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Thanks for reminding me to turn on screen time on my phone. I am indeed wasting a lot of time on my phone reading things that don't get me much value while proc
by grugagag 6y ago
Thanks for reminding me to turn on screen time on my phone. I am indeed wasting a lot of time on my phone reading things that don't get me much value while procrastinating on real work or things that I consciously want to spend my time on. This problem is a lot more prevalent on my phone than on my laptop. I catch myself browsing HN without any intent and without any goal, mostly reading comments and skimming on articles. It's a complete waste of time and I'm not really getting anything from it. I wish I could come once a week and get a synthesis of what's been happening over here. There are a lot of things that I absolutely don't care about at all and filtering on categories would help me skip those. I noticed that the top 30 or 60 items on HN move rather slowly and one visit a day is enough to not feel that you're missing out. I feel that I need outside help to regulate these behaviors.
- joelbluminator 6y agoHow about every few days just actively search for HN topics that interest you? That's what I try to do. https://hn.algolia.com/ https://hn.algolia.com/
- grugagag 6y agoThanks for the suggestion, I will try algolia. What I really want is not a replacement to my addiction but I'd like to learn to control it better. Perhaps your suggestion helps if I want to come to HN on a weekly basis to get some highlights and stop reading and writing comments altogether. I will try to see how that pans out. Thanks again
- jventura 6y agoI was on a similar situation until last month or so. I read this book called The Shallows by Nicholas Carr which references a lot of research that consuming lots of internet modifies your neural paths and makes you more distractable and harder to do deeper thinking (such as reading books, etc). I’ve since removed hn from my browser favorites and get a curated list of articles each friday from [1]. I just came here today to skim some articles as i’ve worked all day in a house project and my body hurts so I have no energy for other things. This house project, some other mini-projects that i’ve done and the 2/3 books I read since last month is something i can now do because now I avoid HN (and the whole internet) by default.. [1] https://hackernewsletter.com/ https://hackernewsletter.com/
- grugagag 6y agoI feel that's exactly what's happened to my brain pathways. Is this reversible? I'd love to get into the habit of deep thinking again. Thanks for the hakernewsletter link, I'll check that out and hopefully will make it a once a week habit.
- jventura 6y agoAccordingly to the book (and research), yes! Just stop consuming so much of the typical short content on the internet, dwelve back into books or what else makes you think more deeply (house projects, hobbies, writing, whatever), and the same brain plasticity that molded your brain for short content will eventually mold your brain for deep topics..
- j1elo 6y agoI liked the idea of your [1] but seems we're late to the party: last issue #433, January 2nd 2019
- thelazyoxymoron 6y agoI was in a similar boat until recently. One thing that has worked brilliantly for me is to use any service that gives you a notification/curates your feed for the top posts on HN. I personally use Pushbullet for this. Since I was already using it in my phone as well as my laptop and desktop (it's a pretty handy tool to share stuffs quickly between devices), I set up the Hacker News 500 channel which sends me notification for the top items on HN. I usually get 2-3 posts throughout the day, which is more than sufficient for me. I encourage you to look into it: https://www.pushbullet.com/ https://www.pushbullet.com/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]