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The way to cure this is to develop a habit that severely limits undirected online browsing and socializing. Part of it is just an education of your own aestheti

The way to cure this is to develop a habit that severely limits undirected online browsing and socializing. Part of it is just an education of your own aesthetic sentiments. I read James Clear's "Atomic Habits" (not that this is a special book, I was just on another kick in which I really needed to improve my productivity and picked up a suggestion to use a physical counter of some kind to make a habit stick. I bought a bunch of marbles, and for every bloc of time that I avoid undirected browsing or social media use, I move a marble from one container to the other. My goal every day is to get through an arbitrary number of marbles (160 right now), after which I can do whatever. If I slip up and open a social media page, HN, or start browsing newspapers, I dump all the marbles out of the container, which generally makes it impossible to meet the day's goal unless the slipup is very early in the day. This has been nothing short of amazing for my life. One issue that I had is I had a physical twitch that would start developing after a couple minutes doing one thing, like a work project, at which I would feel the urge to check the news or social media. This twinge would show up and I would type into a browser window to relieve the sensation. Instead I more or less replaced that twinge with moving the marble from one container to the other. It's made it a lot easier to focus. Over time, I stopped caring as much about the news and became more easily satisfied by very briefly reading summaries every few days. I think a lot of web addiction is less driven by thoughts or brain issues and more by physical habits akin to nail-biting or cuticle-picking. Most of the attempts that I've made to stop addictive behavior have not worked: they were based on schedules, timers, articulated goals, and other things like that rather than recognizing the physical trigger for the habit, the result of that trigger, and just redirecting the stimulus with another physical action rather than trying to suppress it.

wilkommen 5y ago
Wow this is pretty interesting. In my experience checking social media is also a lot like a physical twitch. I might buy some marbles.
- mountainb 5y ago
  I have also settled on using an antique coffee tin to toss them in, so it starts the day with some satisfying 'ding' sounds. Not sure if I could get away with it if I didn't have a private office.
nefitty 5y ago
I am able to achieve this by supplementing with the amino acid precursor N-acetyl cysteine. I've done the container goal with paper clips, have used pomodoros, full-time accounting, to-do lists, commitment devices, aversion stimulus, and on and on. I don't use any hacks or techniques any more.
- mleonhard 5y ago
  How much N-acetyl cysteine do you take and how often? How long have you used it and have you changed your dose or usage over time?
  - nefitty 5y ago
    I take 2000mg. That's about 12-14mg/lb. I think I'm on the high end of dosaging. I've recently encountered reports of people getting unwanted effects like dulled emotions. That's part of what helps me be more productive. Procrastination is largely an emotional problem. One factor that fits into my situation is that I think I have glutamine-glutamate dysregulation due to chronic stomach problems. NAC, GABA, L-Glutamine, lithium orotate all have drastic effects on me. That is a signal that serotonin and GABA production are screwed up in me. I've been using NAC for about three months now, at the same dose. The effects are consistent, although not "noticeable" like a drug. It's more like the target lock mechanism in my brain starts looking for productive activities instead of hedonistic activities.
codeconscious 5y ago
Thank you for this post. > Over time, I stopped caring as much about the news and became more easily satisfied by very briefly reading summaries every few days. Do you have any particular habits or resources for getting news summaries, or do you just check regular news site less frequently?
smugglerFlynn 5y ago
Atomic Habits is an excellent book, highly recommend it to anyone struggling to fix patterns of behavior. I’ve started to curate any environment I use to avoid unintentional triggers. For example, when you reach for your iPhone to open up Medium or Kindle, you are forced to see all the different notifications and home screen icons. If there is a social media app or Safari icon happen to be there, your craving to open it and check the feed will get triggered unconsciously. There will be no “decision to check news” — you’ll just find yourself scrolling through the feed. So what I have now is a clean setup which makes sure screen pages with valuable apps are not arranged together with distractions. I also try to keep my phone away on the other end of the room, so that reaching for it would require more efforts, breaking down old habits of mindless browsing. I find ideas from Atomic Habits interesting as they suggest improving your life through pre-defined policies and good habit design, not through conscious decisions made in the moment. Made me look at many other things (e.g. management, teamwork environment) in a different way.
- dr_kiszonka 5y ago
  Maybe Kindle app should have a notification dot until we read some number of pages on a given day?
  - smugglerFlynn 5y ago
    Interesting idea! Most productivity apps have some kind of a nudge built-in (for example, DayOne sends periodic reminders and even writing prompts to keep you journaling). It rarely works for me, though, as they pop up at times when I’m focused on something else. What usually works is a physical reminder that something I have planned to do is not complete. Two examples: - For a couple of years I had that large sticky note posted on my fridge on which each day I would draw a stick every time I drank a glass of water. Simply seeing this note with no sticks drawn for particular day was enough of a motivation to drink my recommended daily number of glasses. I made sure an empty glass was always strategically positioned nearby. I had many attempts to track that electronically, with reminders and such, but only after reading Atomic Habits I was able to design this simple ‘off-the-grid’ solution, and it just worked. (I have since stopped tracking exact number of glasses, but I still set an empty glass on my kitchen counter, which is enough to trigger my habit and drink more every time I see it) — Similar thing with vitamin D which I take during the winter. At my kitchen table I have this pill case with seven transparent cells per each day of the week, so any time I go to the kitchen and notice the case, and it’s not empty, it motivates me to take this day’s pill. Just keeping a bottle full of pills on the table was not enough to build a habit, but as soon as I made “lack of progress” visible, it worked.
tbonesteaks 5y ago
Thank you writing this. This was such a succinct explanation. Really helpful!
- mountainb 5y ago
  You're welcome. I just wanted to share what worked for me.
hiepph 5y ago
I second "Atomic Habits". It's not my inspiration for building a habit (it' too dry and too methodological for me) but it explains some core ideas why habit is important. One of the main benefit is once you commit your habit, you do it without thinking and even arguing. For example, I commit to read several pages of book before bed time. I try to keep it everyday, even the holiday. Just one page is okay. The amount it accumulates is amazing. Now I already read 40 books per year and still counting. * PS: my inspiration for building habit is Haruki Murakami. "When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity."

wilkommen 5y ago

Wow this is pretty interesting. In my experience checking social media is also a lot like a physical twitch. I might buy some marbles.

mountainb 5y ago
I have also settled on using an antique coffee tin to toss them in, so it starts the day with some satisfying 'ding' sounds. Not sure if I could get away with it if I didn't have a private office.

nefitty 5y ago

I am able to achieve this by supplementing with the amino acid precursor N-acetyl cysteine. I've done the container goal with paper clips, have used pomodoros, full-time accounting, to-do lists, commitment devices, aversion stimulus, and on and on. I don't use any hacks or techniques any more.

mleonhard 5y ago
How much N-acetyl cysteine do you take and how often? How long have you used it and have you changed your dose or usage over time?
- nefitty 5y ago
  I take 2000mg. That's about 12-14mg/lb. I think I'm on the high end of dosaging. I've recently encountered reports of people getting unwanted effects like dulled emotions. That's part of what helps me be more productive. Procrastination is largely an emotional problem. One factor that fits into my situation is that I think I have glutamine-glutamate dysregulation due to chronic stomach problems. NAC, GABA, L-Glutamine, lithium orotate all have drastic effects on me. That is a signal that serotonin and GABA production are screwed up in me. I've been using NAC for about three months now, at the same dose. The effects are consistent, although not "noticeable" like a drug. It's more like the target lock mechanism in my brain starts looking for productive activities instead of hedonistic activities.

codeconscious 5y ago

Thank you for this post. > Over time, I stopped caring as much about the news and became more easily satisfied by very briefly reading summaries every few days. Do you have any particular habits or resources for getting news summaries, or do you just check regular news site less frequently?

smugglerFlynn 5y ago

Atomic Habits is an excellent book, highly recommend it to anyone struggling to fix patterns of behavior. I’ve started to curate any environment I use to avoid unintentional triggers. For example, when you reach for your iPhone to open up Medium or Kindle, you are forced to see all the different notifications and home screen icons. If there is a social media app or Safari icon happen to be there, your craving to open it and check the feed will get triggered unconsciously. There will be no “decision to check news” — you’ll just find yourself scrolling through the feed. So what I have now is a clean setup which makes sure screen pages with valuable apps are not arranged together with distractions. I also try to keep my phone away on the other end of the room, so that reaching for it would require more efforts, breaking down old habits of mindless browsing. I find ideas from Atomic Habits interesting as they suggest improving your life through pre-defined policies and good habit design, not through conscious decisions made in the moment. Made me look at many other things (e.g. management, teamwork environment) in a different way.

dr_kiszonka 5y ago
Maybe Kindle app should have a notification dot until we read some number of pages on a given day?
- smugglerFlynn 5y ago
  Interesting idea! Most productivity apps have some kind of a nudge built-in (for example, DayOne sends periodic reminders and even writing prompts to keep you journaling). It rarely works for me, though, as they pop up at times when I’m focused on something else. What usually works is a physical reminder that something I have planned to do is not complete. Two examples: - For a couple of years I had that large sticky note posted on my fridge on which each day I would draw a stick every time I drank a glass of water. Simply seeing this note with no sticks drawn for particular day was enough of a motivation to drink my recommended daily number of glasses. I made sure an empty glass was always strategically positioned nearby. I had many attempts to track that electronically, with reminders and such, but only after reading Atomic Habits I was able to design this simple ‘off-the-grid’ solution, and it just worked. (I have since stopped tracking exact number of glasses, but I still set an empty glass on my kitchen counter, which is enough to trigger my habit and drink more every time I see it) — Similar thing with vitamin D which I take during the winter. At my kitchen table I have this pill case with seven transparent cells per each day of the week, so any time I go to the kitchen and notice the case, and it’s not empty, it motivates me to take this day’s pill. Just keeping a bottle full of pills on the table was not enough to build a habit, but as soon as I made “lack of progress” visible, it worked.

tbonesteaks 5y ago

Thank you writing this. This was such a succinct explanation. Really helpful!

mountainb 5y ago
You're welcome. I just wanted to share what worked for me.

hiepph 5y ago

I second "Atomic Habits". It's not my inspiration for building a habit (it' too dry and too methodological for me) but it explains some core ideas why habit is important. One of the main benefit is once you commit your habit, you do it without thinking and even arguing. For example, I commit to read several pages of book before bed time. I try to keep it everyday, even the holiday. Just one page is okay. The amount it accumulates is amazing. Now I already read 40 books per year and still counting. * PS: my inspiration for building habit is Haruki Murakami. "When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long — six months to a year — requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity."