I think part of it is that my work is quite uninteresting and doesn't really keep my mind engaged. But the work is tedious enough that I am too tried in the evening to do something interesting. After a few years everything feels like it's a repeat.
Does anybody else feel that way? Have you been able to detach yourself from the constant flow of information and focus on your own stuff?
The purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge.
― Aristotle
Knowledge isn't free. You have to pay attention
― Richard Feynman
"Information is not truth"
― Yuval Noah Harari
If I were the plaything of every thought, I would be a fool, not a wise man.
― Rumi
Dhamma is in your mind, not in the forest. You don't have to go and look anywhere else.
― Ajahn Chah
Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world,
but in the process he loses his soul.
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The wise man knows the Self,
And he plays the game of life.
But the fool lives in the world
Like a beast of burden.
― Ashtavakra Gita (4―1)
We must be true inside, true to ourselves,
before we can know a truth that is outside us.
― Thomas Merton
Saying yes frequently is an additive strategy. Saying no is a subtractive strategy. Keep saying no to a lot of things - the negative and unimportant ones - and once in awhile, you will be left with an idea which is so compelling that it would be a screaming no-brainer 'yes'.
- unknownSome scattered notes from this video:
- when you're bored, your mind is looking for a particular stimulation
- when you allow yourself to resolve boredom with dopaminergic activities like video games, you reinforce for yourself the idea that this is how to relieve yourself of boredom. Your brain in turn will learn to immediately reach for unproductive, dopaminergic activities to make the boredom stop
- if you resist the boredom (procrastinate on boredom, procrastinate on procrastinating) your mind will start thinking creatively
- shower thoughts, hikes - times when your boredom is unresolved and creativity follows it
- capture your fleeting creative impulses
- instead of falling for a craving or a desire, jot it down and meditate on it, think it through. Ask yourself: "What else can I do?"
- Examples - jot things down, work on small business idea, doodle, anything but falling for your boredom resolution
- The reason why we typically don't do this is we don't have the habit of it and we don't reinforce it
- reflect on the work that do
- people are not good at it
- Playing a game a lot does not reflect on skill
- physicians who practice a lot are not necessarily the best at a specific task but the ones who reflect are
- It may help you to visualize this step as an IRL replay analysis. Bronze tier players in video games stay bronze because they don't actively seek out their mistakes and tro to correct them.
- rereading notes, revisiting older work helps create new ideas
- ride out boredom
There’s a simple way to solve this. You get to indulge your love of information. BUT, only if you searched for it first.
Want to look at twitter? Don’t look at the feed, search for something relevant to you. Want to watch a YouTube video? Search for something you care about, something relevant to your perspective.
When you seek out information you are spontaneously curious about, it connects to real problems in your life, things you might have a genuine opportunity to influence. If you consume algorithmic content, your head fills up with problems you can’t do anything about. It’s paralyzing.
It’s important to write, take walks or sit and stare at a tree or even a wall. That’s where the ideas find their space to entire your mind.
If it's the former, block the addictive content and replace it with other things you find fun (hobbies, books, movies, etc), paying attention to how it's more worthwhile to do so.
If it's the latter, find out how to overcome such fear / anxiety and to stop using addictive content as a crutch.
So you don't have to click through, here they are: * Using an outliner like Roam Research
* Working with another person (e.g. pair programming)
* Working with another person present (e.g. independent coworking)
* Running a “distraction detection” program
* Mentally noting the distraction-kind and returning my attention
* Keeping my phone in my kitchen
* Writing on Go Note Go, my headless keyboard
* Attending meetings/talks in “clamshell mode” (laptop closed, no keyboard or mouse available)
* Making TODO lists
* And explicitly writing down the ^^active TODO^^
* Going to sleep at a specific time (e.g. 10:10pm)
* Exercising regularly (or at least aiming to)
* Stopping watching TV in the middle of an episode (ends of episodes are more addicting)
* 50 minute working sessions (e.g. focusmate.com)
* Stretching
* Taking short deliberate breaks
* Using Pomodoro timers for working sessions
* Using the “Intention” Chrome extension by DK
* Keeping all notifications on my phone turned off
* Asking the people I live with to get my attention first before starting a conversation with me
* Announcing my current active goal publicly (e.g. in a chat room)
* “Hide feed” Chrome extension, also by DK
This is all in addition to what I call the "Nike strategy". i.e. "Just do it". aka pure will power. But you don't need to rely completely on the Nike strategy -- the rest of the list can be useful too!
oh yeah, sure!
2 actionable things that changed my view on this things completely:
1) Huberman lab podcast on dopamine: https://hubermanlab.com/how-to-increase-motivation-and-drive.... It's not some self help BS, all based on science, backed by publications.
TL; DR, you might be riding too high on dopamine / layering too many dopaminergic activities. You might need to lower your base dopamine level.
2) for dealing with youtube specifically, block youtube recommended. Like youtube becomes only search bar, no recommended, no follow up videos etc. Complete game-changer for me.
https://pawelurbanek.com/youtube-addiction-selfcontrol https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29485064 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pawurb
@pawurb, thank you for changing my life by unlocking youtube for me, without the addiction. I am very grateful.
I swore off TV for about ten years. Didn’t really miss it. Had watched a bunch before. Wanted to focus on other stuff so I cut it out. Same with video games.
It doesn’t sound like listening to podcasts/YouTube while working is adding anything to your life. So….don’t? Go cold turkey on it.
Pick some music instead to replace it, I find classical or brain.fm are good companions
Literally 100% of the efforts I have made to “manage” information consumption have failed. In the presence of compulsion, cold turkey is the only thing I’ve found that works.
I can now watch TV as a social activity or play Nintendo occasionally. Relationship to both changed and they aren’t compulsions as they were. That can happen with time. With a lot of time.
But right now just stop. Ask yourself why you would even multitask in this way when multitasking is known not to work? The only times I listen to podcasts while doing another activity is when it is truly mindless, like cooking or cleaning.
And maybe find new work. The space you gain from not filling your brain with chatter could let you figure out a path here
* Use the CLI for everything - reduce the amount of time you have a browser open
* An egg timer - use this every time a tedious task needs completing
* A dumb phone - small and minimal functionality, easy to forget about
* A watch - stop using your phone for checking the time
* Cook your own food - excellent use of time
* Exercise - no headphones, a gym provides background music and enough human contact to keep boredom at bay
* Long-form media - books, films, music
* Return to things you know you like - 'it is better to know one book intimately than to have read one hundred'
At the moment I'm "stepping down" from my addictions. I created a Tampermonkey script which blocks Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Coingecko (crypto charts) and porn M-F. I still have HackerNews, Twitch, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Discord fully accessible, but this is just my first couple of weeks at it. I'm going to keep tightening them down and defining smaller windows with fewer tools until I actually look forward to the limited time I have to interface with them.
There are a LOT of suggestions throughout the book and they are quite compelling. Planning your day, reflecting on your values, creating pro/con lists of what you want to achieve in life versus the benefits these tools provide, reflecting on what sort of lifestyle you need to live for personal success. Could you thrive with a fully monastic lifestyle like Neal Stephenson or Donald Knuth? Or perhaps your lifestyle would better off being cyclical on a quarterly basis? Or perhaps you can only afford to weave deep work in for hours each day, sporadically, more like a reporter or journalist. Depending on your lifestyle your strategy for committing to deep work will vary.
I'd give it a read/listen and see what you think!
In my 20s, I was an information sponge. In my 30s, I realize information is commoditized, and the signal-to-noise ratio is very low. Even after I scaled back my consumption to only 'serious' publications and podcasts, I realized they have a ton of fluff too.
So now I primarily restrict my internet use to addressing questions that I personally have. No more opening a podcast app just to see who's on what this week.
The downside of this is that I'm not as interested in broadening the scope of my knowledge as I used to be. That's the point of taking a focused approach over time, but it's also bittersweet because I am intentionally narrowing my fields of interest to the essentials; I discovered a lot of cool stuff in my 20s that I may not in my 40s.
Take a yoga class (I found that to be a huge psychological relief after years of working in startup stress-land). Take a language class. Join a dining event on Meetup.com (I'm assuming that's still a thing).
Obviously this isn't going to help you attain some more personal goal, like "read a challenging book" or "work on my so-called passion project", but that's kind of the point. You need external factors outweighing your habitual behaviors, and you'll at least end up feeling like you made some personal accomplishment even if it's not some big, personal goal.
There's also a lot of self-gaming and time management that can help. Simple tricks like "I don't want to go to the gym today, but I know I need to, so I'll just commit to driving to the gym and going inside for five minutes". Once you're there, you'll almost certainly find yourself sticking around longer, and over time this builds a healthy habit. The Pomodoro technique really helped me with focus and procrastination. "I'll just spend 25 minutes on this task with no interruptions". Next thing I know, I'm five Pomodoro cycles in and I've made a lot of progress.
> But the work is tedious enough that I am too tried in the evening to do something interesting.
Same; sounds normal.
> Have you been able to detach yourself from the constant flow of information and focus on your own stuff?
I put the xbox in the closet for while and made it just a little harder to indulge the impulse. Don't tell yourself you have to swear off podcasts or HN or whatever forever—just ask yourself if you'd be willing to try a brief but significant break, and make sure you have some ideas for what you'll replace it with.
I also rarely spend free time programming. Once in a while I'll get an idea and the motivation to do so, but I find that if I spend a significant chunk of my productive/creative energy during the day on work, I'm much happier if I then spend the rest of the day socializing, exercising, doing stuff around the house—basically anything not in front of the computer.
Habit change can be daunting, but the hardest part is often recognizing something that you want to change, and you're already there! Good luck with the rest :)
1) Not.
Once I got to a place where I wasn't interested in climbing higher (the stress/dollar isn't worth it for me), I felt a vacuum of inertia.
It's uncomfortable to not be buzzing as that's what I was used to, I associate it with progress and reward.
Without the excuse of upskilling for work, I notice that my scouring and crawling for information is associated with stress in my personal life. It's a something I do to distract myself and procrastinate from dealing with whatever stressor is in front of me.
I have now been trying to focus more on my personal emotional growth and looking for ways I can become a better person. Resisting the allure of distraction and dealing with my stressors head on is hard. I don't have an answer for how to yet, but at this stage I am aware of it and on that journey.
One thing I have come to realise is that life is desperately short and I want to strive to experience it in the best way I am wired to.
This is what worked for me:
- Every week I unsubbed a subreddit until eventually there was only one left. It was so boring I stopped visiting Reddit.
- I installed an extension for Facebook and slowly unfollowed every one.
- I stopped posting to Instagram. Eventually stopped posting stories.
- Uninstalled Facebook and Instagram from my phone.
- Don't have TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit or any apps on my phone.
- Started using https://www.beeper.com so I can still chat with people on Facebook or Instagram.
- I turned off all notifications except vital ones (mentions on slack emails)
- I turned on screentime for news, financial stuff, everything really. Put it all for only 5 minutes a day.
This all has dramatically helped.
This could be via many means from parental-lock style apps and firewall setups to uninstalling problematic apps from your phone.
I recently removed the web-browser from my phone leaving no apps on it that aren't strictly for communication (with a few exceptions such as a camera app and file manager). This has been an excellent move, and I liked it so much I tore off maps and emails too - it feels pretty good to live in the real world again. (I accept this is a pretty extreme approach but I'll try anything once)
https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/silence
It helped a lot. I spend more time outside, I read more, I watch fewer YouTube videos. I don't browse reddit as much. I check my inboxes less. I didn't really measure it, but there is an objective improvement, even in the dark days of winter.
However, it's not a magic pill. I'm here right now, am I not? I have good and bad weeks. I still reach for the internet to avoid starting a task I dread.
You feel that the consumption is shallow yet you get value from it. Your work is tedious. If your desire is to do some work-like activities after work but you feel that you don't have the mental energy, you should try some activities like physical exercise, naps, or cold showers.
https://www.betterup.com/blog/mental-fatigue
If you're just feeling guilty pleasure from the Internet variety of "watching TV" I'd say get over it. You deserve it even if you've only been productive one minute today but your job is stressful.
If you want to do a different activity but you can't stop your behavior then you are addicted. In this case you should try to change your environment so that it becomes easier to do the thing you want to do and much harder to do the activity that you want to do less. If this doesn't work you might need professional assistance but that's not something to be ashamed of
1. Quit it all entirely. 2. Wean yourself down to a lower intake. 3. Do nothing and suffer the consequences.
For myself, I still consume a lot of content, but I decided to be more picky about what content I consumed. Furthermore, I decided to start doing something with the knowledge, the results of which you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqirAnnqaCZ8lT8w7p2P...
I take a longer view to this. For example, a few years ago I read about an algorithm to calculate percentiles in real time. [0]
It literally just came up at work today. I haven't used that information but maybe two times since I read it, but it was super relevant today and saved my team potential weeks of development.
So maybe it's not so shallow.
But to your actual question, I have a similar problem. The best I can say is that deadlines help. I usually put down the HN and Youtube when I have a deadline coming up. And not just at work. I make sure my hobbies have deadlines too.
I tell people when I think something will be done, so they start bugging me about it when it doesn't get done, so that I have a "deadline". Also one of my hobbies is pixel light shows for holidays, which come with excellent natural deadlines -- it has to be done by the holiday or it's useless.
So either find an "accountability buddy" who will hold you to your self imposed deadlines, or find a hobby that has natural deadlines, like certain calendar dates, or annual conventions or contests that you need to be done by.
Yes, and to detach, I enforce little lifestyle changes. It's a species of declared war. Ideas to fight back:
1. No mobile or laptop, ever. I like big computers and I cannot lie...
2. Indulge when you do, disconnect otherwise. Use a smart phone like a phone; build apps, don't use them. Promise yourself to get out into nature at least once a week for several hours with no screens. While there, empty your mind, walk to walk, sit to sit. Do it every week.
3. Go back to doing things on paper with a pencil. So much to be said for this. I keep a piece of graph paper in my pocket all the time. Each different fold is like a different app. Best smartphone ever. Don't get me started on notebooks. Practice your handwriting.
4. Expand your hobbies and rotate through them when they start to bore you.
5. Fight, fight, fight.
6. Lose yourself in music more. Don't forget, "life without music is a mistake". Get a little boom box and some batteries and go outside to listen to music on that thing. Make information with your brain while you stare at the clouds. Do it every week like some kind of weird ritual.
But long stretches of silence are the human norm. Even in social situations. I've found when I'm literally spending all day with someone, with no media to distract, that the conversation will have long lulls in it. I think I first noticed it when I went fishing with my boyfriend. Stretches of quiet that will go on for ten minutes until one of us thought of something worth saying, then some lively talk, then quiet again. And that was okay!
Does the thought of such stretches of emptiness fill you with dread? It usually does for me. I think that's where my own information addiction comes from. It relieves that discomforting sensation. But I have come to believe such experiences are essential to mental health, from time to time. I'm ill at ease with my own thoughts.
If this sounds familiar in some way, I suggest prayer and/or meditation. Though if you want a more practical prescription, take a long walk daily without your phone, in a quiet area.
I'm not David Goggins on this one, and most people here aren't either.
I think it is essential to avoid the “raw” sources like Twitter or Google News, and instead scan what bubbles up into higher-level sources such as HN, reddit or newsletters.
I also meter my time on various projects using Toggl Track so I can monitor how I am using my time. Tracking also acts like a promise to myself that I will focus on something: e.g I start the timer to focus on X, and it acts as a subtle nudge to keep me honest and really focus on X.
Also I think meditation helps. It is not a cure all but you are literally practicing letting your brain go unstimulated for a period of time.
If your phone is your main source of distraction then put it out of reach, power it down, put it in a drawer on the other side of the house, etc.
Now that I live inside the biggest library in the world I feel alive, any and all knowledge I want is an instant away (so many times I liken it to the Matrix scene where Neo downloads new learnings and exclaims that he "knows Kung Fu")
I still look at "useless" information, but my interests in Politics, Computer Science, and to a lessor extent Economics are properly satiated.
It might be an addiction, but it's a hang of a lot better than drinking/drugs.
So, I'm working on a personal blog/platform, kind of, exactly for what your talking about. I've decided to be more productive but I haven't really settled on one idea. So, I'm building coolprojectideas.com so that I can blog(tutorials mostly) and build side projects. Plus I have like a million ideas and I wanted a place to idea vomit.
I think there are 4 phases to being successful on your own.
1. experiment publicly.
2. stumble onto something people are into
3. focus/grow that
4. repeat
Also as an experiment I deleted Twitter which I used to mindlessly scroll, put HN on no procrastination mode and stopped reading digital news except for two sites that I trust and read sporadically about two years ago. It might sound strange but I ended up feeling a lot happier on the regular as a result.
Spending some time curating what you consume or limiting the amount of time a day could also be a good idea.
I feel this. The human brain is all too enticed by learning "secret" information that feels like it gives you some sort of edge or new perspective on the world.
Even when fully restricted, LAN access is still granted to a convenient library (served up by calibre-web) of edifying, much-more-wholesome ebooks on a Raspberry Pi, self-hosted. This flexible approach always leaves something to be accessed for those who still feel the need for an "out" of some sort (instead of total denial of all internet access).
Here's part 3, where I showed the setup and operation of OpenWRT and Pihole: https://bhikkhu.ca/buddhism/video/2022/12/19/Dhamma_Talk_098...
Part 2 talked about Calibre-web the most, which is linked to there.
I've found that substantial efforts to get off of platforms that distract me can work, but it's very difficult and should very much be thought of as a hybrid problem of both your personal self, and your technological environment around you. If you're surrounded by distractions, you will find yourself distracted; however, if you simply crave distraction, blocking things will only lead to you getting distracted by the next best source of entertainment.
I still research topics for fun, but I actively have to Google for information and read wiki articles. It feels much more substantive, and I retain the information better.
The crux of the addiction is that doing is hard and consuming is easy. I can watch a YT video on homotopy type theory (I'm not a mathematician) and feel good about myself and how much I'm learning and how I'm going to use this newly found knowledge. The reality of the situation is I'm probably not learning very much and just procrastinating.
The moment you sit down and try to create, you are almost immediately slapped in the face by your own limitations and this is an unsettling feeling. You then have a reflex to escape this discomfort by opening a new tab and navigating to YouTube and sedate yourself with that sweet, sweet content - where anything is possible.
If you're an engineer or product person, I would recommend perhaps turning this problem into an opportunity. Can you solve this problem for yourself as a product or service? If you do I'd love to buy it.
For example:
- Getting rid of my smartphone and going back to a flip phone (lasted a year)
- Limiting my use of email to a few specific windows during the day (lasted a month or two)
- Requiring myself to write things down before looking them up on the Internet (lasted a month or two)
- Took the Facebook app off my phone (pretty much permanent)
- Periodically giving up Internet news for periods lasting from a couple of weeks to a month or two (works whenever I'm actively doing it)
Some of them have worked for a while, but I seem to eventually go back to the default.
The experiment I'm currently running is turning off the web browser on my iPhone. I started that about a week ago, and really like it so far. I don't have an email app on my phone (I use the Gmail web interface), so it really reduces the urge to pull out my phone and check email or look things up.
I accepted that what I loved to do was gobble information and to gain more time what I really needed to do was kill my job. I started tuning all my information gathering and consuming towards balance sheets, SEC filings, hedge fund disclosures, quarterly earnings calls, investor conferences, etc. I started making money trading stocks on the side. I got comfortable and have replaced my salary for the last 3 years with trading profits.
Maybe stock trading isn't for you, but you could just find a job or career where you feed off the constant flow of information. Make that your stuff.
1. Install App (such as Reddit) before use, delete after.
2. Scorched Earth Campaign on my Notifications settings on my smartphone
3. Stick to Hacker News, as most of it is boring irrevelant drivel these days.
4. Trained myself to recognize when I was instinctively cracking open a news website, or Social Media.
I've realized that my daily tendencies are really just repeats of some tendency from days ago, in my mind's helpless attempt to stay preoccupied. If those daily tendencies include a habit loop like "hey, this sucks, maybe crack open your phone to get out of the way of the misery", then as long as my phone is telling me to fuck right off, it operates as a reminder that I'm not interested in it.
All "bad habits" I've been able to combat has been with some mechanism where I can stop the temptation from growing in my mind. Nip it in the bud, as they say. I lost a lot of weight by killing any thoughts about snacking with the mantra "no eating anything you didn't plan to eat, ever for any reason" for example.
Thinking to myself "focus means saying no" has recently helped me close a few background-opened tabs without reading the genuinely interesting articles hiding behind them, but I have found no silver bullet. If I let myself go one night, I'm at 20 wikipedia tabs and 12 HN tabs as bedtime approaches, easy. :)
1) Cut internet to your house, or get someone to change the WiFi password if you can't do that.
2) Remove your SIM card and glue it into a dumb phone
3) Delete social media and things you find distracting (steam, instagram, etc.)
4) Organise your work tasks by priority if you haven't already. I use Kanboard for this. Otherwise the former steps will leave a void you'll fill by procrastinating.
That is essentially the only thing that worked after trying many other solutions over three years. Some people don't have to go to that extreme but... different strokes for different folks. One year later and I'm still going strong! I now rent in a co-working space, but a library was perfectly adequate before that.
It's not a matter of you choosing to use the internet for hours a day, it's a matter of society's efficiencies removing any need to do things such as:
- Build a house
- Grow crops
- Talk to your neighbors
- Etc.
and therefore your are forced to use the internet.
Can you still do the things listed? Sure. Is society set up in such a way that those things are easy and done by the vast majority of people? No.
It's like online dating. A modern person is, in a way, forced to using online dating because the alternatives are out of fashion.
Software is eating the world, which means it's eating your life.
- Don't use anything that has recommendation engine. Especially the opaque ones. I don't need to watch "what Crypto crash means" when I recently searched and watched Cricket videos!
- The only exception is Hacker News.
- If I want to watch something on YouTube, be goal oriented. What exactly am I here to watch.
- I've also cut down on streaming content. Started buying the content I wanna watch. I feel paralyzed and drowning with the array of content from each provider. And somehow they never have the content that I exactly want.
I would find a difficult project to work on. It should be hard enough that you have to put an effort to finish it without being too distracted. I think being distracted occurs when something is too easy so you procrastinate.
If you need an app then you might need a web-browser.
OK, sometimes you really need an app, then you might to not need their service at all.
OK, OK, sometimes you not only need an app but have no choice to replace the need. Then just borrow a smartphone from friends or ask them to help you.
I am going to do anything and everything to NOT have a smartphone at all because having a smartphone and not using is very similar to having a little bit of cocaine and not consuming it - well, if you know at least anything about drugs this is too unrealistic.
https://auspicacious.org/posts/2020/10/03/rehumanize-yoursel...
For HN specifically, I don't browse the site but rather subscribe to the once-weekly Hacker Newsletter; there's already more than enough commenters and voters here. This is the first comment I have made here in many years; usually I'm many days late.
The science fiction novel "The Ringworld Engineers" by Larry Niven (1980) features one Louis Wu, who at the beginning of the story has become a 'wirehead' (wireheading being "the act of directly triggering the brain's reward center by electrical stimulation of an inserted wire, for the purpose of 'short-circuiting' the brain's normal reward process and artificially inducing pleasure.") He manages it by use of a specially designed timer which requires several hours of painstaking work to reset.
I've recently been playing around with Midjourney for the cover images and that's been a excercise as well.
That may be a good kickstart, another step is reducing phone and social media exposure during week. Just uninstall those apps, me removing FB few years ago was great step in this direction (plus saving tons of battery life since it was draining it even when unused)
1. no news or HN in the morning. I could stop just here. Instead I meditate for 10-20 minutes and write using an app I built for myself (https://enso.sonnet.io). The point is to just process the previous day without editing yourself, hence the very limited UX it has.
2. I also made Sit. (https://sit.sonnet.io), with the goal of: "please share with a friend who needs to sit the fuck down or enjoy the experience yourself." It's just a timer with a more gentle snooze function, nothing special, but also an excuse to tell people to spend more time doing nothing, instead of consuming.
That's 20-30m of my morning. It's not that much I think. I am by no means an organised person and a skip those habits on my worse days. It's just so much better than letting someone put random shit in your head every morning.
3. I try to avoid chatting on HN or Twitter and meet people using my "office ours" (https://sonnet.io/posts/hi) where anyone can just call me to chat, pair program or rant. Feel free to come and say hi!
4. I doodle in bed before falling asleep. The worse my doodles are the better. I put some of them on https://potato.horse
I guess my point is that when I'm not sucked into YT it gets much easier to get stuff done. What helps me is just trying to do some of these things in a slightly shoddy way, so I don't obsess about getting them perfect.
This feels my head with something better than noise which often is just there to dull a sense of anxiety. Hope some of that will be useful.
PS I'm writing an article about a related subject at the moment, so if you wanna check it out, let me know–I'll share it later this week.
It's a search for stimulation, and underdeveloped skill of dealing with a lack of stimulation.
For me I've started to focus on just acting. Got the idea to do something? Try your best to do it without googling, youtubing, listening to pod casts. Just take the next action that seems like it might work, and pivot if it doesn't. It adds some adventure back into life too.
However, there is a paradox: If everyone just stops using unmaterial goods (information, software...), who is going to use the "stuff" you are supposed to "focus on”?
Watching/listening to tons of Youtube and podcast in the right spirit could be better that producing stuff just for the sake of doing stuff. It is all about the spirit.
It is like you finally do that “Show HN” and then nobody upvotes cause “Who needs Yet another X”. If information overload is a problem, overproduction is one too (it is even its cause in the first place).
Think of this addiction as a mood regulator. You can replace it by other type of mood regulation (sport, games, family or friends...).
Focusing on what yes is a lot better than focusing on what not. And when we figure out what we want, the rest is just something that stands in the way and easier to avoid.
Example: bored of COVID, on 1 Jan 2021 I stopped reading the ‘mainstream’ (sorry) news. The Guardian, ABC, BBC, whatever it was that I’d been looking at: stop.
It helps that I’ve never watched the TV news. So it wasn’t hard to just cut this out.
But I did not stop using Twitter or browsing HN or Reddit or whatever. Just one thing that I identified as having a definite detrimental impact.
I also did not become religious about not absorbing any news. Sometimes I overhear news. I see my partner’s iPad. The radio news might come on. That’s okay. But for two years now, I just haven’t gone to a news site and read the news.
I don’t really know what’s going on, and my life is better for it. My mind is less busy.
Since then, Sam Harris by way of his ‘Waking Up’ meditation app has convinced me of the power of thought. And perhaps because I broke one cycle, I now find it reasonably easy to break, or at least crack, others.
I listen to way less podcasts than I used to. Every spare moment there used to be an AirPod in my ear. Now, I walk to work and listen to the city. I hang the laundry out without worrying that I’m not spending those three minutes absorbing information.
I no longer use Twitter and barely use Mastodon. But I do use it.
And here I am responding to a HN comment, so I’m obviously still here. Like I say, this isn’t some religion. It’s just a nudge in the right direction. You don’t solve this overnight.
Pick one thing to start. Notice the results. ‘Waking Up’ is excellent. One month free here, no benefit to me. https://dynamic.wakingup.com/shareOpenAccess/af0843
Edit: I should’ve said by recognising this as a problem, you have already taken the first massive step. Well done.
For instance, I'm getting to know more about Blockchain, so this is a blog I usually read if I want to catch up on new things: https://www.ratherlabs.com/blog
So, blog reading is also another option to keep up-to-date.
Go for a walk. Did you see an interesting bird, insect, or plant? Take a picture or commit to memory and try to identify it when you get home.
Got any broken stuff? Look up information on how to fix it. Then fix it.
Has it been over a year since your last physical? Make an appointment with your doctor. Look up any new terminology from your visit or test results.
Seek experiences, then supplement them with related information. Emphasize quality over quantity.
With every project I have an initial reluctance to start. But once I start I usually feel compelled to finish it (these are usually woodworking projects).
Just start. Choose something realistic. Make it consistent. Even just 20 minutes in the morning or evening.
And if you abandon whatever it is - maybe "it" wasn't for you, but you probably learned something. Now do something else.
95% of the time, the answer is no. I didn't get anything out of the consumed information. As this keeps happening, I'm starting to feel much more comfortable ignoring informational content.
My work computer has DNS out of my control. So here I am. Whoops!
Sure there are tools out there to help and techniques and blockers - but ultimately there will always be pressures to consume and a multitude of opportunities to do so. So ultimately it comes down to you: if you want to sort this out, you've just got to stop.
For me it took some time to accept that the only way is giving the thoughts and emotions space.
You have made a really big step by seeing what bothers you IMO.- Website: https://webdigest.pages.dev/ - HN Post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34409691
If you are perfectly fine with that - no need to change anything. If you are not - you will find strength to change it.
It's harsh but is simple as that.
Not trying to be condescending at all - speaking from personal experience.
I recommend reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport and Essentialism by Greg McKeown.
First understand the problem and all the aspects of it. Then action will foolow
* turn off all notifications
* use greasemonkey and OS level features to limit your access
* use offline devices for consuming long-form content (e.g. books and readers)
* find other equally indulgent supplements, like movies or video games
* start a side project you can get excited about. Maybe start a blog or write some OSS
I give into it and feed it more. I can never get enough information. More information has helped me throughout my life to make better informed decisions and sometimes the information is just interesting.
I do still work on my projects though. I listen to the same music/stuff I've heard before while working.
I'm the same, I hardly follow news or social media. Never podcasts, rarely any YouTube. Just doing it frees up a lot of headspace.
But getting out in the sun and exercising truly helps to remind that news, games and computer tinkering are just distractions.
At least now, when I binge, I tend to learn something :-)
Ps. Therapy
In general I’m persuaded that the Graph Mind is not evil (https://joeldueck.com/graph-mind.html), and that FOMO and being plugged in are good, functional instincts. So I don’t really make an effort to tamp down on my consumption.
However I’ve also found that using my creativity, making things, and being able to share things I’ve made ARE crucial to how rewarding it feels to “be online” in general. (https://joeldueck.com/being-in-the-graph-mind.html)
Your consumption probably feels shallow because you don’t have anything creative to work on that feels more interesting and rewarding than whatever else you’re doing.
The only way for that to change is to force yourself to start working on something. It isn’t until you start that ideas start to come. But of course, when you’re tired, this is EXTREMELY difficult.
Here’s how I’ve been able to climb out of that hole:
1. My kids got old enough to sleep through the night.
2. Eventually my wife and I had a hard conversation about how important creativity is to me and how to make space for it in our lives. This unblocked me mentally and creatively quite a lot even though nothing materially changed for some time after. Up till then I had been silently martyring my personal time for anything that came up and never having anything left over. Having the issue out in the open and understood by those close to you is a huge relief by comparison.
3. Months before this conversation, we had another hard conversation about my work schedule. I’d gotten burned out on a huge project, which had finished, but gotten me into the habit of leaving work at 6 or 7 every day. Another case of poor boundary-setting and not being honest with myself. I stopped doing that; I now leave work at 5pm every day. Fortunately I’m in a position to be able to do that.
3. I focused (and still focus) on small, achievable projects (example https://dicewordbook.com), where I’d be able to make good progress in the one or two hours of time I have in a week where I’m both free and have energy.
3a. Nothing is too small. Anything counts. A well-written tweet counts. A handwritten page. Buying an item for a project counts.
Regarding the last one, Robin Sloan just had a newsletter (https://www.robinsloan.com/newsletters/sunshine-skyway/) where he articulates it very well:
> When you start a creative project but don’t finish, the experience drags you down. Worst of all is when you never decisively abandon the project, instead allowing it to fade into forgetfulness. The fades add up; they become a gloomy haze that whispers, you’re not the kind of person who DOES things.
> When you start and finish, by contrast — and it can be a project of any scope: a 24-hour comic, a one-page short story, truly anything — it is powerful fuel that goes straight back into the tank. When a project is finished, it exits the realm of “this is gonna be great” and becomes something you (and perhaps others) can actually evaluate. Even if that evaluation is disastrous, it is also, I will insist, thrilling and productive. It’s the pump of a piston, preparing the engine for the next one.
> Unfinished work drags and depresses; finished work redoubles and accelerates.