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Addicted to Distraction
- DougN7 11y agoThis rings true for me too. If I sit down with a minute or two of spare time, out comes my phone so I can check out HN or Reddit. Never any quiet contemplation any more.
- sonabinu 11y agoThis realization came to me when I was taking a coursera class and had to keep surfing while listening to the lectures. That's when I started using the pomodoro technique and it's been helping me since!
- jfim 11y agoIt's a self-reinforcing habit too, your fingers eventually start typing the URL/start the app without thinking.
- c3534l 11y ago> rings true I see what you did there.
- marincounty 11y agoI am addicted to hn. Reddit, and FB just make me depressed. While I like hn, I can't spend more than 30 minutes on it. It then starts to depress me. Maybe I'm depressed?
- marcosdumay 11y agoTell me. I've just sit in front of my computer saying "well, I'll write those test cases for my side project". Yet, I'm here, replying to you.
- cobweb 11y agoQuiet contemplation. That thing you used to do when you got an early night, that may have helped your brain get into order, or possibly aroused the senses, and led to panic. My partner monopolises the main living space, and always switches the TV on. She's out with the tablet and surfing in seconds. I don't have a mobile internet device at hand. So it can feel lonely and desolate. Once I also pulled out my laptop alongside the telly. So do get it. It does feel rude if one sided. Especially when you are left watching some crap that you wouldn't put on yourself. I could fetch my book, but I find it difficult to read while the telly is on. One day I might challenge her to a conversation. I enjoy space and silence. In the garden I can just stand and listen for an hour or so at a time. I'm almost completely vacant. It feels good, but I'm not sure if it is good for the brain.
- rl3 11y agoThis type of distraction is just another form of procrastination, which in turn is a product of any number of underlying psychological issues. Anxiety and depression come to mind.
- vermooten 11y agoThe CBT approach would have it that, for some ope to fix the symptomatic behaviours of the depression would go some way to managing the depression itself. I'm currently testing that.
- TillE 11y agoI'd be willing to bet that a significant majority of "internet addiction" (are people still talking about that ?) or "game addiction" is actually just a symptom of depression.
- such_a_casual 11y agoCouldn't you say the same about a lot of "drug addiction" as well?
- TeMPOraL 11y agoDrug addiction has a strong chemical dependence compoment, but I wouldn't be surprised if depression was what led people to get addicted in the first place.
- jacinda 11y agoThe Rat Park studies strongly suggest that this is true. Rats studied in conditions where they have every reason to be happy did not suffer from drug addiction, even when drugs were made available to them. Rats kept in cages isolated from each other (rats are very social creatures) became seriously addicted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park http://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/rat-park/148-addiction-the-view-from-rat-park http://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/rat-park/14... http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat-park/ http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comics_en/rat-park/
- ThomPete 11y agoI haven't really gotten my thoughts clear on this so excuse me for the probably unclear formulation. I recently realized that one of the unfortunate consequences of this is the way many in my generation (I'm 41) brings up our kids. Instead of teaching them one thing in depth we are forcing them through a million different subjects way before they even turn 10. It's not unusual in my circles that kids are both playing football, taking piano lessons, learning french on top of their school and homework. I believe this is fundamentally the wrong approach as it only teaches kids to skate over a subject rather than master one in full. The difference is huge because learning to master something takes you through several ups and downs which you don't learn if you only have to learn something on an superficial level. So you spend a lot of time becoming good at only the initial challenges of a subject not the much deeper levels of mastering something. Ironically learning to master something is going to make you much better at learning to master more than one thing. Where as learning a lot of things aren't going to teach you how to master any of them. So I am now trying let my kids just find their ways instead of forcing them into all sorts of subjects.
- tdkl 11y ago> It's not unusual in my circles that kids are both playing football, taking piano lessons, learning french on top of their school and homework. I believe this is fundamentally the wrong approach as it only teaches kids to skate over a subject rather than master one in full. True, although on the other hand that's the best time to experiment what you'll potentially like and perhaps even base your interests and/or career on.
- ThomPete 11y agoYes but this is something I believe kids are perfectly fine figuring out themselves rather than parents sending them to all the things they wished they had learned when they were kids :)
- hashkb 11y ago...and then becoming insecure about our talents when we become moderately successful.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- jfim 11y agoFor gmail, there's BatchedInbox[0], which makes your mail delivery happen once or twice a day, which breaks the "did I get new mail?" feedback loop. It worked well for me. [0] https://www.batchedinbox.com/ https://www.batchedinbox.com/
- eterm 11y agoThose gmail permissions: Batched Inbox would like to: + View and manage your mail Sorry, but any solution which involves giving a third party access to all mail is not a solution.
- ForHackernews 11y ago> Using Gmail Complaining about > any solution which involves giving a third party access to all mail
- danellis 11y agoAh, but Google isn't a third party; it's practically an extension of the first party!
- jfim 11y agoWell, if you want to code it yourself, you can replicate it rather easily by: - Creating a filter that puts all your mail in a label, skipping the inbox - Write a cronjob that takes all the mail with that label and labels it back into the inbox That's probably active procrastination, though. :) Edit: formatting.
- Scarbutt 11y agoI just tried it and wouldn't call it stronger, you can bypass it by just changing your computer time, amusing indeed.
- thrwy111 11y agoThis isn't a real addiction. And it trivializes what addicts actually go through. This is demonstrated being that it was possible for the author to replace the "higher power" of the 12 steps with someone to unplug the Internet router. If you're actually addicted to something, you feel so trapped and subservient to your addiction that you concoct the idea of a higher power simply because you have no power left within yourself to fight. Addiction is so bleak and hopeless that death seems like a decent alternative to living without your addiction.
- jfim 11y ago> This isn't a real addiction. And it trivializes what addicts actually go through. This is demonstrated being that it was possible for the author to replace the "higher power" of the 12 steps with someone to unplug the Internet router. Just like it is possible to fix alcoholism by having someone remove alcohol from the house and gambling by having someone prevent the gambler from walking into a casino. If using the internet in a harmful way (eg. spending six hours a day reloading 9gag, FB, slashdot or whatever up to the point where it hinders your normal activities), how is it different from alcoholism or gambling?
- thrwy111 11y agoI don't think you can fix gambling or alcohol addiction like that. I'm not saying someone can't be addicted to the Internet. I'm just saying this author's story is not a story of addiction. There is such a mental block with addiction. It's like trying to fix an airplane engine while piloting it. And you're trapped in an infinite loop. It's exhausting. If all it takes is someone to unplug your router, or dump out the alcohol, you are not addicted.
- codemac 11y ago> Just like it is possible to fix alcoholism by having someone remove alcohol from the house It's different because alcohol withdrawal can kill you. It can give people seizures and hospitalize them for weeks. Telling someone to "remove alcohol from the house" as a cure is so left field for me it feels like you're missing the very real medical struggle long-term alcoholics go through. I'm livid but I know this should be a civil conversation. I haven't seen someone's facebook+9gag habits tear a community, family, or person apart. Maybe that's my ignorance.
- fowkswe 11y agoIn the middle of a 'compulsion loop' I wound up on HN, leading me to read this article, only to stop halfway through to come back and check the comments - and post this one. See ya. Off to Google Analytics.
- hashkb 11y agoOh man... how awful. Great article. Now... why did I take out my phone?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- scep12 11y agoI recently wrote a chrome extension that helps me curb my "compulsion loop." It's pretty simple; each time the browser loads a website that has potentially distracting content (think: twitter, FB, reddit, hacker news, rotoworld, etc) that I tend to over-visit in search of new tidbits, the extension keeps track of my visit and the text content of the page. The next time I visit, I do a text comparison that checks how similar the content is to my last visit. If there's too much overlap, the browser redirects. There's a profound difference in using this approach versus existing distraction-detractors. When I see the browser redirect away while trying to load reddit.com, my rational side takes over and reminds me that I should be done with tidbit-seeking. I ought to clean it up and put it on github; I'm sure someone else might find it useful.
- g_delgado14 11y agoYeah I'd like to check it out!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- gcek9 11y agoYou should. I've had the same problem - subconsciously re-loading a site I've recently visited, realizing there is little/no new content on the front page, getting frustrated, and diving deeper in the hope of finding new tidbits. By the time the cycle is done I've found nothing of value and wasted 3x the time normally spent.
- pcunite 11y agox = 1hr
- Ocerge 11y agoThat's such an awesome idea. I'd love to check it out.
- LifeQuestioner 11y ago
- raldi 11y agoWhy does the author consider it a perfectly healthy accomplishment to spend a monthlong vacation reading a dozen books, but dangerous and unhealthy to check his email more than thrice a day or read redditlike sites?
- cobweb 11y agoI can easily go a bit tab mad. And noticed this in myself ages ago. At work I vowed not to look at sites that weren't work related. And instead checked personal email/sites before or after work. I was more organised. I even used to sit on the train and plan my days work. And it paid off. These days I'm more and more distracted, have issues concentrating, and I don't have a smartphone, which I'd probably gravitate towards. It is in part, why I don't own one. I also have congnitive difficulty reading from the screen, so if I stumble across something I think is worth reading, I send it to my e-reader. There I have a ton of unread articles. But I do tend to do one at a time, and it sticks better. The young ones seem to be able to happily multitask, they sit next to each other on the bus or in cafes talking and surfing simultaneously. I find multi-tasking increasingly difficult, they don't, what gives?
- stygiansonic 11y agoMy take on multitasking is that it mostly doesn't work, at least not for cognitive activities. But, I guess it depends on your definition of "multitasking" and "working/not working". There are, perhaps, some activities which most people can multitask at - such as, driving a routine route while carrying on a light conversation. (But even that might distract from one or the other) But try something more complex - such as even trying to carry on a simple conversation while driving in an unfamiliar area or when you're lost - and quickly you'll find you can only focus on one thing at a time. So, my sweeping generalization of people surfing and talking simultaneously is that if the two activities are very unrelated, (different topics) it's likely far less attention is being paid to each than the level of attention you're giving to reading your single article.
- collyw 11y agoI am pretty sure in the past that it has been shown that talking on a moble increases the chance of crashing a car. It was a while ago that I read it so I can't provide a reference.
- kordless 11y agoAnyone who thinks they are a good multi-tasker is disillusioned. Multi-tasking requires context loading and unloading, which always seem to have some challenges associated with it that are less than obvious. Don't sweat it. Being able to focus on one thing is a gift!
- crudbug 11y agoI use selfcontrol [1] everyday for this. [1] https://selfcontrolapp.com https://selfcontrolapp.com
- pilatesfordogs 11y agoSoftware isn't just eating the world, it's eating our lives. I think that this is going to become much worse the more intrusive the "IOT" becomes. Being able to manage our attention will become as significant as managing our health.
- kordless 11y agoBefore there was Addicted to Distraction, there was Hooked on Gadgets: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html
- whyenot 11y agoI realize for many people this is not going to be an option, but what has worked for me is to do more work "offline." Write drafts with pen and paper, instead of composing on a screen, if I have something I want to read, I print it out.
- intrasight 11y agoAnd here I am being distracted by Hacker News. But I am ok with getting distracted once an hour by checking what is new on Hacker News. During working hours, I've blocked all sites that I find distracting - except for Hacker News. NYTimes is blocked so can't go read the referenced article. With so many sites self-blocked, I end up getting the TL;DR summary here on HN, and find that works most of the time. The discussions here are generally of high quality! Of course this is no solution for self-distraction. I can still Google some topic of interest. But that is a more active process as opposed to a "reflex" distraction.
- maneesh 11y agoI used to suffer from massive unproductivity. So I began to run experiments. Among them, I realized that accountability and a human being next to me aided in productivity. So I did what any normal person would do. I hired someone to slap me in the face. http://hackthesystem.com/blog/why-i-hired-a-girl-on-craigslist-to-slap-me-in-the-face-and-why-it-quadrupled-my-productivity/ http://hackthesystem.com/blog/why-i-hired-a-girl-on-craigsli... The results were mindblowing. My productivity quadrupled. I got Important (but non-urgent) work done fluidly, and easily. I posted the article online and it went viral. Many people thought it was crazy, but others understood. So I decided to take it a step further. What if the world could improve as well as I did? Unfortunately, slapping doesn't scale, so I tried to build the next best thing. Pavlok --- the wearable device that uses vibrations to reward good behavior, and a mild electric stimulus to reduce bad behaviors. My first app was a Chrome extension that allows me to choose which sites I want to blacklist. If I spend 5 minutes on Facebook, it will beep my wrist. If I spend 30 mins on Facebook, I receive the electric zap --- and the longer I stay on line, the more powerful the zap becomes. People use it in hundreds of ways. To beep loudly when they enter facebook. To vibrate if they bite their nails. To send a zap to wake them up (shocking alarm clock --- it just works). It's actually pretty freaking amazing to see what our users are doing with it. Anyway, I thought you all might be interested --- what do you think? Could you see yourselves using the chrome extension to train away your bad habits? http://buy.pavlok.com http://buy.pavlok.com is the site to check it out. or on Amazon: http://amazon.com/Pavlok-1/dp/B011U2QYO2 http://amazon.com/Pavlok-1/dp/B011U2QYO2
- kzhahou 11y agoHacker News is part of the problem! This comment page is pure meta. I'm now going to close the six other HN articles + comment pages I just opened before this one, and just not read them. See you all in a couple of days!
- ThomPete 11y agoDon't dissmiss the act of learning through conversation. Keep in mind that the likelihood of you being surrounded by likeminded people is pretty slim. HN allow you to discuss and explore some more eccentric thoughts you won't be able to necessarily find an audience of places like Facebook.
- FrankenPC 11y agoReminds me of when the BlackBerry inserted itself into the corporate consciousness. Meetings went from being a focused affair to this round table of people staring incessantly down at their laps typing away as if their lives depended on it. In a way, they did. It was expected that all of us IT professionals would become addicted to the device, reachable 24/7. It's no wonder the entire internet is driven by that same mentality.
- MTmind 11y agoA simple solution to this, if your using an iOS or OS X device, is to use the network link conditioner. Using this tool, you can decrease the bandwidth going into your computer, increase the number of packets being dropped, and increase the delays while doing DNS lookups. The effect of this is you may bring your network speed down enough that your mind can keep up with the torrent of things trying to distract it. By imposing on yourself the network connectivity of 10 years ago, you may regain the focus you had back then as well. The difference is very noticeable, you'll realize right away that your doing something unessential when you're waiting +10 seconds for it to download. Food for thought.
- fretn 11y agothis is a book that has a lot of interesting information about this topic, written in human understandable language (backed with science) https://sites.google.com/site/liberateyourbrain/home/buy-brainchains https://sites.google.com/site/liberateyourbrain/home/buy-bra...
- sureshn 11y agoYoga and Meditation are key to increased concentration levels and intrinsic calmness, fragmented attention is one problem many face but fail to address !