14 ms·

What I learned during my three days offline

209 points by imgabe 5y ago

pugworthy 5y ago
3 days is... well not much. That said I like the effort. I recently disabled chat on a popular online game I enjoy to help cleans my experience a bit. Not just what others say but what I say is a bit too toxic. On this site, I now just log off and ignore things. Rarely log in but to make a comment, then promptly log off. Viewing my "karma" is just too toxic for me.
- faeyanpiraat 5y ago
  I did the same, unfortunately there is no way to disable a small “ding” noise when a message is written by someone, and then I’m too curious not to check the hidden msg in console. It also feels so unreal when chat is off, its almost like playing against bots.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- lfkdev 5y ago
  Nah bud, but online games are for people playing together. If it's a team game, disabling chat or voice chat is really not a great idea. Nothing worse than deaf team mates.
  - WA 5y ago
    You have never played Wild Rift oder LoL, have you? Disabling the ingame chat is the most sane thing you can do. Games are won by playing, not by typing.
  - gambiting 5y ago
    >> If it's a team game, disabling chat or voice chat is really not a great idea. I literally have no idea how people manage to play a game like Overwatch with chat or worse - voice chat - enabled in games with strangers. It's an enjoyable game but 9/10 people online just straight up suck and I don't play games after work to deal with that kind of negativity. Happy to be on chat when playing with actual friends or work colleagues, but random people online? That chat is staying muted and off I'm afraid.
    - gigaflop 5y ago
      It really depends on the other players. I try to make sure that I only communicate neutral-to-positive stuff in a game's voice chat. Stuff that's generally relevant to the situation at hand. Insulting randoms is done in Discord, with friends, since insulting a random player in a game you're currently in does nothing to help if the team is struggling. Like the other day, I was playing Deep Rock Galactic. I host my own lobbies to keep things simple (and to feel entitled to a bit more control), and had started with 3 players instead of 4, since that's fine. The 4th player to join was the second scout (I prefer to play Scout if I'm hosting, and have no way to change when ingame), and I kinda blame them for why we lost that map. I tried using voice chat to quickly coordinate with them and the others, but lack of coordination ended up killing us all. In hindsight, I should have just kicked the second scout when they joined. (Hazard level 4. We got a Crassus detonator (big, does big damage, explodes on death, makes a golden crater) and a Dreadnought (big, somewhat fast, armored, ranged + melee attacks) spawn at roughly the same time, were SUPER short on Nitra (resupply resource, and we were missing a whopping 3 out of 80), and not enough damage output to kill one or the other big baddie properly (Crassus needs to be killed in a tunnel to maximize its reward). I also asked the other scout to go revive another player who had gone down in an odd spot (since scouts have great mobility), but they preferred to use their weak gun against an armored enemy, while the Gunner tried to get the Engineer and also went down. Plus, earlier in that map, people had burned their 1-use perk to get up after being downed, while there was still a very good shot of surviving. If I tell someone I'm coming for them, I really do mean it, even if I'm dancing around shooting the bugs off of their downed body. I just want to make enough space to not get bitten, and to not waste my 1-time use of Field Medic to insta-rez them.)
- smugkot 5y ago
  I recently disabled RES in Reddit. Now I can't infinite scroll through a porn sub hitting j, j, j,... with the images expanding automatically.
- akselmo 5y ago
  I've deleted my twitter and reddit accounts. I have discord open but i barely read it, same with matrix which I use mostly with my fiancee. In games I disable chats often. I do use mastodon, but not as excessively as I used twitter. I also made this HN account recently because I felt that I need to talk to someone sometimes. It certainly has made me happier to cut as much social media as possible out of my life. I don't want to go full offline for many days or weeks (nor could, because of work). Many things I like are connected to internet and tech, and I don't mind it that much. Just need to remember to have breaks every now and then.
newbie789 5y ago
kingcharles 5y ago
I just did 8 years offline. I really missed Wikipedia for settling arguments.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Prison?
  - otagekki 5y ago
    or a monastery buried deep in a valley with poor network coverage
    - DocTomoe 5y ago
      Deserted island, Gilligan-style, maybe?
    - readlikeasloth 5y ago
      You are joking but this place exists, in California in the middle between SF and L.A. and spent 5 months there. Didn‘t write an article about it though.
  - ihateolives 5y ago
    Do you think they settle arguments with Wikipedia there? I have no idea, maybe they are.
    - danieljacksonno 5y ago
      I would think so. Prisoners are human, and humans settle arguments with Wikipedia
    - kingcharles 5y ago
      Fists first. Then if that doesn't work we queue for the phone and get someone to Google it.
  - shmageggy 5y ago
watercooler_guy 5y ago
Opinions such as the author’s are often mocked or attributed to an older, less tech-savy generation (see the “not a cell phone in sight, just people living in the moment” copypasta[0]). But I really think there’s something to this, as the author has found: having an internet-connected phone on you at all times makes it too easy to waste hours doing nothing in particular, instead of living your life. I’ve recently made it a personal policy to catch myself doing non-purposeful activity on my phone and put it away. And at least for me, my quality of life is better when my mind is not constantly abuzz with stimulation. [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/not-a-cell-phone-in-sight https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/not-a-cell-phone-in-sight
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I used to be at the bleeding edge of tech and I refuse to move to a smartphone simply because of the distraction it causes. I have a real problem dealing with distractions as it is and adding such a device would make my life much harder. Tech is here to serve us, not the other way around and in the end what matters is whether or not a given piece of technology improves your life so much that the downsides are more than balanced out. For smartphones in my life that would be a net negative. Of course for others that equation works out differently.
- CannisterFlux 5y ago
  I occasionally find myself going in a feed-refresh cycle between apps. Anything new in this reddit group? What about RSS on theoldreader? Nope, HN? Podcasts? Oh well, back to reddit. It's almost impossible to pull myself out of, it has to be a real conscious effort. Another stupid time-waster is reading about a thing I want to do, instead of just doing the thing. Such as reading opinions about some video game I already own, instead of just playing the game, or watching videos about playing guitar instead of actually doing it. I get cross at myself for how easily manipulated I am.
  - nicbou 5y ago
    If you block them with an ad blocker, it gives you a second to rethink this reflex.
flerp 5y ago
These type of posts seems to get a shorter and shorter span of absence every time they pop up.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  "I put my phone down to talk to my wife at dinner. Here's what I'm learning."
  - throwaway744678 5y ago
    "You won't believe these 5 things that man learnt by raising his eyes a few seconds from his phone"
    - sva_ 5y ago
      "Going to the grocery store without my phone helped me reconnect with nature"
      - quirk 5y ago
        "Unplugging My Neuralink for One Hour Made Me Realize I Am Alone In Some Sort Of Windowless Pod"
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        dwaltrip 5y ago
        Thanks for the laugh :) Now I’m going to try to put down my phone. Wish me luck!
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- matonias 5y ago
  Its true, but it does indicate that there is a problem with our relationship between our online devices and the 'offline' world. Some terms to describe it could be Collective Screen Addiction of Cyber Stockholm Syndrome.
tehjoker 5y ago
How can you do this if your job is coding and writing research papers? So hard to escape...
- Shared404 5y ago
  This may not work for you, but helped me for a bit in HS. Don't use a desktop environment. Literally run in text mode. Use Lynx/Links/w3m if you need to look something up. VLC has an ncurses interface, and you can use youtube-dl to download music. Use emacs or vim for text editing, and tmux to split the screen ( + more, but I never used it to it's full potential ) and you can cover a lot of ground. For the innevitable need to view pdf's and pictures, download them to this text mode machine, and then file transfer them to an offline only tablet. Did I discover this because I was dumb and didn't know how to handle nvidia drivers? ...I was a noob ok :| . That being said, I think I focused more and accomplished more with this setup then I did for the next 3 months after I set up a DE.
- yakubin 5y ago
  I know some mathematicians print all the supporting material they need in advance and then work on paper for weeks without internet. Although admittedly that's a fringe option. And contrary to the expectation that they will probably need to look up things that come up later, they are actually very productive. (That's just an anecdote from second-hand, as in: I know a mathematician who knows a mathematician who does this.) For my own coding, I usually don't use the internet anyway. I browser offline documentation of the stuff I use, vendor all my libraries (i.e. building doesn't require internet access), so maybe I'm going to try disconnecting my computer during those sessions. That's of course not counting coding at work, due to the tyranny of Slack.
- nicbou 5y ago
  How about a separate session in which you're logged out of everything?
- joshvm 5y ago
  People do this in Antarctica all the time. 100% offline is basically impossible, but very limited and high latency (we had a 3 second ping) is doable. Mostly you have to remember to download things when you get the chance. Get offline copies of Wikipedia and stack exchange (via Kiwix), download package docs as PDFs. Installing anything is a nightmare so work on a cloud system and run a job server if you're able to (eg jobs that take hours to days and need a connection). Pip is a disaster for this - download every wheel just to check the toml file for dependency resolution? Just doesn't work with poor connectivity. Get good with rsync and wget flags to manage partial downloads. My preferred method is to pull remotely and then rsync partial to a local machine over a few days. That's much more reliable than wget with the -C flag. You end up building a lot of packages from source, a shallow git clone is far smaller than a compiled binary. Forget Overleaf. Install tex locally like the old days.
otagekki 5y ago
I did this in 2008 when on a trip in my home country where network coverage was so bad and power sockets so rare that a smartphone was basically useless and more likely stolen from you if you show people you have one. After that that, my cyber-addiction has mostly stopped: I can go without a computer big or small for months (but then I would need the good old paper for various needs) and not give a damn about likes or karma or even toxic comments.
- brotheradam 5y ago
  It also really helps if you were born in a time where all this didn't exist. Just remember how we did this in the 90s. I do a live-like-in-the-90s-day about once a month now, and it is quite relaxing.
  - kk6mrp 5y ago
    I was born in 1999, what does a "live-like-in-the-90s-day" look like?
    - brotheradam 5y ago
      Easy: No internet, no smartphones.
trabant00 5y ago
Anything can generate interesting discussion. A little self analysis never hurt no one, and experimenting on yourself can teach you some things. But 3 days without internet? What is this, intermittent fasting for social media obesity? Nothing changes in 3 days of any routine change. And he already reached enlightenment. Wordle is "“mild purgatory” — like being stuck in human flypaper", email is a "stoppage of living", I can't stop laughing. This is some low quality "I did 100 pushups a day for a week and this is what happened" youtube style of click bait stuff. It is no-fap level of ridiculousness.
- adamsmith143 5y ago
- leetcodesucks 5y ago
  Semen retention is a rediculous idea to you? I bet you wear glasses and are balding
DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
it says something about FOMO and being enslaved to the system when people feel 3 days of silence is life changing. Like the brief moment of clarity an addict experiences just before succumbing to another cycle of abuse. 3 days isn't enough to build new routines to help you stay sober. It's more like waking up from a dream before falling back into a slumber when in the morning you won't remember what that dream was about. I've been escaping into the woods for several months on long distance hikes. No Internet, no phone or GPS, nobody to talk to but the moon. When the moment is right I have a tent, sleeping bag, a few bits and bobs like a ferro-rod, rescue-blanket first-aid kit, plenty of blister band aids, and whatever else I can fit into a backpack. This has literally healed my addiction, and my crippling life-long depression. I'm really happy people see how powerful (and weird) 3 days offline can be so they feel an urge to tell everyone. I also find it hard to keep it to myself. But I hope their next step is to imagine what 1 or 3 months could do. Truth is you can become a totally new person beyond your wildest imagination. It'll be really weird when you get back because people still think you're same when in reality you've totally become someone else. It's a literal lifehack. Once I came across some distressed farmers in the mountains who lost their cows. I offered to help them searching. They were confused and said you will help for free? Aren't you busy on a hike reaching your destination. So I told them that experiences like these are my destination. The problem with herd animals like they told me was that they were already gone for 3 days. And timing is so important! Apparently if cows are separated too long from their herd, then chances increase they won't bother coming back. If you do catch them they will always stay "naughty" and tend to escape again. But worse! They often bring a friend with them and continue to remain a problem for the farmer forever. I feel like that cow sometimes.
- 88840-8855 5y ago
  - noduerme 5y ago
    What a terrible comment. How do you know if someone has money or not? I read OP's post as meaning they had probably given up making money in favor of living a richer life.
gnicholas 5y ago
> Normally, by that time of day (noonish), I would have checked the weather 17 times or so already, all but one of them a pointless reflexive tic. I'm as online as the next guy, but why would someone check the weather more than once or twice a day? Granted, I live in California so I don't worry much about extreme weather, but even when I lived on the east coast I would only check the weather once in the morning.
- smcl 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s something they consciously want to do (“… pointless reflexive tic”). I’m sure many of us have a site where it takes a few milliseconds to hit ctrl-t, type the first few letters, let autocomplete fill it out and hit enter. If your mind is wandering you can easily find yourself doing this many times per day
- was_a_dev 5y ago
  I live in the UK I usually check the weather about three times a week. At the moment it's daily while we deal with our bout of storms.
  - faeyanpiraat 5y ago
    I could always tell what’s the weather there without looking at a forecast. :)
    - maccard 5y ago
      Really? I'm looking out my window right now and it's perfectly calm, with some gray clouds, but there's storm warnings out for later in the day.
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  I live in the UK where the weather can change significantly during the course of the day and I still generally just look out of a window rather than rely on weather forecasts.
- WorldMaker 5y ago
chmod775 5y ago
Nice. Now I wonder what not eating avocado toast for 3 days is like.
- tobyhinloopen 5y ago
  Am I on Reddit? Hmm no, I’m in a browser and I still have my whole screen available
- smcl 5y ago
  Doesn’t look like avocado toast was mentioned in either this article or the original
daverol 5y ago
Three days? Some people thought that 24 hours was so difficult it merited a cash reward https://www.reviews.org/internet-service/digital-detox-challenge/ https://www.reviews.org/internet-service/digital-detox-chall...
rsanheim 5y ago
I skimmed the essay and it is satire right? At least 1/3 satire? Please? The problem isn't knowing that there is a problem with phone/online addiction, the problem is finding a balance between work that requires us being online, real world things that make it so useful, and the rest that drives our dopamine centers in our free time. Taking a break is good, but what happens after?
WA 5y ago
This post resonates a lot with me for several reasons: 1. I know exactly how this passive state of mind feels to me. It's good to hear that others feel the same. 2. 3 days might not be much, but it doesn't matter, if it is long enough to give one clarity how the own mind works, to reflect on a bad habit, and, which is most important, come up with rules how to further break the bad habit, as the poster did. Saying this, I'm gonna go to the rock climbing gym now ;)
rkr1410 5y ago
> I just took three days completely offline > A few times (...) I flipped on mobile data to look up an address Er... Okay, I guess it's more about whether they could control their cravings, and not checking whether offline life is possible anymore? Don't we still have, like, ways to check an address without using internet?
llimos 5y ago
This feels like the library vs framework distinction, which I think is a useful way of looking at it. The Internet is great as a library, looking things up when you need to. When it turns into a framework, encompassing everything you do, that's when things have gone wrong. This article is a great advertisement for turning it back into a library.
MontagFTB 5y ago
Verge journalist Paul Miller took a year off the internet. He wrote about the experience the entire time (physically submitting his articles along the way.) It is an interesting series of articles that cover some of the same issues here. His conclusions were, I believe, different than the author here, due in large part to the scale involved in his experiment. https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/1/4279674/im-still-here-back-online-after-a-year-without-the-internet https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/1/4279674/im-still-here-back...
- escapedmoose 5y ago
  That was a great essay, thanks for linking. The writer’s experiences overlapped with my own, as I dropped off of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Reddit/Snapchat a couple years ago. I still find those platforms distasteful and have no desire to go back to them, but the isolation is real. When you drop off, people really do forget to talk to you. It becomes a real effort and a struggle to keep up friendships. Like people forget you exist when you’re not broadcasting. It’s a little unnerving, and it brings up all sorts of existential anxieties.
hnlmorg 5y ago
Blogging about 3 days is a little silly but I guess feeling the need to publish that online falls inline with the problem this guy seems to have with his dependency on technology. For me, 3 days is little more than a bank holiday with my family. A trip to the zoo, family meals, walks along the fields and foot paths, teaching the kids to ride a bike, playing games: sports games, board games, card games, or even just hide and seek. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy "online" as much as the next person (video streaming, online gaming, HN etc) but sometimes it's nice to interact with people and/or nature instead of LCD screens. So not spending time online is as natural as eating.
- matwood 5y ago
  I feel the same, but maybe that's because we're older (I'm in my 40s)? I was just on a ski vacation with friends and my screen time dropped 90%+ naturally. Same when I go on vacations with my wife. But, I didn't grow up with screens everywhere. They are simply another thing I use.
  - dorchadas 5y ago
    It's funny as it was the opposite for my friends. We always go on New Year's trips together, and when we're just sitting around or in the car, etc. everyone was on their screens. Same back at the cabin, unless we were playing Uno or some other game. We're all early 29-31.
IYasha 5y ago
Interesting, but not what I was anticipating. My offline experience was very harsh. And I try to live offline as much as possible. For example, I've learned that I can't pay for aprtment offline anymore unless I go to special office and pay ridiculously high commission. Can't even use banking unless online.
notjes 5y ago
Being always connected to all people on the planet might not be healthy for all. No way!
dangerface 5y ago
> I would have checked the weather 17 times or so already, all but one of them a pointless reflexive tic. Bro has issues, I don't think the issue is the internet I think thats just the symptom / enabler.
ezconnect 5y ago
I had the same experience during my 20s that the TV was not essential to life. My day schedule used to be tied to the air time of my favorite show. Sadly internet happened and it's all downhill from that brief moment of enlightenment.
Shinchy 5y ago
I recently spent a month offline (with the exception of where my job required). Internet addiction is something I have become much more conscious of in recent years and I found that the first few days are very much in alignment with the article. The problem is that after the initial buzz wears off there is still that innate tendency to dwindle time away and distract yourself just with other means. Was I more focussed and aware, yes I would say so - but it's not as if I suddenly become super productive with this new focus all of a sudden and would pursue every project or idea I ever dreamed up in my head. What I found was that initially I become productive but it was more from the excitement of moving away from the internet. What happened after is that my mind found other ways to distract, some better than others; for example I read a lot more books than usual however I would also just spend time doing nothing at all or watching pointless TV. It was enjoyable to sit and actually concentrate on something for once. I spent more time outside and that initial anxiety of not know what was going on (FOMO) slowly started to fade as I realised the insignificance of it upon my life. I think the biggest difference though is that I felt happier without the internet in my life. The return is an almighty crash, that proved the addictive nature upon me. My screen time shot through the roof, I tried to check up on everything I had missed, I felt shame at just how strong the grip was and how little control I had over it. It tapered off after a couple of days and I am better than I was before, more aware of the strong hold that looms over me. I try to use leave my phone away in the evenings to avoid that spontaneous reach for the next dopamine hit. It works, but I think I will do another detox for a longer period of time soon. It's a funny thing, I think the internet has done wonderful things for me, it's certainly given me a fantastic career that I would otherwise never have had. It's given me a wealth of knowledge and entertainment over the years - but like most things in its nature it came with a hefty price.
- smugkot 5y ago
  >What happened after is that my mind found other ways to distract As soon as I power off my laptop intending to study, I get an almost irresistible urge to start working on random math/physics problems I read about months ago. But honestly, that's way more productive than browsing HN/Reddit/4chan all day.
rthomas6 5y ago
Cal Newport's book Digital Minimalism suggests doing a 30 day technology detox. That's 30 days offline. I've done it, and I highly recommended it. Three days would not have been long enough for me to not return to ingrained habits when the time was up, nor long enough to start to cultivate other activities to fill the time with.
darepublic 5y ago
Recently YouTube algorithm recommended me industrial society and it's future (the Unabomber manifesto) and I'm reminded of it again after skimming these comments
ryanmercer 5y ago
Like I said years ago in this post https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2017/2/13/i-miss-the-20th-century?rq=miss https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2017/2/13/i-miss-th... "Yes, I am a 20th century person. My curse is that of being born on the cusp of the digital revolution. My curse is that of wanting a simple life in a friendly world. My curse is that of being smart enough to know that this 21st century life isn't something good, it will never be for me. "
cindarin 5y ago
I feel like I have read this same article two dozen times, each by a different author. The internet and I grew up together; it's nearly always been a part of my life. I use the internet every day for several hours. My career involves constant use and access to the internet. I also get my news and communicate with friends via the internet. All that said, I spend time away from the internet every day and not as some forced action to distance myself from it. I don't see the internet as some perverse addiction that I need to break. If I'm not working for a stretch of days, there's a good chance that I will not use the internet simply because no situation comes up that calls for it. The idea that 3 days away is life and mind altering is deeply concerning to me.
- wink 5y ago
  Yeah, that sums it up pretty nicely. It's like tap water, I'm used to it being there and I use it without thinking about it. But there's no problem just going on a weekend (or week long) trip without any internet connectivity (unless you depend on your phone for navigation, but you get what I mean).
- whiddershins 5y ago
  Not use the internet including to check email or chats or messages or Google random stuff or map to anywhere on your phone?
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I've certainly been places where I've been out of cell reception for days at a time. Not frequently but I also wouldn't consider it some weird anomaly.
  - cindarin 5y ago
    I can't hardly be bothered to check email when it's relevant to do so. If the people I care to talk to are in the room with me at the time, I don't need to get on my phone. That's not always the case. Sometimes I will stick my nose in my phone in a public setting, and it's not intended as a slight. I just have a fancy in my head about something I'd like to go read about. However, this is more to my point. My separation from the internet has never needed to be some all-encompassing effort. I have never thought about needing to make sure that there is absolutely 0% access for an extended period. If I go on a multi-day backpacking/camping trip, it's not to escape the internet, it's because I like being outdoors.
lambic 5y ago
The distinction between online and offline has always seemed weird to me. You can do destructive things in both, just as you can do beneficial things in both. Instead of going offline for X days I try to have healthy online and offline habits. Reduce the twitter doomscrolling and increase the social interactions over text chat or zoom. Reduce the TV watching (is TV watching offline or online??) and walk more and read more books.
- cpsns 5y ago
  Some of us find it very, very hard to have healthy online habits. I know many here don't like the idea of internet addiction, but at this point I am convinced it's a real thing and for some people the only solution is abstinence.
  - lambic 5y ago
    I don't think we should be calling it internet addiction though. The internet can be used for so many things, many of them beneficial overall. People may suffer from social media addiction, or gaming addiction or porn addiction, or TV/video addiction, but internet addiction seems overly broad. Am I addicted to the internet because I check the weather every day or look at google maps every time I go anywhere?
lbj 5y ago
I quit coffee for 45 minute today, anyone interested in a write-up of what i learned?
- doublerabbit 5y ago
  is it that Whisky tastes better on it's own?
- kk6mrp 5y ago
  Low blood/coffee levels?
- imgabe 5y ago
  If you previously have spent years never going 45 minutes without consuming coffee, then yes I'd be very interested to hear what happened when you stopped and how you managed to consume that much coffee in the first place. Was it on an IV drip? Did you have a team of baristas working around the clock to always have fresh coffee on hand?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thenerdhead 5y ago
It's not about avoiding or removing the internet from your life. It's about learning to live intentionally given the internet is a thing. This has to be sustainably. You can't do that with a 3-day or 30-day detox. You won't be successful with monochrome hacks or net nannies. You can't do that even going cold turkey because you have to use technology to still function in society unless you're going off grid and starting a homestead. What I found to work is to start small, replace one habit at a time. Give yourself plenty of time to do absolutely nothing and you will creatively find great uses of that time again. After a few years, you'll feel back in control, happier, and healthier because of it.
unethical_ban 5y ago
Internet addiction is a real thing. Millions of people probably deal with it and don't even know it, by using social media or refreshing newsfeeds compulsively and not even realizing the impact it has on people. It's one thing for some of y'all not to get it or understand it - great. I'm happy that there are people with healthy boundaries for that. It's shameful how many posts in this thread are making light of it. "Three days is nothing pal, hey I went 45 minutes without coffee who wants my blog?". --- I had COVID right before Christmas. I had to cancel all my plans. Christmas was relatively slow news-wise. Lots of my friends were busy, and the few I interact with online were doing family things. So I had time to myself, with no compulsion to go out or to seek friends to hang out with. It was incredible. I remember playing Skyrim a lot, which I've wanted to do for a long time. I watched some good TV. I read a book. I worked the ham radio. I cleaned the house. And I was happy at the end of each day, other than blowing my nose 75 times. Oh, and I didn't drink either. Now I'm back to my routine. Several days a week of no drinking. Several days a week of 7-10 drinks. Every 10-15 minutes is a swipe/refresh of reddit. Whenever a loading screen pops up at work for more than a moment I "ctrl-T, ctrl-L, new" and open up google or HN. Compulsive behavior is awful. Not having focus is awful. FOMO is awful. And I'll preemptively tell you to eat a cottonball sandwich if you think it's as simple as "well, don't do it". I'm sure the answer incorporates a support structure from friends, changing communications habits to be less worried about missing messages, and even therapy. Hey, wouldn't you know, talking and blogging about it can help.
rootusrootus 5y ago
I feel it. Sometimes it gets terrible, the reflexive pulling up the Internet just to see what's out there. And I can feel what it does to my mind. When it gets really bad, I'll find myself pulling out my phone when I'm sitting on the toilet, when I'm sitting at the table eating, sitting in the hot tub. And of course sometimes at night in bed, if I wake up. Or even during work, to distract from some bit of unpleasant (but paid...) activity I should be doing. Yes, this is all somewhat of a reflection on my inability to push it away. I get quite angry at myself sometimes when my control slips and I feel hours of my day slipping into the void. But my professional life depends on Internet access. So I can't just put it down and walk away. I've considered blocking HN on my router, sometimes ;-).
vbphprubyjsgo 5y ago
meigwilym 5y ago
Poe's law anyone?
AlwaysRock 5y ago
What do yall do during a three day weekend? I try to get outside and avoid screens.
godzillafarts 5y ago
Lots of hate in this thread around the author writing about "only" three days offline. I get the sentiment, it isn't a particularly long duration of time, but three days offline can feel like an eternity if you legitimately have an internet addiction. Some of us are luckier than other in that we're able to self moderate. I know that I sometimes struggle with pulling my phone out for no reason and refreshing HN or Reddit. Same with my laptop during work hours. I don't like it and I'm trying to do better; I want a healthier relationship with my devices and the internet. I definitely took something from this article, though. For a while I've been using Do Not Disturb to cut down on distracting notifications throughout the day, with a whitelist for family members in case of emergency. But from now on, my phone's WiFi will be turned off and I've also disabled cellular data for all other non-critical applications. Now if I want to refresh HN or Reddit for no reason, I either have to connect to WiFi or explicitly grant Safari permission to use cellular data. Overall, I feel like I'm taking steps in the right direction...
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  Using DND for "only necessities" communication is great. Uninstalling social media apps that aren't comms is useful for me too (Instagram is non-essential, and reddit). Take away the muscle memory of opening the apps. Finally, when it's appropriate, I leave my phone in my car entirely. Occasionally for dinner/breakfast, on runs, and going to the movies. Just leave it at home. The world will go on without you - especially if people know you're away.
- isitmadeofglass 5y ago
  > I get the sentiment, it isn't a particularly long duration of time, but three days offline can feel like an eternity if you legitimately have an internet addiction. Sure, and 3 days without heroine might seem like a long time to someone with a heroine addiction. But still doesn’t mean that someone writing a an article of “I went 3 days without heroine, here is my insightful report” and stating that it actually wasn’t that bad is somehow not deserving of a bit of healthy critique.
  - ulisesrmzroche 5y ago
camillomiller 5y ago
For me the issue is really about 1) being available all the time and feeling like I’m expected to reply or be considered potentially dead (or very rude) 2) picking up the smartphone to check something useful and end up in some doomscrolling rabbithole because a notification seized my attention I wish there were easier ways to put the phone into an automated setting that lets you access only a subset of apps. I know you can do similar stuff with the iPhone, but I tried, and blocking apps works for like a few days, and then I constantly hit “remind me later”
JimWestergren 5y ago
Off topic but interesting: Before today (I am 40 yo) I did not know anything about jungle cats - I did not know any such thing existed. This morning I did some research about them to send a google image for my painter to paint for my upcoming board game. Later today I see the words "jungle cats" mentioned in a totally unrelated tech article - what are the odds? Confirmation bias I know, but interesting.
dkarp 5y ago
I visited North Korea some years ago. For me, one of the most memorable things about the trip had nothing to do with the North Korea itself. Without the comfort of their smartphones, all the other tourists had no choice but to spend their time interacting with each other. We were all inseparable for the simple fact that there was literally nothing else to do.
themadturk 5y ago
I deleted Facebook years ago, when it was still fairly easy to do so. I still have a Twitter account, but I only regularly follow three or four people, and get their tweets via my Feedbin account. I also see new posts to BoingBoing and Metafilter via Feedbin, and log in here once or twice a day to browse. I check in on Reddit once every day or two, but the subreddits I follow are very carefully curated. I'm one of those who remembers the world before the Internet. I was about 30 and married when I got my first computer in the mid-1980s. I did a lot of reading back then, and some writing as well, though I didn't get serious about writing until I discovered word processing. I've been thinking about writing my own essay about tech minimalism, just because I've seen so many articles like this one over the past couple of years. In some ways it's something I aspire to, if only because I sometimes enjoy making things difficult, to test myself a little. But with a few exceptions, I like the digital life I've built. I'm happy to be able to get online every day. I've managed to mostly break the doomscrolling habit, to be able to close the laptop and put down the phone and read a book (on my Kindle, because I can make the type any size I want).

209 points by imgabe 5y ago

3 days is... well not much. That said I like the effort. I recently disabled chat on a popular online game I enjoy to help cleans my experience a bit. Not just what others say but what I say is a bit too toxic. On this site, I now just log off and ignore things. Rarely log in but to make a comment, then promptly log off. Viewing my "karma" is just too toxic for me.

faeyanpiraat 5y ago
I did the same, unfortunately there is no way to disable a small “ding” noise when a message is written by someone, and then I’m too curious not to check the hidden msg in console. It also feels so unreal when chat is off, its almost like playing against bots.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
lfkdev 5y ago
Nah bud, but online games are for people playing together. If it's a team game, disabling chat or voice chat is really not a great idea. Nothing worse than deaf team mates.
- WA 5y ago
  You have never played Wild Rift oder LoL, have you? Disabling the ingame chat is the most sane thing you can do. Games are won by playing, not by typing.
- gambiting 5y ago
  >> If it's a team game, disabling chat or voice chat is really not a great idea. I literally have no idea how people manage to play a game like Overwatch with chat or worse - voice chat - enabled in games with strangers. It's an enjoyable game but 9/10 people online just straight up suck and I don't play games after work to deal with that kind of negativity. Happy to be on chat when playing with actual friends or work colleagues, but random people online? That chat is staying muted and off I'm afraid.
  - gigaflop 5y ago
    It really depends on the other players. I try to make sure that I only communicate neutral-to-positive stuff in a game's voice chat. Stuff that's generally relevant to the situation at hand. Insulting randoms is done in Discord, with friends, since insulting a random player in a game you're currently in does nothing to help if the team is struggling. Like the other day, I was playing Deep Rock Galactic. I host my own lobbies to keep things simple (and to feel entitled to a bit more control), and had started with 3 players instead of 4, since that's fine. The 4th player to join was the second scout (I prefer to play Scout if I'm hosting, and have no way to change when ingame), and I kinda blame them for why we lost that map. I tried using voice chat to quickly coordinate with them and the others, but lack of coordination ended up killing us all. In hindsight, I should have just kicked the second scout when they joined. (Hazard level 4. We got a Crassus detonator (big, does big damage, explodes on death, makes a golden crater) and a Dreadnought (big, somewhat fast, armored, ranged + melee attacks) spawn at roughly the same time, were SUPER short on Nitra (resupply resource, and we were missing a whopping 3 out of 80), and not enough damage output to kill one or the other big baddie properly (Crassus needs to be killed in a tunnel to maximize its reward). I also asked the other scout to go revive another player who had gone down in an odd spot (since scouts have great mobility), but they preferred to use their weak gun against an armored enemy, while the Gunner tried to get the Engineer and also went down. Plus, earlier in that map, people had burned their 1-use perk to get up after being downed, while there was still a very good shot of surviving. If I tell someone I'm coming for them, I really do mean it, even if I'm dancing around shooting the bugs off of their downed body. I just want to make enough space to not get bitten, and to not waste my 1-time use of Field Medic to insta-rez them.)
smugkot 5y ago
I recently disabled RES in Reddit. Now I can't infinite scroll through a porn sub hitting j, j, j,... with the images expanding automatically.
akselmo 5y ago
I've deleted my twitter and reddit accounts. I have discord open but i barely read it, same with matrix which I use mostly with my fiancee. In games I disable chats often. I do use mastodon, but not as excessively as I used twitter. I also made this HN account recently because I felt that I need to talk to someone sometimes. It certainly has made me happier to cut as much social media as possible out of my life. I don't want to go full offline for many days or weeks (nor could, because of work). Many things I like are connected to internet and tech, and I don't mind it that much. Just need to remember to have breaks every now and then.

newbie789 5y ago

kingcharles 5y ago

I just did 8 years offline. I really missed Wikipedia for settling arguments.

TameAntelope 5y ago
Prison?
- otagekki 5y ago
  or a monastery buried deep in a valley with poor network coverage
  - DocTomoe 5y ago
    Deserted island, Gilligan-style, maybe?
  - readlikeasloth 5y ago
    You are joking but this place exists, in California in the middle between SF and L.A. and spent 5 months there. Didn‘t write an article about it though.
- ihateolives 5y ago
  Do you think they settle arguments with Wikipedia there? I have no idea, maybe they are.
  - danieljacksonno 5y ago
    I would think so. Prisoners are human, and humans settle arguments with Wikipedia
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    Fists first. Then if that doesn't work we queue for the phone and get someone to Google it.
- shmageggy 5y ago

watercooler_guy 5y ago

Opinions such as the author’s are often mocked or attributed to an older, less tech-savy generation (see the “not a cell phone in sight, just people living in the moment” copypasta[0]). But I really think there’s something to this, as the author has found: having an internet-connected phone on you at all times makes it too easy to waste hours doing nothing in particular, instead of living your life. I’ve recently made it a personal policy to catch myself doing non-purposeful activity on my phone and put it away. And at least for me, my quality of life is better when my mind is not constantly abuzz with stimulation. [0] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/not-a-cell-phone-in-sight https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/not-a-cell-phone-in-sight

jacquesm 5y ago
I used to be at the bleeding edge of tech and I refuse to move to a smartphone simply because of the distraction it causes. I have a real problem dealing with distractions as it is and adding such a device would make my life much harder. Tech is here to serve us, not the other way around and in the end what matters is whether or not a given piece of technology improves your life so much that the downsides are more than balanced out. For smartphones in my life that would be a net negative. Of course for others that equation works out differently.
CannisterFlux 5y ago
I occasionally find myself going in a feed-refresh cycle between apps. Anything new in this reddit group? What about RSS on theoldreader? Nope, HN? Podcasts? Oh well, back to reddit. It's almost impossible to pull myself out of, it has to be a real conscious effort. Another stupid time-waster is reading about a thing I want to do, instead of just doing the thing. Such as reading opinions about some video game I already own, instead of just playing the game, or watching videos about playing guitar instead of actually doing it. I get cross at myself for how easily manipulated I am.
- nicbou 5y ago
  If you block them with an ad blocker, it gives you a second to rethink this reflex.

flerp 5y ago

These type of posts seems to get a shorter and shorter span of absence every time they pop up.

ALittleLight 5y ago
"I put my phone down to talk to my wife at dinner. Here's what I'm learning."
- throwaway744678 5y ago
  "You won't believe these 5 things that man learnt by raising his eyes a few seconds from his phone"
  - sva_ 5y ago
    "Going to the grocery store without my phone helped me reconnect with nature"
    - quirk 5y ago
      "Unplugging My Neuralink for One Hour Made Me Realize I Am Alone In Some Sort Of Windowless Pod"
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - dwaltrip 5y ago
        Thanks for the laugh :) Now I’m going to try to put down my phone. Wish me luck!
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
matonias 5y ago
Its true, but it does indicate that there is a problem with our relationship between our online devices and the 'offline' world. Some terms to describe it could be Collective Screen Addiction of Cyber Stockholm Syndrome.

tehjoker 5y ago

How can you do this if your job is coding and writing research papers? So hard to escape...

Shared404 5y ago
This may not work for you, but helped me for a bit in HS. Don't use a desktop environment. Literally run in text mode. Use Lynx/Links/w3m if you need to look something up. VLC has an ncurses interface, and you can use youtube-dl to download music. Use emacs or vim for text editing, and tmux to split the screen ( + more, but I never used it to it's full potential ) and you can cover a lot of ground. For the innevitable need to view pdf's and pictures, download them to this text mode machine, and then file transfer them to an offline only tablet. Did I discover this because I was dumb and didn't know how to handle nvidia drivers? ...I was a noob ok :| . That being said, I think I focused more and accomplished more with this setup then I did for the next 3 months after I set up a DE.
yakubin 5y ago
I know some mathematicians print all the supporting material they need in advance and then work on paper for weeks without internet. Although admittedly that's a fringe option. And contrary to the expectation that they will probably need to look up things that come up later, they are actually very productive. (That's just an anecdote from second-hand, as in: I know a mathematician who knows a mathematician who does this.) For my own coding, I usually don't use the internet anyway. I browser offline documentation of the stuff I use, vendor all my libraries (i.e. building doesn't require internet access), so maybe I'm going to try disconnecting my computer during those sessions. That's of course not counting coding at work, due to the tyranny of Slack.
nicbou 5y ago
How about a separate session in which you're logged out of everything?
joshvm 5y ago
People do this in Antarctica all the time. 100% offline is basically impossible, but very limited and high latency (we had a 3 second ping) is doable. Mostly you have to remember to download things when you get the chance. Get offline copies of Wikipedia and stack exchange (via Kiwix), download package docs as PDFs. Installing anything is a nightmare so work on a cloud system and run a job server if you're able to (eg jobs that take hours to days and need a connection). Pip is a disaster for this - download every wheel just to check the toml file for dependency resolution? Just doesn't work with poor connectivity. Get good with rsync and wget flags to manage partial downloads. My preferred method is to pull remotely and then rsync partial to a local machine over a few days. That's much more reliable than wget with the -C flag. You end up building a lot of packages from source, a shallow git clone is far smaller than a compiled binary. Forget Overleaf. Install tex locally like the old days.

otagekki 5y ago

I did this in 2008 when on a trip in my home country where network coverage was so bad and power sockets so rare that a smartphone was basically useless and more likely stolen from you if you show people you have one. After that that, my cyber-addiction has mostly stopped: I can go without a computer big or small for months (but then I would need the good old paper for various needs) and not give a damn about likes or karma or even toxic comments.

brotheradam 5y ago
It also really helps if you were born in a time where all this didn't exist. Just remember how we did this in the 90s. I do a live-like-in-the-90s-day about once a month now, and it is quite relaxing.
- kk6mrp 5y ago
  I was born in 1999, what does a "live-like-in-the-90s-day" look like?
  - brotheradam 5y ago
    Easy: No internet, no smartphones.

trabant00 5y ago

Anything can generate interesting discussion. A little self analysis never hurt no one, and experimenting on yourself can teach you some things. But 3 days without internet? What is this, intermittent fasting for social media obesity? Nothing changes in 3 days of any routine change. And he already reached enlightenment. Wordle is "“mild purgatory” — like being stuck in human flypaper", email is a "stoppage of living", I can't stop laughing. This is some low quality "I did 100 pushups a day for a week and this is what happened" youtube style of click bait stuff. It is no-fap level of ridiculousness.

adamsmith143 5y ago
leetcodesucks 5y ago
Semen retention is a rediculous idea to you? I bet you wear glasses and are balding

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago

it says something about FOMO and being enslaved to the system when people feel 3 days of silence is life changing. Like the brief moment of clarity an addict experiences just before succumbing to another cycle of abuse. 3 days isn't enough to build new routines to help you stay sober. It's more like waking up from a dream before falling back into a slumber when in the morning you won't remember what that dream was about. I've been escaping into the woods for several months on long distance hikes. No Internet, no phone or GPS, nobody to talk to but the moon. When the moment is right I have a tent, sleeping bag, a few bits and bobs like a ferro-rod, rescue-blanket first-aid kit, plenty of blister band aids, and whatever else I can fit into a backpack. This has literally healed my addiction, and my crippling life-long depression. I'm really happy people see how powerful (and weird) 3 days offline can be so they feel an urge to tell everyone. I also find it hard to keep it to myself. But I hope their next step is to imagine what 1 or 3 months could do. Truth is you can become a totally new person beyond your wildest imagination. It'll be really weird when you get back because people still think you're same when in reality you've totally become someone else. It's a literal lifehack. Once I came across some distressed farmers in the mountains who lost their cows. I offered to help them searching. They were confused and said you will help for free? Aren't you busy on a hike reaching your destination. So I told them that experiences like these are my destination. The problem with herd animals like they told me was that they were already gone for 3 days. And timing is so important! Apparently if cows are separated too long from their herd, then chances increase they won't bother coming back. If you do catch them they will always stay "naughty" and tend to escape again. But worse! They often bring a friend with them and continue to remain a problem for the farmer forever. I feel like that cow sometimes.

88840-8855 5y ago
- noduerme 5y ago
  What a terrible comment. How do you know if someone has money or not? I read OP's post as meaning they had probably given up making money in favor of living a richer life.

gnicholas 5y ago

> Normally, by that time of day (noonish), I would have checked the weather 17 times or so already, all but one of them a pointless reflexive tic. I'm as online as the next guy, but why would someone check the weather more than once or twice a day? Granted, I live in California so I don't worry much about extreme weather, but even when I lived on the east coast I would only check the weather once in the morning.

smcl 5y ago
I don’t think it’s something they consciously want to do (“… pointless reflexive tic”). I’m sure many of us have a site where it takes a few milliseconds to hit ctrl-t, type the first few letters, let autocomplete fill it out and hit enter. If your mind is wandering you can easily find yourself doing this many times per day
was_a_dev 5y ago
I live in the UK I usually check the weather about three times a week. At the moment it's daily while we deal with our bout of storms.
- faeyanpiraat 5y ago
  I could always tell what’s the weather there without looking at a forecast. :)
  - maccard 5y ago
    Really? I'm looking out my window right now and it's perfectly calm, with some gray clouds, but there's storm warnings out for later in the day.
hnlmorg 5y ago
I live in the UK where the weather can change significantly during the course of the day and I still generally just look out of a window rather than rely on weather forecasts.
WorldMaker 5y ago

chmod775 5y ago

Nice. Now I wonder what not eating avocado toast for 3 days is like.

tobyhinloopen 5y ago
Am I on Reddit? Hmm no, I’m in a browser and I still have my whole screen available
smcl 5y ago
Doesn’t look like avocado toast was mentioned in either this article or the original

daverol 5y ago

Three days? Some people thought that 24 hours was so difficult it merited a cash reward https://www.reviews.org/internet-service/digital-detox-challenge/ https://www.reviews.org/internet-service/digital-detox-chall...

rsanheim 5y ago

I skimmed the essay and it is satire right? At least 1/3 satire? Please? The problem isn't knowing that there is a problem with phone/online addiction, the problem is finding a balance between work that requires us being online, real world things that make it so useful, and the rest that drives our dopamine centers in our free time. Taking a break is good, but what happens after?

WA 5y ago

This post resonates a lot with me for several reasons: 1. I know exactly how this passive state of mind feels to me. It's good to hear that others feel the same. 2. 3 days might not be much, but it doesn't matter, if it is long enough to give one clarity how the own mind works, to reflect on a bad habit, and, which is most important, come up with rules how to further break the bad habit, as the poster did. Saying this, I'm gonna go to the rock climbing gym now ;)

rkr1410 5y ago

> I just took three days completely offline > A few times (...) I flipped on mobile data to look up an address Er... Okay, I guess it's more about whether they could control their cravings, and not checking whether offline life is possible anymore? Don't we still have, like, ways to check an address without using internet?

llimos 5y ago

This feels like the library vs framework distinction, which I think is a useful way of looking at it. The Internet is great as a library, looking things up when you need to. When it turns into a framework, encompassing everything you do, that's when things have gone wrong. This article is a great advertisement for turning it back into a library.

MontagFTB 5y ago

Verge journalist Paul Miller took a year off the internet. He wrote about the experience the entire time (physically submitting his articles along the way.) It is an interesting series of articles that cover some of the same issues here. His conclusions were, I believe, different than the author here, due in large part to the scale involved in his experiment. https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/1/4279674/im-still-here-back-online-after-a-year-without-the-internet https://www.theverge.com/2013/5/1/4279674/im-still-here-back...

escapedmoose 5y ago
That was a great essay, thanks for linking. The writer’s experiences overlapped with my own, as I dropped off of Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Reddit/Snapchat a couple years ago. I still find those platforms distasteful and have no desire to go back to them, but the isolation is real. When you drop off, people really do forget to talk to you. It becomes a real effort and a struggle to keep up friendships. Like people forget you exist when you’re not broadcasting. It’s a little unnerving, and it brings up all sorts of existential anxieties.

hnlmorg 5y ago

Blogging about 3 days is a little silly but I guess feeling the need to publish that online falls inline with the problem this guy seems to have with his dependency on technology. For me, 3 days is little more than a bank holiday with my family. A trip to the zoo, family meals, walks along the fields and foot paths, teaching the kids to ride a bike, playing games: sports games, board games, card games, or even just hide and seek. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy "online" as much as the next person (video streaming, online gaming, HN etc) but sometimes it's nice to interact with people and/or nature instead of LCD screens. So not spending time online is as natural as eating.

matwood 5y ago
I feel the same, but maybe that's because we're older (I'm in my 40s)? I was just on a ski vacation with friends and my screen time dropped 90%+ naturally. Same when I go on vacations with my wife. But, I didn't grow up with screens everywhere. They are simply another thing I use.
- dorchadas 5y ago
  It's funny as it was the opposite for my friends. We always go on New Year's trips together, and when we're just sitting around or in the car, etc. everyone was on their screens. Same back at the cabin, unless we were playing Uno or some other game. We're all early 29-31.

IYasha 5y ago

Interesting, but not what I was anticipating. My offline experience was very harsh. And I try to live offline as much as possible. For example, I've learned that I can't pay for aprtment offline anymore unless I go to special office and pay ridiculously high commission. Can't even use banking unless online.

notjes 5y ago

Being always connected to all people on the planet might not be healthy for all. No way!

dangerface 5y ago

> I would have checked the weather 17 times or so already, all but one of them a pointless reflexive tic. Bro has issues, I don't think the issue is the internet I think thats just the symptom / enabler.

ezconnect 5y ago

I had the same experience during my 20s that the TV was not essential to life. My day schedule used to be tied to the air time of my favorite show. Sadly internet happened and it's all downhill from that brief moment of enlightenment.

Shinchy 5y ago

I recently spent a month offline (with the exception of where my job required). Internet addiction is something I have become much more conscious of in recent years and I found that the first few days are very much in alignment with the article. The problem is that after the initial buzz wears off there is still that innate tendency to dwindle time away and distract yourself just with other means. Was I more focussed and aware, yes I would say so - but it's not as if I suddenly become super productive with this new focus all of a sudden and would pursue every project or idea I ever dreamed up in my head. What I found was that initially I become productive but it was more from the excitement of moving away from the internet. What happened after is that my mind found other ways to distract, some better than others; for example I read a lot more books than usual however I would also just spend time doing nothing at all or watching pointless TV. It was enjoyable to sit and actually concentrate on something for once. I spent more time outside and that initial anxiety of not know what was going on (FOMO) slowly started to fade as I realised the insignificance of it upon my life. I think the biggest difference though is that I felt happier without the internet in my life. The return is an almighty crash, that proved the addictive nature upon me. My screen time shot through the roof, I tried to check up on everything I had missed, I felt shame at just how strong the grip was and how little control I had over it. It tapered off after a couple of days and I am better than I was before, more aware of the strong hold that looms over me. I try to use leave my phone away in the evenings to avoid that spontaneous reach for the next dopamine hit. It works, but I think I will do another detox for a longer period of time soon. It's a funny thing, I think the internet has done wonderful things for me, it's certainly given me a fantastic career that I would otherwise never have had. It's given me a wealth of knowledge and entertainment over the years - but like most things in its nature it came with a hefty price.

smugkot 5y ago
>What happened after is that my mind found other ways to distract As soon as I power off my laptop intending to study, I get an almost irresistible urge to start working on random math/physics problems I read about months ago. But honestly, that's way more productive than browsing HN/Reddit/4chan all day.

rthomas6 5y ago

Cal Newport's book Digital Minimalism suggests doing a 30 day technology detox. That's 30 days offline. I've done it, and I highly recommended it. Three days would not have been long enough for me to not return to ingrained habits when the time was up, nor long enough to start to cultivate other activities to fill the time with.

darepublic 5y ago

Recently YouTube algorithm recommended me industrial society and it's future (the Unabomber manifesto) and I'm reminded of it again after skimming these comments

ryanmercer 5y ago

Like I said years ago in this post https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2017/2/13/i-miss-the-20th-century?rq=miss https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2017/2/13/i-miss-th... "Yes, I am a 20th century person. My curse is that of being born on the cusp of the digital revolution. My curse is that of wanting a simple life in a friendly world. My curse is that of being smart enough to know that this 21st century life isn't something good, it will never be for me. "

cindarin 5y ago

I feel like I have read this same article two dozen times, each by a different author. The internet and I grew up together; it's nearly always been a part of my life. I use the internet every day for several hours. My career involves constant use and access to the internet. I also get my news and communicate with friends via the internet. All that said, I spend time away from the internet every day and not as some forced action to distance myself from it. I don't see the internet as some perverse addiction that I need to break. If I'm not working for a stretch of days, there's a good chance that I will not use the internet simply because no situation comes up that calls for it. The idea that 3 days away is life and mind altering is deeply concerning to me.

wink 5y ago
Yeah, that sums it up pretty nicely. It's like tap water, I'm used to it being there and I use it without thinking about it. But there's no problem just going on a weekend (or week long) trip without any internet connectivity (unless you depend on your phone for navigation, but you get what I mean).
whiddershins 5y ago
Not use the internet including to check email or chats or messages or Google random stuff or map to anywhere on your phone?
- ghaff 5y ago
  I've certainly been places where I've been out of cell reception for days at a time. Not frequently but I also wouldn't consider it some weird anomaly.
- cindarin 5y ago
  I can't hardly be bothered to check email when it's relevant to do so. If the people I care to talk to are in the room with me at the time, I don't need to get on my phone. That's not always the case. Sometimes I will stick my nose in my phone in a public setting, and it's not intended as a slight. I just have a fancy in my head about something I'd like to go read about. However, this is more to my point. My separation from the internet has never needed to be some all-encompassing effort. I have never thought about needing to make sure that there is absolutely 0% access for an extended period. If I go on a multi-day backpacking/camping trip, it's not to escape the internet, it's because I like being outdoors.

lambic 5y ago

The distinction between online and offline has always seemed weird to me. You can do destructive things in both, just as you can do beneficial things in both. Instead of going offline for X days I try to have healthy online and offline habits. Reduce the twitter doomscrolling and increase the social interactions over text chat or zoom. Reduce the TV watching (is TV watching offline or online??) and walk more and read more books.

cpsns 5y ago
Some of us find it very, very hard to have healthy online habits. I know many here don't like the idea of internet addiction, but at this point I am convinced it's a real thing and for some people the only solution is abstinence.
- lambic 5y ago
  I don't think we should be calling it internet addiction though. The internet can be used for so many things, many of them beneficial overall. People may suffer from social media addiction, or gaming addiction or porn addiction, or TV/video addiction, but internet addiction seems overly broad. Am I addicted to the internet because I check the weather every day or look at google maps every time I go anywhere?

lbj 5y ago

I quit coffee for 45 minute today, anyone interested in a write-up of what i learned?

doublerabbit 5y ago
is it that Whisky tastes better on it's own?
kk6mrp 5y ago
Low blood/coffee levels?
imgabe 5y ago
If you previously have spent years never going 45 minutes without consuming coffee, then yes I'd be very interested to hear what happened when you stopped and how you managed to consume that much coffee in the first place. Was it on an IV drip? Did you have a team of baristas working around the clock to always have fresh coffee on hand?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

thenerdhead 5y ago

It's not about avoiding or removing the internet from your life. It's about learning to live intentionally given the internet is a thing. This has to be sustainably. You can't do that with a 3-day or 30-day detox. You won't be successful with monochrome hacks or net nannies. You can't do that even going cold turkey because you have to use technology to still function in society unless you're going off grid and starting a homestead. What I found to work is to start small, replace one habit at a time. Give yourself plenty of time to do absolutely nothing and you will creatively find great uses of that time again. After a few years, you'll feel back in control, happier, and healthier because of it.

unethical_ban 5y ago

Internet addiction is a real thing. Millions of people probably deal with it and don't even know it, by using social media or refreshing newsfeeds compulsively and not even realizing the impact it has on people. It's one thing for some of y'all not to get it or understand it - great. I'm happy that there are people with healthy boundaries for that. It's shameful how many posts in this thread are making light of it. "Three days is nothing pal, hey I went 45 minutes without coffee who wants my blog?". --- I had COVID right before Christmas. I had to cancel all my plans. Christmas was relatively slow news-wise. Lots of my friends were busy, and the few I interact with online were doing family things. So I had time to myself, with no compulsion to go out or to seek friends to hang out with. It was incredible. I remember playing Skyrim a lot, which I've wanted to do for a long time. I watched some good TV. I read a book. I worked the ham radio. I cleaned the house. And I was happy at the end of each day, other than blowing my nose 75 times. Oh, and I didn't drink either. Now I'm back to my routine. Several days a week of no drinking. Several days a week of 7-10 drinks. Every 10-15 minutes is a swipe/refresh of reddit. Whenever a loading screen pops up at work for more than a moment I "ctrl-T, ctrl-L, new" and open up google or HN. Compulsive behavior is awful. Not having focus is awful. FOMO is awful. And I'll preemptively tell you to eat a cottonball sandwich if you think it's as simple as "well, don't do it". I'm sure the answer incorporates a support structure from friends, changing communications habits to be less worried about missing messages, and even therapy. Hey, wouldn't you know, talking and blogging about it can help.

rootusrootus 5y ago

I feel it. Sometimes it gets terrible, the reflexive pulling up the Internet just to see what's out there. And I can feel what it does to my mind. When it gets really bad, I'll find myself pulling out my phone when I'm sitting on the toilet, when I'm sitting at the table eating, sitting in the hot tub. And of course sometimes at night in bed, if I wake up. Or even during work, to distract from some bit of unpleasant (but paid...) activity I should be doing. Yes, this is all somewhat of a reflection on my inability to push it away. I get quite angry at myself sometimes when my control slips and I feel hours of my day slipping into the void. But my professional life depends on Internet access. So I can't just put it down and walk away. I've considered blocking HN on my router, sometimes ;-).

vbphprubyjsgo 5y ago

meigwilym 5y ago

Poe's law anyone?

AlwaysRock 5y ago

What do yall do during a three day weekend? I try to get outside and avoid screens.

godzillafarts 5y ago

Lots of hate in this thread around the author writing about "only" three days offline. I get the sentiment, it isn't a particularly long duration of time, but three days offline can feel like an eternity if you legitimately have an internet addiction. Some of us are luckier than other in that we're able to self moderate. I know that I sometimes struggle with pulling my phone out for no reason and refreshing HN or Reddit. Same with my laptop during work hours. I don't like it and I'm trying to do better; I want a healthier relationship with my devices and the internet. I definitely took something from this article, though. For a while I've been using Do Not Disturb to cut down on distracting notifications throughout the day, with a whitelist for family members in case of emergency. But from now on, my phone's WiFi will be turned off and I've also disabled cellular data for all other non-critical applications. Now if I want to refresh HN or Reddit for no reason, I either have to connect to WiFi or explicitly grant Safari permission to use cellular data. Overall, I feel like I'm taking steps in the right direction...

unethical_ban 5y ago
Using DND for "only necessities" communication is great. Uninstalling social media apps that aren't comms is useful for me too (Instagram is non-essential, and reddit). Take away the muscle memory of opening the apps. Finally, when it's appropriate, I leave my phone in my car entirely. Occasionally for dinner/breakfast, on runs, and going to the movies. Just leave it at home. The world will go on without you - especially if people know you're away.
isitmadeofglass 5y ago
> I get the sentiment, it isn't a particularly long duration of time, but three days offline can feel like an eternity if you legitimately have an internet addiction. Sure, and 3 days without heroine might seem like a long time to someone with a heroine addiction. But still doesn’t mean that someone writing a an article of “I went 3 days without heroine, here is my insightful report” and stating that it actually wasn’t that bad is somehow not deserving of a bit of healthy critique.
- ulisesrmzroche 5y ago

camillomiller 5y ago

For me the issue is really about 1) being available all the time and feeling like I’m expected to reply or be considered potentially dead (or very rude) 2) picking up the smartphone to check something useful and end up in some doomscrolling rabbithole because a notification seized my attention I wish there were easier ways to put the phone into an automated setting that lets you access only a subset of apps. I know you can do similar stuff with the iPhone, but I tried, and blocking apps works for like a few days, and then I constantly hit “remind me later”

JimWestergren 5y ago

Off topic but interesting: Before today (I am 40 yo) I did not know anything about jungle cats - I did not know any such thing existed. This morning I did some research about them to send a google image for my painter to paint for my upcoming board game. Later today I see the words "jungle cats" mentioned in a totally unrelated tech article - what are the odds? Confirmation bias I know, but interesting.

dkarp 5y ago

I visited North Korea some years ago. For me, one of the most memorable things about the trip had nothing to do with the North Korea itself. Without the comfort of their smartphones, all the other tourists had no choice but to spend their time interacting with each other. We were all inseparable for the simple fact that there was literally nothing else to do.

themadturk 5y ago

I deleted Facebook years ago, when it was still fairly easy to do so. I still have a Twitter account, but I only regularly follow three or four people, and get their tweets via my Feedbin account. I also see new posts to BoingBoing and Metafilter via Feedbin, and log in here once or twice a day to browse. I check in on Reddit once every day or two, but the subreddits I follow are very carefully curated. I'm one of those who remembers the world before the Internet. I was about 30 and married when I got my first computer in the mid-1980s. I did a lot of reading back then, and some writing as well, though I didn't get serious about writing until I discovered word processing. I've been thinking about writing my own essay about tech minimalism, just because I've seen so many articles like this one over the past couple of years. In some ways it's something I aspire to, if only because I sometimes enjoy making things difficult, to test myself a little. But with a few exceptions, I like the digital life I've built. I'm happy to be able to get online every day. I've managed to mostly break the doomscrolling habit, to be able to close the laptop and put down the phone and read a book (on my Kindle, because I can make the type any size I want).