14 ms·

The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world

429 points by DanielBMarkham 8y ago

spencore 8y ago
i would love to read this... but, ya know...
hiei 8y ago
This is one of the reasons I still have a few subscriptions to magazines. No micro-distractions, just long form journalism.
- moltar 8y ago
  Which magazines aren’t 90% ads and the remaining 10% long form ads? Genuinely interested as I haven’t seen any good mags in a while.
  - carrier_lost 8y ago
    Lapham’s Quarterly: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org https://www.laphamsquarterly.org
  - mikepurvis 8y ago
    Depending what kind of thing you're interested in: Harper's, The Economist, Vanity Fair.
  - sixstringtheory 8y ago
    I recently discovered the Congressional Digest at my local library, seems really good so far. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Digest https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Digest
  - culot 8y ago
    The Sun Magazine is still an ad-free pleasure. https://www.thesunmagazine.org/ https://www.thesunmagazine.org/
  - epicide 8y ago
    I really like reading 2600. Some articles get kinda... biased, but I think they do a decent job of striking a balance. It's nice reading about tech-related things that aren't just blockchain or Facebook. The particularly fun ones are just little side projects someone writes about for a few paragraphs/pages. No real major point or grand purpose. Just a neat thing they did.
  - un_montagnard 8y ago
    The Economist.
  - Baeocystin 8y ago
    I still subscribe to Science News. It's mostly smaller digests with one long-form article per issue (it's bi-weekly and thin) but it is a genuinely enjoyable read, and gives you lots of jump-off points on subjects you didn't even know you were interested in. https://www.sciencenews.org/sn-magazine/october-13-2018 https://www.sciencenews.org/sn-magazine/october-13-2018
  - jbrun 8y ago
    Lots - Lapham's Quarterly, Harpers, The Atlantic, Jacobin, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, Monde Diplomatique, ....
  - dmschulman 8y ago
    The New Yorker
leggomylibro 8y ago
It seems like nowadays, we wring our hands about the effects of constant access to the internet on a near-daily basis. And isn't it kind of odd that the people working on these products in an 'individual contributor' capacity are often the same ones encouraging others to stay away from their platforms? Maybe that should tell us something. Anecdotally, most of the things that this article recommends are things that I wholeheartedly enjoyed several years ago, but tellingly no longer have time for despite a similar schedule. Reading for pleasure took the biggest hit - I can just listen to an audiobook or podcast during the commute, right? But it does also feel like I've gotten worse at persisting in tedious tasks after being interrupted, exercise feels more like wasted time, and even my breathing exercises are getting shallow and rapid these days. What is going on? It's not that thumbing through the news feels like an accomplishment, and I know that I'll look back on these years and shake my head at how terribly I'm wasting my time - it's already happening - but this is a comfortable lifestyle and I just keep on doing it. That does sound like an addiction, right? I don't know. But I do know that I've had enough, and I'm coping with it by planning to spend a couple of years on the road in the hopes that things blow over and the people of 202x will have this all figured out. And hey, maybe I'll feel better after forcing myself to be bored for several months. Because these issues seem so massive and unapproachable that I can't think of anything to do besides throwing up my hands and leaving. I can't even talk to other people about it because everybody's noses are in their phones everywhere. Is that weird?
- bradhoffman 8y ago
  Yes, I think it's weird. Both because you notice it and because it is happening. I feel your frustrations with this hyper-connected life because this certainly feels like an addiction. I've worked through deleting social media. I've deleted apps off my phone. I've moved my phone outside of my bedroom. All of it seems to help a small amount, but not enough to keep me from moving to something else. Throwing up my hands and leaving seems to be a good solution as well, but not the whole world or my job, just the digital world, as much as I reasonably can. I miss having the ability to focus and remember, and I feel as if the only way I can accomplish my goals is to regain those skills.
- deepGem 8y ago
Terretta 8y ago
They mentioned a variety of apps, but w/o discussion of iOS 12 “Screen Time” (best if enabled for All Devices). That data can be jarring enough to motivate habit change.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
bsimpson 8y ago
I love that every time the monkey[0] distracts me today, the top link is about distraction. Reminds me to get back to work. [0] https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrasti...
InclinedPlane 8y ago
People have short attention spans. It was not so very long ago (and indeed it is still quite common today) when the standard way that one "lived" their life was to spend 8 hours a day at work and then most of the remainder watching television. Yes, compared to the ideal, having your nose in your phone to the detriment of all other activities is undesirable, but compared to the actuality of what came before it might be an improvement.
- jsemrau 8y ago
  I would counter argument that in the past TV was a shared experience while staring at one's phone is a single experience.
  - InclinedPlane 8y ago
    I would counter-counter argue that using a smartphone is much more of a social experience than TV, and can be less interruptive as well. Much of the time when people are using their phones they are socializing asynchronously or synchronously with their friends and family. They are following what's happening in their lives through twitter, facebook, instagram, etc. They are keeping in touch through instant messaging (on facebook, through google hangouts, texting, what-have-you). They are keeping up with current news and events. They are keeping themselves informed, etc. And in terms of the presence of media in the physical space sometimes watching TV with others can be a social experience, but it can also be an anti-social experience by draining attention away from conversations and by having something of interest going on that can't easily be interrupted or paused to do something else. Whereas smartphone use can more often be interrupted or paused. My own anecdotal experience is that television is much worse of an attention hog than smartphones, on average.
flycaliguy 8y ago
That's it, I'm deleting my hacker news bookmark. I've been on a good kick lately looking at old illustrations in books on archive.org. I've started reading around them and there is some pretty neat stuff written by people who never logged on.
- sundvor 8y ago
  My fingers can touch type the url autonomously, before I even realise what's happening. That's why I need the hosts entry block at work..
organman91 8y ago
CGP Grey discussed this on a recent Hello Internet episode [1], that he was concerned by his inability to maintain focus on a single task (such as reading a book) for more than several minutes. He specifically notes that Reddit and HN were major contributors to this. 1. http://www.hellointernet.fm/podcast/108 http://www.hellointernet.fm/podcast/108 (about the 1 hr 15 min mark)
fogetti 8y ago
It's hard to take these articles seriously. Do these psychologists think that the average person's issue is they get distracted 60 times a day on their weekends? Who cares about that??? My problem is that I get interrupted 160 times a day in my workplace!!! How do these suggestions help me in my workplace? Shall I tell my boss that I can't reply his email right now because I am counting back in sevens from 1000 or what???
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  Tell your boss you check email three times a day, in the morning, after lunch, and before leaving work. And if she/he has something urgent to please slack you directly. If necessary create a filter that lets people add an #urgent tag to the subject that sends you a notification. Then turn off email and slack notifications for all but the rooms centered on things you are directly responsible for. Police those groups so they are only critical isssues that the whole team should be addressing. Create a second channel for casual discussion if need be. I don’t know... maybe none of these work but just try something. If you can’t change anything at least keep a log of all your interruptions and the general category of issue, so that you can talk about it with your boss in an informed way at your next 1 on 1.
- floatrock 8y ago
  > Shall I tell my boss that I can't reply his email right now because I am counting back in sevens from 1000 or what??? Pretty much. You can turn Slack onto Do Not Disturb and establish a culture of deep focus where your coworkers understand you're in the middle of something and you're signaling that you're not going to get back to them right away because you're in the zone. As with anything culture-building, it does take some conversations to discuss what you're trying to do and why you're doing it. And you don't do those in slack.
- watwut 8y ago
  Yes you should tell that. If you cant, then it really sounds like horribly ineffective and toxic workplace.
agumonkey 8y ago
Anybody ever felt relieved when their ISP was down ?
reasonablemann 8y ago
My internet cut out last week for four hours while my phone was busted. I spent an hour listening to this podcast I'd downloaded a week earlier: https://fs.blog/naval-ravikant/ https://fs.blog/naval-ravikant/ And then spent a few hours thinking about what was said. It was the most peaceful evening I've had all year.
- jsemrau 8y ago
  > It was the most peaceful evening I've had all year. That's a really powerful statement to make. Lately, I am have become addicted to riding my bicycle to the office. The main reason is that I have 30 min each way to not care about emails, news, etc.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    Says a thing about the reality of human impedance [mis]match with the modern life fantasy. Moving one's butt in nature is probably more tuned to our system.
woogiewonka 8y ago
One of my biggest distractions for years has been email. I just have to have my inbox at zero and used to check my email religiously, from every few minutes to every few hours. I'd check email in the bathroom, in bed, at the table .. it was getting ridiculous. The things is, I never got any interesting email worth checking - it was always the same pattern: swipe - delete. So I decided to do something about it. I figured checking email once or at most twice per day would be enough so I took took a few steps to accomplish this: 1. Moved the email icon from my phone into an obscure folder hidden on the very last screen on my phone. Now, instead of clicking it right away I have to actively find it which is kind of a pain. 2. Installed SelfControl for Mac and added gmail.com, facebook (yes I still have a shell account I use to check one group), reddit, ycombinator, twitter and a host of other news sites I may occasionally visit to the black list. The first thing I do in the morning is set that timer for almost the entirety of the day and hit start. Now everything is literally blocked and I cannot access it without turning off SelfControl which I have yet to do. Some days I make an exception and leave hacker news off the list. What I really want now is a product, app or SOMETHING that just turns off everything, including notifications at a click of tap of a button - across all devices simultaenteouly. Turn of all notifications, popups, alerts, all the garbage that comes up through the day including phone calls, messages, Facetime.. just everything. I don't care if it's an emergency, I don't care if someone died, I don't care if checking the phone will save my life. Just turn it all off, but give me access to the apps I still use.
- raffael-vogler 8y ago
  For me it seems that in times of instant messaging email is the saviour in personal communication - not in professional context though (I still prefer an email over being called many times over). When it comes to private messaging people tend to write mails more with a mindset of writing a letter. Full sentences and the entire communication structure seems to be aimed at being complete and more thoughtful. IMing often feels more like ping pong than actually conversing.
mario0b1 8y ago
I often felt that I was getting distracted way too much, but I couldn't stop it. About a year ago when my depression got back on track I just shut myself off of every service I had. I quit facebook, deleted all unnecessary apps from my phone, muted it completly and turned off the thing that the display lights up if you get a new message. I even let my phone at home when I was not expecting any major call. If people called me I just called them back when I was at home and had time for it. All of this went out way better than I ever would've thought. I feel super relieved and relaxed nowadays. Because I started a new job I carry my phone with me now most of the day, but it is still muted most of the time. It is even fun to see if there is something new on the internet without getting notified about it instantly. Now I decide when I want to take a break and what I want to look for, not my Smartphone or something else.
samzer 8y ago
After using facebook for 8 years, I had reached a point where I stopped posting content but couldn't stop consuming the content posted by others and also logging into facebook without even thinking. I tried multiple times to deactivate the account but it always resulted in reactivating it. The two main reasons for it was the herd mentality and the FOMO. I needed a new approach, I started by unfollowing people and pages that made me react. I realized the most important part of facebook for me was keeping in touch with people and not the posts that they share so decided to unfollow everyone which includes pages and groups too. The annoying part is that it is not easy to unfollow everyone and you have to do it one by one. I found a post with some js code that helped in achieving this and it worked, don't know if it will work now - https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-unfollow-everyone-on-Facebook-at-once https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-unfollow-everyone-on-Facebook... After about 8 months of using facebook this way,I checked how many conversations I had using the messenger which turned out to be in the lower end of the single digit. Finally, I decided to go ahead with the deletion of facebook after backing up all my data. Once you hit delete, it gives 14 days of thinking time in case you decide to change your mind. After deleting the account, it took me almost 2 months to stop my reflex action of going to facebook login page. Its been more than 6 months I've deleted facebook, I'm not missing it, I hardly think about it and quite happy that I'm out of it.
- raffael-vogler 8y ago
  > After using facebook for 8 years, I had reached a point where I stopped posting content but couldn't stop consuming the content posted by others and also logging into facebook without even thinking. I tried multiple times to deactivate the account but it always resulted in reactivating it. The two main reasons for it was the herd mentality and the FOMO. I'd argue that deeply reflecting on this offers a huge potential for personal growth. Why the fear of missing out? To me it seems more and more clear that the only thing to miss out on is the present moment as it is for me right here and right now. > The annoying part is that it is not easy to unfollow everyone and you have to do it one by one. I found a post with some js code that helped in achieving this and it worked, don't know if it will work now I guess with Facebook and its siblings this is an uphill battle as they will always try to come up with new ways to prevent you from pursuing precisely those kind of goals. > Its been more than 6 months I've deleted facebook, I'm not missing it, I hardly think about it and quite happy that I'm out of it. Congratulations on that!
octygen 8y ago
Three things helped me: 1) Mindfulness training so I could see myself in the moment NOT concentrating and stop myself. Still not at 100% with this but have been getting a lot better since I first took https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/mindfulness-wellbeing-performance/1 https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/mindfulness-wellbeing-pe... a couple of years ago. 2) Thinking of my mobile in the way marketers think of it. As a cache for mobile minutes. Each marketing dept is like a little gnome each trying to get at my treasure. So I cut them off. I deleted all apps with ads and made an effort to block all ads or suggestions for new content across the digital things I use via everything from Greasemonkey to plug-ins to switching providers of services. So now distraction from my digital browsing is significantly diminished. 3) Re-reading this Michener essay about once a year: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~xs3d-bull/michener.html http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~xs3d-bull/michener.html. It reminds me that it takes long periods of time and discipline to create great things. Else they are easily achievable and don't IMHO qualify as great. This includes everything from putting tons of time in for Ironman training (quite the physical achievement) to writing a book (look at Michener's books and how crazy-well-researched and expansive they are) to having a good relationship with your mate to writing quality code for your most recent idea. The more the gnomes pick at your little time treasure, the less time you have to achieve great things.
- afarrell 8y ago
  Piggy-backing off of this to add the things I find useful: - Mindfulness medidation, same as you. It is hard and when you first try it feels like you are failing. But Yoda is wrong: trying is very valuable and builds the mindfulness muscle. - Website blocking software like SelfControl.app and Freedom.io —- some might ridicule these as being a crutch, but that is a silly reason not to use them. If you are trying to change your diet, don’t keep cookies on your desk. - working with a therapist to improve my self-confidence — one reason I was distracted so much is that I didn’t have a strong belief in my right to decide how I spend my time. Combined with mindfulness meditation, I now have a much stronger internal voice that says “I had decided I wanted to relax and read this long history article so that is what I’m going to do.” Or “this bit of life-administrivia is really frustrating and scary, but I do need to do it and have set out this time for it.” - A belief in “setting myself up for success” in tasks — when I feel like I don’t know how to do something, it is much better to trust that intuition, dig into it, and flesh it out into an explicit list of resources to acquire rather. If instead I say “I should believe in myself* and buckle down and do the work.” Then my sense of not doing the right thing will stick with me. For instance, I am someone who is much more effective at building things when I know how my tools work. * (This is perhaps very idiosyncratic to me, but I absorbed from a young age that I could do anything I set my mind to. When you don’t know how to set your mind to things, This turns out to be a less-than-useful belief, especially in response to a not-well-articulated need for resources. Example: I once tried to write code against an api whose docs were in Chinese —as a non-Chinese speaker. ) - Sleep, Food, Exercise — I am a sack of meat. The thinking bits of me are also made of meat. Thinking meat, if you’ll believe it. In order to think well, I need to give my meat what it needs on a habitual basis. ————- One interesting thing about being more mindful and less distracted is that it reveals some underlying discomforts that I was distracting myself from. For instance, I didn’t have any friends as a child and I just don’t know how to lead engaging conversations or how to keep conversations going when they fizzle out. But now that I’ve repeatedly noticed that, I can make it a goal to find ways to learn it (suggestions very welcome) and confidently pursue that goal.
hevi_jos 8y ago
Distraction is not new. We love doing things with instant gratification and anything of great value comes from deep work. What it is new today is that people are fighting against a football team of Doctors in Psychology, experts manipulators that have sold their soul to the "Man", Google, Facebook... in order to enslave people following their primal impulses for the benefit of those Juggernauts, and the manipulators themselves, pretty happy to receive a fat check for their services. The first thing you need to do in order to become free of their extensive web of control is to be conscious of their unfair game. If you try to fight , alone, you will lose. Those guys know much more about you and humanity that you could ever grasp. Theoretically they hire experts in human behavior. In practice they know what thousands of millions of people do for real. They hold the emails, they have cameras and microphones on people's rooms, they follow your GPS signal on real time. If you want to be a creator, free of distraction, the winning strategy is not to play. Use digital services that you pay and own, and associate with other creators because alone you are too weak.
- tangaye 8y ago
  Thank you very much. I find this very insightful and eyeopening. What are resources that I can pay attention to in order to be "conscious of their unfair game"? Will wholeheartedly appreciate it. Thank you once again.
Tade0 8y ago
I rediscovered(after 10 years or so) a half-solution the other day: any activity that requires focus but is done offline(so not programming nowadays, unless you have your docs/tutorials/etc offline). In my case it's making music. The product is obviously crap and takes a lot of time to create, but it has done wonders to my ability to focus.
- raffael-vogler 8y ago
  Just yesterday evening I had a quick look for old-fashioned chess computers. Who needs a chess computer when you have a real computer or a tablet? The difference is that with a chess computer you are offline.
raffael-vogler 8y ago
This is an ongoing battle for me. I do make progress but it seems that the fundamental design of our culture and society is just increasingly depending and requiring to be online all the time. But I found that a set of simple rituals will go a long way. > We check our phones every 12 minutes, often just after waking up. First of all I reduced my involvement with services that cause me to check my phone. I don't use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter. I even blocked youtube.com and youtu.be on my computers. At some point in the evening I will switch off my phone and keep it in the living room when going to bed. That solved my terrible habit of reading reddit, HN etc while lying in bed intending to sleep. After stopping this I realized how detrimentally this impacted my sleep quality. It also keeps me from immediately reaching for my phone upon waking up. Now I'll do several things before giving attention to my phone. > more and more experts are telling us that these interruptions and distractions have eroded our ability to concentrate. I guess a lot of people will argue that it didn't erode anything but instead just changed our ability to concentrate - in the sense of evolutionary addaption - but I will argue that this is in deed a negative development. I do this confidently from a position of personal experience. It simply doesn't feel good. And a lot of people who claim they like being on and conneceted 24/7 seem nervous and anxious to me. > More than half of the 1,100 participants said they always responded to an email immediately or as soon as possible, while 21% admitted they would interrupt a meeting to do so. That's one of the first things to learn on a job - not to respond to mails immediately. It seems this will just trigger the next mail and establish an expectation to receive fast response from me at all times. In the end it will just snowball and suddenly I'm only writing mails all day long. > ... The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” I observed that with me, too. The antidote is naturally to read more lengthy texts like books. Sitting down and just reading a book in the evening feels sometimes like therapy - but in a good way. (Currently I'm reading Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court") > Start by switching off smartphone alerts, or taking social media apps off your phone, then switching off the device for increasingly long periods. I even got me second (dumb) phone (Bea C65). It's number one feature is that it can do nothing except calling and SMS. Also the number is known currently only to my girlfriend. I take it with me when I am certain that I won't need my smartphone. No way to check about Seehofer or Kashogghi on sueddeutsche.de. > Most of us breathe poorly: ... I practice various kinds of meditation - currently twice a day for half an hour each. Body Scan, Zen meditation, Wim Hof breathing, Pranayama inspired breathing etc. This is easily the most important and healthy habit for me at the moment. > Although any type of light can inhibit sleep, research has shown that light towards the blue end of the spectrum is especially effective at keeping you awake because it stimulates the retina in the eye and inhibits the secretion of melatonin from the pineal gland in the brain. In hindsight I have to conclude that reducing brightness on my S7 to lowest setting + activating the blue light filter + using a special app to reduce the brightness even further was not sufficient to prevent sleep issues.
tw1010 8y ago
I typically think of this as a unique advantage that programmers have. In almost every other industry I see, I see people who never get the chance to focus all their attention on intellectually challenging tasks for hours without break, and a lot of them seem super distracted and like their brain have been negatively affected by this absence. But programmers seem like the rare species that actually do get this privilege, and this is usually the reason I prefer intellectual conversations with coders than almost anyone else (even when the topic is something other than engineering).
- random_kris 8y ago
  I agree with you. But lately I've been noticing myself being distracted a lot and finding it hard to concentrate... for example I have a hard problem in front of me and in the momment something goes wrong I just switch task and go on hn/reddit/mail etc...
  - tw1010 8y ago
    Habituating myself with music and special rooms that I'm very strict about associating only to work (never play) has been the key for me. Play music when you work, and be very strict about not playing the same track/genre when you go on hn/reddit. Sometimes I stand up when people speak to me, just so I don't encourage my mind to allow "conversation thoughts" to bubble up from my subconsious when I'm in a chair. If you're strict about this, and you do it for long enough, it becomes much easier. (Don't be too hard on yourself when you fail, let it take the time it needs to take, be patient. And be careful once you've reached the good habit state. Remember how fragile it is and how much effort was required to get to that point.)
jacquesm 8y ago
As a tech fanatic here is my way of dealing with it: - no smartphone - as little social media as possible (yes, I know) - when with family or others the phone is on silent and I won't answer or text - adblockers and privacy tools used to the max to get rid of advertising - no TV - no radio Between all those tricks I can get a half decent day's work and still spend time on others, though I have to admit that the better the business is doing there is still pressure there that will need to be relieved somehow.
clubm8 8y ago
I have a cell phone plan with limited data. At first it was just a frugality thing, but it's also done wonders for attention/mindfulness. I tend to listen to podcasts instead of mindlessly FB/Redditing. Not only does it clear my mind, but listening to the news instead of constantly refreshing a news site throughout the day saves time and decreases stress and "FOMO" (fear of missing out). I know I'm missing out - I've chosen to! :)
brootstrap 8y ago
Might be coming across as an asshole but it's not that hard for me to ignore digital things. Sure i have a bad habit of looking to my phone and opening HN but... When i'm at home i will leave phone sitting somewhere (forgot where i left it) for hours and ignore people. I can run and exercise and listen to the sounds of nature. The problem I have is that at work you are plugged into the browser 8-10 hours a day and instantly searching everything. When you get home it takes a bit of focus to just live and not be staring at a screen. It is possible though.
gfs78 8y ago
My best strategy is to avoid the distractions from the get go. I don't browse the web until I finish my workday. If I need to look up something (which must be work related) I just browse the minimum needed to get the answer. I don't browse to the related links. With my smartphone is the same. I turn off all notifications and leave it in my bag (if I'm at office) or in another room (if I'm working from home). My focus, calmness and confidence skyrocket when I do this.
momentmaker 8y ago
The book War of Art by Steven Pressfield is a great book talking about this. Half of the battle is procrastination. One has to do develop a routine and stick to it never what. Concentration will come from that.

i would love to read this... but, ya know...

hiei 8y ago

This is one of the reasons I still have a few subscriptions to magazines. No micro-distractions, just long form journalism.

moltar 8y ago
Which magazines aren’t 90% ads and the remaining 10% long form ads? Genuinely interested as I haven’t seen any good mags in a while.
- carrier_lost 8y ago
  Lapham’s Quarterly: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org https://www.laphamsquarterly.org
- mikepurvis 8y ago
  Depending what kind of thing you're interested in: Harper's, The Economist, Vanity Fair.
- sixstringtheory 8y ago
  I recently discovered the Congressional Digest at my local library, seems really good so far. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Digest https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Digest
- culot 8y ago
  The Sun Magazine is still an ad-free pleasure. https://www.thesunmagazine.org/ https://www.thesunmagazine.org/
- epicide 8y ago
  I really like reading 2600. Some articles get kinda... biased, but I think they do a decent job of striking a balance. It's nice reading about tech-related things that aren't just blockchain or Facebook. The particularly fun ones are just little side projects someone writes about for a few paragraphs/pages. No real major point or grand purpose. Just a neat thing they did.
- un_montagnard 8y ago
  The Economist.
- Baeocystin 8y ago
  I still subscribe to Science News. It's mostly smaller digests with one long-form article per issue (it's bi-weekly and thin) but it is a genuinely enjoyable read, and gives you lots of jump-off points on subjects you didn't even know you were interested in. https://www.sciencenews.org/sn-magazine/october-13-2018 https://www.sciencenews.org/sn-magazine/october-13-2018
- jbrun 8y ago
  Lots - Lapham's Quarterly, Harpers, The Atlantic, Jacobin, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, Monde Diplomatique, ....
- dmschulman 8y ago
  The New Yorker

leggomylibro 8y ago

It seems like nowadays, we wring our hands about the effects of constant access to the internet on a near-daily basis. And isn't it kind of odd that the people working on these products in an 'individual contributor' capacity are often the same ones encouraging others to stay away from their platforms? Maybe that should tell us something. Anecdotally, most of the things that this article recommends are things that I wholeheartedly enjoyed several years ago, but tellingly no longer have time for despite a similar schedule. Reading for pleasure took the biggest hit - I can just listen to an audiobook or podcast during the commute, right? But it does also feel like I've gotten worse at persisting in tedious tasks after being interrupted, exercise feels more like wasted time, and even my breathing exercises are getting shallow and rapid these days. What is going on? It's not that thumbing through the news feels like an accomplishment, and I know that I'll look back on these years and shake my head at how terribly I'm wasting my time - it's already happening - but this is a comfortable lifestyle and I just keep on doing it. That does sound like an addiction, right? I don't know. But I do know that I've had enough, and I'm coping with it by planning to spend a couple of years on the road in the hopes that things blow over and the people of 202x will have this all figured out. And hey, maybe I'll feel better after forcing myself to be bored for several months. Because these issues seem so massive and unapproachable that I can't think of anything to do besides throwing up my hands and leaving. I can't even talk to other people about it because everybody's noses are in their phones everywhere. Is that weird?

bradhoffman 8y ago
Yes, I think it's weird. Both because you notice it and because it is happening. I feel your frustrations with this hyper-connected life because this certainly feels like an addiction. I've worked through deleting social media. I've deleted apps off my phone. I've moved my phone outside of my bedroom. All of it seems to help a small amount, but not enough to keep me from moving to something else. Throwing up my hands and leaving seems to be a good solution as well, but not the whole world or my job, just the digital world, as much as I reasonably can. I miss having the ability to focus and remember, and I feel as if the only way I can accomplish my goals is to regain those skills.
deepGem 8y ago

Terretta 8y ago

They mentioned a variety of apps, but w/o discussion of iOS 12 “Screen Time” (best if enabled for All Devices). That data can be jarring enough to motivate habit change.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

bsimpson 8y ago

I love that every time the monkey[0] distracts me today, the top link is about distraction. Reminds me to get back to work. [0] https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrastinate.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/10/why-procrastinators-procrasti...

InclinedPlane 8y ago

People have short attention spans. It was not so very long ago (and indeed it is still quite common today) when the standard way that one "lived" their life was to spend 8 hours a day at work and then most of the remainder watching television. Yes, compared to the ideal, having your nose in your phone to the detriment of all other activities is undesirable, but compared to the actuality of what came before it might be an improvement.

jsemrau 8y ago
I would counter argument that in the past TV was a shared experience while staring at one's phone is a single experience.
- InclinedPlane 8y ago
  I would counter-counter argue that using a smartphone is much more of a social experience than TV, and can be less interruptive as well. Much of the time when people are using their phones they are socializing asynchronously or synchronously with their friends and family. They are following what's happening in their lives through twitter, facebook, instagram, etc. They are keeping in touch through instant messaging (on facebook, through google hangouts, texting, what-have-you). They are keeping up with current news and events. They are keeping themselves informed, etc. And in terms of the presence of media in the physical space sometimes watching TV with others can be a social experience, but it can also be an anti-social experience by draining attention away from conversations and by having something of interest going on that can't easily be interrupted or paused to do something else. Whereas smartphone use can more often be interrupted or paused. My own anecdotal experience is that television is much worse of an attention hog than smartphones, on average.

flycaliguy 8y ago

That's it, I'm deleting my hacker news bookmark. I've been on a good kick lately looking at old illustrations in books on archive.org. I've started reading around them and there is some pretty neat stuff written by people who never logged on.

sundvor 8y ago
My fingers can touch type the url autonomously, before I even realise what's happening. That's why I need the hosts entry block at work..

organman91 8y ago

CGP Grey discussed this on a recent Hello Internet episode [1], that he was concerned by his inability to maintain focus on a single task (such as reading a book) for more than several minutes. He specifically notes that Reddit and HN were major contributors to this. 1. http://www.hellointernet.fm/podcast/108 http://www.hellointernet.fm/podcast/108 (about the 1 hr 15 min mark)

fogetti 8y ago

It's hard to take these articles seriously. Do these psychologists think that the average person's issue is they get distracted 60 times a day on their weekends? Who cares about that??? My problem is that I get interrupted 160 times a day in my workplace!!! How do these suggestions help me in my workplace? Shall I tell my boss that I can't reply his email right now because I am counting back in sevens from 1000 or what???

erikpukinskis 8y ago
Tell your boss you check email three times a day, in the morning, after lunch, and before leaving work. And if she/he has something urgent to please slack you directly. If necessary create a filter that lets people add an #urgent tag to the subject that sends you a notification. Then turn off email and slack notifications for all but the rooms centered on things you are directly responsible for. Police those groups so they are only critical isssues that the whole team should be addressing. Create a second channel for casual discussion if need be. I don’t know... maybe none of these work but just try something. If you can’t change anything at least keep a log of all your interruptions and the general category of issue, so that you can talk about it with your boss in an informed way at your next 1 on 1.
floatrock 8y ago
> Shall I tell my boss that I can't reply his email right now because I am counting back in sevens from 1000 or what??? Pretty much. You can turn Slack onto Do Not Disturb and establish a culture of deep focus where your coworkers understand you're in the middle of something and you're signaling that you're not going to get back to them right away because you're in the zone. As with anything culture-building, it does take some conversations to discuss what you're trying to do and why you're doing it. And you don't do those in slack.
watwut 8y ago
Yes you should tell that. If you cant, then it really sounds like horribly ineffective and toxic workplace.

agumonkey 8y ago

Anybody ever felt relieved when their ISP was down ?

reasonablemann 8y ago

My internet cut out last week for four hours while my phone was busted. I spent an hour listening to this podcast I'd downloaded a week earlier: https://fs.blog/naval-ravikant/ https://fs.blog/naval-ravikant/ And then spent a few hours thinking about what was said. It was the most peaceful evening I've had all year.

jsemrau 8y ago
> It was the most peaceful evening I've had all year. That's a really powerful statement to make. Lately, I am have become addicted to riding my bicycle to the office. The main reason is that I have 30 min each way to not care about emails, news, etc.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  Says a thing about the reality of human impedance [mis]match with the modern life fantasy. Moving one's butt in nature is probably more tuned to our system.

woogiewonka 8y ago

One of my biggest distractions for years has been email. I just have to have my inbox at zero and used to check my email religiously, from every few minutes to every few hours. I'd check email in the bathroom, in bed, at the table .. it was getting ridiculous. The things is, I never got any interesting email worth checking - it was always the same pattern: swipe - delete. So I decided to do something about it. I figured checking email once or at most twice per day would be enough so I took took a few steps to accomplish this: 1. Moved the email icon from my phone into an obscure folder hidden on the very last screen on my phone. Now, instead of clicking it right away I have to actively find it which is kind of a pain. 2. Installed SelfControl for Mac and added gmail.com, facebook (yes I still have a shell account I use to check one group), reddit, ycombinator, twitter and a host of other news sites I may occasionally visit to the black list. The first thing I do in the morning is set that timer for almost the entirety of the day and hit start. Now everything is literally blocked and I cannot access it without turning off SelfControl which I have yet to do. Some days I make an exception and leave hacker news off the list. What I really want now is a product, app or SOMETHING that just turns off everything, including notifications at a click of tap of a button - across all devices simultaenteouly. Turn of all notifications, popups, alerts, all the garbage that comes up through the day including phone calls, messages, Facetime.. just everything. I don't care if it's an emergency, I don't care if someone died, I don't care if checking the phone will save my life. Just turn it all off, but give me access to the apps I still use.

raffael-vogler 8y ago
For me it seems that in times of instant messaging email is the saviour in personal communication - not in professional context though (I still prefer an email over being called many times over). When it comes to private messaging people tend to write mails more with a mindset of writing a letter. Full sentences and the entire communication structure seems to be aimed at being complete and more thoughtful. IMing often feels more like ping pong than actually conversing.

mario0b1 8y ago

I often felt that I was getting distracted way too much, but I couldn't stop it. About a year ago when my depression got back on track I just shut myself off of every service I had. I quit facebook, deleted all unnecessary apps from my phone, muted it completly and turned off the thing that the display lights up if you get a new message. I even let my phone at home when I was not expecting any major call. If people called me I just called them back when I was at home and had time for it. All of this went out way better than I ever would've thought. I feel super relieved and relaxed nowadays. Because I started a new job I carry my phone with me now most of the day, but it is still muted most of the time. It is even fun to see if there is something new on the internet without getting notified about it instantly. Now I decide when I want to take a break and what I want to look for, not my Smartphone or something else.

samzer 8y ago

After using facebook for 8 years, I had reached a point where I stopped posting content but couldn't stop consuming the content posted by others and also logging into facebook without even thinking. I tried multiple times to deactivate the account but it always resulted in reactivating it. The two main reasons for it was the herd mentality and the FOMO. I needed a new approach, I started by unfollowing people and pages that made me react. I realized the most important part of facebook for me was keeping in touch with people and not the posts that they share so decided to unfollow everyone which includes pages and groups too. The annoying part is that it is not easy to unfollow everyone and you have to do it one by one. I found a post with some js code that helped in achieving this and it worked, don't know if it will work now - https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-unfollow-everyone-on-Facebook-at-once https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-unfollow-everyone-on-Facebook... After about 8 months of using facebook this way,I checked how many conversations I had using the messenger which turned out to be in the lower end of the single digit. Finally, I decided to go ahead with the deletion of facebook after backing up all my data. Once you hit delete, it gives 14 days of thinking time in case you decide to change your mind. After deleting the account, it took me almost 2 months to stop my reflex action of going to facebook login page. Its been more than 6 months I've deleted facebook, I'm not missing it, I hardly think about it and quite happy that I'm out of it.

raffael-vogler 8y ago
> After using facebook for 8 years, I had reached a point where I stopped posting content but couldn't stop consuming the content posted by others and also logging into facebook without even thinking. I tried multiple times to deactivate the account but it always resulted in reactivating it. The two main reasons for it was the herd mentality and the FOMO. I'd argue that deeply reflecting on this offers a huge potential for personal growth. Why the fear of missing out? To me it seems more and more clear that the only thing to miss out on is the present moment as it is for me right here and right now. > The annoying part is that it is not easy to unfollow everyone and you have to do it one by one. I found a post with some js code that helped in achieving this and it worked, don't know if it will work now I guess with Facebook and its siblings this is an uphill battle as they will always try to come up with new ways to prevent you from pursuing precisely those kind of goals. > Its been more than 6 months I've deleted facebook, I'm not missing it, I hardly think about it and quite happy that I'm out of it. Congratulations on that!

octygen 8y ago

Three things helped me: 1) Mindfulness training so I could see myself in the moment NOT concentrating and stop myself. Still not at 100% with this but have been getting a lot better since I first took https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/mindfulness-wellbeing-performance/1 https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/mindfulness-wellbeing-pe... a couple of years ago. 2) Thinking of my mobile in the way marketers think of it. As a cache for mobile minutes. Each marketing dept is like a little gnome each trying to get at my treasure. So I cut them off. I deleted all apps with ads and made an effort to block all ads or suggestions for new content across the digital things I use via everything from Greasemonkey to plug-ins to switching providers of services. So now distraction from my digital browsing is significantly diminished. 3) Re-reading this Michener essay about once a year: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~xs3d-bull/michener.html http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~xs3d-bull/michener.html. It reminds me that it takes long periods of time and discipline to create great things. Else they are easily achievable and don't IMHO qualify as great. This includes everything from putting tons of time in for Ironman training (quite the physical achievement) to writing a book (look at Michener's books and how crazy-well-researched and expansive they are) to having a good relationship with your mate to writing quality code for your most recent idea. The more the gnomes pick at your little time treasure, the less time you have to achieve great things.

afarrell 8y ago
Piggy-backing off of this to add the things I find useful: - Mindfulness medidation, same as you. It is hard and when you first try it feels like you are failing. But Yoda is wrong: trying is very valuable and builds the mindfulness muscle. - Website blocking software like SelfControl.app and Freedom.io —- some might ridicule these as being a crutch, but that is a silly reason not to use them. If you are trying to change your diet, don’t keep cookies on your desk. - working with a therapist to improve my self-confidence — one reason I was distracted so much is that I didn’t have a strong belief in my right to decide how I spend my time. Combined with mindfulness meditation, I now have a much stronger internal voice that says “I had decided I wanted to relax and read this long history article so that is what I’m going to do.” Or “this bit of life-administrivia is really frustrating and scary, but I do need to do it and have set out this time for it.” - A belief in “setting myself up for success” in tasks — when I feel like I don’t know how to do something, it is much better to trust that intuition, dig into it, and flesh it out into an explicit list of resources to acquire rather. If instead I say “I should believe in myself* and buckle down and do the work.” Then my sense of not doing the right thing will stick with me. For instance, I am someone who is much more effective at building things when I know how my tools work. * (This is perhaps very idiosyncratic to me, but I absorbed from a young age that I could do anything I set my mind to. When you don’t know how to set your mind to things, This turns out to be a less-than-useful belief, especially in response to a not-well-articulated need for resources. Example: I once tried to write code against an api whose docs were in Chinese —as a non-Chinese speaker. ) - Sleep, Food, Exercise — I am a sack of meat. The thinking bits of me are also made of meat. Thinking meat, if you’ll believe it. In order to think well, I need to give my meat what it needs on a habitual basis. ————- One interesting thing about being more mindful and less distracted is that it reveals some underlying discomforts that I was distracting myself from. For instance, I didn’t have any friends as a child and I just don’t know how to lead engaging conversations or how to keep conversations going when they fizzle out. But now that I’ve repeatedly noticed that, I can make it a goal to find ways to learn it (suggestions very welcome) and confidently pursue that goal.

hevi_jos 8y ago

Distraction is not new. We love doing things with instant gratification and anything of great value comes from deep work. What it is new today is that people are fighting against a football team of Doctors in Psychology, experts manipulators that have sold their soul to the "Man", Google, Facebook... in order to enslave people following their primal impulses for the benefit of those Juggernauts, and the manipulators themselves, pretty happy to receive a fat check for their services. The first thing you need to do in order to become free of their extensive web of control is to be conscious of their unfair game. If you try to fight , alone, you will lose. Those guys know much more about you and humanity that you could ever grasp. Theoretically they hire experts in human behavior. In practice they know what thousands of millions of people do for real. They hold the emails, they have cameras and microphones on people's rooms, they follow your GPS signal on real time. If you want to be a creator, free of distraction, the winning strategy is not to play. Use digital services that you pay and own, and associate with other creators because alone you are too weak.

tangaye 8y ago
Thank you very much. I find this very insightful and eyeopening. What are resources that I can pay attention to in order to be "conscious of their unfair game"? Will wholeheartedly appreciate it. Thank you once again.

Tade0 8y ago

I rediscovered(after 10 years or so) a half-solution the other day: any activity that requires focus but is done offline(so not programming nowadays, unless you have your docs/tutorials/etc offline). In my case it's making music. The product is obviously crap and takes a lot of time to create, but it has done wonders to my ability to focus.

raffael-vogler 8y ago
Just yesterday evening I had a quick look for old-fashioned chess computers. Who needs a chess computer when you have a real computer or a tablet? The difference is that with a chess computer you are offline.

raffael-vogler 8y ago

This is an ongoing battle for me. I do make progress but it seems that the fundamental design of our culture and society is just increasingly depending and requiring to be online all the time. But I found that a set of simple rituals will go a long way. > We check our phones every 12 minutes, often just after waking up. First of all I reduced my involvement with services that cause me to check my phone. I don't use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Twitter. I even blocked youtube.com and youtu.be on my computers. At some point in the evening I will switch off my phone and keep it in the living room when going to bed. That solved my terrible habit of reading reddit, HN etc while lying in bed intending to sleep. After stopping this I realized how detrimentally this impacted my sleep quality. It also keeps me from immediately reaching for my phone upon waking up. Now I'll do several things before giving attention to my phone. > more and more experts are telling us that these interruptions and distractions have eroded our ability to concentrate. I guess a lot of people will argue that it didn't erode anything but instead just changed our ability to concentrate - in the sense of evolutionary addaption - but I will argue that this is in deed a negative development. I do this confidently from a position of personal experience. It simply doesn't feel good. And a lot of people who claim they like being on and conneceted 24/7 seem nervous and anxious to me. > More than half of the 1,100 participants said they always responded to an email immediately or as soon as possible, while 21% admitted they would interrupt a meeting to do so. That's one of the first things to learn on a job - not to respond to mails immediately. It seems this will just trigger the next mail and establish an expectation to receive fast response from me at all times. In the end it will just snowball and suddenly I'm only writing mails all day long. > ... The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.” I observed that with me, too. The antidote is naturally to read more lengthy texts like books. Sitting down and just reading a book in the evening feels sometimes like therapy - but in a good way. (Currently I'm reading Twain's "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court") > Start by switching off smartphone alerts, or taking social media apps off your phone, then switching off the device for increasingly long periods. I even got me second (dumb) phone (Bea C65). It's number one feature is that it can do nothing except calling and SMS. Also the number is known currently only to my girlfriend. I take it with me when I am certain that I won't need my smartphone. No way to check about Seehofer or Kashogghi on sueddeutsche.de. > Most of us breathe poorly: ... I practice various kinds of meditation - currently twice a day for half an hour each. Body Scan, Zen meditation, Wim Hof breathing, Pranayama inspired breathing etc. This is easily the most important and healthy habit for me at the moment. > Although any type of light can inhibit sleep, research has shown that light towards the blue end of the spectrum is especially effective at keeping you awake because it stimulates the retina in the eye and inhibits the secretion of melatonin from the pineal gland in the brain. In hindsight I have to conclude that reducing brightness on my S7 to lowest setting + activating the blue light filter + using a special app to reduce the brightness even further was not sufficient to prevent sleep issues.

tw1010 8y ago

I typically think of this as a unique advantage that programmers have. In almost every other industry I see, I see people who never get the chance to focus all their attention on intellectually challenging tasks for hours without break, and a lot of them seem super distracted and like their brain have been negatively affected by this absence. But programmers seem like the rare species that actually do get this privilege, and this is usually the reason I prefer intellectual conversations with coders than almost anyone else (even when the topic is something other than engineering).

random_kris 8y ago
I agree with you. But lately I've been noticing myself being distracted a lot and finding it hard to concentrate... for example I have a hard problem in front of me and in the momment something goes wrong I just switch task and go on hn/reddit/mail etc...
- tw1010 8y ago
  Habituating myself with music and special rooms that I'm very strict about associating only to work (never play) has been the key for me. Play music when you work, and be very strict about not playing the same track/genre when you go on hn/reddit. Sometimes I stand up when people speak to me, just so I don't encourage my mind to allow "conversation thoughts" to bubble up from my subconsious when I'm in a chair. If you're strict about this, and you do it for long enough, it becomes much easier. (Don't be too hard on yourself when you fail, let it take the time it needs to take, be patient. And be careful once you've reached the good habit state. Remember how fragile it is and how much effort was required to get to that point.)

jacquesm 8y ago

As a tech fanatic here is my way of dealing with it: - no smartphone - as little social media as possible (yes, I know) - when with family or others the phone is on silent and I won't answer or text - adblockers and privacy tools used to the max to get rid of advertising - no TV - no radio Between all those tricks I can get a half decent day's work and still spend time on others, though I have to admit that the better the business is doing there is still pressure there that will need to be relieved somehow.

clubm8 8y ago

I have a cell phone plan with limited data. At first it was just a frugality thing, but it's also done wonders for attention/mindfulness. I tend to listen to podcasts instead of mindlessly FB/Redditing. Not only does it clear my mind, but listening to the news instead of constantly refreshing a news site throughout the day saves time and decreases stress and "FOMO" (fear of missing out). I know I'm missing out - I've chosen to! :)

brootstrap 8y ago

Might be coming across as an asshole but it's not that hard for me to ignore digital things. Sure i have a bad habit of looking to my phone and opening HN but... When i'm at home i will leave phone sitting somewhere (forgot where i left it) for hours and ignore people. I can run and exercise and listen to the sounds of nature. The problem I have is that at work you are plugged into the browser 8-10 hours a day and instantly searching everything. When you get home it takes a bit of focus to just live and not be staring at a screen. It is possible though.

gfs78 8y ago

My best strategy is to avoid the distractions from the get go. I don't browse the web until I finish my workday. If I need to look up something (which must be work related) I just browse the minimum needed to get the answer. I don't browse to the related links. With my smartphone is the same. I turn off all notifications and leave it in my bag (if I'm at office) or in another room (if I'm working from home). My focus, calmness and confidence skyrocket when I do this.

momentmaker 8y ago

The book War of Art by Steven Pressfield is a great book talking about this. Half of the battle is procrastination. One has to do develop a routine and stick to it never what. Concentration will come from that.