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How do you separate the enriching part from the addictive part? To me the problem is that my laptop and my phone are magical doors that lead to both smart peopl

• Mirioron 8y ago
  I find this weird. The main thing I do on my phone is HN, some subreddits and books. Most other things fail to engage me on a phone for some reason. I find surfing the web to be way too frustrating to do it on a phone.
• smileypete 8y ago
  I'm coming to the conclusion that it may be best to somehow curate and control your own 'feed'. Eg for Youtube, block the suggestions and just rely on RSS from subscribed channels, or bookmark videos recommended elsewhere. What may also work well is to think of a topic that is really interesting, /then/ go searching for it on Youtube. Trouble is the suggestion algorithms also work to wear down discretion, as it seems you've found...
  • frosted-flakes 8y ago
    For YouTube, I reccomend disabling watch and search history. That way, the only thing that shows up is from channels you're subscribed to or videos that are related to other vidoes you've "liked". If you want to remember a video, add it to a private playlist.
  • eswat 8y ago
    Another thing is to add the DF Tube (or Distraction Free YouTube) extension which lets you hide most of the annoying parts of the UI like recommendations, comments, trending videos, etc.
• davidscolgan 8y ago
  If you figure out a way to solve this problem, please let me know - as someone who works from home, internet distractions are the biggest thing that stand between me and success. I've heard the advice for writers of "turn of your wifi and just write without distractions". But, coding requires the internet in most cases. Hacker News is simultaneously enriching and distracting for me. Youtube is the source of all knowledge, both useful and incredibly banal. I started using hnwatcher.com to notify me when certain topics I care about come up on Hacker News and that was a big level up in being more smart about time spent on here. Reddit I have no idea how to use. I have the feeling I should just permaban it from my life, but it does have it's uses. Same with Twitter. Youtube has probably sucked more of my life away than anything else watching dumb videos that aren't useful or even entertaining/relaxing. It's one thing to do something to relax, but some of my internet surfing seems to fall into this weird middle ground of neither productive or fun, just addicting. Perhaps one option is, as someone else mentioned, more curation. I don't usually have to worry about reading the news even though I do, since I know I'll get word of important things from my friends who do read the news a lot. I recently joined a private freelancer community online, and that has replaced a lot of what I used Reddit effectively for - finding new ideas and rubbing shoulders with peers. I'm also a fan these days of mailing lists since they are not sources of infinite content like Youtube/Reddit.
  • ChrisLTD 8y ago
    One suggestion and one question: - Consider using a tool like Dash to create an offline cache of docs so you can turn off WiFi and still program effectively https://kapeli.com/dash https://kapeli.com/dash - What freelancer community did you join?
    • TheCoelacanth 8y ago
      The trouble is that often the thing you are looking for isn't in the documentation, it's in some random Github issue.
    • davidscolgan 8y ago
      I'm in Kai Davis's Freelance Camp (http://freelance.camp http://freelance.camp). It's a wonderful group of people.
• SllX 8y ago
  The answer is discipline. That’s not the answer people generally like, but it is real and honest. I wake up at the same time every day, have the same routine every day, and have the same commute most days. To an extent, software has made it possible to chuck my own bad habits in the bin and start anew, but it doesn’t have a say in how I spend my time. I read Hacker News and comment here because I like to, but if I need to stop for any reason during the day, I’m losing nothing by doing so, and if something is worth reading, then it is worth writing down what I’ve read. To me this is just a part of my reading time that I’ve allocated for each day, and not even the largest share of it. Same with /r/AskHistorians or /r/DepthHub. If you treat each thing like it is just a book you haven’t stopped reading yet, then you know you can always come back to it and read some a bit more whenever you want to. There’s no guilt, no stress, it’s just another part of my daily routine. Just like my job is. Just like listening to podcasts is. Or going for a walk. Or drinking a cup of coffee. Or cooking my meals and eating. Or brushing my teeth. You are the master of your own destiny. You don’t have to spend time in any way that you don’t choose to, so you might as well spend time taking care of yourself rather than trying to figure out how. Social media might be the digital equivalent of crack, but there isn’t a gun to your head telling you to use it.
  • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    The answer is discipline. If the OP had discipline then they wouldn’t be asking the question. That response is as useless as telling a fat person not to eat so much.
    • paxunix 8y ago
      It's not useless at all. That the answer is simple does not imply the journey to fulfilling the answer is also simple. If a person lacks discipline, it is generally within their control to look at themselves and their choices and figure out how to become more disciplined. If they cannot figure out some way, it is generally within their control to figure out how to ask someone for help about how to build discipline. I recognize that there are people with a mental makeup for whom asking for help is extremely difficult. I do not know what to tell those people, but to continue to make progress in their lives means they have to overcome those blockers somehow.
• wallflower 8y ago
  > and right next to it there are social media bubbles Do you have the native apps or native client apps for these social media bubbles installed currently on your phone? If so, uninstalling them will go a long way to lessening your addiction since the mobile web experience of most social media apps has enough friction to make it more jerky and painful... Think of it like having cookies at home when you were a child. Having them put on top of the cabinet by your parent out of reach (beyond your childhood height) made them practically inaccessible.
• grawprog 8y ago
  I'm honestly not sure, for me it's mostly i've been on the internet a long time, I know 99% of everything is some bullshit. I look at most of it the same way I look at tv shows or movies. Do I want to spend the limited time I have taking in some bullshit? Or, do I want to spend my time productively? It really is your own choice. It's up to everybody how they spend their time. If you feel like it's a waste and it makes you miserable, just don't... It's the same way I stopped eating candy and garbage. I still want it, I see it, it looks appealing. Then I remind myself it's a bag poison garbage. Likewise with facebook or stupid shit on the internet, I see it, it looks appealing...but i tell myself it's poisonous garbage...and just leave it.
• ath0 8y ago
  Let's dive into the "discipline" advice and get practical: 1. Find ways to create cues for yourself to separate the two kinds of activity, and use those cues to hint yourself - create that half-second of separation that gives you a chance to stop, recognize what you're about to do, and make a personal decision about whether you want to continue. For example, split by device: your phone is for addictive and fun activities; and your laptop is for enriching activities. Or by browser: Safari is for fun and Chrome is for enriching. Or by time: fun before noon, enriching after noon. 2. Write down your intent and start to track for yourself how successful you are at tracking toward your goal. You can use iOS' screen time for this, or RescueTime, a pomodoro timer, or a tangible cue - pen and paper even - that gives you the feedback. 3. Be realistic: start with tracking and don't try to set a massive, aggressive goal ("no addicting activity") up front. You're going to need time and energy to build new habits, and you can't rely on having both consistently: it might be easier to notice your habits when you're less tired at the beginning of the week, or on days you're lucky enough to have fewer meetings. But start, try, and be consistent about getting better through time. To be clear - this isn't novel advice - you may recognize parts of it from OKRs (write down your goals and revisit them weekly), from "one habit a month" self-help blogs, from mindfulness training, or even from cognitive behavioral therapy techniques. Various tweaks on this formula might be necessary for your personal brain chemistry. But practice can give your brain the space to notice the underlying concepts and get better at it.
  • AQuantized 8y ago
    My "problem" with this is that I don't know how to separate activities into fun vs. enriching. I've gleaned a ton of valuable advice/information from Hacker News and similar sources, and also wasted an awful lot of time on them, and it's difficult to know which I'll end up having done on a given day.
  • telchar 8y ago
    One of the problems with this is that my workflow these days involves fairly frequently using the authenticator apps on my phone for 2fa to log into sites. While the phone is the worst culprit on distraction, I still can't just turn it off and put it away since I have to refer to it often. It would be better if I could at least block particular distracting sites and apps but I haven't found a way to do that that doesn't involve rooting it.
• rvn1045 8y ago
  Allocate a fixed amount of time at whatever cadence you like and stick to that. whipping out your phone everytime your bored has a net negative effect, no matter what insights you may glean during a particular instance.
• smallgovt 8y ago
  I think a lot of commenters have made productive comments on how to get started in changing bad habits. A commonality between these suggestions is a process of self-evaluation -- that is, it's important to set aside time to analyze how you spent your time and whether it was productive. One thing I'd like to add is that the process of self-evaluation becomes a lot easier when you learn to shut off the part of your brain that negatively judges yourself. Many people (including myself) have an inner monologue that chastises yourself when you do something that is sub-optimal to your value system. This negative superego makes it REALLY hard to start honestly evaluating your behavior because you equate negative actions with negative self-worth, and nobody wants to put themselves down. Part of my path towards mental fitness has involved replacing this negative super ego with the same love and compassion that I would show a friend. Then, the process of self-evaluation becomes psychologically much easier to tackle. I like to think of the time I've set aside for self-evaluation as an opportunity to work on my self-compassion as well as a way to identify corrective actions -- two birds one stone. Nobody is perfect, and even if we end up wasting a ton of time on this earth on mindless activities, it's not the end of the world. At the same time, it makes sense to take actions that lead to our most fulfilling life. And, it sounds like you've identified one change that you could make, so good luck :).
• O_H_E 8y ago
  You spoke my mind better than I could do.