5 ms·

These days, the ground state of most people is aimless browsing, Facebook and Twitter. Unfortunately,I am becoming most people and that has to stop now.

johnfn 16y ago
I challenge you to follow up on it. Block them. Let me give you some anecdotal background story... I realized this was happening to me a few months ago - that I was wasting more and more time just surfing Facebook or Twitter and so forth. So I started adding websites to my /etc/hosts file. (That is, my computer now blocks me from accessing these websites, unless I edit a file, and then restart). It started with Reddit - one day I read an article on Reddit that said something along the lines of "How many of you are intelligent, but waste a ton of time on the Internet?". It struck me that I was one of those people - that my potential was dwindling away because I was wasting tons of time on Reddit rather than getting interesting things done. I blocked Reddit a bit later, figuring I might unblock it given time, but I never have. After the first day or two, the instinct to open up a Reddit tab just died. I still feel an attachment to the community, and I feel kind of bad that I left, but I don't feel that I was addicted like people get addicted to drugs or so forth. Later on, I blocked some other sites that I frequent, including Facebook. I even blocked HN for a while, but I realized that I wasn't wasting nearly as much time on here as the other sites, for some reason. Perhaps it's because the rate of change of articles is small. Plus, HN has noprocrast settings, which are great. Anyway, I digress. Sure, there are disadvantages, but the advantages, and the savings in time, are huge. I know a lot of people say they don't want to leave FB because they'll lose contact with people. 2 responses: One, my last FB status says to contact me on gmail - so if anyone really wants to get in touch with me, they know how. Two, it's only blocked on my computer, so if I really want to take the effort, I can hike over to a library computer or something and respond to people. Now, the point to this comment is to convince you that you have to block these websites too. There are two things that I would want to tell myself in order convince myself that I needed to go through with it. 1. The reason I didn't want to do it - and didn't do it, for a long time - is because I always thought that I should just have enough will power to stop doing it. If you believe this, remind yourself that even though you believe this to be true, you keep coming back to Facebook every few hours or days. Why is that? It's because even if you have enough willpower 90% or 98% of the time, that small fraction when you don't is enough to open a tab to FB, but once you open a tab, you could end up wasting an hour. 2. You become more aware of how you spend your time, and you become more productive, after you stop wasting it. I used to dump hours into just surfing the web. Now I'm quite sensitive to how much time I spend, which is advantageous. Plus, most of the sites that I visit (like HN) require constant focus, so you can't really get into that vaguely unfocused mindset that allows you to waste tons of time on things like Facebook. In short - you said that it had to stop now. I challenge you to follow up on it :) Blocking FB, etc, was an awesome choice on my part. I think it will be for you as well.
- REALLYHUGENEKO 16y ago
  A rather inspiring post. I'm currently editing my hosts file.
  - johnfn 16y ago
    Thanks :) I'm glad I could make a difference. Maybe I should edit this into a blog post.
- portman 16y ago
  "edit a file, and then restart" Our of curiosity, what operating system do you use? On Windows, hosts entries take effect immediately. No need to restart.
  - johnfn 16y ago
    Ubuntu. I could be wrong though - I read it somewhere and never tested it out.
    - polynomial 16y ago
      Wait, you restart your whole system anytime you edit /etc/hosts ?
  - philwelch 16y ago
    I wrote an ad-hoc adblocker out of /etc/hosts files and shell scripts for Mac OS X. (The shell scripts just block and unblock--unblocking is necessary sometimes for a chess site I use which detects adblockers.) Usually restarting is overkill for a new hosts file to take effect--on Mac OS X `dscacheutil -flushcache` will reinstate a hosts file. Ubuntu must have a similar command.
    - noahc 16y ago
      I use the self control app on Mac OSX. http://visitsteve.com/work/selfcontrol/ http://visitsteve.com/work/selfcontrol/
raintrees 16y ago
Or becoming enticed in extremely interesting articles on HN when there is billing to be done, or problems to work through... Edit: This seemed really snarky when I reread it - I do want to state emphatically that I would REALLY miss HN. But I must confess that I have to give myself a mental shove to get back to work sometimes... And back to the point of the article, I have to keep my eyes on the path _through_ the obstacles - I think the same thing. Like my grandmother's bumper sticker "Look for the good and praise it."
- robryan 16y ago
  Or when your reading somewhat interesting articles on subjects that are well outside your current areas. As in I find myself occasionally reading things on Haskell or Scala or some other language despite not even knowing the basics of the language.

johnfn 16y ago

I challenge you to follow up on it. Block them. Let me give you some anecdotal background story... I realized this was happening to me a few months ago - that I was wasting more and more time just surfing Facebook or Twitter and so forth. So I started adding websites to my /etc/hosts file. (That is, my computer now blocks me from accessing these websites, unless I edit a file, and then restart). It started with Reddit - one day I read an article on Reddit that said something along the lines of "How many of you are intelligent, but waste a ton of time on the Internet?". It struck me that I was one of those people - that my potential was dwindling away because I was wasting tons of time on Reddit rather than getting interesting things done. I blocked Reddit a bit later, figuring I might unblock it given time, but I never have. After the first day or two, the instinct to open up a Reddit tab just died. I still feel an attachment to the community, and I feel kind of bad that I left, but I don't feel that I was addicted like people get addicted to drugs or so forth. Later on, I blocked some other sites that I frequent, including Facebook. I even blocked HN for a while, but I realized that I wasn't wasting nearly as much time on here as the other sites, for some reason. Perhaps it's because the rate of change of articles is small. Plus, HN has noprocrast settings, which are great. Anyway, I digress. Sure, there are disadvantages, but the advantages, and the savings in time, are huge. I know a lot of people say they don't want to leave FB because they'll lose contact with people. 2 responses: One, my last FB status says to contact me on gmail - so if anyone really wants to get in touch with me, they know how. Two, it's only blocked on my computer, so if I really want to take the effort, I can hike over to a library computer or something and respond to people. Now, the point to this comment is to convince you that you have to block these websites too. There are two things that I would want to tell myself in order convince myself that I needed to go through with it. 1. The reason I didn't want to do it - and didn't do it, for a long time - is because I always thought that I should just have enough will power to stop doing it. If you believe this, remind yourself that even though you believe this to be true, you keep coming back to Facebook every few hours or days. Why is that? It's because even if you have enough willpower 90% or 98% of the time, that small fraction when you don't is enough to open a tab to FB, but once you open a tab, you could end up wasting an hour. 2. You become more aware of how you spend your time, and you become more productive, after you stop wasting it. I used to dump hours into just surfing the web. Now I'm quite sensitive to how much time I spend, which is advantageous. Plus, most of the sites that I visit (like HN) require constant focus, so you can't really get into that vaguely unfocused mindset that allows you to waste tons of time on things like Facebook. In short - you said that it had to stop now. I challenge you to follow up on it :) Blocking FB, etc, was an awesome choice on my part. I think it will be for you as well.

REALLYHUGENEKO 16y ago
A rather inspiring post. I'm currently editing my hosts file.
- johnfn 16y ago
  Thanks :) I'm glad I could make a difference. Maybe I should edit this into a blog post.
portman 16y ago
"edit a file, and then restart" Our of curiosity, what operating system do you use? On Windows, hosts entries take effect immediately. No need to restart.
- johnfn 16y ago
  Ubuntu. I could be wrong though - I read it somewhere and never tested it out.
  - polynomial 16y ago
    Wait, you restart your whole system anytime you edit /etc/hosts ?
- philwelch 16y ago
  I wrote an ad-hoc adblocker out of /etc/hosts files and shell scripts for Mac OS X. (The shell scripts just block and unblock--unblocking is necessary sometimes for a chess site I use which detects adblockers.) Usually restarting is overkill for a new hosts file to take effect--on Mac OS X `dscacheutil -flushcache` will reinstate a hosts file. Ubuntu must have a similar command.
  - noahc 16y ago
    I use the self control app on Mac OSX. http://visitsteve.com/work/selfcontrol/ http://visitsteve.com/work/selfcontrol/

raintrees 16y ago

Or becoming enticed in extremely interesting articles on HN when there is billing to be done, or problems to work through... Edit: This seemed really snarky when I reread it - I do want to state emphatically that I would REALLY miss HN. But I must confess that I have to give myself a mental shove to get back to work sometimes... And back to the point of the article, I have to keep my eyes on the path _through_ the obstacles - I think the same thing. Like my grandmother's bumper sticker "Look for the good and praise it."

robryan 16y ago
Or when your reading somewhat interesting articles on subjects that are well outside your current areas. As in I find myself occasionally reading things on Haskell or Scala or some other language despite not even knowing the basics of the language.