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This part really resonated with me: > Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increa

This part really resonated with me: > Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom. I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work and I genuinely think this might be the reason. I find myself compulsively opening twitter and tumblr and scrolling through for ages before realising that literally none of it is interesting. I'm just scrolling past brightly coloured images and auto-playing videos while completely distracted and detached from the real world. I agree with the sentiment elsewhere in these comments that the solution isn't to completely delete your accounts (I think they can have some value when used in moderation), but rather to change the way I use them. Maybe deleting the native apps and using the webapps will raise the barrier to entry high enough that I'll only use them when there's actually something I want to do on them. As for Facebook, I deleted that a few months ago and my quality of life instantly increased.

Veen 10y ago
> I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work I've overcome my Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter problems, but I can't seem to shake Hacker News.
- ythn 10y ago
  I've rationalized somehow that HN is okay because the content is relevant, insightful, etc.
- sotojuan 10y ago
  It's not impossible. I went from a hourly checker to only checking it twice a week. You just need to practice self control and realize most tech news aren't interesting or useful to know.
  - AstroJetson 10y ago
    Interested to know how long your twice a week sessions are and how far you go back in the pages? I come twice a day for 10 mins and then once a week going back to article 90. Total time for the week is just under 3 hours, but I feel I've learned something.
    - II2II 10y ago
      It may also be a question of how you use sites like HN. I've found that this site is useful for learning when I simply click on the headlines and ignore the comments. Yes, the comments are informative. On the other hand, I have found that reading comments is a behaviour that I have adopted to procratinate (rather than to gain deeper insight).
      - erichocean 10y ago
        I primarily visit HN for the comments. My usage is as follows: 1. Scan headlines for a topic I'm interested in, say, geometric algebra. 2. Rapidly scan the comments for people linking to other media (books, blog posts, libraries, etc.) that are related to geometric algebra. I get vastly superior pointers to useful material this way than any other approach I've tried, and I'm extremely good at research anyway.
    - pault 10y ago
      It's dangerous to go alone. Take this: https://news.ycombinator.com/best https://news.ycombinator.com/best
      - erichocean 10y ago
        It's hilarious that HN conflates popularity with "best". So even at HN, the most addictive content is considered to have the highest value. Seems…topical.
        striking 10y ago
        The way this usually works, at least in comment threads, is that usually upvotes end up being stronger than downvotes. So the most popular thought in the community ends up at the top of the page... and then usually, the most popular counter-argument is its highest child. It's interesting to see HN debate itself. The asymmetrical karma allocation can be a really interesting factor.
- tcrews 10y ago
  I can relate to that and part of it is probably because we don't want to be left out, we don't want to miss the latest technology that will make us obsolete, etc. 1) Reading HN all the time creates a false sense that things are moving much faster than they really are. 2) I'd suggesting reading "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" and it'll remind you your time is finite https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitive/dp/0062457713 https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitiv...
  - bogomipz 10y ago
    I couldn't help but see an irony in the Amazon description for this book considering the subject being discussed :) "In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people." That being said this looks interesting and I am going to give this a read. Thanks for the tip!
    - tcrews 10y ago
      Indeed. The book is really good in the first half. The second half is a mishmash of common sense advice, but I still found it useful.
  - sean_patel 10y ago
    Absolutely no need to buy the book. Just read his original blog post that is more or less a TLDR; version of this bloated Amazon book. It made a huge difference in my work life. Everytime I found myself in a dumb user or arrogant dev or inept manager type situation (in meetings or emails or face-2-face), I would think back to this blog post and instantly feel better. Mark Manson "THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A F_CK" (12 minute read) => https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck
    - ppgn 10y ago
      Thanks for the TLDR!
  - 10y ago
- hashtagMERKY 10y ago
  If I'm honest, I'm exactly the same: I'm on HN right now to avoid my matlab coursework. While HN doesn't feel like it's designed for distraction in the same way FB and Twitter are, it does seem to have the same effect: there's a reliable, constant stream of content that's vaguely stimulating. I think this is the combination that's so addictive. It feels as though your brain enters a lower energy state where content is being fed into it with minimum effort. Something about the lack of required energy to find and consume content seems to be what makes it powerful.
  - gurkendoktor 10y ago
    HN also has the noprocrast settings. I've set the parameters to enforce an optional habit of reading HN once a day (usually after work). It works quite well.
    - elliotec 10y ago
      How?
      - gruez 10y ago
        https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html, under noprocrast
  - hjnilsson 10y ago
    For this reason, I always end up reading HN and Reddit after work. I'm usually mentally exhausted and need half an hour or so of nothing mentally taxing to recover. I imagine other things might fill this role for different people.
- afarrell 10y ago
  I use https://freedom.to/ https://freedom.to/ to block HN on my phone and laptop when I need to.
  - rashkov 10y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation, but why is it a subscription service? Does it work like a vpn or something where they host servers to support this kind of traffic blocking?
    - Jonovono 10y ago
      Ya, that's how they are able to block websites on your phone. You go through their VPN.
  - apancik 10y ago
    What I found is that blocking completely works less than just delaying the page for a bit with something like https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waitblock/kcnjfeppclpdinikcljfjigoongebpkh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waitblock/kcnjfepp... That way I have enough time to think and question whether I really want to open the page I was about to open, and I don't disable the whole thing if I actually need to visit it.
  - douche 10y ago
    My favorite is: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/go-fucking-work/hibmkkpfegfiinilnlabbfnjcopdiiig?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/go-fucking-work/hi...
- mysterypie 10y ago
  The actual inventor of Hacker News, Paul Graham, hasn't commented for over a year: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg Considering that he was very very active on HN in the past (karma 155077), I wonder what his reasoning is to cut back?
  - fabiandesimone 10y ago
    Well, the quality of the discussions on HN have taken a dive dramatically since about a year and a half. So maybe he just doesn't feel theres much to comment these days.
    - nicky0 10y ago
      They said that a year and a half ago.
    - jabl 10y ago
      A year and a half? Hmm, I think that's about the time I've been more active on HN. Sorry about that.
    - psyc 10y ago
      Concern over the decline of HN reached a head ~5.5 years ago.
    - golergka 10y ago
      Has it? I've seen comments such as this for a few years now, but I didn't notice the decline myself.
      - aswanson 10y ago
        Some of the political arguments would -never- have been tolerated in the early years. Users and moderators would have quickly suppressed them...but they seem to have infested the forum since then.
        10y ago
- neom 10y ago
  +1 - Deleted everything else but HN is sooo good and I can trick myself into it being relevant because it's mostly about the future. :\
- djsumdog 10y ago
  I use Google/FB just for the IM. I rarely ever read status updates. But when I get frustrated on a problem or am knee deep in technical debt, you can be I'll flip over to Hacker News.
  - satysin 10y ago
    I have quit FB a few times but the reality is that FB Messenger is the main IM platform for many because it works so well going from mobile and computer. I don't use or care for any other features of Facebook. I also don't bother with Twitter anymore. I still have an account but don't ever open it. Instagram and Snapchat are rather boring for me also. So while I like social I don't really care for the media.
    - sunnyps 10y ago
      You can use FB messenger even after deactivating your FB account. But there are still things that can cause you to reactivate your account e.g. accessing two factor settings.
- Reedx 10y ago
  Same here. Although I never got pulled in by Facebook and only a little with Twitter, I did with Reddit and especially Hacker News. HN is the one where I find myself checking several times/day and I constantly have 20+ HN tabs. The pattern is something like this: 1) "Oh, interesting topic!" 2) Open in a tab 3) Read existing comments & the link (I don't always do the latter, admittedly) 4) Come back N hours later, read new comments 5) Repeat #4 over a day or two 6) Close tab unless I haven't read the link yet. If I haven't, then they tend to stick around until I do or send it off into OneTab for ultimate procrastination.
  - tedmiston 10y ago
    I have replaced (2) with Shift-Click, which is Add to Reading List on a story link in Safari. It works better to preserve attention for me. I end up not reading 90%+ of what sounded interesting from the front page on first glance.
  - craftandhustle 10y ago
    I follow a very similar pattern here on HN. One thing I've been thinking about lately is that I always read the comments first and only sometimes visit the link. The links act as topics that allow for discussion more than an end/reward in and of themselves (like on reddit for example). I'm always interested in hearing domain expertise, anecdotes, opinions, etc from the HN crowd which is, admittedly, much different than my active social circle.
    - Reedx 10y ago
      Spot on. That's a good way of looking at it - that the links act as topics. The comments are definitely the main value proposition (and addiction) for me. This was true with Slashdot as well, now that I think about it. Back in the day it had the same draw for the same reasons. Though I think HN is a better version, since it doesn't have a few editors driving it like /. did, which was often frustrating.
    - brokenmasonjars 10y ago
      I don't think I'm as addicted to HN. I use to be pretty bad with facebook and ...oh god..sigh..myspace..but I think there was a point sometime in 2009 where I just felt my use had to be curtailed. Reddit naturally replaced facebook and I was pretty addicted to that as well. Reddit was probably the most difficult to curtail mainly because as I was earning my phd I belonged to some subs on the specific topics I was studying and found the stuff being posted to be relative to what I was studying. Post-PhD and what not, I use a new account there and don't really post much. I prefer to check in later in the day along with HN to catch some of the interesting reads and read up on the responses in the comments. But usually that's only after I've taken my lunesta and am winding down for bed.
- aswanson 10y ago
  The problem with hn is that it's likely to get past your primary defenses and justify itself by telling you the information provided is useful and relevant. Also, the conversations are likely to engage you at a higher level and the many of the arguments require laying out your case like a legal team to be taken seriously.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    It is useful and relevant. However, just because something is good for you doesn't mean it can't be used as a distraction from another task.
    - themoat 10y ago
      Absolutely. There are lots of good, interesting, and useful things to spend time on, but that doesn't mean they are always the right use of my time right now.
    - aswanson 10y ago
      No argument here, hence my constaclicking.
    - m_fayer 10y ago
      That's exactly the problem. If I'm in "work mode" I'm after the thrill of tackling a meaty challenge. Then I don't procrastinate. But when I'm dealing with some tedious dependency hell/build glitches/other slow boring BS, I go looking for my intellectual thrill and before I know it, hello HN.
- igravious 10y ago
  This has been me for ever so long. Started with /. , with me to this day in the guise of HN and others. The slightest cognitive lull then muscle memory and habit brings me back to the tech news feed.
- ionwake 10y ago
  It barely works but the reason I built www.sagebump.com was not be distracted by a need to visit different social media sites. It also condenses the best to only a handful, so in theory one would only need to spend around 15 mins to get the best of ones own custom feeds, then spend the rest of the day coding. I have only posted this as I believe it is relevant otherwise let me know and I will remove this post. Thanks.
- b3b0p 10y ago
  I have the same problem. I found editing my hosts files helps. 127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com When or if I try to go to HN I get an error in my browser and instantly reminded. Then I get back to work. One time I went 6 months without visiting HN.
  - ricardobeat 10y ago
    HN offers this functionality itself. Go to your profile, enable 'noprocrast' and customize the intervals.
    - b3b0p 10y ago
      This only works if I am logged in though. Thanks for pointing it out though as I completely forgot about it.
    - mohsinr 10y ago
      Didn't know this. Thanks a ton for this. Awesome I just enabled it. Oh funny thing I found I was wrong about showdead setting there... I had assumed if I wanted myself to be declared dead/offline I could set my profile to show dead.. lol
      - behnamoh 10y ago
        > Oh funny thing I found I was wrong about showdead setting there... I had assumed if I wanted myself to be declared dead/offline I could set my profile to show dead.. lol What's its functionality?
        tlb 10y ago
        When showdead is on, you see killed comments. Mostly spam and trolls. Only recommended for moderators.
        icebraining 10y ago
        Everyone's a moderator after gaining a bit of karma, since you can update and vouch for comments. It seems to be getting better, but there's still a few people getting hellbanned by what I can only consider a mistake.
- diegoperini 10y ago
  Same here. HN is addictive, but also insanely useful in some cases which makes it hard to leave like any other mentioned site there. I literally owe many of my succesful professional decisions to researches that initally started here. I find some interesting article, read the comments first, then the article, then the comments again. In the middle of this flow, I decide whether it is worthy to save to my Pocket account. Those things in my Pocket quite often become kickstarters for things that I eventually adopt using or learning. I see no way of giving up such opportunity. Why would anyone do that? (That is a serious question that I really wish there exists a convincing answer)
  - 762236 10y ago
    You've just given a good justification for staying up to date with trade news.
  - WA 10y ago
    Have you checked if the articles in your Pocket share something, for example upvotes or number of comments? Because then you could browse the top posts only once per week. Either via Hckrnews [1] or use the curated Hacker Newsletter [2]. [1]: http://hckrnews.com/ http://hckrnews.com/ [2]: http://www.hackernewsletter.com/ http://www.hackernewsletter.com/
    - duck 10y ago
      Thanks for mentioning Hacker Newsletter! I hear from several subscribers a week (currently have almost 40k) that mention it has helped them cure/control their HN addiction. :)
      - sjayasinghe 10y ago
        I'm getting an access denied error when trying to subscribe
        duck 10y ago
        Sorry to hear that. It seems to be working fine based on the couple hundred others that have signed up this evening, so maybe try again? If that doesn't work, hit me up via email (listed in my profile) and I'll see what I can do!
- kazinator 10y ago
  Hacker News isn't social networking. Look, you have no friend list. No private message box. No feeds are pouring into your account. If you post something inane, you're punished by anonymous strangers.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Not quite. It's mostly not social media but there are similarities. There's a friends list here for sure where certain topics or people attract either similar or the same people. A small community effect happens there in the sub-threads. There's no private messaging but anyone posting an email or contact option will get messages if their posts are worthwhile. Anyone with HN Replies commenting a lot will have a pile of posts in their inbox on topics of interest. The last requirement mostly doesn't apply to decent members of the community but the sketchy ones dodge with with throwaways on a regular basis. So, a bit closer to underlying mechanics of social networking in practice than it would seem on surface. Enough to get a similar participation high. That's on top of the knowledge expansion we use to justify the other high coming from the fact that we just enjoy reading this stuff. ;)
    - nicky0 10y ago
      An I alone in never looking at usernames? I only read the content of each comment. I only look at the username to track a back-and-forth between two users and even then it's pretty much an opaque token to me. Might as well be a random string.
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Your unconscious mind will see them. I don't know how much effect that has. I did consider helping people eliminate bias by creating a HN client that replaces the names with random ones on a per-thread basis. Any replies get substituted with real name when sent to actual site. Also some filtering options.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    It is a sorta social networking though. A pull instead of push one, yes, but you do have feeds for people. Also, I recognize you and 'nickpsecurity by names already, by the very virtue of being a frequent visitor (and commenter), so it's not like totally anonymous - you get to talk to the same people over many discussion threads :).
- zilchers 10y ago
  Hacker News doesn't have the churn that means other news sites are always different when you visit them...perhaps you could call that a downside, but I actually really like that aspect.
  - astrange 10y ago
    Worryingly, every time I've checked the admin news updates threads on Reddit, users are complaining that the front page changes too slowly. It does only seem to update about once a day. The comments are seriously addictive; I wish there was a way to hide 90% of them to make it easier to stop reading.
- tlb 10y ago
  You might try setting the noprocrast flag in your profile. By default, after 20 minutes it'll enforce a 3-hour break.
- regularfry 10y ago
  Helpfully providing us with an example of survivor bias, though!
- r00fus 10y ago
  It may seem trivial, but during the US primary season I had to modify my /etc/hosts file to block several political sites for my own sanity. Yes, I can very easily `sudo vi /etc/hosts` to undo, but I never did. Helps that I could really pull it up on my iPhone if I needed, but this way I could focus when I needed to, and if I was on my mobile I was clearly doing other stuff. HN is problematic because signal/noise ratio is relatively high.
  - chaosphere2112 10y ago
    My old strategy for this involved a cronjob to update my host file every five minutes, so I could edit the file and read for a few minutes when I legitimately was waiting on something to compile, but would get yanked away from the browser black hole and back to work in a reasonable amount of time. Then I got a better job, and now I feel a lot less compulsion to sit and read the internet.
- greggman 10y ago
  I've blocked HN in my /etc/hosts on my laptop. I also recently blocked it on my phone. I can still read it in a VM on my laptop but at least I have to make a conscious decision to view it where as before I blocked them I'd literally type `n` and chrome would auto complete to `news.ycombinator.com` and I'd be 20-30 minutes in before I realized I never consciously decided to start reading. I have similar problems with the net in general. This happens to me all too often. I decide to do something like take a shower. I walk to the shower and turn it on letting it heat up. I remember something that I want to remind myself to do. I walk over to the computer to type in a reminder. Before I even start typing the reminder something on the screen distracts me. 5-15 minutes go by. I go back to the shower and just before getting in I realize I never typed the reminder. So, I walk over to the computer to type the reminder and the same thing happens again. This type of thing has happened on more than one occasion. For example I'm walking out of the house, at the door I remember something tiny I want to do on the computer (send a mail, write a reminder, ...) same things happen as above.
  - wuschel 10y ago
    To me, this loss of control looks like a very classic addiction pattern. As a suggestion, try to get in touch with a Internet/computer addiction specialist.
    - wuschel 10y ago
      Not sure why the downvotes. It was an opinion, and actually not a disinformed one due to experience in my circle of friends. I did not want to sounds paternalistic in any way.
      - greggman 10y ago
        Thank you for the concern. You might be right. I guess I assume addition means I can't go without without withdrawals but I know I can go without just fine (long vacations) etc.. so at least at the moment I just look at it as being distracted easily (like a child ;P)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sjg007 10y ago
  I'm making an AI to recommend articles so you can check it once a day or get email alerts for ones you want to comment on. Downside is you have to train it.
  - sean_patel 10y ago
    How far are you? Beta site link?
  - majewsky 10y ago
    Will it be able to do something like "send me articles about Ruby on Rails, but only if the author hates Rails"? :)
- Kronopath 10y ago
  Here's a friendly reminder that the "noprocrast" options in your profile exist. From the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html: > If you turn it on you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. You can set it to something more extreme, like maxvisit=60 minaway=720, and then it'll only allow you a one-hour session every twelve hours, which in practice usually means you can only go here once per day. Doing this turns HN from a distraction to something you have to consciously choose to visit.
  - conradfr 10y ago
    It worked for me, until I got a smartphone ;)
- timje1 10y ago
  I just simply changed my bookmarks to point to https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=280 https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=280 - which gets shaken up by a couple of new stories per day, but doesn't actually change enough to justify visiting every hour.
- spaceknarf 10y ago
  I only visit https://news.ycombinator.com/best https://news.ycombinator.com/best . The articles there don't change every time you press F5.
jdietrich 10y ago
>I agree with the sentiment elsewhere in these comments that the solution isn't to completely delete your accounts (I think they can have some value when used in moderation) If social media really is addictive, then moderation might not work. Most alcoholics aren't capable of having just one drink, most smokers aren't capable of having just one cigarette. Absolute prohibitions are cognitively much easier than moderation.
- paublyrne 10y ago
  But most people are not alcoholics, and are capable of having an occasional drink. Social media could also be like that. One reason I do not wish to close my Facebook account is for the groups and events. Facebook Timeline is not something I look at daily, but rather once or twice a week, to find upcoming events I might be interested in, particularly ones in which people I know have already expressed an interest. When being on Facebook becomes an activity in itself, then I think it becomes problematic.
  - gglover 10y ago
    Facebook has an events app that cuts timeline and profiles and pages. Deleting the main app for this totally isolated that usefulness for me.
- philipodonnell 10y ago
  You may find this article interesting that criticizes the abstinence-based approach of Alcoholics Anonymous. Research has shown that cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing and medication to control withdrawal symptoms is more effective for a large population than absolute prohibition. In fact, I wonder if there are medications that address withdrawal symptoms from social media? https://www.google.com/amp/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/386255/ https://www.google.com/amp/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/3...
  - brightball 10y ago
    I'd have to wonder how medication plus prohibition would work. AA is more than simple prohibition though. It's a program to help people come to grips with the negative impact addiction has had on their lives while helping them to work to clean up the mistakes. I think it's harder to measure the impact vs sheer statistics because people often talk about hitting rock bottom before they go to AA. Rock bottom usually means your life is at a point where it's broken, you are broken, relationships are broken and you feel like you can't ever be forgiven for what you've done. AA helps you rebuild your life. It's a whole lot more than just coping with addiction. At some point over the last couple of years AA started coming under attack for some inexplicable reason. There's a lot more to it than just statistics.
kyriakos 10y ago
There are far too many distractions online not necessarily social media. In the past it was irc and later forums. I find instant messengers particularly distracting, even if you put all on silent mode sooner or later you will want to check if you have unread messages.
- majewsky 10y ago
  cough Slack cough
amelius 10y ago
Yes. If somebody would have told us 20 years ago that we would all have a TV-set on our office desks today, we wouldn't have believed them. But the reality is that we indeed have a good equivalent of it, and with highly addictive content.
Klathmon 10y ago
Actually I've found that by setting up a blocker on my devices that I can toggle on and off at will is enough. When I start the workday, I toggle it on, and every time I try to load my social stuff (HN included) it puts up a big red warning. I found that the majority of my wasted time was because I impulsively opened a tab to somewhere during like 10 seconds of downtime while waiting for something. And having this little block in place stopped it in its tracks.
- ohbleek 10y ago
  Will you share what you're using as a blocker and on which device?
  - Klathmon 10y ago
    It's an extension for chrome that I'm using, as I tend to not have a problem with my phone during work. I'm not near my PC to be able to say which one exactly, but there are several made specifically for this kind of thing.
- kilroy123 10y ago
  Agreed. I use rescue time and it has a feature to block distracting sites. Very helpful to train yourself to stop being distracted.
markovbling 10y ago
The counter argument is that social media being designed to distract you makes it good training for your concentration. You don't need to avoid grocery stores that sell chocolate to stop getting fat, just get more disciplined.
dcposch 10y ago
> Maybe deleting the native apps and using the webapps will raise the barrier to entry high enough that I'll only use them when there's actually something I want to do on them. That's worked pretty well for me. Also check out Kill News Feed and Kill Tweet Stream to avoid distraction if you need to use eg Facebook events or Twitter DMs. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-feed/hjobfcedfgohjkaieocljfcppjbkglfd https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-feed/hjo... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-tweet-stream/dmbjkljffdbmcfbigilmnadinlnpkmkk https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-tweet-stream/... -- > Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. Absolutely. App companies like FB and Twitter are on a constant quest to eat up as much of your time as possible, in pursuit of metrics like "daily active users" (they want you there daily) and "average session time" (they want you there as long as possible). Ultimately, they're maximizing ad revenue. An hour of your time spent feed scrolling is worth about 10 cents to Facebook. https://blog.dcpos.ch/the-distraction-industrial-complex https://blog.dcpos.ch/the-distraction-industrial-complex
erichocean 10y ago
> Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. Might as well add (modern?) gaming to the list—it has the exact same property.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  ..and movies, books and TV?
  - erichocean 10y ago
    No: all of those are "single use" items, i.e. you typically only consume them once. Games and social media, OTOH, are designed for continuous consumption without end. Here, "being addictive" is basically the only thing that matters (and in fact, is the only variable companies actually measure).
    - sotojuan 10y ago
      This is why I've stuck with single player games. Aside from a summer where I spent 12 hours a day on Counter Strike, I only play single player games enough to just finish the main story (don't care much about unlockables or anything crazy). I finish them and that's it!
      - djsumdog 10y ago
        I've never actually played an MMORPG. I avoided EverQuest in University when everyone was playing it. I never got into WoW (I did have a friend who lost his virginity to a girl he met on WoW so...I guess it helps some people). I feel religiously opposed to them now when I see how involved people get into those games. I'm all okay with Quake/CounterStrike/Left4Dead type games where you shoot-em-up with a team for a bit and then it's over. Those are good breaks when you've been on a project for hours.
    - VLM 10y ago
      A problem with that model is little kids do what feels good and what feels good is watching the same TV cartoon many times. Once they're socialized into adult life they stop. I distinctly remember when little kid cartoons (tom and jerry type stuff) became boring and repetitive to me so I stopped while my kid sister was still cool with watching endlessly repeated stories. And at the other end of the age scale, my MiL watched (watches) MASH (a 70s sitcom about the Korean war, which sounds improbable but was actually hilarious due to good writers) and she never, ever laughs, quiet as a church service, but I'd LMAO at a funny line I'd never heard before, and her entire family would stare at me like I'm insane. "But don't you get it, it was hilarious, Radar compared the other guy's wife to ..." and they'd just shush me like in church. I'm not entirely sure what she's thinking when she sees episode #24 for the three hundredth time. I should ask her over the holidays... Something that both anecdotes fit is the model of not being in adult society or caring much about adult opinions.
pj_mukh 10y ago
Instead of deleting or otherwise cold-turkeying, I've been experimenting with freedom.to to manage my social media usage. It has been pretty effective so far, though the mobile experience is still somewhat lacking.
s_kilk 10y ago
> I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work and I genuinely think this might be the reason. I find myself compulsively opening twitter and tumblr and scrolling through for ages before realising that literally none of it is interesting. LeechBlock has helped me out of this habit. I'd recommend giving it a shot.
Clubber 10y ago
I was always leery of Facebook and what it did with data. After the Snowden revelations, I only used LinkedIn for career related reasons. I make sure to never post too personal, identifiable information on forums. My real name returns google results, but they are very sparse. It's crazy out there and the consequences are real. As for the premise of the article, I can see how your brain craves immediate relief from boredom. That's really what it is, right? My work is fairly interesting to me, so I've never had the overwhelming and constant desire to distract myself from it. Perhaps a few articles here and there for a mental break.
dalbasal 10y ago
Makes me think of this: http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html
- tedmiston 10y ago
  The very last sentence really resonated with me. > Sounds pretty eccentric, doesn't it? It always will when you're trying to solve problems where there are no customs yet to guide you. Maybe I can't plead Occam's razor; maybe I'm simply eccentric. But if I'm right about the acceleration of addictiveness, then this kind of lonely squirming to avoid it will increasingly be the fate of anyone who wants to get things done. We'll increasingly be defined by what we say no to.
viiralvx 10y ago
I have a legitimate question. If you delete your Facebook account, how does that affect your OAuth logins on other websites? I've been tempted to delete my Facebook account but there are unknowns about how that would play out in the social login space, so I'd be interested in your thoughts.
- clintonb 10y ago
  I can only speak for my own site. We don't receive any notifications from third-parties when accounts are closed. If you don't login again, you can use password reset with your email address to get a password for your account. Which email address depends on the primary address set at Facebook.
- lucb1e 10y ago
  I don't use OAuth ever, because: advantages: 1. log in once; be logged in everywhere 2. no password manager required because you have only one (or maybe a few) logins disadvantages (I'll just keep numbering to give it unique IDs): 3. if the provider is down, you can't login 4. the provider knows when and where you log in 5. if you decide to delete your account at the provider, you can't log in anymore 6. if the provider decides to delete your account because, say, you bought a fake Nexus (or what was the story recently?) or because you forgot to pay or just because there is a glitch on their end, you've got a problem 7. if your account gets hacked, everything got hacked. I just don't see how that tiny bit of convenience weighs up to all the issues of having a SPOF whose trustworthiness is questionable to begin with.
- hashtagMERKY 10y ago
  For some reason I never used FB for other accounts - I always used Twitter or Google, so it wasn't a problem for me. I guess if I deleted my Google account a lot of things (GitHub, Freenom, Soundcloud) would go down too.
pasbesoin 10y ago
But "social" was the whole mantra of business, a decade or two ago. Still is... "open space!" We are all going to "collaborate" endlessly into ever higher heights of achievement. "Social" was being integrated, per force, into the workforce. And... real productivity dropped, and people became stressed out. Facebook et al. aren't at odds with the contemporary corporate workplace. They just exemplify what a crap policy it is. Imagine being forced to be on Facebook 8, 10, 12 hours a day, while trying to actually accomplish something. That's what much of the contemporary workplace has become at major corporations with which I'm familiar. Am I bitter? A little... more than. Because they kept telling my my trouble concentrating in such environments was my fault. Whatever you think of social media, such workplaces have not earned the right to express any opinion on the matter.
- gaius 10y ago
  A couple of companies I have worked for have tried company social networking e.g. with Yammer or Tibbr. It doesn't work because companies are fundamentally not social. Like, am I suppose to follow my manager, and his manager, and her manager? Do I have to "like" what they say even if I know it's complete nonsense? Will it be noticed if I'm the only one that doesn't? Can I ever post an honest status, or comment on anything? Is my "friends" list being used to judge me? Does my "engagement" with this project, which was mandated by the CEO, affect my annual appraisal, because you can bet it's tracked. And it doesn't help that the software itself is universally bad, if it were ever exposed to the public internet where people had a choice to use it or not, it would sink without trace...
  - VLM 10y ago
    I suspect OP was making fun of the open office fad where interrupting my debugging flow by hearing the finance clerks arguing about workload when posting accounts receivable forms or whatever will magically make my code 100x better. Or if I stand up and read from the book of Knuth on the topic of the evils of the bubblesort, that will motivate the salespeople to sell sell sell. Or at those open offices that are as quiet as libraries used to be, the off the charts sarcasm level displays that nobody works together with anyone at all, which is kinda sad and sterile working environment. At a large company I worked at they tried discussion software but once the shine was gone, out of 150K people you'd have like 10 people who actually posted and on this web discussion board thingy and the content was all filler. Sometimes funny filler, but filler none the less. Imagine the sadness of a HN with only 10 participants.
godmodus 10y ago
i just put together a small script if you're interested! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13000254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13000254
jhobag 10y ago
try medtitation
z3t4 10y ago
randomness is very addicting, even if most stuff is not interesting, the few interesting parts keep you coming back.
rjromero 10y ago
I'm curious, what is it in the human psyche that causes us to have such a desire to stay plugged in to social media? Especially when the content we go through usually only ends up white noise to us.
- heartbreak 10y ago
  Fear of missing out, or FoMO: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out
  - gaius 10y ago
    Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
- VLM 10y ago
  All the positive reinforcement of gossip, with none of the historical negative connotations because of the new name. As with all renaming strategies, eventually the new name gets enough tarnish that its either given up, gets yet another new name. There was a pretty concerted push a few years ago to rename everything online as "viral" regardless of the original source and meaning of that name. Wasn't time yet, but soon enough "social media" will be for old people but the cool kids will continue doing the same old thing with a new name.
- ahartman00 10y ago
  It's the same reason why kids were passing notes in school instead of paying attention. It's no longer called socializing/talking with friends. Its now social media/playing with your phone. People want to feel like they are part of a group.
- sean_patel 10y ago
  It's a combination of 2 very primitive (and hence innate) human instinct - Anxiety and Pleasure. Anxiety - It's also called FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). If all our friends and family are on Facebook and we don't constantly login and read the feeds, we feel like we are "missing out" on all the fun and exicting stuff going on around us. Pleasure - Social Media feeds our ego and give us pleasure when we post pics and "updates" and then few minutes later, a RED Icon notification pops up showing that so and so liked your post, commented on it etc. There is a reason why Facebook has no DISLIKE button. Don't forget 'Zuck' is a Psychology Minor. Related Reading: "What is driving people to constantly check in with social media" => https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rewired-the-psychology-technology/201407/our-social-media-obsession https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rewired-the-psychology-...
dghughes 10y ago
Years ago I caught myself watching Entertainment Tonight this was around or a bit past the Mary Hart and John Tesh days. I caught myself with a smile but my eyes following along if that makes sense I call it the Joker smile it was terrifying to think what I had become. So I stopped watching any stupid tabloid shows outright starting that at that moment. The other day I realized that social media is essentially the same thing tabloid junk. Only now in the social media we choose to watch it we seek it out and then comment on it we become part of it.
sisedi 10y ago
I just "deactivated" Facebook and I think things are improving as well. As for twitter, I want to use it as a personal brand vehicle, that and my quora page. So while I agree that it's poison half the time, it's also a great way to engage people and discuss topics that can lead to partnerships/work in the future.
- thucydides 10y ago
  "personal brand vehicle" It's hard to find this done well. I tried this myself on Twitter for a few months and realized that, even though I wasn't saying so explicitly, it was bland pathetic performative "I'm an entrepreneur, thinker, innovator, creator, TEDx Speaker" nonsense.
elastic_church 10y ago
> As for Facebook, I deleted that a few months ago and my quality of life instantly increased. Except for the part where the addicts are confused why you aren't on facebook. But I think its becoming common enough now that you aren't so much of an aberration
hkmurakami 10y ago
Smartphones make the problem 10x worse for me. It virtually calls out to me from my left pocket to check for updates. I'm on vacation now and am experimenting with reducing my phone time dramatically (about 10 minutes a day to respond to texts). I don't carry the phone around with me at all times. It's great -- mentally liberating and actually allows me to completely space out staring off into the distant landscapes, or completely focus on reading/writing.
- majewsky 10y ago
  I'm thinking about doing the same, but I need to carry my phone with me to listen to my music at work. I'm investigating MP3 players, but the field is disappointingly sparse these days (which is to be expected since everyone listens to music on their smartphone now).
patrickdavey 10y ago
I removed social apps from my phone ages ago, and turned off notifications most places (especially slack which is massively distracting). It has helped, a bit. I do still check hn more than I should...might have to work on that one next.
perlpimp 10y ago
IMO distraction from your work where how interesting your task at hand vs immediate facebook check.I would relax and get to see what I am doing and how its interesting/fullfilling/fun/silly etc and lets the grip of immersion take over you. So to reiterate is I don't think social media is distracting but rather working lives of most office workers aren't as exciting(like friends windsurfing) and social media can be a demotivational poison at that point. I am guilty of letting social media reign over me on bad days, but on really good days it is the task at hand has control of my attention and rest of facebook/tv/movies/games noise has selfish demanting and yet weak overtones...
splintercell 10y ago
> I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work and I genuinely think this might be the reason. I find myself compulsively opening twitter and tumblr and scrolling through for ages before realising that literally none of it is interesting. I'm just scrolling past brightly coloured images and auto-playing videos while completely distracted and detached from the real world. I recently solved this problem, yes 'solved' and it worked from day one. Thanks to Cal Newport's ideas. The trick was this (YMMV, but I believe you sound exactly like me): Imagine your mind like your desk. Every morning it's empty. (Usually) You wake up you load it up with all sorts of crap to entertain yourself, social media, Reddit, hacker news etc, etc. By the time you get to work, there is no place to put work stuff on that desk. You try to put work stuff on it, but pretty much the whole desk is filled with Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook shit. So even if you make some space for the work stuff, sooner or later you focus on Tumblr again. Work stuff gets pushed out. Generally in my case, by 2PM I manage to clear out all the distracting stuff and get focused. The solution was this: BORE YOURSELF at every available opportunity. When I start my morning, I refused to pick up my phone and check out social media (usually I would take a 45 minute dump just catching up on stuff posted last night). Sure my morning chores became a bit boring, but I also became more efficient (I started getting to work sooner). Basically, by the time I get to my desk, I am so bored that the most interesting thing I can do is work. And my work (programming) is a very interesting task, it used to keep me engaged for hours and hours, it's just that Social Media defeated it. I do check social media. I check it around 2PM after my standup. That 'impulsive' desire to constantly check it is gone. I catch up on all the social media in the evening or at night (but it doesn't create that compulsive pattern anymore. End result: My productivity has gone up by 5-6 times. I have a performance enhancement story to work on and I managed to fix 6-7 bugs I found during my work, and it turns out that it was a whole team's sprint's work.
- huilee 10y ago
  Facebook's a problem, but aren't there plenty of other things online and on your phone that are just as distracting? For example, I waste at least 2 hours a day on the weekend on HN. I learn a little bit, but not as much as if I had been actively trying to learn a new technology or topic. Also on HN, I get frustrated with others' responses, so it affects me mentally as well. If anything is engineered to be addictive for those in tech, it's HN. Also, news. I can read news sites for hours. Constantly going back to the same headlines, waiting for something new. And games. I have a handful of games I'll waste time on. And deal websites. I want to save money. The only way to stop all of it? Stop using my phone and computer.
jsprogrammer 10y ago
>I agree with the sentiment elsewhere in these comments that the solution isn't to completely delete your accounts (I think they can have some value when used in moderation), but rather to change the way I use them. I would hope the solution to your problem is not for me to delete my accounts. Your problem sounds like you're following people with weak content. Follow new people and stop following (or make better) the weak.
T2_t2 10y ago
vi /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 facebook.com www.facebook.com m.facebook.com twitter.com m.twitter.com www.twitter.com I found that really helps.
mahyarm 10y ago
If that was really valued, then you wouldn't have your day cut up with meetings working in an open office either.
hisam 10y ago
My way out is the self control app on mac. I have fb, twitter and reddit blocked using that for 24hrs, then visit fb and twitter for 30 mins when the 24 hrs is done and then call the self control app again for the next 24 hrs. As for the top hackernews i subscribe to The Macro weekly newsletter, saves me from HN addiction as well.
marttt 10y ago
> Maybe deleting the native apps and using the webapps will raise the barrier to entry high enough that I'll only use them when there's actually something I want to do on them. +1. I have found that switching to the Dillo web browser (with CSS and at times even images disabled) has considerably decreased the time I spend on Facebook. There was also a command line client for FB, but iirc it's not maintained any more. So, yes, use an "ugly" browser and you're good. :-)

Veen 10y ago

> I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work I've overcome my Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter problems, but I can't seem to shake Hacker News.

ythn 10y ago
I've rationalized somehow that HN is okay because the content is relevant, insightful, etc.
sotojuan 10y ago
It's not impossible. I went from a hourly checker to only checking it twice a week. You just need to practice self control and realize most tech news aren't interesting or useful to know.
- AstroJetson 10y ago
  Interested to know how long your twice a week sessions are and how far you go back in the pages? I come twice a day for 10 mins and then once a week going back to article 90. Total time for the week is just under 3 hours, but I feel I've learned something.
  - II2II 10y ago
    It may also be a question of how you use sites like HN. I've found that this site is useful for learning when I simply click on the headlines and ignore the comments. Yes, the comments are informative. On the other hand, I have found that reading comments is a behaviour that I have adopted to procratinate (rather than to gain deeper insight).
    - erichocean 10y ago
      I primarily visit HN for the comments. My usage is as follows: 1. Scan headlines for a topic I'm interested in, say, geometric algebra. 2. Rapidly scan the comments for people linking to other media (books, blog posts, libraries, etc.) that are related to geometric algebra. I get vastly superior pointers to useful material this way than any other approach I've tried, and I'm extremely good at research anyway.
  - pault 10y ago
    It's dangerous to go alone. Take this: https://news.ycombinator.com/best https://news.ycombinator.com/best
    - erichocean 10y ago
      It's hilarious that HN conflates popularity with "best". So even at HN, the most addictive content is considered to have the highest value. Seems…topical.
      - striking 10y ago
        The way this usually works, at least in comment threads, is that usually upvotes end up being stronger than downvotes. So the most popular thought in the community ends up at the top of the page... and then usually, the most popular counter-argument is its highest child. It's interesting to see HN debate itself. The asymmetrical karma allocation can be a really interesting factor.
tcrews 10y ago
I can relate to that and part of it is probably because we don't want to be left out, we don't want to miss the latest technology that will make us obsolete, etc. 1) Reading HN all the time creates a false sense that things are moving much faster than they really are. 2) I'd suggesting reading "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" and it'll remind you your time is finite https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitive/dp/0062457713 https://www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-Not-Giving-Counterintuitiv...
- bogomipz 10y ago
  I couldn't help but see an irony in the Amazon description for this book considering the subject being discussed :) "In this generation-defining self-help guide, a superstar blogger cuts through the crap to show us how to stop trying to be "positive" all the time so that we can truly become better, happier people." That being said this looks interesting and I am going to give this a read. Thanks for the tip!
  - tcrews 10y ago
    Indeed. The book is really good in the first half. The second half is a mishmash of common sense advice, but I still found it useful.
- sean_patel 10y ago
  Absolutely no need to buy the book. Just read his original blog post that is more or less a TLDR; version of this bloated Amazon book. It made a huge difference in my work life. Everytime I found myself in a dumb user or arrogant dev or inept manager type situation (in meetings or emails or face-2-face), I would think back to this blog post and instantly feel better. Mark Manson "THE SUBTLE ART OF NOT GIVING A F_CK" (12 minute read) => https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck https://markmanson.net/not-giving-a-fuck
  - ppgn 10y ago
    Thanks for the TLDR!
- 10y ago
hashtagMERKY 10y ago
If I'm honest, I'm exactly the same: I'm on HN right now to avoid my matlab coursework. While HN doesn't feel like it's designed for distraction in the same way FB and Twitter are, it does seem to have the same effect: there's a reliable, constant stream of content that's vaguely stimulating. I think this is the combination that's so addictive. It feels as though your brain enters a lower energy state where content is being fed into it with minimum effort. Something about the lack of required energy to find and consume content seems to be what makes it powerful.
- gurkendoktor 10y ago
  HN also has the noprocrast settings. I've set the parameters to enforce an optional habit of reading HN once a day (usually after work). It works quite well.
  - elliotec 10y ago
    How?
    - gruez 10y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html, under noprocrast
- hjnilsson 10y ago
  For this reason, I always end up reading HN and Reddit after work. I'm usually mentally exhausted and need half an hour or so of nothing mentally taxing to recover. I imagine other things might fill this role for different people.
afarrell 10y ago
I use https://freedom.to/ https://freedom.to/ to block HN on my phone and laptop when I need to.
- rashkov 10y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation, but why is it a subscription service? Does it work like a vpn or something where they host servers to support this kind of traffic blocking?
  - Jonovono 10y ago
    Ya, that's how they are able to block websites on your phone. You go through their VPN.
- apancik 10y ago
  What I found is that blocking completely works less than just delaying the page for a bit with something like https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waitblock/kcnjfeppclpdinikcljfjigoongebpkh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/waitblock/kcnjfepp... That way I have enough time to think and question whether I really want to open the page I was about to open, and I don't disable the whole thing if I actually need to visit it.
- douche 10y ago
  My favorite is: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/go-fucking-work/hibmkkpfegfiinilnlabbfnjcopdiiig?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/go-fucking-work/hi...
mysterypie 10y ago
The actual inventor of Hacker News, Paul Graham, hasn't commented for over a year: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg Considering that he was very very active on HN in the past (karma 155077), I wonder what his reasoning is to cut back?
- fabiandesimone 10y ago
  Well, the quality of the discussions on HN have taken a dive dramatically since about a year and a half. So maybe he just doesn't feel theres much to comment these days.
  - nicky0 10y ago
    They said that a year and a half ago.
  - jabl 10y ago
    A year and a half? Hmm, I think that's about the time I've been more active on HN. Sorry about that.
  - psyc 10y ago
    Concern over the decline of HN reached a head ~5.5 years ago.
  - golergka 10y ago
    Has it? I've seen comments such as this for a few years now, but I didn't notice the decline myself.
    - aswanson 10y ago
      Some of the political arguments would -never- have been tolerated in the early years. Users and moderators would have quickly suppressed them...but they seem to have infested the forum since then.
      - 10y ago
neom 10y ago
+1 - Deleted everything else but HN is sooo good and I can trick myself into it being relevant because it's mostly about the future. :\
djsumdog 10y ago
I use Google/FB just for the IM. I rarely ever read status updates. But when I get frustrated on a problem or am knee deep in technical debt, you can be I'll flip over to Hacker News.
- satysin 10y ago
  I have quit FB a few times but the reality is that FB Messenger is the main IM platform for many because it works so well going from mobile and computer. I don't use or care for any other features of Facebook. I also don't bother with Twitter anymore. I still have an account but don't ever open it. Instagram and Snapchat are rather boring for me also. So while I like social I don't really care for the media.
  - sunnyps 10y ago
    You can use FB messenger even after deactivating your FB account. But there are still things that can cause you to reactivate your account e.g. accessing two factor settings.
Reedx 10y ago
Same here. Although I never got pulled in by Facebook and only a little with Twitter, I did with Reddit and especially Hacker News. HN is the one where I find myself checking several times/day and I constantly have 20+ HN tabs. The pattern is something like this: 1) "Oh, interesting topic!" 2) Open in a tab 3) Read existing comments & the link (I don't always do the latter, admittedly) 4) Come back N hours later, read new comments 5) Repeat #4 over a day or two 6) Close tab unless I haven't read the link yet. If I haven't, then they tend to stick around until I do or send it off into OneTab for ultimate procrastination.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  I have replaced (2) with Shift-Click, which is Add to Reading List on a story link in Safari. It works better to preserve attention for me. I end up not reading 90%+ of what sounded interesting from the front page on first glance.
- craftandhustle 10y ago
  I follow a very similar pattern here on HN. One thing I've been thinking about lately is that I always read the comments first and only sometimes visit the link. The links act as topics that allow for discussion more than an end/reward in and of themselves (like on reddit for example). I'm always interested in hearing domain expertise, anecdotes, opinions, etc from the HN crowd which is, admittedly, much different than my active social circle.
  - Reedx 10y ago
    Spot on. That's a good way of looking at it - that the links act as topics. The comments are definitely the main value proposition (and addiction) for me. This was true with Slashdot as well, now that I think about it. Back in the day it had the same draw for the same reasons. Though I think HN is a better version, since it doesn't have a few editors driving it like /. did, which was often frustrating.
  - brokenmasonjars 10y ago
    I don't think I'm as addicted to HN. I use to be pretty bad with facebook and ...oh god..sigh..myspace..but I think there was a point sometime in 2009 where I just felt my use had to be curtailed. Reddit naturally replaced facebook and I was pretty addicted to that as well. Reddit was probably the most difficult to curtail mainly because as I was earning my phd I belonged to some subs on the specific topics I was studying and found the stuff being posted to be relative to what I was studying. Post-PhD and what not, I use a new account there and don't really post much. I prefer to check in later in the day along with HN to catch some of the interesting reads and read up on the responses in the comments. But usually that's only after I've taken my lunesta and am winding down for bed.
aswanson 10y ago
The problem with hn is that it's likely to get past your primary defenses and justify itself by telling you the information provided is useful and relevant. Also, the conversations are likely to engage you at a higher level and the many of the arguments require laying out your case like a legal team to be taken seriously.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  It is useful and relevant. However, just because something is good for you doesn't mean it can't be used as a distraction from another task.
  - themoat 10y ago
    Absolutely. There are lots of good, interesting, and useful things to spend time on, but that doesn't mean they are always the right use of my time right now.
  - aswanson 10y ago
    No argument here, hence my constaclicking.
  - m_fayer 10y ago
    That's exactly the problem. If I'm in "work mode" I'm after the thrill of tackling a meaty challenge. Then I don't procrastinate. But when I'm dealing with some tedious dependency hell/build glitches/other slow boring BS, I go looking for my intellectual thrill and before I know it, hello HN.
igravious 10y ago
This has been me for ever so long. Started with /. , with me to this day in the guise of HN and others. The slightest cognitive lull then muscle memory and habit brings me back to the tech news feed.
ionwake 10y ago
It barely works but the reason I built www.sagebump.com was not be distracted by a need to visit different social media sites. It also condenses the best to only a handful, so in theory one would only need to spend around 15 mins to get the best of ones own custom feeds, then spend the rest of the day coding. I have only posted this as I believe it is relevant otherwise let me know and I will remove this post. Thanks.
b3b0p 10y ago
I have the same problem. I found editing my hosts files helps. 127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com When or if I try to go to HN I get an error in my browser and instantly reminded. Then I get back to work. One time I went 6 months without visiting HN.
- ricardobeat 10y ago
  HN offers this functionality itself. Go to your profile, enable 'noprocrast' and customize the intervals.
  - b3b0p 10y ago
    This only works if I am logged in though. Thanks for pointing it out though as I completely forgot about it.
  - mohsinr 10y ago
    Didn't know this. Thanks a ton for this. Awesome I just enabled it. Oh funny thing I found I was wrong about showdead setting there... I had assumed if I wanted myself to be declared dead/offline I could set my profile to show dead.. lol
    - behnamoh 10y ago
      > Oh funny thing I found I was wrong about showdead setting there... I had assumed if I wanted myself to be declared dead/offline I could set my profile to show dead.. lol What's its functionality?
      - tlb 10y ago
        When showdead is on, you see killed comments. Mostly spam and trolls. Only recommended for moderators.
        icebraining 10y ago
        Everyone's a moderator after gaining a bit of karma, since you can update and vouch for comments. It seems to be getting better, but there's still a few people getting hellbanned by what I can only consider a mistake.
diegoperini 10y ago
Same here. HN is addictive, but also insanely useful in some cases which makes it hard to leave like any other mentioned site there. I literally owe many of my succesful professional decisions to researches that initally started here. I find some interesting article, read the comments first, then the article, then the comments again. In the middle of this flow, I decide whether it is worthy to save to my Pocket account. Those things in my Pocket quite often become kickstarters for things that I eventually adopt using or learning. I see no way of giving up such opportunity. Why would anyone do that? (That is a serious question that I really wish there exists a convincing answer)
- 762236 10y ago
  You've just given a good justification for staying up to date with trade news.
- WA 10y ago
  Have you checked if the articles in your Pocket share something, for example upvotes or number of comments? Because then you could browse the top posts only once per week. Either via Hckrnews [1] or use the curated Hacker Newsletter [2]. [1]: http://hckrnews.com/ http://hckrnews.com/ [2]: http://www.hackernewsletter.com/ http://www.hackernewsletter.com/
  - duck 10y ago
    Thanks for mentioning Hacker Newsletter! I hear from several subscribers a week (currently have almost 40k) that mention it has helped them cure/control their HN addiction. :)
    - sjayasinghe 10y ago
      I'm getting an access denied error when trying to subscribe
      - duck 10y ago
        Sorry to hear that. It seems to be working fine based on the couple hundred others that have signed up this evening, so maybe try again? If that doesn't work, hit me up via email (listed in my profile) and I'll see what I can do!
kazinator 10y ago
Hacker News isn't social networking. Look, you have no friend list. No private message box. No feeds are pouring into your account. If you post something inane, you're punished by anonymous strangers.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Not quite. It's mostly not social media but there are similarities. There's a friends list here for sure where certain topics or people attract either similar or the same people. A small community effect happens there in the sub-threads. There's no private messaging but anyone posting an email or contact option will get messages if their posts are worthwhile. Anyone with HN Replies commenting a lot will have a pile of posts in their inbox on topics of interest. The last requirement mostly doesn't apply to decent members of the community but the sketchy ones dodge with with throwaways on a regular basis. So, a bit closer to underlying mechanics of social networking in practice than it would seem on surface. Enough to get a similar participation high. That's on top of the knowledge expansion we use to justify the other high coming from the fact that we just enjoy reading this stuff. ;)
  - nicky0 10y ago
    An I alone in never looking at usernames? I only read the content of each comment. I only look at the username to track a back-and-forth between two users and even then it's pretty much an opaque token to me. Might as well be a random string.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      Your unconscious mind will see them. I don't know how much effect that has. I did consider helping people eliminate bias by creating a HN client that replaces the names with random ones on a per-thread basis. Any replies get substituted with real name when sent to actual site. Also some filtering options.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  It is a sorta social networking though. A pull instead of push one, yes, but you do have feeds for people. Also, I recognize you and 'nickpsecurity by names already, by the very virtue of being a frequent visitor (and commenter), so it's not like totally anonymous - you get to talk to the same people over many discussion threads :).
zilchers 10y ago
Hacker News doesn't have the churn that means other news sites are always different when you visit them...perhaps you could call that a downside, but I actually really like that aspect.
- astrange 10y ago
  Worryingly, every time I've checked the admin news updates threads on Reddit, users are complaining that the front page changes too slowly. It does only seem to update about once a day. The comments are seriously addictive; I wish there was a way to hide 90% of them to make it easier to stop reading.
tlb 10y ago
You might try setting the noprocrast flag in your profile. By default, after 20 minutes it'll enforce a 3-hour break.
regularfry 10y ago
Helpfully providing us with an example of survivor bias, though!
r00fus 10y ago
It may seem trivial, but during the US primary season I had to modify my /etc/hosts file to block several political sites for my own sanity. Yes, I can very easily `sudo vi /etc/hosts` to undo, but I never did. Helps that I could really pull it up on my iPhone if I needed, but this way I could focus when I needed to, and if I was on my mobile I was clearly doing other stuff. HN is problematic because signal/noise ratio is relatively high.
- chaosphere2112 10y ago
  My old strategy for this involved a cronjob to update my host file every five minutes, so I could edit the file and read for a few minutes when I legitimately was waiting on something to compile, but would get yanked away from the browser black hole and back to work in a reasonable amount of time. Then I got a better job, and now I feel a lot less compulsion to sit and read the internet.
greggman 10y ago
I've blocked HN in my /etc/hosts on my laptop. I also recently blocked it on my phone. I can still read it in a VM on my laptop but at least I have to make a conscious decision to view it where as before I blocked them I'd literally type `n` and chrome would auto complete to `news.ycombinator.com` and I'd be 20-30 minutes in before I realized I never consciously decided to start reading. I have similar problems with the net in general. This happens to me all too often. I decide to do something like take a shower. I walk to the shower and turn it on letting it heat up. I remember something that I want to remind myself to do. I walk over to the computer to type in a reminder. Before I even start typing the reminder something on the screen distracts me. 5-15 minutes go by. I go back to the shower and just before getting in I realize I never typed the reminder. So, I walk over to the computer to type the reminder and the same thing happens again. This type of thing has happened on more than one occasion. For example I'm walking out of the house, at the door I remember something tiny I want to do on the computer (send a mail, write a reminder, ...) same things happen as above.
- wuschel 10y ago
  To me, this loss of control looks like a very classic addiction pattern. As a suggestion, try to get in touch with a Internet/computer addiction specialist.
  - wuschel 10y ago
    Not sure why the downvotes. It was an opinion, and actually not a disinformed one due to experience in my circle of friends. I did not want to sounds paternalistic in any way.
    - greggman 10y ago
      Thank you for the concern. You might be right. I guess I assume addition means I can't go without without withdrawals but I know I can go without just fine (long vacations) etc.. so at least at the moment I just look at it as being distracted easily (like a child ;P)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sjg007 10y ago
I'm making an AI to recommend articles so you can check it once a day or get email alerts for ones you want to comment on. Downside is you have to train it.
- sean_patel 10y ago
  How far are you? Beta site link?
- majewsky 10y ago
  Will it be able to do something like "send me articles about Ruby on Rails, but only if the author hates Rails"? :)
Kronopath 10y ago
Here's a friendly reminder that the "noprocrast" options in your profile exist. From the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html: > If you turn it on you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. You can set it to something more extreme, like maxvisit=60 minaway=720, and then it'll only allow you a one-hour session every twelve hours, which in practice usually means you can only go here once per day. Doing this turns HN from a distraction to something you have to consciously choose to visit.
- conradfr 10y ago
  It worked for me, until I got a smartphone ;)
timje1 10y ago
I just simply changed my bookmarks to point to https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=280 https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=280 - which gets shaken up by a couple of new stories per day, but doesn't actually change enough to justify visiting every hour.
spaceknarf 10y ago
I only visit https://news.ycombinator.com/best https://news.ycombinator.com/best . The articles there don't change every time you press F5.

jdietrich 10y ago

>I agree with the sentiment elsewhere in these comments that the solution isn't to completely delete your accounts (I think they can have some value when used in moderation) If social media really is addictive, then moderation might not work. Most alcoholics aren't capable of having just one drink, most smokers aren't capable of having just one cigarette. Absolute prohibitions are cognitively much easier than moderation.

paublyrne 10y ago
But most people are not alcoholics, and are capable of having an occasional drink. Social media could also be like that. One reason I do not wish to close my Facebook account is for the groups and events. Facebook Timeline is not something I look at daily, but rather once or twice a week, to find upcoming events I might be interested in, particularly ones in which people I know have already expressed an interest. When being on Facebook becomes an activity in itself, then I think it becomes problematic.
- gglover 10y ago
  Facebook has an events app that cuts timeline and profiles and pages. Deleting the main app for this totally isolated that usefulness for me.
philipodonnell 10y ago
You may find this article interesting that criticizes the abstinence-based approach of Alcoholics Anonymous. Research has shown that cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing and medication to control withdrawal symptoms is more effective for a large population than absolute prohibition. In fact, I wonder if there are medications that address withdrawal symptoms from social media? https://www.google.com/amp/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/386255/ https://www.google.com/amp/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/3...
- brightball 10y ago
  I'd have to wonder how medication plus prohibition would work. AA is more than simple prohibition though. It's a program to help people come to grips with the negative impact addiction has had on their lives while helping them to work to clean up the mistakes. I think it's harder to measure the impact vs sheer statistics because people often talk about hitting rock bottom before they go to AA. Rock bottom usually means your life is at a point where it's broken, you are broken, relationships are broken and you feel like you can't ever be forgiven for what you've done. AA helps you rebuild your life. It's a whole lot more than just coping with addiction. At some point over the last couple of years AA started coming under attack for some inexplicable reason. There's a lot more to it than just statistics.

kyriakos 10y ago

There are far too many distractions online not necessarily social media. In the past it was irc and later forums. I find instant messengers particularly distracting, even if you put all on silent mode sooner or later you will want to check if you have unread messages.

majewsky 10y ago
cough Slack cough

amelius 10y ago

Yes. If somebody would have told us 20 years ago that we would all have a TV-set on our office desks today, we wouldn't have believed them. But the reality is that we indeed have a good equivalent of it, and with highly addictive content.

Klathmon 10y ago

Actually I've found that by setting up a blocker on my devices that I can toggle on and off at will is enough. When I start the workday, I toggle it on, and every time I try to load my social stuff (HN included) it puts up a big red warning. I found that the majority of my wasted time was because I impulsively opened a tab to somewhere during like 10 seconds of downtime while waiting for something. And having this little block in place stopped it in its tracks.

ohbleek 10y ago
Will you share what you're using as a blocker and on which device?
- Klathmon 10y ago
  It's an extension for chrome that I'm using, as I tend to not have a problem with my phone during work. I'm not near my PC to be able to say which one exactly, but there are several made specifically for this kind of thing.
kilroy123 10y ago
Agreed. I use rescue time and it has a feature to block distracting sites. Very helpful to train yourself to stop being distracted.

markovbling 10y ago

The counter argument is that social media being designed to distract you makes it good training for your concentration. You don't need to avoid grocery stores that sell chocolate to stop getting fat, just get more disciplined.

dcposch 10y ago

> Maybe deleting the native apps and using the webapps will raise the barrier to entry high enough that I'll only use them when there's actually something I want to do on them. That's worked pretty well for me. Also check out Kill News Feed and Kill Tweet Stream to avoid distraction if you need to use eg Facebook events or Twitter DMs. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-feed/hjobfcedfgohjkaieocljfcppjbkglfd https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-feed/hjo... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-tweet-stream/dmbjkljffdbmcfbigilmnadinlnpkmkk https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-tweet-stream/... -- > Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. Absolutely. App companies like FB and Twitter are on a constant quest to eat up as much of your time as possible, in pursuit of metrics like "daily active users" (they want you there daily) and "average session time" (they want you there as long as possible). Ultimately, they're maximizing ad revenue. An hour of your time spent feed scrolling is worth about 10 cents to Facebook. https://blog.dcpos.ch/the-distraction-industrial-complex https://blog.dcpos.ch/the-distraction-industrial-complex

erichocean 10y ago

> Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. Might as well add (modern?) gaming to the list—it has the exact same property.

djsumdog 10y ago
..and movies, books and TV?
- erichocean 10y ago
  No: all of those are "single use" items, i.e. you typically only consume them once. Games and social media, OTOH, are designed for continuous consumption without end. Here, "being addictive" is basically the only thing that matters (and in fact, is the only variable companies actually measure).
  - sotojuan 10y ago
    This is why I've stuck with single player games. Aside from a summer where I spent 12 hours a day on Counter Strike, I only play single player games enough to just finish the main story (don't care much about unlockables or anything crazy). I finish them and that's it!
    - djsumdog 10y ago
      I've never actually played an MMORPG. I avoided EverQuest in University when everyone was playing it. I never got into WoW (I did have a friend who lost his virginity to a girl he met on WoW so...I guess it helps some people). I feel religiously opposed to them now when I see how involved people get into those games. I'm all okay with Quake/CounterStrike/Left4Dead type games where you shoot-em-up with a team for a bit and then it's over. Those are good breaks when you've been on a project for hours.
  - VLM 10y ago
    A problem with that model is little kids do what feels good and what feels good is watching the same TV cartoon many times. Once they're socialized into adult life they stop. I distinctly remember when little kid cartoons (tom and jerry type stuff) became boring and repetitive to me so I stopped while my kid sister was still cool with watching endlessly repeated stories. And at the other end of the age scale, my MiL watched (watches) MASH (a 70s sitcom about the Korean war, which sounds improbable but was actually hilarious due to good writers) and she never, ever laughs, quiet as a church service, but I'd LMAO at a funny line I'd never heard before, and her entire family would stare at me like I'm insane. "But don't you get it, it was hilarious, Radar compared the other guy's wife to ..." and they'd just shush me like in church. I'm not entirely sure what she's thinking when she sees episode #24 for the three hundredth time. I should ask her over the holidays... Something that both anecdotes fit is the model of not being in adult society or caring much about adult opinions.

pj_mukh 10y ago

Instead of deleting or otherwise cold-turkeying, I've been experimenting with freedom.to to manage my social media usage. It has been pretty effective so far, though the mobile experience is still somewhat lacking.

s_kilk 10y ago

Clubber 10y ago

I was always leery of Facebook and what it did with data. After the Snowden revelations, I only used LinkedIn for career related reasons. I make sure to never post too personal, identifiable information on forums. My real name returns google results, but they are very sparse. It's crazy out there and the consequences are real. As for the premise of the article, I can see how your brain craves immediate relief from boredom. That's really what it is, right? My work is fairly interesting to me, so I've never had the overwhelming and constant desire to distract myself from it. Perhaps a few articles here and there for a mental break.

dalbasal 10y ago

Makes me think of this: http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

tedmiston 10y ago
The very last sentence really resonated with me. > Sounds pretty eccentric, doesn't it? It always will when you're trying to solve problems where there are no customs yet to guide you. Maybe I can't plead Occam's razor; maybe I'm simply eccentric. But if I'm right about the acceleration of addictiveness, then this kind of lonely squirming to avoid it will increasingly be the fate of anyone who wants to get things done. We'll increasingly be defined by what we say no to.

viiralvx 10y ago

I have a legitimate question. If you delete your Facebook account, how does that affect your OAuth logins on other websites? I've been tempted to delete my Facebook account but there are unknowns about how that would play out in the social login space, so I'd be interested in your thoughts.

clintonb 10y ago
I can only speak for my own site. We don't receive any notifications from third-parties when accounts are closed. If you don't login again, you can use password reset with your email address to get a password for your account. Which email address depends on the primary address set at Facebook.
lucb1e 10y ago
I don't use OAuth ever, because: advantages: 1. log in once; be logged in everywhere 2. no password manager required because you have only one (or maybe a few) logins disadvantages (I'll just keep numbering to give it unique IDs): 3. if the provider is down, you can't login 4. the provider knows when and where you log in 5. if you decide to delete your account at the provider, you can't log in anymore 6. if the provider decides to delete your account because, say, you bought a fake Nexus (or what was the story recently?) or because you forgot to pay or just because there is a glitch on their end, you've got a problem 7. if your account gets hacked, everything got hacked. I just don't see how that tiny bit of convenience weighs up to all the issues of having a SPOF whose trustworthiness is questionable to begin with.
hashtagMERKY 10y ago
For some reason I never used FB for other accounts - I always used Twitter or Google, so it wasn't a problem for me. I guess if I deleted my Google account a lot of things (GitHub, Freenom, Soundcloud) would go down too.

pasbesoin 10y ago

But "social" was the whole mantra of business, a decade or two ago. Still is... "open space!" We are all going to "collaborate" endlessly into ever higher heights of achievement. "Social" was being integrated, per force, into the workforce. And... real productivity dropped, and people became stressed out. Facebook et al. aren't at odds with the contemporary corporate workplace. They just exemplify what a crap policy it is. Imagine being forced to be on Facebook 8, 10, 12 hours a day, while trying to actually accomplish something. That's what much of the contemporary workplace has become at major corporations with which I'm familiar. Am I bitter? A little... more than. Because they kept telling my my trouble concentrating in such environments was my fault. Whatever you think of social media, such workplaces have not earned the right to express any opinion on the matter.

gaius 10y ago
A couple of companies I have worked for have tried company social networking e.g. with Yammer or Tibbr. It doesn't work because companies are fundamentally not social. Like, am I suppose to follow my manager, and his manager, and her manager? Do I have to "like" what they say even if I know it's complete nonsense? Will it be noticed if I'm the only one that doesn't? Can I ever post an honest status, or comment on anything? Is my "friends" list being used to judge me? Does my "engagement" with this project, which was mandated by the CEO, affect my annual appraisal, because you can bet it's tracked. And it doesn't help that the software itself is universally bad, if it were ever exposed to the public internet where people had a choice to use it or not, it would sink without trace...
- VLM 10y ago
  I suspect OP was making fun of the open office fad where interrupting my debugging flow by hearing the finance clerks arguing about workload when posting accounts receivable forms or whatever will magically make my code 100x better. Or if I stand up and read from the book of Knuth on the topic of the evils of the bubblesort, that will motivate the salespeople to sell sell sell. Or at those open offices that are as quiet as libraries used to be, the off the charts sarcasm level displays that nobody works together with anyone at all, which is kinda sad and sterile working environment. At a large company I worked at they tried discussion software but once the shine was gone, out of 150K people you'd have like 10 people who actually posted and on this web discussion board thingy and the content was all filler. Sometimes funny filler, but filler none the less. Imagine the sadness of a HN with only 10 participants.

godmodus 10y ago

i just put together a small script if you're interested! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13000254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13000254

jhobag 10y ago

try medtitation

z3t4 10y ago

randomness is very addicting, even if most stuff is not interesting, the few interesting parts keep you coming back.

rjromero 10y ago

I'm curious, what is it in the human psyche that causes us to have such a desire to stay plugged in to social media? Especially when the content we go through usually only ends up white noise to us.

heartbreak 10y ago
Fear of missing out, or FoMO: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out
- gaius 10y ago
  Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
VLM 10y ago
All the positive reinforcement of gossip, with none of the historical negative connotations because of the new name. As with all renaming strategies, eventually the new name gets enough tarnish that its either given up, gets yet another new name. There was a pretty concerted push a few years ago to rename everything online as "viral" regardless of the original source and meaning of that name. Wasn't time yet, but soon enough "social media" will be for old people but the cool kids will continue doing the same old thing with a new name.
ahartman00 10y ago
It's the same reason why kids were passing notes in school instead of paying attention. It's no longer called socializing/talking with friends. Its now social media/playing with your phone. People want to feel like they are part of a group.
sean_patel 10y ago
It's a combination of 2 very primitive (and hence innate) human instinct - Anxiety and Pleasure. Anxiety - It's also called FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). If all our friends and family are on Facebook and we don't constantly login and read the feeds, we feel like we are "missing out" on all the fun and exicting stuff going on around us. Pleasure - Social Media feeds our ego and give us pleasure when we post pics and "updates" and then few minutes later, a RED Icon notification pops up showing that so and so liked your post, commented on it etc. There is a reason why Facebook has no DISLIKE button. Don't forget 'Zuck' is a Psychology Minor. Related Reading: "What is driving people to constantly check in with social media" => https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rewired-the-psychology-technology/201407/our-social-media-obsession https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rewired-the-psychology-...

dghughes 10y ago

Years ago I caught myself watching Entertainment Tonight this was around or a bit past the Mary Hart and John Tesh days. I caught myself with a smile but my eyes following along if that makes sense I call it the Joker smile it was terrifying to think what I had become. So I stopped watching any stupid tabloid shows outright starting that at that moment. The other day I realized that social media is essentially the same thing tabloid junk. Only now in the social media we choose to watch it we seek it out and then comment on it we become part of it.

sisedi 10y ago

I just "deactivated" Facebook and I think things are improving as well. As for twitter, I want to use it as a personal brand vehicle, that and my quora page. So while I agree that it's poison half the time, it's also a great way to engage people and discuss topics that can lead to partnerships/work in the future.

thucydides 10y ago
"personal brand vehicle" It's hard to find this done well. I tried this myself on Twitter for a few months and realized that, even though I wasn't saying so explicitly, it was bland pathetic performative "I'm an entrepreneur, thinker, innovator, creator, TEDx Speaker" nonsense.

elastic_church 10y ago

> As for Facebook, I deleted that a few months ago and my quality of life instantly increased. Except for the part where the addicts are confused why you aren't on facebook. But I think its becoming common enough now that you aren't so much of an aberration

hkmurakami 10y ago

Smartphones make the problem 10x worse for me. It virtually calls out to me from my left pocket to check for updates. I'm on vacation now and am experimenting with reducing my phone time dramatically (about 10 minutes a day to respond to texts). I don't carry the phone around with me at all times. It's great -- mentally liberating and actually allows me to completely space out staring off into the distant landscapes, or completely focus on reading/writing.

majewsky 10y ago
I'm thinking about doing the same, but I need to carry my phone with me to listen to my music at work. I'm investigating MP3 players, but the field is disappointingly sparse these days (which is to be expected since everyone listens to music on their smartphone now).

patrickdavey 10y ago

I removed social apps from my phone ages ago, and turned off notifications most places (especially slack which is massively distracting). It has helped, a bit. I do still check hn more than I should...might have to work on that one next.

perlpimp 10y ago

IMO distraction from your work where how interesting your task at hand vs immediate facebook check.I would relax and get to see what I am doing and how its interesting/fullfilling/fun/silly etc and lets the grip of immersion take over you. So to reiterate is I don't think social media is distracting but rather working lives of most office workers aren't as exciting(like friends windsurfing) and social media can be a demotivational poison at that point. I am guilty of letting social media reign over me on bad days, but on really good days it is the task at hand has control of my attention and rest of facebook/tv/movies/games noise has selfish demanting and yet weak overtones...

splintercell 10y ago

> I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work and I genuinely think this might be the reason. I find myself compulsively opening twitter and tumblr and scrolling through for ages before realising that literally none of it is interesting. I'm just scrolling past brightly coloured images and auto-playing videos while completely distracted and detached from the real world. I recently solved this problem, yes 'solved' and it worked from day one. Thanks to Cal Newport's ideas. The trick was this (YMMV, but I believe you sound exactly like me): Imagine your mind like your desk. Every morning it's empty. (Usually) You wake up you load it up with all sorts of crap to entertain yourself, social media, Reddit, hacker news etc, etc. By the time you get to work, there is no place to put work stuff on that desk. You try to put work stuff on it, but pretty much the whole desk is filled with Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook shit. So even if you make some space for the work stuff, sooner or later you focus on Tumblr again. Work stuff gets pushed out. Generally in my case, by 2PM I manage to clear out all the distracting stuff and get focused. The solution was this: BORE YOURSELF at every available opportunity. When I start my morning, I refused to pick up my phone and check out social media (usually I would take a 45 minute dump just catching up on stuff posted last night). Sure my morning chores became a bit boring, but I also became more efficient (I started getting to work sooner). Basically, by the time I get to my desk, I am so bored that the most interesting thing I can do is work. And my work (programming) is a very interesting task, it used to keep me engaged for hours and hours, it's just that Social Media defeated it. I do check social media. I check it around 2PM after my standup. That 'impulsive' desire to constantly check it is gone. I catch up on all the social media in the evening or at night (but it doesn't create that compulsive pattern anymore. End result: My productivity has gone up by 5-6 times. I have a performance enhancement story to work on and I managed to fix 6-7 bugs I found during my work, and it turns out that it was a whole team's sprint's work.

huilee 10y ago
Facebook's a problem, but aren't there plenty of other things online and on your phone that are just as distracting? For example, I waste at least 2 hours a day on the weekend on HN. I learn a little bit, but not as much as if I had been actively trying to learn a new technology or topic. Also on HN, I get frustrated with others' responses, so it affects me mentally as well. If anything is engineered to be addictive for those in tech, it's HN. Also, news. I can read news sites for hours. Constantly going back to the same headlines, waiting for something new. And games. I have a handful of games I'll waste time on. And deal websites. I want to save money. The only way to stop all of it? Stop using my phone and computer.

jsprogrammer 10y ago

>I agree with the sentiment elsewhere in these comments that the solution isn't to completely delete your accounts (I think they can have some value when used in moderation), but rather to change the way I use them. I would hope the solution to your problem is not for me to delete my accounts. Your problem sounds like you're following people with weak content. Follow new people and stop following (or make better) the weak.

T2_t2 10y ago

vi /etc/hosts 127.0.0.1 facebook.com www.facebook.com m.facebook.com twitter.com m.twitter.com www.twitter.com I found that really helps.

mahyarm 10y ago

If that was really valued, then you wouldn't have your day cut up with meetings working in an open office either.

hisam 10y ago

My way out is the self control app on mac. I have fb, twitter and reddit blocked using that for 24hrs, then visit fb and twitter for 30 mins when the 24 hrs is done and then call the self control app again for the next 24 hrs. As for the top hackernews i subscribe to The Macro weekly newsletter, saves me from HN addiction as well.

marttt 10y ago

> Maybe deleting the native apps and using the webapps will raise the barrier to entry high enough that I'll only use them when there's actually something I want to do on them. +1. I have found that switching to the Dillo web browser (with CSS and at times even images disabled) has considerably decreased the time I spend on Facebook. There was also a command line client for FB, but iirc it's not maintained any more. So, yes, use an "ugly" browser and you're good. :-)