many years and forgot to daydream about their earlier years.
[+] [-] theletterf|10 months ago|reply
Because the world is interesting, yes, but only in spurts, and only for some people.
It's been this way before and after the arrival of smartphones. Some of us have always felt the need to disconnect from what didn't interest us. But it's never been as easy and convenient as it is now. In a second, you can access all of human knowledge, record a memory, see where you are on a map, or simply entertain your brain with a game. Everything we used to carry in a bag now fits in the palm of your hand.
Maybe I'm just rude, but if someone snatched a book from my hands just because I wasn't enjoying a sunset, I'd be mad. If they then called me a slave or a zombie, I'd throw the book at their face. Or the puzzle. Or the iPad. Well, maybe not the iPad, because it's really heavy and expensive, but you get the idea. Why? Because I decide what to dedicate my mental resources to at any given moment.
I decide when to pay attention. There will be times when I want to share a look with the person I'm with, and others when I simply won't have anything to say or do. And still others when I'd prefer to be far, far away, somewhere else entirely. My mind is like that: it wanders and rebels. Perhaps others prefer to cling to the apparent certainties of what's in front of them; I don't dislike that, but I can't and don't want to do it constantly. Nobody can.
[+] [-] graemep|10 months ago|reply
ON Saturday was waiting to meet people on a road that had just been reopened after a May Day (traditional British style with May Queen etc.) parade. Other people were doing the same.
I looked around and noticed people (some still in costume etc. so interesting crowd) and looked at buildings (its a pretty street, even though I know it well) and was quite happy.
One thing I noticed was the everyone else who was waiting for people was on their phones, almost all the time they were there.
Obsessive business is the opposite of mindfulness.
It also kills casual social interaction. Talking to someone who is standing next to you.
[+] [-] entropie|10 months ago|reply
I do active thinking about projects I have, I recapitulate human interactions and reweight my decisions, I decide stuff that is going to happen. Someimes I do nothing, its not like I plan this stuff. I just plan not using any devices. (I also dont listen to music).
A friend and me worked for like a year back to back on a project and I like forced him to split work-time and come with me with the dogs. He absolutely loved it and said recently that he still forces himself to take a longer break for walks because that just makes him more productive.
[+] [-] dingaling|10 months ago|reply
The rule I apply is that I can only use my phone if I'm walking on hard surfaces.
Once I'm on a beach, a country path or rolling fields then it gets turned to flight mode and put away.
[+] [-] 542354234235|10 months ago|reply
20 years ago was the mid 2000s, and I had a cell phone for 7 or 8 years at that point. Also, the Palm Pilot (1997) had been around for about 5 years before the Axim (2002).
[+] [-] chiefgeek|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] spudlyo|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] reaperducer|10 months ago|reply
The whole point of this discussion is that daydreaming is not a worthless activity, therefore time spent daydreaming is not "squandered."
[+] [-] moffkalast|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] chairmansteve|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] hirvi74|10 months ago|reply
Obviously, that is the extreme on the opposite side of the spectrum. But from what I recall reading, daydreaming, evenly moderately, can be somewhat unproductive. I mean that in the sense that daydreaming can provide the brain with a shortcut to a feeling that would be better served if an action provided it.
For example, one can daydream about going to the gym and becoming more healthy. One can follow the daydream all the way through. However, at least in my case, I have caught myself enjoying the pleasurable feelings and the "one day, I will..." too much to the point that I never go to the gym.
I think my brain has learned that I can quell whatever feeling I am having in the moment by daydreaming. It's my brain's shortcut. It's as if my mind say, "Why spend the effort to do something when we can just imagine how it feels and enjoy the reward now?"
Like anything in life, the key is balance. However, creating that balance is not easy in my experience.
[+] [-] awalsh128|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kzrdude|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] hs586|10 months ago|reply
Given this, I find that daydreaming is in a way an expression of a freedom and luxury that we have. I find myself starting to think deeply about some topics in those moments. Spending that time on a smartphone/social media is wasting a freedom that we have. I used to check news or watch something more frequently before I had this realization and not doing that has greatly improved my state of mind.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43856798
[+] [-] rc_kas|10 months ago|reply
As a parent I highly value boredom. At ages 6 and 8 electronics limited to 30 mins per day.
[+] [-] jjulius|10 months ago|reply
Our phones stay in my wife's home office during the day, since we want to model not staring at them.
They come to my work sometimes, and I've had a few people express how they're impressed when they watch them entertain themselves, and my response is always, "They have to learn how to be bored".
[+] [-] bigmattystyles|10 months ago|reply
[+] [-] cantSpellSober|10 months ago|reply
Noticeable on pubic transit particularly
[+] [-] bluefirebrand|10 months ago|reply
I'm sure it happens, but it seemed rare to me. People read books or magazines, or were just too cramped and crowded to bother trying to interact
[+] [-] RandallBrown|10 months ago|reply
Maybe this is true for the author, but before smartphones I wasn't just chatting up strangers while I waited for the elevator or reflecting on my life. I was staring at the elevator light getting angry that it was taking too long.
I spent a lot of time being bored and being angry that I was bored. Now I can consume information and learn new things ALL THE TIME. It's amazing!