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It is interesting how manufactured distraction-free sessions like yoga, meditation, paid retreats, have emerged to fill the demand for idle time. We’re forgetti

It is interesting how manufactured distraction-free sessions like yoga, meditation, paid retreats, have emerged to fill the demand for idle time. We’re forgetting how to unplug unless it’s a product or service that we can buy. The distraction issue is the number one issue holding back most of the young people in the mentorship group I’m part of. They’re so glued to their phones to check minute-by-minute updates about COVID death tolls, how big their stimulus checks are going to be, the value of their crypto portfolio, GameStop, and every other popular topic under the sun that they don’t have any attention left for their own lives. Bitcoin is especially distracting right now, as they’re all nervously watching the real-time changes of their $1000 portfolios to see if they need to be sad about losing money because it’s crashing or sad about not investing more money because it’s going up. These are all smart students. I always wonder how much more they could accomplish if they’d simply pick four hours each day to turn off their phones. That’s a tough sell, though.

zzzeek 6y ago
> It is interesting how manufactured distraction-free sessions like yoga, meditation, paid retreats, have emerged to fill the demand for idle time. We’re forgetting how to unplug unless it’s a product or service that we can buy. I meditate every day and it's cost me nothing, uses nothing, does not require going anywhere, literally brushing my teeth is more of a commercial activity than meditation is. Meditation is exactly what your students could use most effectively to learn to manage distracted minds, so given you are in a position of mentorship it's kind of sad you seem to think the basic act of sitting and doing exactly nothing but observing how it feels is some kind of corporate fad that should be avoided.
- hybridtupel 6y ago
  I think what was meant here are the countless (monetarized) apps and courses which gamify the meditation experience of course. You are totally right that the original intention of meditation is quite the opposite. No app, gadget or anything else required. Edit: Grammar
  - abnercoimbre 6y ago
    Agreed, but I would need to vouch for the Waking Up app for my own meditation. It was training wheels before venturing off on my own -- don't think anything is wrong with that!
  - tayo42 6y ago
    > countless (monetarized) apps and courses which gamify the meditation experience What do these apps do? Ive been giving meditation a shot recently. (Because i have similar thoughts about my distractions) So im aware of them, ive been mediating just by setting the timer on my phone and finding some quiet time and then well mediate. Mediate as i understand it is just sitting still and being present and aware of your mind wandering then bringing it back to being present. What am I missing?
    - pencildog 6y ago
      The main advantage of an app is guided meditation. If you only want to sit quietly, or you're already trained in meditation, or you've read some books on practice, then the apps may not provide an advantage to you.
    - thombee 6y ago
      It's kinda like having a meditation teacher, but in an app. Totally not necessary, but I like it :D
mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
I am personally finding myself getting caught in exactly these kinds of traps much more often since COVID showed up and all of the opportunity for in person social interaction dried up. Stillness has become difficult and while the digital interactions haven been an imperfect substitute, they’re better than nothing and it’s even more challenging to engage in good digital habits when you’re leaning on these networks for such basic needs. It’s been a challenge.
shortandsweet 6y ago
Curious about your mentoring program. How does it work? I always feel that who am I to really provide advice? I was recently asked to attend a virtual mentoring session and I didn't due to scheduling conflicts but I had no idea what to say had I attended. I was going to kick it off if they had any questions about anything and then move into my career over the years. I didn't want to share too much because I feel it would be bragging.
- cher88 6y ago
  Not the OP, but my advice is to tailor your advice / sharing of experiences to what your mentee(s) need. Always start by listening before sharing your experiences, and for each experience, distill the key learning so you can help your mentee see how they can apply it to their situation.
warent 6y ago
> Bitcoin is especially distracting right now, as they’re all nervously watching the real-time changes of their $1000 portfolios to see if they need to be sad about losing money because it’s crashing or sad about not investing more money because it’s going up. Great way to articulate this! This very experience is relatable although in my case with normal stocks, and something very interesting happened. I sold some stocks for a modest profit, checked a few days later, and read that if I had just held a little longer then my profit would have been like double. It was very frustrating, and there was that negative emotional reaction. Then I realized I'd somehow misread the numbers, and in fact I would have had my initial investment cut in half. My frustration melted into relief and happiness. But more than that, it shocked me into realizing something very important: in the moment, my emotions seemed real, but were actually completely disconnected from reality. Further, the sense of "control" I thought I had was revealed to be a complete illusion. After that, these "bets" (gambles) have completely stopped affecting me, and I haven't experienced FOMO since. Hope more people have the same liberating realization!
- antoniuschan99 6y ago
  It's also compounded because our Peer groups are doing it too so there's that additional FOMO. I get the same feelings as you do (we all do). I read that if the price goes up, we get an elated feeling but it's minor. But when we lose money, that negative feeling is twice as strong.
  - aaaxyz 6y ago
    There's also the fact that the more often you look at your portfolio, the less likely you are to see it go up (assuming typical returns and volatility). Something like ~51% if you look at it every hour vs ~70% if you look every month. Taleb uses that example in Fooled by Randomness.
  - rubicon33 6y ago
    People seem to have a strange way of 'investing'. For me, it falls into 2 categories: 1) Long term investements which I almost never look at. Regular scheduled deposits going into an index fund. 2) Bets. Fun little side gambles which I always do for one purpose - aquiring something in the real world. Example: I want a new M1 macbook, but rather than drop $1k, I gamble $3k bitcoin. If it makes enough profit for the macbook, I sell immediately, and buy. If it drops, I just hang onto it until it goes up. But ultimately, this category of investment is never anything other than a bet, which I am OK losing. And, it's always a means to and end. I have a product in mind, and I justify gambling some money (which is fun) as a means to acquiring said product.
keiferski 6y ago
The blank page is unpopular these days. People have lost the ability to be creative, as in “create from scratch.” Everything must be appified and scheduled, offered with multiple preplanned choices and not with anything open-ended. This is easy to see with an example like kids toys or Legos: most of their new (and lucrative, I imagine) products are branded franchise ones, which is a far cry from the freeform building blocks of just a few decades ago.
- lm28469 6y ago
  > Everything must be appified and scheduled You see it very often on HN with all the articles about tweaking your productivity, scheduling everything, writing what you're doing every 15 minutes in a logbook as to not lose a single second of your life to "unproductivity", &c. We're applying machine concepts to human life as if all that mattered was how much "things" you can produce and how much other things it allows you to consume
  - benhurmarcel 6y ago
    I enjoy to read/watch about productivity apps and new tech, but it seems to me that all this "optimization" doesn't have any strong effect on output. It's not negative, you can do it if that brings you joy, but don't expect it to increase your output. One of my last year's most productive days, I was stuck in a small hotel room on a business trip for a entire day, with a 13-inch laptop on shit wifi. In just a few hours I wrote one of the most useful document for my job in the last couple of years. I guess I had nothing else to do, and had no distractions. Both at my office and home, I have all kinds of ergonomic setup, great connection, comfortable drinks, whatever. And I work ok there most of the time, but I got more focused and productive stuck in a hotel on a small laptop and a wooden chair… Recently this video [1] got my the same impression. A dozen content producers in the "productivity" niche show their workplace. Obviously there are some high-tech desks full of expensive latest tech, but also some simple laptops and a wooden chair. In the end it doesn't matter, they're all producing good output regardless of their productivity setup. So it looks more like a hobby than an actual link to being productive. It's really not about the apps or setup. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs7TCNDQy1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs7TCNDQy1E
teach420 6y ago
> they’re all nervously watching the real-time changes of their $1000 portfolios to see if they need to be sad about losing money because it’s crashing or sad about not investing more money because it’s going up. I'd say those students are learning a lot. A few could make a profit or loss that is life-changing to them (this might also be a surprisingly small amount of money), and they are also presumably learning how to assess their risk profile in reality (as user warent describes in their comment) and be less likely to squander a much larger portfolio later.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  In this case, these are mostly software engineering students. They stand to gain more from their first signing bonus or even first paycheck than what they'd see from 10Xing most of their investments. From a mentor perspective, it's exhausting to hear students complain that they don't have any time to study or schedule interviews, then watch them spend 4 hours talking in the group Slack about their Dogecoin speculation theories.
burade 6y ago
It's called being young. They're emotional and inexperienced. 50 years ago this used to be normal. Now for some reason everybody expects perfection out of everybody at all times. Insanity.
- imesh 6y ago
  Very good point. I'm 30, check reddit/instagram/FB more than I ever did in college, yet I'm more more disciplined during my work and study than I was in college.
- EvilEy3 6y ago
  50 years ago it was different. You could work some grocery job and still be okay. Nowadays working minimum wage means being left behind and poverty. Given how competitive world has become it's only natural that it came to that. 50 years ago you would compete with your surroundings, now you compete with the whole city, country or even world in some cases. And this applies to everything: work, relationships, sex life, etc.
brightball 6y ago
This is honestly one of the reasons I stopped investing in my twenties. I cashed out everything and put it all towards paying down debt because I was absolutely obsessed with the stock market...but after doing the math the guaranteed returns on debt payment were a better focus than the up and down nature of the stock market. I invest now but I have to be conscious of obsession mitigation techniques otherwise I will constantly be watching fluctuations and wondering if I need to sell, buy something else, etc. Instead I buy big boring companies that pay a dividend...and never sell. Just watch for whatever looks like the best deal at the time when I have new money to invest.
- PragmaticPulp 6y ago
  I think it's more important than ever to clarify the difference between long-term investing and short-term speculation with young people. Many young people are entering the market with an expectation that cryptocurrency prices only go up and that they can outperform Wall Street by getting hot tips (DD) from meme-infused posts on Reddit. When it doesn't work out, they swear off "investing" when they never actually did anything beyond speculation and daytrading. I hope apps like Robinhood find a good way to encourage portfolio balance, dollar cost averaging, and risk management over time.
- Tarsul 6y ago
  I had/have the same problem. I now invest in companies that are big in sustainability. Saying to myself that even if the earnings fall flat, at least I can look in the mirror and live with it.
sp332 6y ago
You could start smaller. Set aside 15 minutes to think about life. Once they see the benefits, selling them on longer stretches might be easier.
rubicon33 6y ago
I am going to make a counter point, albeit one that I don't like: Advising kids to lean away from modern life and push back on the progress of distracting technologies will actually be a more anti-social move than not. What I mean is that to exist and live in the modern world increasingly requires adept skills at managing bespoke technological platforms. To be a social being in the 21st century is largely about navigating these platforms and being 'plugged in'. Disconnect, and you'll miss out on the flow of humanity. I mention I don't like this because frankly, I miss the idea of small towns with supportive communities that had inherent dependencies on each other. The baker, the butcher, the doctor, the pastor, etc, everyone had a feeling of purpose and a connectivity to their community. Of course this ideological view of society is long gone so there's just no sense trying to push back. Accept that today's child is a highly connected, distracted, techno-proficient being and let that be that.
- imbnwa 6y ago
  I wager the sexual success of most young men does not hinge on their social media read/write frequency.
  - jpster 6y ago
    You haven’t been paying attention. Look into “thirst traps”.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - EvilEy3 6y ago
      And what's there?
  - ramphastidae 6y ago
    I wouldn’t be sure — being off social media is seen as a red flag these days among young people, esp on dating sites, where linking your Instagram / Snapchat in your profile is considered par for the course. This is obviously satire but there is truth to it too: https://youtu.be/GEWnXmDfVZg https://youtu.be/GEWnXmDfVZg
dominotw 6y ago
> We’re forgetting how to unplug unless it’s a product or service that we can buy. For me I never want to unplug because it brings me all the stress from things I have going on (and not going on) in life. This continuous online state has allowed me to putoff major life decisions.
hauget 6y ago
This, and undiagnosed and untreated ADHD. By the way, for anyone struggling with ADD, check out a book called" by Johhn Ratey the way. It's GREAT. He also wrote Spark, which I think everyone should read.
- rexpop 6y ago
  > a book called" by Johhn Ratey I think you may have accidentally omitted some words.
  - EvilEy3 6y ago
    One of the symptoms of ADHD, btw, lol.
    - hauget 6y ago
      Small typo, no need to be a douche.
  - hauget 6y ago
    Sorry about that, the book is called "ADHD 2.0" by John Ratey :) Small typo.
    - rexpop 6y ago
      Thanks!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
heroHACK17 6y ago
> It is interesting how manufactured distraction-free sessions like yoga, meditation, paid retreats, have emerged to fill the demand for idle time. We’re forgetting how to unplug unless it’s a product or service that we can buy. I never thought of it this way, very interesting. But it's not surprising. There's obviously a demand for these types of products.
baxtr 6y ago
> I always wonder how much more they could accomplish if they’d simply pick four hours each day to turn off their phones. I think most of them sincerely wouldn’t know what to do in those 4 hours. Working on their laptops? I guess I wonder: How can people “accomplish things” nowadays without being on a device?
- vaylian 6y ago
  I think the question should rather be: How can people accomplish things today by using devices that are connected to the internet? Having internet access increases the potential for distraction by a lot. Some websites are specifically designed to be addictive. The easiest way to deal with this is to block them on your device during certain times of the day.
dreamer7 6y ago
Seems like there's an app opportunity here! Free time as a service. "Choose how many hours in a day you would like to be free and we will automatically block your calendar, cancel meeting invites, setup an email auto-responder and disable access to the internet" /s
- hetspookjee 6y ago
  It's good that you explicitly made the /s. Otherwise you surely would've fallen victim of Poe's law.
lm28469 6y ago
> It is interesting how manufactured distraction-free sessions like yoga, meditation, paid retreats, have emerged to fill the demand for idle time. We’re forgetting how to unplug unless it’s a product or service that we can buy. This is the most interesting part to me, people managed to monetize these things. After vacations, entertainment, now they monetize idleness, I really don't know what to think of it. The funny thing is that they're really two sides of the same coin, they both compete for your time and money
agumonkey 6y ago
It might be a shallow conclusion but the level of absurdity of 2000s life is getting to me. Everything good that was free is now ~offered as paid services to compensate for all the subtle toxicity of the average mainstream life. I just came back from a very free (for now) walk in the woods.
AtlasBarfed 6y ago
Exercise is shoes and a trip out the door away. It's really reflective of a (hopefully) near-endgame of marketing: turning over the last stones available. Well, I don't really believe that. Again, a failure of economics. EVERYTHING shouldn't be monetized, that is truly a path to dystopia, where you pay for the air you breathe.
Balgair 6y ago
One (hopelessly futile) tactic may be focusing on the ROI of various reading material. Internet comments take ~5 minutes to write, 30s to read (6x ROI). Blog posts are ~4 hours to write, 10m to read (24x). Magazine articles are ~3 months to write, 30m to read (960x). Books are ~5 years to write, 8h to read (1300x). Obviously, reading books is one of the best sources of reading. But it also works with video and audio material. Movies are better than YT vlogs which are better than ticktocks. Albums are better than singles which are better than soundcloud covers. I know that teenagers are never going to listen to this advice (I sure wouldn't have), but there is that fleeting chance! (Also, the ROI stuff is a rough guide, read/view/listen to whatever you'd like, I'm not your dad!)
callamdelaney 6y ago
There is a lot of talk about investments / trading on this thread so I thought I'd drop some of my thoughts and experiences here. 1) You can be right and still lose significant amounts of money. I've lost many thousands myself on something that I was eventually right about, timing is key - and it doesn't do to dwell on any decision - whether because you lost or could have made more. Sure, if I'd just invested my pocket money in bitcoin when I first mined it in 2012 I'd be retired already - but I didn't - shit happens. 2) If you are attaching emotion to your positions you're doing it wrong. This is a huge point, not one I've personally mastered - which is why I don't play with stocks anymore. 3) The whole cycle of emotions surrounding markets is explained brilliantly by George Soros in 'The Alchemy of Finance'. This is an excellent read. It's interesting and illuminating that Soros was a student of Philosophy and not strictly mathematics or business. In my own experience there are two layers to markets - what actually is and what people think is or will be; usually the latter is much more powerful in terms of short term positions. One of Soros's points is that the two interact and influence the other eventually.

zzzeek 6y ago

> It is interesting how manufactured distraction-free sessions like yoga, meditation, paid retreats, have emerged to fill the demand for idle time. We’re forgetting how to unplug unless it’s a product or service that we can buy. I meditate every day and it's cost me nothing, uses nothing, does not require going anywhere, literally brushing my teeth is more of a commercial activity than meditation is. Meditation is exactly what your students could use most effectively to learn to manage distracted minds, so given you are in a position of mentorship it's kind of sad you seem to think the basic act of sitting and doing exactly nothing but observing how it feels is some kind of corporate fad that should be avoided.

hybridtupel 6y ago
I think what was meant here are the countless (monetarized) apps and courses which gamify the meditation experience of course. You are totally right that the original intention of meditation is quite the opposite. No app, gadget or anything else required. Edit: Grammar
- abnercoimbre 6y ago
  Agreed, but I would need to vouch for the Waking Up app for my own meditation. It was training wheels before venturing off on my own -- don't think anything is wrong with that!
- tayo42 6y ago
  > countless (monetarized) apps and courses which gamify the meditation experience What do these apps do? Ive been giving meditation a shot recently. (Because i have similar thoughts about my distractions) So im aware of them, ive been mediating just by setting the timer on my phone and finding some quiet time and then well mediate. Mediate as i understand it is just sitting still and being present and aware of your mind wandering then bringing it back to being present. What am I missing?
  - pencildog 6y ago
    The main advantage of an app is guided meditation. If you only want to sit quietly, or you're already trained in meditation, or you've read some books on practice, then the apps may not provide an advantage to you.
  - thombee 6y ago
    It's kinda like having a meditation teacher, but in an app. Totally not necessary, but I like it :D

mandelbrotwurst 6y ago

I am personally finding myself getting caught in exactly these kinds of traps much more often since COVID showed up and all of the opportunity for in person social interaction dried up. Stillness has become difficult and while the digital interactions haven been an imperfect substitute, they’re better than nothing and it’s even more challenging to engage in good digital habits when you’re leaning on these networks for such basic needs. It’s been a challenge.

shortandsweet 6y ago

Curious about your mentoring program. How does it work? I always feel that who am I to really provide advice? I was recently asked to attend a virtual mentoring session and I didn't due to scheduling conflicts but I had no idea what to say had I attended. I was going to kick it off if they had any questions about anything and then move into my career over the years. I didn't want to share too much because I feel it would be bragging.

cher88 6y ago
Not the OP, but my advice is to tailor your advice / sharing of experiences to what your mentee(s) need. Always start by listening before sharing your experiences, and for each experience, distill the key learning so you can help your mentee see how they can apply it to their situation.

warent 6y ago

> Bitcoin is especially distracting right now, as they’re all nervously watching the real-time changes of their $1000 portfolios to see if they need to be sad about losing money because it’s crashing or sad about not investing more money because it’s going up. Great way to articulate this! This very experience is relatable although in my case with normal stocks, and something very interesting happened. I sold some stocks for a modest profit, checked a few days later, and read that if I had just held a little longer then my profit would have been like double. It was very frustrating, and there was that negative emotional reaction. Then I realized I'd somehow misread the numbers, and in fact I would have had my initial investment cut in half. My frustration melted into relief and happiness. But more than that, it shocked me into realizing something very important: in the moment, my emotions seemed real, but were actually completely disconnected from reality. Further, the sense of "control" I thought I had was revealed to be a complete illusion. After that, these "bets" (gambles) have completely stopped affecting me, and I haven't experienced FOMO since. Hope more people have the same liberating realization!

antoniuschan99 6y ago
It's also compounded because our Peer groups are doing it too so there's that additional FOMO. I get the same feelings as you do (we all do). I read that if the price goes up, we get an elated feeling but it's minor. But when we lose money, that negative feeling is twice as strong.
- aaaxyz 6y ago
  There's also the fact that the more often you look at your portfolio, the less likely you are to see it go up (assuming typical returns and volatility). Something like ~51% if you look at it every hour vs ~70% if you look every month. Taleb uses that example in Fooled by Randomness.
- rubicon33 6y ago
  People seem to have a strange way of 'investing'. For me, it falls into 2 categories: 1) Long term investements which I almost never look at. Regular scheduled deposits going into an index fund. 2) Bets. Fun little side gambles which I always do for one purpose - aquiring something in the real world. Example: I want a new M1 macbook, but rather than drop $1k, I gamble $3k bitcoin. If it makes enough profit for the macbook, I sell immediately, and buy. If it drops, I just hang onto it until it goes up. But ultimately, this category of investment is never anything other than a bet, which I am OK losing. And, it's always a means to and end. I have a product in mind, and I justify gambling some money (which is fun) as a means to acquiring said product.

keiferski 6y ago

The blank page is unpopular these days. People have lost the ability to be creative, as in “create from scratch.” Everything must be appified and scheduled, offered with multiple preplanned choices and not with anything open-ended. This is easy to see with an example like kids toys or Legos: most of their new (and lucrative, I imagine) products are branded franchise ones, which is a far cry from the freeform building blocks of just a few decades ago.

lm28469 6y ago
> Everything must be appified and scheduled You see it very often on HN with all the articles about tweaking your productivity, scheduling everything, writing what you're doing every 15 minutes in a logbook as to not lose a single second of your life to "unproductivity", &c. We're applying machine concepts to human life as if all that mattered was how much "things" you can produce and how much other things it allows you to consume
- benhurmarcel 6y ago
  I enjoy to read/watch about productivity apps and new tech, but it seems to me that all this "optimization" doesn't have any strong effect on output. It's not negative, you can do it if that brings you joy, but don't expect it to increase your output. One of my last year's most productive days, I was stuck in a small hotel room on a business trip for a entire day, with a 13-inch laptop on shit wifi. In just a few hours I wrote one of the most useful document for my job in the last couple of years. I guess I had nothing else to do, and had no distractions. Both at my office and home, I have all kinds of ergonomic setup, great connection, comfortable drinks, whatever. And I work ok there most of the time, but I got more focused and productive stuck in a hotel on a small laptop and a wooden chair… Recently this video [1] got my the same impression. A dozen content producers in the "productivity" niche show their workplace. Obviously there are some high-tech desks full of expensive latest tech, but also some simple laptops and a wooden chair. In the end it doesn't matter, they're all producing good output regardless of their productivity setup. So it looks more like a hobby than an actual link to being productive. It's really not about the apps or setup. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs7TCNDQy1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs7TCNDQy1E

teach420 6y ago

> they’re all nervously watching the real-time changes of their $1000 portfolios to see if they need to be sad about losing money because it’s crashing or sad about not investing more money because it’s going up. I'd say those students are learning a lot. A few could make a profit or loss that is life-changing to them (this might also be a surprisingly small amount of money), and they are also presumably learning how to assess their risk profile in reality (as user warent describes in their comment) and be less likely to squander a much larger portfolio later.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
In this case, these are mostly software engineering students. They stand to gain more from their first signing bonus or even first paycheck than what they'd see from 10Xing most of their investments. From a mentor perspective, it's exhausting to hear students complain that they don't have any time to study or schedule interviews, then watch them spend 4 hours talking in the group Slack about their Dogecoin speculation theories.

burade 6y ago

It's called being young. They're emotional and inexperienced. 50 years ago this used to be normal. Now for some reason everybody expects perfection out of everybody at all times. Insanity.

imesh 6y ago
Very good point. I'm 30, check reddit/instagram/FB more than I ever did in college, yet I'm more more disciplined during my work and study than I was in college.
EvilEy3 6y ago
50 years ago it was different. You could work some grocery job and still be okay. Nowadays working minimum wage means being left behind and poverty. Given how competitive world has become it's only natural that it came to that. 50 years ago you would compete with your surroundings, now you compete with the whole city, country or even world in some cases. And this applies to everything: work, relationships, sex life, etc.

brightball 6y ago

This is honestly one of the reasons I stopped investing in my twenties. I cashed out everything and put it all towards paying down debt because I was absolutely obsessed with the stock market...but after doing the math the guaranteed returns on debt payment were a better focus than the up and down nature of the stock market. I invest now but I have to be conscious of obsession mitigation techniques otherwise I will constantly be watching fluctuations and wondering if I need to sell, buy something else, etc. Instead I buy big boring companies that pay a dividend...and never sell. Just watch for whatever looks like the best deal at the time when I have new money to invest.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
I think it's more important than ever to clarify the difference between long-term investing and short-term speculation with young people. Many young people are entering the market with an expectation that cryptocurrency prices only go up and that they can outperform Wall Street by getting hot tips (DD) from meme-infused posts on Reddit. When it doesn't work out, they swear off "investing" when they never actually did anything beyond speculation and daytrading. I hope apps like Robinhood find a good way to encourage portfolio balance, dollar cost averaging, and risk management over time.
Tarsul 6y ago
I had/have the same problem. I now invest in companies that are big in sustainability. Saying to myself that even if the earnings fall flat, at least I can look in the mirror and live with it.

sp332 6y ago

You could start smaller. Set aside 15 minutes to think about life. Once they see the benefits, selling them on longer stretches might be easier.

rubicon33 6y ago

I am going to make a counter point, albeit one that I don't like: Advising kids to lean away from modern life and push back on the progress of distracting technologies will actually be a more anti-social move than not. What I mean is that to exist and live in the modern world increasingly requires adept skills at managing bespoke technological platforms. To be a social being in the 21st century is largely about navigating these platforms and being 'plugged in'. Disconnect, and you'll miss out on the flow of humanity. I mention I don't like this because frankly, I miss the idea of small towns with supportive communities that had inherent dependencies on each other. The baker, the butcher, the doctor, the pastor, etc, everyone had a feeling of purpose and a connectivity to their community. Of course this ideological view of society is long gone so there's just no sense trying to push back. Accept that today's child is a highly connected, distracted, techno-proficient being and let that be that.

imbnwa 6y ago
I wager the sexual success of most young men does not hinge on their social media read/write frequency.
- jpster 6y ago
  You haven’t been paying attention. Look into “thirst traps”.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - EvilEy3 6y ago
    And what's there?
- ramphastidae 6y ago
  I wouldn’t be sure — being off social media is seen as a red flag these days among young people, esp on dating sites, where linking your Instagram / Snapchat in your profile is considered par for the course. This is obviously satire but there is truth to it too: https://youtu.be/GEWnXmDfVZg https://youtu.be/GEWnXmDfVZg

dominotw 6y ago

> We’re forgetting how to unplug unless it’s a product or service that we can buy. For me I never want to unplug because it brings me all the stress from things I have going on (and not going on) in life. This continuous online state has allowed me to putoff major life decisions.

hauget 6y ago

This, and undiagnosed and untreated ADHD. By the way, for anyone struggling with ADD, check out a book called" by Johhn Ratey the way. It's GREAT. He also wrote Spark, which I think everyone should read.

rexpop 6y ago
> a book called" by Johhn Ratey I think you may have accidentally omitted some words.
- EvilEy3 6y ago
  One of the symptoms of ADHD, btw, lol.
  - hauget 6y ago
    Small typo, no need to be a douche.
- hauget 6y ago
  Sorry about that, the book is called "ADHD 2.0" by John Ratey :) Small typo.
  - rexpop 6y ago
    Thanks!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

heroHACK17 6y ago

> It is interesting how manufactured distraction-free sessions like yoga, meditation, paid retreats, have emerged to fill the demand for idle time. We’re forgetting how to unplug unless it’s a product or service that we can buy. I never thought of it this way, very interesting. But it's not surprising. There's obviously a demand for these types of products.

baxtr 6y ago

> I always wonder how much more they could accomplish if they’d simply pick four hours each day to turn off their phones. I think most of them sincerely wouldn’t know what to do in those 4 hours. Working on their laptops? I guess I wonder: How can people “accomplish things” nowadays without being on a device?

vaylian 6y ago
I think the question should rather be: How can people accomplish things today by using devices that are connected to the internet? Having internet access increases the potential for distraction by a lot. Some websites are specifically designed to be addictive. The easiest way to deal with this is to block them on your device during certain times of the day.

dreamer7 6y ago

Seems like there's an app opportunity here! Free time as a service. "Choose how many hours in a day you would like to be free and we will automatically block your calendar, cancel meeting invites, setup an email auto-responder and disable access to the internet" /s

hetspookjee 6y ago
It's good that you explicitly made the /s. Otherwise you surely would've fallen victim of Poe's law.

lm28469 6y ago

> It is interesting how manufactured distraction-free sessions like yoga, meditation, paid retreats, have emerged to fill the demand for idle time. We’re forgetting how to unplug unless it’s a product or service that we can buy. This is the most interesting part to me, people managed to monetize these things. After vacations, entertainment, now they monetize idleness, I really don't know what to think of it. The funny thing is that they're really two sides of the same coin, they both compete for your time and money

agumonkey 6y ago

It might be a shallow conclusion but the level of absurdity of 2000s life is getting to me. Everything good that was free is now ~offered as paid services to compensate for all the subtle toxicity of the average mainstream life. I just came back from a very free (for now) walk in the woods.

AtlasBarfed 6y ago

Exercise is shoes and a trip out the door away. It's really reflective of a (hopefully) near-endgame of marketing: turning over the last stones available. Well, I don't really believe that. Again, a failure of economics. EVERYTHING shouldn't be monetized, that is truly a path to dystopia, where you pay for the air you breathe.

Balgair 6y ago

One (hopelessly futile) tactic may be focusing on the ROI of various reading material. Internet comments take ~5 minutes to write, 30s to read (6x ROI). Blog posts are ~4 hours to write, 10m to read (24x). Magazine articles are ~3 months to write, 30m to read (960x). Books are ~5 years to write, 8h to read (1300x). Obviously, reading books is one of the best sources of reading. But it also works with video and audio material. Movies are better than YT vlogs which are better than ticktocks. Albums are better than singles which are better than soundcloud covers. I know that teenagers are never going to listen to this advice (I sure wouldn't have), but there is that fleeting chance! (Also, the ROI stuff is a rough guide, read/view/listen to whatever you'd like, I'm not your dad!)

callamdelaney 6y ago

There is a lot of talk about investments / trading on this thread so I thought I'd drop some of my thoughts and experiences here. 1) You can be right and still lose significant amounts of money. I've lost many thousands myself on something that I was eventually right about, timing is key - and it doesn't do to dwell on any decision - whether because you lost or could have made more. Sure, if I'd just invested my pocket money in bitcoin when I first mined it in 2012 I'd be retired already - but I didn't - shit happens. 2) If you are attaching emotion to your positions you're doing it wrong. This is a huge point, not one I've personally mastered - which is why I don't play with stocks anymore. 3) The whole cycle of emotions surrounding markets is explained brilliantly by George Soros in 'The Alchemy of Finance'. This is an excellent read. It's interesting and illuminating that Soros was a student of Philosophy and not strictly mathematics or business. In my own experience there are two layers to markets - what actually is and what people think is or will be; usually the latter is much more powerful in terms of short term positions. One of Soros's points is that the two interact and influence the other eventually.