6 ms·

Here's how I (try to) keep the Internet-based distractions to a minimum: * Uninstall twitter, facebook and other social apps from your phone; only use the comp

by senko 9y ago

Here's how I (try to) keep the Internet-based distractions to a minimum: * Uninstall twitter, facebook and other social apps from your phone; only use the computer (or other device that's not constantly in your pocket). * Even on your computer, log out of twitter, facebook and others. Only log in when you want to look into something (eg. check the social events, send a message), and use private/incognito mode for this; use 2FA - besides being good security practice, it's an extra hurdle so you won't default to "quickly check" the sites when your mental energy is low. * When you do use tw/fb/..., unfollow/block/opt out of all the meme/cute/funny stuff (at least n my fb feed, there's basically 10 sites that'd constantly crop up - blocking posts by all of these greatly increased Signal/Noise ratio on FB); * Have a reading list ready. I use iBooks on my iPhone to load up interesting articles, but you can use whichever method you prefer. The goal is to have something interesting/worthwhile to read available for the moments when you do want to look at your phone and/or kill some time (eg when in a long queue or waiting for a train). This something shouldn't require special focus or mental energy/capacity. * Develop heuristics to ignore content that you know is junk but that tends to drag you in. I suspect this is slightly different for anyone, mine is: anything cute, funny, outrageous, sad or is a list of things. I am aware this potentially cuts out some genuinely worthwhile stuff and I'm okay with it. Considering my attention & time is finite and the Internet is (for all purposes) not, I'd rather have false positives than false negatives. * I also have a high bar for what's newsworthy for me: anything that personally affects me (meaning I have to change my intentions or react in some way), and stuff that'll still be considered newsworthy in a month. Anything else gets ignored, no matter the medium. Again I'm okay with false positives. Also, since my friends are colleagues typically don't have the same approach, if I miss anything important (or really interesting), I'll probably hear it on the grapevine. Couldn't be happier.

tammer 9y ago
I follow a similar protocol & find it very helpful. The missing link for me was the events function of Facebook, which I find endlessly useful. Luckily FB now has a standalone app specifically for this, Facebook Local. Its no-nonsense, no ads, just relevant events. Plus, the feed it gives you actually ends!
- graeme 9y ago
  Oh wow, dod not know about facebook local. Does it let you manage events you’ve been invited to, amd host events? I could avoid facebook entirely with that. Friend’s birthdays would be tye only thing i’d miss.
  - asavadatti 9y ago
    I believe there is a way to link your FB friend's birthdays to your google calendar.
    - graeme 9y ago
      True. Though then my calendar becomes terribly cluttered. (I care about maybe 20% of the birthdays on my list) I think the birthdays only counted as "costless" when I was already checking and filtering through Facebook notifications, but that was an illusion.
jacobra2 9y ago
I've done something similar with my Android phone, and it's worked out decently. One problem I encountered though - I spent a lot of time on Reddit, and would check it subconsciously, so I deleted it. Now I find that I'm using Google Now, the left swipe off the home screen. In effect I took the attention from Reddit and gave it to Google. I'm not convinced that was a worthwhile trade. Given I can't delete Google Now, maybe having Reddit on my phone was serving a purpose I didn't realize. Maybe there's an app that will minimize the subconscious attention blast radius. Something that I'll still check but will minimize the time I spend there.
- dhd415 9y ago
  FWIW, you can disable Google Now on your phone. On the more recent versions of Android, you long-press an empty spot on your home screen, select "Settings", and then locate and disable the "Your feed" item.
  - jacobra2 9y ago
    Amazing. Disabled. Didn't know that, thank you!
  - djsavvy 9y ago
    If only that actually did anything on my phone.
  - pvdebbe 9y ago
    Moto G5, Android 7.0, the long press on home screen -> settings has no other settings but one. But I did locate the settings by going through Google Now's settings. Thanks for pointing this out!
  - TimJRobinson 9y ago
    This doesn't seem to work any more :( I'm trying to keep notifications of my calendar and flights but disable all the distractions like "Stories to read", and apparently Google has removed the ability to disable it... (https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/140288/how-do-i-turn-off-stories-to-read-in-google-now?newreg=1f949e170e874561a6c706ab3dfeb1c5 https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/140288/how-do-i-...)
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Uninstall twitter, facebook and other social apps from your phone A middle ground is turning off badges and other notifications. Switching to a paper newspaper also helps.
etrautmann 9y ago
This list is EXACTLY what I do and I'm pretty happy with it.
endgame 9y ago
One thing that has helped me: beeminder (I don't work for them). I have a goal that tracks reddit(etc)-free days, of which I need to do several each week or they take some of my money. This has been pretty effective, in that I've been doing more than strictly required and coming back here to write this feels weird.
maksimum 9y ago
Love the 2FA idea. Do you know of an app/browser extension that lets you bookmark arbitrary HTML pages, and keeps track of how far down you've scrolled; maybe let you write notes? Or maybe one that converts an arbitrary page to PDF, and stores it locally for you?
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  The combination of OneNote and Edge's Web Notes gets you most of those features. There's also relatively "ancient" apps like Pocket (which Firefox presents out of the box these days) and Instapaper.
gkya 9y ago
Solid advice. I'll add to this: - Do not follow newspapers RSS feeds. They bombard you with news that are not relevant at all. Their newsletters are better. I get all my news from daily or weekly newsletters. I would like to get weekly digests only, but I havent found a good one from a newspaper I like. - Actually quit Facebook. It's pure evil. I was so shocked to hear how it showed you your old, forgotten photos/memories from past just to engage you. If you can't engage with people through messaging (including whatsapp) or phone calls, they are not that close friends. - On reddit, avoid controversial subreddits, especially on things relevant to you. As a Turkish citizen I avoid /r/Turkey because it's idiots idioting on things that directly affect me, and the urge to rant and answer is hard to suppress. Nowadays I usually only comment on /r/emacs and HN, and avoid all the controversy everywhere. Also, I push all the funny, interesting etc. stuff on reddit into multis, and subscribe only to some low traffic subs where I do not thing my participation would be a loss of time (which is basically /r/emacs, /r/istanbul, and a couple others). - If you use HN often, subscribe to the front page RSS and to the digest [1]. This way you won't ever miss the important stuff but have less need to actually check the frontpage. - Disable email notifications. Don't let the sender dictate you when you'll interact with them, decide it yourself. The last time I had an email notification was quite some years ago. - Declutter your email inbox. Try to make sure that most of what's in there is what you'd just immediately read. Try to redirect the rest in relevant mailboxes. Your email setup should allow you to dispatch incoming messages on headers and body content. Especially useful are List-ID, Subject and From headers. [1]: https://hndigest.com/ https://hndigest.com/
- agumonkey 9y ago
  it's funny, your comment makes me think.. the world has too many moving parts to follow them all, so a carefully curated summary of events would be interesting. annnnd that's the press (which got injured by the stream fad.. irony)
  - gkya 9y ago
    I dream about an AI service that can curate me a newsletter given some sources (RSS, Twitter feeds, youtube feeds, whatnot) and send it to me regularly on a given interval. It would avoid duplicates and essentially identical stuff [1], weigh and choose the most interesting ones, and present them to me in a nice, readable format. Ironically I would not use such service if it existed because it would be very anti-privacy. [1] Twitter is weird. I only follow ~15 accounts for events and (want to) use twitter only for that, but the way people usually post updates about events is to repeatedly post what is essentially the same tweet, and even with that many accounts followed it becomes a mess. I end up never checking it because it's basically a puzzle.
SirFatty 9y ago
Excellent advice!
gorbachev 9y ago
I used to run my browsers with an addon that disabled user comments. I whitelisted a few sites where the Internet idiots didn't visit. It worked absolutely beautifully and forced me to avoid the worst of Internet very effectively, even during my weak moments. It cut down so much of the frustration I had about consuming content on the Internet. I had to uninstall it, because the addon developer stopped maintaining it and the performance bugs made browsing bigger sites much too slow.
keypress 9y ago
When internet connections were pay per minute, I'd think about what I wanted to look up before I connected. Then I'd go online and used Opera to follow many links to different tabs. I'd have a flurry, then disconnect and read. This worked surprisingly well. I find I can't really read/comprehend from an LED screen well at all these days. I got into the habit of sending items of interest to my e-reader. Any long form article goes there. Sadly I sat on my e-reader, and my system went to pot. I've just stacked up my reading list. I have no idea what is there. Going back to scrappy reading, feels like a real time and brain drain.
Terr_ 9y ago
> Even on your computer, log out of twitter, facebook and others. Only log in when you want to look into something Even without going as far as "incognito mode for everything", this can dovetail well with a privacy-conscious cookie or browser-profile policy.
austinjp 9y ago
> Even on your computer, log out of twitter, facebook and others. Only log in when you want to look into something... use private/incognito mode... use 2FA... it's an extra hurdle so you won't default to "quickly check" Absolutely. Latest Firefox helps here. There's an option to use private by default for all windows. This means when you close it (another habit to develop perhaps) you don't stay logged in to these social media sites.
austinjp 9y ago
> ignore content that you know is junk but that tends to drag you in. I suspect this is slightly different for anyone, mine is: anything cute... I've actually started deliberately looking at the cute stuff. It's a welcome antidote to the outrage apparent in other threads/sites. I have enough natural spleen already without needing to top it up.

by senko 9y ago

tammer 9y ago

I follow a similar protocol & find it very helpful. The missing link for me was the events function of Facebook, which I find endlessly useful. Luckily FB now has a standalone app specifically for this, Facebook Local. Its no-nonsense, no ads, just relevant events. Plus, the feed it gives you actually ends!

graeme 9y ago
Oh wow, dod not know about facebook local. Does it let you manage events you’ve been invited to, amd host events? I could avoid facebook entirely with that. Friend’s birthdays would be tye only thing i’d miss.
- asavadatti 9y ago
  I believe there is a way to link your FB friend's birthdays to your google calendar.
  - graeme 9y ago
    True. Though then my calendar becomes terribly cluttered. (I care about maybe 20% of the birthdays on my list) I think the birthdays only counted as "costless" when I was already checking and filtering through Facebook notifications, but that was an illusion.

jacobra2 9y ago

I've done something similar with my Android phone, and it's worked out decently. One problem I encountered though - I spent a lot of time on Reddit, and would check it subconsciously, so I deleted it. Now I find that I'm using Google Now, the left swipe off the home screen. In effect I took the attention from Reddit and gave it to Google. I'm not convinced that was a worthwhile trade. Given I can't delete Google Now, maybe having Reddit on my phone was serving a purpose I didn't realize. Maybe there's an app that will minimize the subconscious attention blast radius. Something that I'll still check but will minimize the time I spend there.

dhd415 9y ago
FWIW, you can disable Google Now on your phone. On the more recent versions of Android, you long-press an empty spot on your home screen, select "Settings", and then locate and disable the "Your feed" item.
- jacobra2 9y ago
  Amazing. Disabled. Didn't know that, thank you!
- djsavvy 9y ago
  If only that actually did anything on my phone.
- pvdebbe 9y ago
  Moto G5, Android 7.0, the long press on home screen -> settings has no other settings but one. But I did locate the settings by going through Google Now's settings. Thanks for pointing this out!
- TimJRobinson 9y ago
  This doesn't seem to work any more :( I'm trying to keep notifications of my calendar and flights but disable all the distractions like "Stories to read", and apparently Google has removed the ability to disable it... (https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/140288/how-do-i-turn-off-stories-to-read-in-google-now?newreg=1f949e170e874561a6c706ab3dfeb1c5 https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/140288/how-do-i-...)

JumpCrisscross 9y ago

> Uninstall twitter, facebook and other social apps from your phone A middle ground is turning off badges and other notifications. Switching to a paper newspaper also helps.

etrautmann 9y ago

This list is EXACTLY what I do and I'm pretty happy with it.

endgame 9y ago

One thing that has helped me: beeminder (I don't work for them). I have a goal that tracks reddit(etc)-free days, of which I need to do several each week or they take some of my money. This has been pretty effective, in that I've been doing more than strictly required and coming back here to write this feels weird.

maksimum 9y ago

Love the 2FA idea. Do you know of an app/browser extension that lets you bookmark arbitrary HTML pages, and keeps track of how far down you've scrolled; maybe let you write notes? Or maybe one that converts an arbitrary page to PDF, and stores it locally for you?

WorldMaker 9y ago
The combination of OneNote and Edge's Web Notes gets you most of those features. There's also relatively "ancient" apps like Pocket (which Firefox presents out of the box these days) and Instapaper.

gkya 9y ago

Solid advice. I'll add to this: - Do not follow newspapers RSS feeds. They bombard you with news that are not relevant at all. Their newsletters are better. I get all my news from daily or weekly newsletters. I would like to get weekly digests only, but I havent found a good one from a newspaper I like. - Actually quit Facebook. It's pure evil. I was so shocked to hear how it showed you your old, forgotten photos/memories from past just to engage you. If you can't engage with people through messaging (including whatsapp) or phone calls, they are not that close friends. - On reddit, avoid controversial subreddits, especially on things relevant to you. As a Turkish citizen I avoid /r/Turkey because it's idiots idioting on things that directly affect me, and the urge to rant and answer is hard to suppress. Nowadays I usually only comment on /r/emacs and HN, and avoid all the controversy everywhere. Also, I push all the funny, interesting etc. stuff on reddit into multis, and subscribe only to some low traffic subs where I do not thing my participation would be a loss of time (which is basically /r/emacs, /r/istanbul, and a couple others). - If you use HN often, subscribe to the front page RSS and to the digest [1]. This way you won't ever miss the important stuff but have less need to actually check the frontpage. - Disable email notifications. Don't let the sender dictate you when you'll interact with them, decide it yourself. The last time I had an email notification was quite some years ago. - Declutter your email inbox. Try to make sure that most of what's in there is what you'd just immediately read. Try to redirect the rest in relevant mailboxes. Your email setup should allow you to dispatch incoming messages on headers and body content. Especially useful are List-ID, Subject and From headers. [1]: https://hndigest.com/ https://hndigest.com/

agumonkey 9y ago
it's funny, your comment makes me think.. the world has too many moving parts to follow them all, so a carefully curated summary of events would be interesting. annnnd that's the press (which got injured by the stream fad.. irony)
- gkya 9y ago
  I dream about an AI service that can curate me a newsletter given some sources (RSS, Twitter feeds, youtube feeds, whatnot) and send it to me regularly on a given interval. It would avoid duplicates and essentially identical stuff [1], weigh and choose the most interesting ones, and present them to me in a nice, readable format. Ironically I would not use such service if it existed because it would be very anti-privacy. [1] Twitter is weird. I only follow ~15 accounts for events and (want to) use twitter only for that, but the way people usually post updates about events is to repeatedly post what is essentially the same tweet, and even with that many accounts followed it becomes a mess. I end up never checking it because it's basically a puzzle.

SirFatty 9y ago

Excellent advice!

gorbachev 9y ago

I used to run my browsers with an addon that disabled user comments. I whitelisted a few sites where the Internet idiots didn't visit. It worked absolutely beautifully and forced me to avoid the worst of Internet very effectively, even during my weak moments. It cut down so much of the frustration I had about consuming content on the Internet. I had to uninstall it, because the addon developer stopped maintaining it and the performance bugs made browsing bigger sites much too slow.

keypress 9y ago

When internet connections were pay per minute, I'd think about what I wanted to look up before I connected. Then I'd go online and used Opera to follow many links to different tabs. I'd have a flurry, then disconnect and read. This worked surprisingly well. I find I can't really read/comprehend from an LED screen well at all these days. I got into the habit of sending items of interest to my e-reader. Any long form article goes there. Sadly I sat on my e-reader, and my system went to pot. I've just stacked up my reading list. I have no idea what is there. Going back to scrappy reading, feels like a real time and brain drain.

Terr_ 9y ago

> Even on your computer, log out of twitter, facebook and others. Only log in when you want to look into something Even without going as far as "incognito mode for everything", this can dovetail well with a privacy-conscious cookie or browser-profile policy.

austinjp 9y ago

> Even on your computer, log out of twitter, facebook and others. Only log in when you want to look into something... use private/incognito mode... use 2FA... it's an extra hurdle so you won't default to "quickly check" Absolutely. Latest Firefox helps here. There's an option to use private by default for all windows. This means when you close it (another habit to develop perhaps) you don't stay logged in to these social media sites.

austinjp 9y ago

> ignore content that you know is junk but that tends to drag you in. I suspect this is slightly different for anyone, mine is: anything cute... I've actually started deliberately looking at the cute stuff. It's a welcome antidote to the outrage apparent in other threads/sites. I have enough natural spleen already without needing to top it up.