6 ms·

If you have such a hard time not reading reddit or hackernews maybe the correct conclusion is not that you're 'wasting' time but that there's something enjoyabl

If you have such a hard time not reading reddit or hackernews maybe the correct conclusion is not that you're 'wasting' time but that there's something enjoyable about so called low quality or idle activities and that they're normal part of a healthy life. I think it's deeply ironic that people will judge videogames on that basis but then to proceed to gamify and min-max their entire life because of this rat race mentality. If you think that kind of stuff is meaningless when it turns up as a hobby the correct conclusion is probably to not structure your entire personality that way. Just be less judgmental with yourself. things don't need to be highbrow or particularly meaningful to be a good use of time. It's mostly just a cultural artifact of our time that puts ripped busybodies and entrepreneurs, and celebs and intellectuals on pedestals.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sojournerc 5y ago
Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. (Many credits https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/11/time-you-enjoy/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/11/time-you-enjoy/)
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Would it 'twere so simple.
  - sojournerc 5y ago
    Care to expand? It may depend on your values. Is the purpose of a life to be as productive as possible? Is it to share love with friends and family? We have this sick obsession with productivity that harms our quality of life. Wouldn't you rather make the world happier "wasting" good time with those close to you (even yourself, e.g. video games) than being "productive" for someone else's bottom line?
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      There are different types of wasting time. I often feel like I overlook hobbies and pastimes that are more productive (reading books, learning languages) over ones that are mindless (browsing HN, watching YouTubes).
zz865 5y ago
If I could restrict it to just 1 hour a day I'd be happy but its really ruining my career and social life.
- mlac 5y ago
  Read digital minimalism, install pihole on your network, use Tailscale for DNS to point it there, implement blocks on the offending websites and categories. Make your smart phone dumb so you are limited to what you can do, and get an offline hobby. Be easy on yourself, you will relapse, and realize that nearly everything on a digital platform can be shut off and ignored with the click (or long press) of a button. Set up your environment for success, and make the path of least resistance align with your values. You say you want one hour a day, but I’d scale back to nothing for a while and slowly re-introduce it. Or make it less convenient to do the activity.
  - totetsu 5y ago
    This kind of thing works to begin with at least.. when that browser plugin in chrome stops me opening HN after 1hour it interrupts the impulse to browse, but then I can alway just open Firefox.. Limits outside ones control are best.. it's amazing how uninteresting youtube is when your data is rate limited.
    - mlac 5y ago
      Yeah, giving someone else the keys or password for locking down devices is weird but ideal if it’s a real problem.
      - Trex_Egg 5y ago
        I am going to try out this.
    - zz865 5y ago
      Yeah I was going to say I used to have a pihole, worked great for a few weeks until you start disabling it all the time. I wish there were 3G only SIM plans. My prepaid goes slow but only after I hit my limit.
DennisP 5y ago
What you want to do is entirely up to you. It doesn't have to be meaningful in anyone else's eyes. But if it matters to you that you get X done, and you never get it done because it was usually easier in the moment to do Y instead, then you'll end up regretting that. In that case it's worth figuring that out in advance and trying to fix it.
- totetsu 5y ago
  In that case it's still not a matter or judging Y as a waste of time or low value activity, it's just that committing to doing things to get X done a better choice
modeless 5y ago
Many of the highest impact decisions in my life, I made because of things I learned reading HN and reddit. And I've even been able to promote my own projects and other projects I like with some success. It's hard to tell whether I'm wasting this time or whether I'm learning about the next Tesla or Bitcoin or deep learning before it's big. Or learning the skills to communicate effectively and promote my work to a big community. I can't separate those things. If I amortize the benefits over the time spent, I think the ROI is pretty good even though the time is large.
- Swizec 5y ago
  Or as Hamming says in his famous essay: He who works with a closed door is more productive today and tomorrow, but over time works on just slightly the wrong things to make an impact. But those with an open door are full of flitting and scattering and keep getting distracted, yet over time stay aligned with the field and are much more likely to do important work
  - suriyaG 5y ago
    Is there a link to this essay? I'm curious now. Edit: found it https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
    - Trex_Egg 5y ago
      Hey, thanks for sharing this post. I find this as an interesting one.
    - dredmorbius 5y ago
      An HN perennial: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22you%20and%20your%20research%22%20&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Most recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28322153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28322153 At least 10 instances with some discussion. The lecture is part of a series of lectures by Richard W. Hamming and is collected into a book The art of doing science and engineering : learning to learn https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30 https://www.worldcat.org/title/art-of-doing-science-and-engineering-learning-to-learn/oclc/1227304365 https://www.worldcat.org/title/art-of-doing-science-and-engi...
colechristensen 5y ago
Something can be both useful and a sort of “something to satisfy my need for simulation” at the same time. Most things can be and are overdone. Many people recognize this in themselves but have a hard time tearing away from it or only doing it in moderation. You can enjoy something while admitting to yourself that you’re not happy about spending 9 hours today glued to X for no particular reason.
boppo1 5y ago
I spend on average[1] 4+ hours a day here, reddit or 4chan. I wish I had spent the time on other pursuits that I have consistently found more enjoyable and rewarding. 4chan in particular usually leaves me feeling some subtle mixture of mentally nauseous and despondent, although I laugh a lot and find interesting things I don't elsewhere. My over-browsing habit is absolutely an unhealthy and compulsive behavior. I'm 30 now and started on SomethingAwful and StumbleUpon and videogame/software enthusiast forums I think when I was about 9 or 10. I wonder if I'm sort of like a person who started smoking cigarettes at that age. My relationship with compulsive browsing seems to be rooted in experiencing it differently than normal people[2]. They seem to lose interest after a period of time. I can (and do) browse for 9+ hours about 2-3x a month. Interestingly, when I travel, my relationship with browsing changes. The feeling of "magnetic attention" (present even right now) is entirely absent and I lose interest after 5 minutes, max. [1] The 'wellness' screentime monitors have been a godsend. Assembling histograms of my usage stopped me regarding myself as entirely pathetic and got me to think that maybe I have a problem along the lines of nicotine, perhaps something not well understood by psychology yet. Still pathetic, but maybe less so. [2]It seems that the issue I have is increasingly present in others, especially younger people who had connected devices even younger than I.
- pieix 5y ago
  As somebody who found it far easier to give up nicotine than 4chan, I empathize.
  - boppo1 5y ago
    It's incredible. I was dependent on prescription stimulants to be functional and I managed to give those up. But 4chan? I've tried 4 times and made it to a month, max.
- climb_stealth 5y ago
  > Interestingly, when I travel, my relationship with browsing changes. The feeling of "magnetic attention" (present even right now) is entirely absent and I lose interest after 5 minutes, max. Oh wow, interesting that you mention it because I experience the same. Can and do spend hours a day looking at random stuff on various forums / youtube / hn. But once I'm out traveling the need disappears and it just doesn't seem to grip as much anymore. I believe the almost obsessive browsing is some kind of escape or avoidance mechanism. An escape from being somewhere doing something that you don't want to be doing. It is an easy of taking the mind of whatever is going on in reality. Not that it helps much.
wpietri 5y ago
Or maybe you could credit that people can sometimes recognize which urges toward consumption are unhealthy? I agree the rat race mentality is also bad. But it shouldn't surprise anybody that products engineered to be compelling end up with some people feeling over-compelled to consume.
nicbou 5y ago
A little of it is normal. Too much of it is wasteful. I have clocked a thousand hours in a video game I like. Many of that hours were not fun, but still just entertaining enough to prevent me from seeking greater pleasures. I was just killing time, not enjoying it. I realise now that reddit is just the same. I sometimes use tools to block it, and I end up doing much more during that time. Not more work, but more time well spent. I'm not being judgemental. I'm realizing that mindless browsing has a negative impact on my life and I choose to address it.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Among the most insidious aspects of such sites is when somebody is wrong on the Internet. As in the comment above. https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/
ahaferburg 5y ago
The article is written by someone who regards their habit as a problem, and, without knowing anything about it, you try to minimize it. "Why quit smoking? If you're smoking this much, it must bring you great joy!" You don't seem to understand how addiction works. The fact that it's not scientifically proven that compulsive browsing is harmful was explicitly addressed in the article. That's a problem. In my opinion, the biggest problem with compulsive browsing is that you give up a proactive design of your own free time. You hand over all decisions to the algorithms. The only decision left is whether or not to open up a thumbnail. It's a slot machine, it's gambling. For a laugh, for entertainment, for the next dopamine hit. "Why quit gambling? It's only a couple minutes every night, and you have so many minutes left."
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  While I believe that the problem is insidious, you're not bringing any actual evidence to counter the article. All you have is contrived counter-examples about other negative behaviors unrelated to the article. So you haven't added anything substantive to the discussion.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

sojournerc 5y ago

Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. (Many credits https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/11/time-you-enjoy/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/11/time-you-enjoy/)

Apocryphon 5y ago
Would it 'twere so simple.
- sojournerc 5y ago
  Care to expand? It may depend on your values. Is the purpose of a life to be as productive as possible? Is it to share love with friends and family? We have this sick obsession with productivity that harms our quality of life. Wouldn't you rather make the world happier "wasting" good time with those close to you (even yourself, e.g. video games) than being "productive" for someone else's bottom line?
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    There are different types of wasting time. I often feel like I overlook hobbies and pastimes that are more productive (reading books, learning languages) over ones that are mindless (browsing HN, watching YouTubes).

zz865 5y ago

If I could restrict it to just 1 hour a day I'd be happy but its really ruining my career and social life.

mlac 5y ago
Read digital minimalism, install pihole on your network, use Tailscale for DNS to point it there, implement blocks on the offending websites and categories. Make your smart phone dumb so you are limited to what you can do, and get an offline hobby. Be easy on yourself, you will relapse, and realize that nearly everything on a digital platform can be shut off and ignored with the click (or long press) of a button. Set up your environment for success, and make the path of least resistance align with your values. You say you want one hour a day, but I’d scale back to nothing for a while and slowly re-introduce it. Or make it less convenient to do the activity.
- totetsu 5y ago
  This kind of thing works to begin with at least.. when that browser plugin in chrome stops me opening HN after 1hour it interrupts the impulse to browse, but then I can alway just open Firefox.. Limits outside ones control are best.. it's amazing how uninteresting youtube is when your data is rate limited.
  - mlac 5y ago
    Yeah, giving someone else the keys or password for locking down devices is weird but ideal if it’s a real problem.
    - Trex_Egg 5y ago
      I am going to try out this.
  - zz865 5y ago
    Yeah I was going to say I used to have a pihole, worked great for a few weeks until you start disabling it all the time. I wish there were 3G only SIM plans. My prepaid goes slow but only after I hit my limit.

DennisP 5y ago

What you want to do is entirely up to you. It doesn't have to be meaningful in anyone else's eyes. But if it matters to you that you get X done, and you never get it done because it was usually easier in the moment to do Y instead, then you'll end up regretting that. In that case it's worth figuring that out in advance and trying to fix it.

totetsu 5y ago
In that case it's still not a matter or judging Y as a waste of time or low value activity, it's just that committing to doing things to get X done a better choice

modeless 5y ago

Many of the highest impact decisions in my life, I made because of things I learned reading HN and reddit. And I've even been able to promote my own projects and other projects I like with some success. It's hard to tell whether I'm wasting this time or whether I'm learning about the next Tesla or Bitcoin or deep learning before it's big. Or learning the skills to communicate effectively and promote my work to a big community. I can't separate those things. If I amortize the benefits over the time spent, I think the ROI is pretty good even though the time is large.

Swizec 5y ago
Or as Hamming says in his famous essay: He who works with a closed door is more productive today and tomorrow, but over time works on just slightly the wrong things to make an impact. But those with an open door are full of flitting and scattering and keep getting distracted, yet over time stay aligned with the field and are much more likely to do important work
- suriyaG 5y ago
  Is there a link to this essay? I'm curious now. Edit: found it https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
  - Trex_Egg 5y ago
    Hey, thanks for sharing this post. I find this as an interesting one.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    An HN perennial: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22you%20and%20your%20research%22%20&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... Most recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28322153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28322153 At least 10 instances with some discussion. The lecture is part of a series of lectures by Richard W. Hamming and is collected into a book The art of doing science and engineering : learning to learn https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30 https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30 https://www.worldcat.org/title/art-of-doing-science-and-engineering-learning-to-learn/oclc/1227304365 https://www.worldcat.org/title/art-of-doing-science-and-engi...

colechristensen 5y ago

Something can be both useful and a sort of “something to satisfy my need for simulation” at the same time. Most things can be and are overdone. Many people recognize this in themselves but have a hard time tearing away from it or only doing it in moderation. You can enjoy something while admitting to yourself that you’re not happy about spending 9 hours today glued to X for no particular reason.

boppo1 5y ago

I spend on average[1] 4+ hours a day here, reddit or 4chan. I wish I had spent the time on other pursuits that I have consistently found more enjoyable and rewarding. 4chan in particular usually leaves me feeling some subtle mixture of mentally nauseous and despondent, although I laugh a lot and find interesting things I don't elsewhere. My over-browsing habit is absolutely an unhealthy and compulsive behavior. I'm 30 now and started on SomethingAwful and StumbleUpon and videogame/software enthusiast forums I think when I was about 9 or 10. I wonder if I'm sort of like a person who started smoking cigarettes at that age. My relationship with compulsive browsing seems to be rooted in experiencing it differently than normal people[2]. They seem to lose interest after a period of time. I can (and do) browse for 9+ hours about 2-3x a month. Interestingly, when I travel, my relationship with browsing changes. The feeling of "magnetic attention" (present even right now) is entirely absent and I lose interest after 5 minutes, max. [1] The 'wellness' screentime monitors have been a godsend. Assembling histograms of my usage stopped me regarding myself as entirely pathetic and got me to think that maybe I have a problem along the lines of nicotine, perhaps something not well understood by psychology yet. Still pathetic, but maybe less so. [2]It seems that the issue I have is increasingly present in others, especially younger people who had connected devices even younger than I.

pieix 5y ago
As somebody who found it far easier to give up nicotine than 4chan, I empathize.
- boppo1 5y ago
  It's incredible. I was dependent on prescription stimulants to be functional and I managed to give those up. But 4chan? I've tried 4 times and made it to a month, max.
climb_stealth 5y ago
> Interestingly, when I travel, my relationship with browsing changes. The feeling of "magnetic attention" (present even right now) is entirely absent and I lose interest after 5 minutes, max. Oh wow, interesting that you mention it because I experience the same. Can and do spend hours a day looking at random stuff on various forums / youtube / hn. But once I'm out traveling the need disappears and it just doesn't seem to grip as much anymore. I believe the almost obsessive browsing is some kind of escape or avoidance mechanism. An escape from being somewhere doing something that you don't want to be doing. It is an easy of taking the mind of whatever is going on in reality. Not that it helps much.

wpietri 5y ago

Or maybe you could credit that people can sometimes recognize which urges toward consumption are unhealthy? I agree the rat race mentality is also bad. But it shouldn't surprise anybody that products engineered to be compelling end up with some people feeling over-compelled to consume.

nicbou 5y ago

A little of it is normal. Too much of it is wasteful. I have clocked a thousand hours in a video game I like. Many of that hours were not fun, but still just entertaining enough to prevent me from seeking greater pleasures. I was just killing time, not enjoying it. I realise now that reddit is just the same. I sometimes use tools to block it, and I end up doing much more during that time. Not more work, but more time well spent. I'm not being judgemental. I'm realizing that mindless browsing has a negative impact on my life and I choose to address it.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Among the most insidious aspects of such sites is when somebody is wrong on the Internet. As in the comment above. https://xkcd.com/386/ https://xkcd.com/386/

ahaferburg 5y ago

The article is written by someone who regards their habit as a problem, and, without knowing anything about it, you try to minimize it. "Why quit smoking? If you're smoking this much, it must bring you great joy!" You don't seem to understand how addiction works. The fact that it's not scientifically proven that compulsive browsing is harmful was explicitly addressed in the article. That's a problem. In my opinion, the biggest problem with compulsive browsing is that you give up a proactive design of your own free time. You hand over all decisions to the algorithms. The only decision left is whether or not to open up a thumbnail. It's a slot machine, it's gambling. For a laugh, for entertainment, for the next dopamine hit. "Why quit gambling? It's only a couple minutes every night, and you have so many minutes left."

Apocryphon 5y ago
While I believe that the problem is insidious, you're not bringing any actual evidence to counter the article. All you have is contrived counter-examples about other negative behaviors unrelated to the article. So you haven't added anything substantive to the discussion.