34 ms·

How I regained concentration and focus

671 points by aiobe 4y ago

zorg42 4y ago
thanx - pragmatic collection of suggestions
ph1p 4y ago
the "zero news diet" should really be done more often. For myself, it would be "zero Twitter diet".
- cocoflunchy 4y ago
  I managed to completely stop using Twitter by removing all my follows. Then when I'd mindlessly open twitter I'd be presented with a blank screen. After a few days I just stopped opening it.
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    This is a very smart strategy. You effectively trained yourself that there was no reward to be had from the behaviour and so broke the habit. Someone should make a browser extension that does this for other sites, essentially allows the masthead and other boring trim to load but removes all of the content.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      The browser extension kinda already exists — I've accidentally done that to a few sites with Adblock Plus.
- Kiro 4y ago
  Zero HN diet would be the most effective.
- jansan 4y ago
  I put Twitter on my router's domain blacklist. The only way for me to read Twitter is through nitter.net, which is not much fun and readonly, so there is no risk to get addicted.
khaledh 4y ago
For me, the zero news diet would be really hard to apply to HN. Any suggestions (in addition to noprocrast)?
- pella 4y ago
  try check only 1x weekly AND only the "top 10%" go https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/ -> set "top 10%"
  - khaledh 4y ago
    I've seen this one before, but never tried it. I'll give it a try. Thanks!
- pacifika 4y ago
  Use one of the Havkernews Digest services to get a periodic email. Fomo is the biggest reason for me to keep checking back.
Scarblac 4y ago
I see that Rolf Dobelli has a book on avoiding news now. But he made his point crystal clear in an article he wrote in 2010 already, and put as a freely downloadable PDF on his website. I can't find it there now, but here's a link to that PDF on some other site: https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf
- planarhobbit 4y ago
  One would think he would also avoid the great majority of books out there too, as they’re just as trashy and toxic as news are.
- walleeee 4y ago
  Gwern's site is a gold mine of various interesting tidbits
throw93232 4y ago
》CNN, WSJ, and BBC That is a news equivalent of junk food. Clickbait partisan outrage generator. I would suggest some independent podcast with daily or weekly summaries. Much higher information density.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Given the junk food analogy, things with much higher information density would be like drinking neat olive oil. I think a more useful thing is to filter news down to only that news which is important rather than merely engaging, and leave engagement for either friends or hobbies with a ratio depending on your personal level of introversion/extroversion.
  - throw93232 4y ago
    I just checked front side of CNN, first 6 titles are about some unofficial trip. They do not know if it will happen, what will happen, where it may happen, what that means... There is no value for me there. Even if I invest time into filtering, there is no value to gain from that. Maybe it is important, but I am not policy maker or investor, it is not important right now for me! I can find out about that visit week later, after it actually happened. Without all the speculations and opinions. And since it will be podcast I can listen while running or exercising, and with much lower investment from my side.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      I think you've underestimated what I mean by filtering in this case: unless you're a politician, almost literally all political news is pointless; unless you are a game developer or unsatisfied with your VR headset, literally all news about VR headsets is pointless; there's no point watching a weather forecast for any place you are not going to be in; unless you're an investor or looking to invest or borrow, financial news is pointless; unless you're in the royal family or selling memorabilia, gossip about any royal family is worthless; … Does CNN have any content that's genuinely important to you? But the argument also applies to podcasts: no value in any fact-based podcast if you don't act on the information it gives you, just as there's no point in fiction-based podcasts if they don't entertain you.
hvs 4y ago
As someone with serious concentration issues (unless I'm hyperfocused, I may have undiagnosed ADHD) I found the biggest help for me was cutting out caffeine.
- saos 4y ago
  Even tea? :(
  - hvs 4y ago
    You might be able to get away with a cup of tea every once in a while, but I tend to be an "in for a penny in for a pound" type of person, so it's complete elimination or 4-5 cups of coffee for me.
  - gatane 4y ago
    I stopped drinking tea and my daily anxiety halved :)
  - WuxiFingerHold 4y ago
    To me green tea had a similar effect as coffee. Both feels great and gives huge energy and motivation boost, but at the costs of calmness, clarity and sustainability over the day.
- swah 4y ago
  Was this on the short term?
  - hvs 4y ago
    No, it's complete. I was drinking 4-5 cups of coffee a day and my brain was a cluttered mess. Now it's just mildly cluttered.
    - EForEndeavour 4y ago
      On a much smaller time scale, I have noticed that when I skip my usual morning coffee (say, running out of coffee, going for a run with an accountability buddy, or traveling and staying in a "coffee desert"), I feel remarkably clear-minded and calm, even though I crave the smell, taste, experience of coffee. When I let it last, this mental calmness lasts until early afternoon, when I'd usually get coffee #2 of 2, as the dull withdrawal headache sets in and I chemotactically writhe my way toward increasingly desperate sources of caffeine. I've been drinking at least 2 cups of coffee ("cups" is a fuzzy measure) for maybe 15 years. Maybe I should power through the withdrawal and discover for myself if I've accidentally been undermining my mental clarity and life quality this whole time, instead of giving myself energy and helping concentration as I'd been assuming.
giantg2 4y ago
My distraction is from all the family stuff I have to deal with. My lack of concentration is because I lack motivation - I don't see any reason to try hard at work since it's all politics and BS.
- tenebrisalietum 4y ago
  Work for money.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    What money? There's no way to get a raise at my company without a promotion and they won't promote me. I have no motivation to work hard if it won't be rewarded. I do the minimum to get paid my shitty salary.
    - TameAntelope 4y ago
      Who said anything about your current company?
      - giantg2 4y ago
        I don't have the skills to switch to a different company, tech jobs are limited in my area, I don't perform well remotely, and my wife won't consider relocating. My current shitty job is the best job I can get.
        bumby 4y ago
        It's okay to say tech jobs aren't the right fit as well.
        giantg2 4y ago
        They might not be. I'm hesitant to admit that because 1) They used to be and I was a high performer at a mediocre non-tech company 2) There's nothing else I can do to earn enough to support my family.
endisneigh 4y ago
Ironically this page is a great example of why it’s hard to focus. Unnecessary images, stylization and colors. Unnecessary links to other distracting websites. Flashy flash.
- pristineshatter 4y ago
  Let the man create the blog he wants to create.
  - dxdm 4y ago
    Maybe there's a lesson for him in that comment.
mprime1 4y ago
If you’re looking for a ‘lean’ source of news (just the facts, no commentary) try Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events (RSS feed available)
- bananabiscuit 4y ago
  Unfortunately, it is a mistake to think that just because you are only presented with high quality facts (statements that are very likely to be true), that you are getting an objective view of the story. You would be surprised how unrepresentative a story can be made purely through omission or selective emphasis, and Wikipedia is very guilty especially of the latter. The talk pages are usually very revealing of what the articles fails to mention, if you happen to catch them before the discussion gets archived.
  - anonporridge 4y ago
    This is something a lot of people don't understand. It is impossible to have an objective and bias-free source of information, simply because the amount of information that exists is unimaginably enormous. It's impossible for any single human mind to absorb everything that's happening, so we have to rely on services whose job is filtering that information into a small set of important bits. By selectively choosing which bits of information you share or emphasize, multiple different sources can all technically be telling the gods honest truth, while also all pushing completely contradictory narratives. Everyone is pushing a narrative, and it's critical that we all try to understand the incentives of the pushers of information we ingest.
    - stripline 4y ago
      I learned this when I dated a law student while in college. They teach an entire class to the first year students dedicated to presenting the facts of the case, the way lawyers do in their opening statements. They actually had to create the set of facts for each side. It was really interesting how you could totally bias it by what you emphasized or left out and the different words used (i.e. word connotations).
jansan 4y ago
I think routers should have more fine grained settings, so I can block social media during weekdays, HN on weekdays except lunchtime and evening, and allow my children only to access their 5 websites that they need for homework/study during a few hours in the afternoon. This would help me a lot.
- clydethefrog 4y ago
  My German router (FritzBox) has some of these options. Blacklist, whitelist, limited time and scheduling.
- terminalcommand 4y ago
  A more extreme measure some users here used to take was not access the internet at all during their downtime. When you come home from work simply not use the internet. I guess exceptions can be made for streaming movies/music. Ideally you should download and stock up on these. I remember some users deliberately not connecting internet to their homes to stick with this. There were also some users who switched to "dumb" phones to reduce distractions. I guess these could work.
- bishopsmother 4y ago
  even with your router's domain blacklist, it may not be so easy to block all social media (specifically, apps[0]). I don't imagine cigarette manufacturers are keen on making it easier for people to quit smoking either. [0] https://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/tech/facebook-app-and-unnamed-domains-avoiding-dns-blocking/102501213/ https://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/tech/facebook-app-and-un...
davidkuennen 4y ago
Hard for me since I'm addicted to my own app that I'd have to be productive for.
freediver 4y ago
I collection of links and quotes on stop reading "news" We are what we read: https://tinygem.org/about#stopnews https://tinygem.org/about#stopnews Entire TinyGem service was created with the purpose of collecting content worth reading.
kzrdude 4y ago
I don't think there is a silver bullet or a tick box solution. You have to want to stop. Change your behaviour.
- TimTheTinker 4y ago
  Sometimes there really is - for people who want to focus but find it frustratingly difficult because of their brain chemistry (ADHD or whatever). For me, it's sleeping enough, nicotine patches, green tea, L-Tyrosine, Avmacol, and no coffee. This regimen has helped me improve my work performance significantly. It doesn't "fix" everything, but it sure makes it so much easier to function and to focus what I want to focus on.
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    That sounds great, I've certainly too gone through a better sleep period where I focused on better sleep - no coffee for two years and lots of other measures like that. And it works. That's not a silver bullet, that's hard work. :)
    - ge96 4y ago
      For the last couple of years my sleep pattern has been crazy. Sometimes I would stay up two days in a row to rest my sleep pattern back to 9-5 schedule. I preferred to be sleep deprived as it made my job more interesting. But lately (since a month ago) I have been thankfully able to maintain a 12/1-8:30 range sleep pattern. I do a 15 min workout 5 days a week. I have been fasting so I eat a big meal a couple hours before sleeping. Read a book half an hour before sleep. So far it's been working. Fasting is weight loss reasons. Also helps me personally focus since if I eat too much I get lazy/tired. Other thing I'll comment on is regarding personal projects. I lay out a plan, when the day begins (weekend) I don't open anything (social media) I just immediately work on this project. Thankfully I can dump the most of the weekend days toward the project.
      - kzrdude 4y ago
        Sounds awesome. Thanks for the inspiration.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
Switching to text only [1] browsing changed my relationship to information and vastly improved my focus while using computers. I highly recommend it. [1] Text mostly (90+%). Those few occasions I want to see images as part of a web page it's possible to turn that on.
- nunodonato 4y ago
  do you use any particular browser or extension? or do you mean stuff like gopher/gemini?
  - b215826 4y ago
    On Firefox, setting permissions.default.image in about:config to 2 blocks all images. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Permissions.default.image http://kb.mozillazine.org/Permissions.default.image
  - nonrandomstring 4y ago
    I use w3m a fair bit, because of emacs. Also have "Links" (variant of Lynx maybe) set up in some environments.
djohnston 4y ago
I've managed to consolidate all my distracted news consumption to HN but indeed I need to break myself from this reflexive habit.
- bckr 4y ago
  I'm in the same boat! I feel better because my twitchy fingers always lead to learning or discussing something new and interesting, but they're still twitchy fingers.
papito 4y ago
If you want to get your life back, read Stolen Focus. It has all these tips and tricks but it does a lot more - it explains why our focus is shot, and dissects the forces behind it. It's much more sinister than most people suspect. https://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Focus-Attention-Think-Deeply/dp/0593138511 https://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Focus-Attention-Think-Deeply/d... I was spending hours per day on Twitter, and then I learned that overusing social media rewires your brain, and you essentially unlearn to digest information in bigger chunks. This book will horrify you, and that's exactly what needs to be done. And if a book (to listen to) is too much for you to focus on - listen to Ezra Klein's interview with the author, at least: https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/its-not-your-fault-you-cant-pay-attention-heres-why/id1548604447?i=1000550779064 https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/its-not-your-fault-you...
- eddie_catflap 4y ago
  This book grabbed my eye too, but then I saw Matthew Sweet on Twitter (@DrMatthewSweet) kept questioning the studies used and suggesting that Hari has cherry picked results to support his point. I've no idea if this was the case but some interesting stuff to look at I think. A good summary thread is here : https://twitter.com/DrMatthewSweet/status/1479125910896975877 https://twitter.com/DrMatthewSweet/status/147912591089697587...
  - papito 4y ago
    Sure, it's not perfect. The author's flaunting of his privileged lifestyle - taking months off a year to just chill - really ground my gears, but he seemed genuine in his quest to find the reason why he could no longer think clearly. Does that make him biased - of course, but whether or not the study of how topics get covered faster across decades was peer reviewed is rather unimportant. What I know is that I was able to read half a book in one session, and now I am struggling with a single page.
tessela 4y ago
Extra tip for iOS/macOS/iPadOS users: go to Settings / Accessibility / Display & Text Size / Color Filters and enable the Grayscale filter.
frostwarrior 4y ago
To me, mindfulness meditation helped me a lot with concentration because it was like learning mental aikido, in the sense of not trying to remove invasive information, but redirect it in a way that doesn't affect my focus. Everything stops being so important by default
woweoe 4y ago
So basically block the entirety of Reddit, which I agree would be good for all humankind.
- shakow 4y ago
  > which I agree would be good for all humankind. I disagree with that statement. I know it's fashionable on HN to spit on Reddit, but for all its flaws, Reddit also birthed fantastic communities that are hard to replicate somewhere else due to the network effect, e.g. /r/WarCollege, /r/hoggit, /r/AskHistorians, /r/Rust, /r/LinguisticsHumor, etc. – come for the dumb memes, stay for the niche communities.
  - woweoe 4y ago
    But surely these are just commercialized versions of forums, the latter being a far more versatile medium to have discussions on? Reddit has monopolized the entire forum industry and ruined online communities.
- PaulsWallet 4y ago
  If you are talking about default subreddits then sure but there are some great communities on reddit that I think are great pieces of the internet. A lot of which I'm sure exist because people don't need 100 different forum accounts to access them. Also generally, I see no difference between reddit and Hacker News except Hacker News drips with a unique brand of elitist smarm you can't get elsewhere.
mingusrude 4y ago
I recently switched Twitter to strictly timeline and that pretty much fixed Twitter for me. I still use it but it no more doom-scrolling.
synergy20 4y ago
Block websites will help definitely. another "threat" is when you have a few kids, your daily life is cut into pieces with random and sometimes strong background noises 24x7x365, not much you can do there. personally, that impacts my focus the most and there is no cure, and it usually lasts for about 20 years when kids are finally into colleges. obviously there are many good stuff out of raising kids, and I enjoyed it, but focus-on-tech-advancement is not one of them.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- koheripbal 4y ago
  This is why many people with kids want to physically return to the office - fewer distractions.
  - ChrisPebble 4y ago
    Anecdotally all but one of the parents I know (including myself) prefer working remotely. I tried to find if there were any survey results and found a survey by Harris Poll on behalf of Zapier that said that "56 percent of parents want the option to work remotely" [1]. I have a private office in our home and know that's not a luxury for many others, but the quality of life as a parent working from home vs being in the office is dramatic. With the kids home during the summer the noise and distraction levels do go up, but honestly are still less bothersome then the open office floor plan I was in previously. I think it really depends on your home situation as well as how your office was setup, but my guess is that a majority of parents would prefer remote positions if available. [1] https://zapier.com/blog/remote-work-report-by-zapier/ https://zapier.com/blog/remote-work-report-by-zapier/
  - jader201 4y ago
    I've WFH for the past 8+ years, my kids are now 18 and 15 (so they were 10 and 7 when I started WFH). They can definitely be a distraction, but I was able to minimize it by having an office with a door + setting reasonable boundaries. Also, they're out of the house at school for many hours (except for COVID -- that was a bit tougher, but that was the case for everyone). I have no regrets. One of the reasons I WFH is to have less time on the road and more time w/ family. My oldest has said that he's glad I WFH, and that he didn't like me being away when he was younger. Of course, every person/family is different. But for me & my family, I think minimizing the distractions in other ways while WFH + accepting the remaining distractions was worth it in the end.
closedloop129 4y ago
Did he regain concentration and focus? It's more like he just reduced distractions. That's not the same. What if being distracted is not a bug but a feature and his mind doesn't want to continue the path of constantly writing books? Instead of eliminating distractions, it could be more helpful to find the activities that don't create the desire for distractions.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  my mind doesn't want to continue the path of constantly working. I've done a lot of kinds of work and am not young, coding is my third career, and I've never found "the activities" that pay rent and don't create the desire for distractions. Want it or not (I don't want it) that's a problem it's on me to solve.
- Digital28 4y ago
  He also says the pandemic didn't affect him, but honestly, whether it was Long COVID or an indirect psych effect of isolation, I've had extreme issues concentrating ever since 2020 that have been absolutely bullshit to manage.
  - andai 4y ago
    Re: wide-scale reports of cognitive decline since lockdowns: > In lab animals, isolation has been shown to cause brain shrinkage and the kind of brain changes you'd see in Alzheimer's disease — reduced brain cell connections and reduced levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is important for the formation, connection, and repair of brain cells. https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/how-isolation-affects-memory-and-thinking-skills https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/how-isolation-a...
    - powerhour 4y ago
      Course we don't know if that would still be the case for rats that were capable of communicating with others online.
KindAndFriendly 4y ago
"...I cancelled my subscription to my formerly favourite online news portal (the German “Spiegel-Online”)..." Very good. Spiegel Online - unfortunately - became terribly bad over the last years, with click-bait headlines, sensational reporting as well as pushing fear & anxiety throughout their articles.
- muffinman26 4y ago
  Do you have a different German newspaper you would recommend now? I used to read der Spiegel regularly to keep my German from getting too rusty.
  - zorg42 4y ago
    https://www.handelsblatt.com/ https://www.handelsblatt.com/
mberning 4y ago
It is said that Napoleon did not open his mail for 3 weeks after it arrived. His belief was that most issues would resolve themselves and were therefore unimportant for him to attend to. If you go back and watch the news from 2-3 weeks ago it is amazing how much of it is just nonsense. It's especially hard to go back and watch covid discussions from a year ago and hear just how wrong most information was.
- kortex 4y ago
  Sounds like a great way to get a bench warrant for avoiding a legal summons in today's day and age. Knuth has a secretary which prioritizes his snail mail. I think filters are a great way to go. I have tried to pre-bin my mail but my tray organizer has just been covered over with assorted cruft, which kinda makes the system untenable until I stop procrastinating...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
Get out and ride a bike or something. More blood to the brain; no digital distraction. Take a shower and bam! productive. That's how it works for me.
- LesZedCB 4y ago
  agreed the days where I get out for a morning bike ride are some of my best
121789 4y ago
Does anyone know how to block websites at something like the router level? I find myself able to get around normal browser-level blockers fairly easily. I'd love to use some parental controls against myself from like 6-5pm on weekdays
- 1123581321 4y ago
  A custom DNS provider in the router is probably easiest. Use NextDNS or CloudFlare for Families with controls on, and then give the login for the DNS and the login for your router admin to someone else.
- nop_slide 4y ago
  Might be able to do that with a pi-hole
  - rr888 4y ago
    I did this, works great until you realize how easy it is to pause blocking.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  If you have DoH enabled, it's hard. If you don't, with OpenWrt, it's easy enough to configure its DNS server to add IPs to ipsets after a lookup, then configure the firewall to drop those requests over a time window. > I find myself able to get around normal browser-level blockers fairly easily. You're still just 30 seconds away from disabling the rule.
- cloudking 4y ago
  Put Adguard Home on a Raspberry Pi, and point your router DNS to it. https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome
- bishopsmother 4y ago
  If you're willing to be a beta tester - I'll set you up with a free account (see about[0]); I'm open to suggestions/implementing new features based on user demand (e.g. Slowdown as a Service). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bishopsmother https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bishopsmother
semidetached 4y ago
I stopped watching 24-hour news channels in 1991 when I saw how the Gulf War coverage was turning so many into zombies. By 2010 I had stopped regularly reading a list of news web sites I'd constructed. HN is about the only thing I read regularly online, and I'm getting less regular with that. I watch local news sometimes but only to sneer at the local weatherman who's job here in central Texas could be performed by one of my pugs. If I'm going to starve to death pushing a pleasure lever it ain't gonna be one connected to the infotainment industry.
- planarhobbit 4y ago
  Hear hear. To add, I started treating most information outlets, including HN, as endless faucets of propaganda, misinformation AND misdirection. The outrage is, at best, a farcical play of human dramas unfolding on a stage. To take any of this seriously is borderline pathological.
ilikehurdles 4y ago
> Install a swipe keyboard app iPhone keyboards have built-in swipe typing now.
A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
I did not see it listed here, so I will mention Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, who, among other things, discusses news in particular, but digital distractions in general and proposes a way to deal with it by changing our relationship with technology. I am currently going through the steps proposed by him and while not easy, it generally supports the point of the article. That said, it is not just news. edit: Just in case. No connection to the author other than being a happy reader.
- rr888 4y ago
  I really like his message but I feel each of his books could be a blog post. Good blog posts, but nevertheless something you could read in a few minutes. Instead you have to buy/borrow a $10 book, then he rubs it in by talking about how productive he as he has written so many books.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    I think you have a point here and brevity matters. At the same time, would his advice be more credible if he was struggling the way I was with various distractions ( and I am still in a lot better place than an average internet user these days )? Alternatively, would a blogpost take away from his point about digital distraction? Amusingly, as a result of all this re-arranging I did as a result of the book, I restarted writing a book for my kid. Not a lot, but a little bit each day should an inspiration strike. It helps to allow mind wander a little. TLDR: I don't disagree with your point, but I think it may have been a conscious decision beyond fiscal considerations.
namaria 4y ago
Turning off all notifications on my personal phone was a life changer. No longer I feel like I'm wearing an electronic collar. Giving everyone who has your contact information access to your attention is poison to the ability to concentrate. Another big thing for me was cutting down on infinite scrolling, blogs and videos and spending a lot more time with long form content (mainly books). Attention is our most precious resource and we should guard fiercely against attempts to monetize it.
- ge96 4y ago
  My phone is always on mute (no vibrate either) Only alarms to wake up
  - andrewljohnson 4y ago
    Having a family and responsibilities made this infeasible for me. Most apps on my phone are denied notifications, but people can still text/call me.
    - namaria 4y ago
      I also have family and responsibilities. But I am very careful whom I give unfettered access to my attention.
      - copperx 4y ago
        Everybody who depends on you directly (partner, children, parents, and extended family) should be on you VIP contact list and have direct access to you. I find that reduces my anxiety. I don't get distracted by notifications, or the thought that someone might be dying and trying to reach me.
        ge96 4y ago
        Just commenting about phone calls I have stranger phone call anxiety and the other thing is spam/scam calls. Which thankfully my phone has been good at flagging/blocking. Regarding notifications I used to have phones that either had LED blinking indicators or sound/beeping ahh, crazy used to just drop what I was doing to check it.
rr888 4y ago
What I did is tell my boss about my difficulty and now they check in on me twice a day to look at my progress. I hate being micro managed, but really helped me to work on delivering.
- ramblerman 4y ago
  I’m not sure if this was sarcasm, but if not … It’s a dystopian nightmare, that you would voluntarily request this.
  - rr888 4y ago
    Lol I hate it but the extra eyes makes me focus.
tmaly 4y ago
The one thing I really like after switching from Android to Iphone was the consistent interface to be able to shut off all notifications in one screen.
Zanneth 4y ago
Aaron Swartz wrote a blog post about the news[1] and just how terrible it is for the brain. Reading his post had a major impact on me—since then I have always thought differently about the time I spend online. It’s interesting how people, including myself, try to justify various addictions. How am I supposed to stay informed about important topics without the news? How do I know how to help people in need without knowing what’s going on? There are much, much better ways than reading CNN/NYTimes every day. Also, there really is nothing new about the human condition today compared to a hundred years ago. [1] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
- mtnygard 4y ago
  I hadn’t seen that post before. This paragraph hit me as a tragic irony: ‘This seems to be true, but the curious thing is that I’m never involved. The government commits a crime, the New York Times prints it on the front page, the people on the cable chat shows foam at the mouth about it, the government apologizes and commits the crime more subtly. It’s a valuable system — I certainly support the government being more subtle about committing crimes (well, for the sake of argument, at least) — but you notice how it never involves me?’
  - Buttons840 4y ago
    Plus, whatever the news is talking about endlessly this week will most likely be far down the list of important events come next voting seasons (or whatever milestone is important to you).
  - Balgair 4y ago
    Kinda like the Murry Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect https://loricism.fandom.com/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect https://loricism.fandom.com/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect
  - stevage 4y ago
    The bit his argument is missing is about how the news gets funded. Me, currently I pay for a Guardian subscription, because I think it plays an important role in our democracy - although I don't actually read it.
webscout 4y ago
I use sites like https://biztoc.com https://biztoc.com once or twice a day and I'm more or less done with news. Just make sure you only read the headlines ;)
lordnacho 4y ago
Get one of those browser extensions that limits your use. This at least tells you how much time you've spent. It's easy to get carried away reading one long form article after another.
kortex 4y ago
"Trivial inconveniences" are a big hurdle when trying to build a habit, but are a great tool for breaking bad ones. Anything you can do to break the dopamine loop helps, however small it may be. I've had success with: - setting long passwords to social media that aren't autofilled (saved in bitwarden) and logging out after each session - nerfing addicting parts of webapps (plugins which block the facebook news feed but allow messaging/groups helped a TON) - forbidding dedicated social media apps and only using "worse" internet sites - router DNS blockers, even if I can get around them, the act of having to bypass it raises my awareness I'm doing something subpar for myself
- LukeShu 4y ago
  > and logging out after each session I started using a Cookie AutoDelete plugin for privacy reasons; but it's also been great for this purpose, so I don't have to remember to log out.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  My method is using private browsing to open addicting websites. This way their address will not be saved in history and I'll have to type it which sometimes stop me from doing that in mid-way. Also helps with automatically logging out.
  - kibwen 4y ago
    I've done this with YouTube and it's been extraordinarily effective for me. Without the history associated with my account, the recommendation engine just shows me the default junk, preventing me from falling down rabbit holes when I just want to watch some video. For keeping in touch with channels that I still want to follow, I've subscribed to them via RSS. If you need an extra push to enforce that you only use private browsing, you can install any browser extension that blocks sites and then tell your browser to not permit that extension to run in private windows.
    - gofreddygo 4y ago
      With youtube, on the phone, setup an alter account, go to settings, switch on "pause watch history" and "pause search history". You can then see how sick that algorithm is in recommending and pushing junk. Only now its junk you will despise.
aszantu 4y ago
may sound stupid... I recently started to test around with vitamin B supplements, inspired by some NMN interview, refined Vitamin B seemingly turns back age #inmice. Decided to play around with the real thing first... B3 itself helps me sleep better, Yeast tablets feel like coffee, a full vitamin B complex seems to aleviate focus issues. For the first time in a while I'm able to actually work on something without getting distracted much. Suffering from some adhd-like symptoms I used to be happy to be distracted. Now I'm even unhappy when a coworker wants something. AND I don't enjoy gaming... which is weird and frustrating because I consider myself addicted to video games.
- flawn 4y ago
  can you introduce me to that NMN iceberg? what the heck do these people using that experience, this undoubtedly can't be 100% legit
  - aszantu 4y ago
    If you check out youtube, there are a few nmn experiences. They report some benefits without trying to sell anything. One critic warns though. Nmn if overdosed might suppress methylation which then can lead to shitty outcomes after a few weeks. Nmn is just refined vitamin b3, thiamine I think? That's why I decided to try b-complex first (no overdose ). I found it works fine, back pain diminished, mood feels stable.
mauliknshah 4y ago
Typo: It's Daniel Kahneman and not David Kahnemann.
- zorg42 4y ago
  thanx, I fixed that.
leobg 4y ago
Isn’t it funny how much attention these anti-procrastination posts are getting on essentially a procrastination site? (Tongue in cheek! I love HN. I just know that I sometimes do abuse it as a procrastination device.)
- II2II 4y ago
  When it comes to HN, I definitely have mixed feelings about the procrastination aspect. Yet I am unwilling to drop it since there are stories that I am genuinely interested in and make life better. So it is a net positive in my books.
- mr90210 4y ago
  Where would you go if you wanted to target procrastinators?
- atmosx 4y ago
  It’s also funny how all these posts are so “western” in style: ‘Hey look at me, I did something a bit difficult for 3 days, now I am a guru!’ Not trying to knock the author but the time window is simply too small and this approach is simply too common online. Let’s see if the author can actually change lifestyle for more than 5 years and then we can discuss about “lessons learned”.
  - marcinreal 4y ago
    This is a bit harsh; the article does contain a lot of useful advice. I myself implemented many of these tips about two years ago, and am still going strong. I do fall off the wagon here and there and get sucked into my phone, especially when I'm avoiding something in real life, but I really value having minimal notifications. I also love focus modes (though I've only known about them for about a year I think) -- great for working, sleeping, and overall mental health. But I would stress this important point: if you have trouble implementing these steps, there may be a bigger issue in your life that you're avoiding.
  - ninkendo 4y ago
    What does that have to do with being “western”?
HellDunkel 4y ago
I had a similar problem. My solution is to go offline in the evening- 3 hours before going to sleep.
leobg 4y ago
Ok. So the author tells us that news is bad for us. Isn’t that well known since like ten years ago? When opening the article I had been hoping for something new... ...if y’all catch my drift here ;)
smm11 4y ago
Duh.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
thenerdhead 4y ago
This is very surface level. These tips can help for periods of time, but they won't last forever. I think the things that do change your perspective forever though are philosophy and even other's philosophies on attention in general. Reading books like "Four arguments for the elimination of television" and "Amusing ourselves to death" changed how I view our attention. Reading older books like "tao te ching" or "meditations" gave me perspective into how much my attention matters.
Jeff_Brown 4y ago
I try to keep my productivity improvements secret, because any time I announce one -- especially if I also explain why it happened -- I immediately falsify whatever I just said by losing all focus and producing nothing of interest for a while.
- jventura 4y ago
  So, can you tell us your secret? :)
  - Jeff_Brown 4y ago
    Not sure, but here are candidates. Staying healthy. Documentation, journaling, meditation, reviewing -- they're all different aspect of the same, uh, something. Thinking and writing a plan before doing anything complicated. Sensing when something might be complicated. Trusting the right people with the right tasks. Trading money for time. Picking my battles well. Finding prior art. Knowing when to learn a better way (tool, language). Knowing when to automate. Lacking creativity when it comes to leisure.
- rpmisms 4y ago
  This resonates deeply. It has to feel like a secret to me.
y42 4y ago
I'm doomed. Did not read more than the head line.
rwoerz 4y ago
Oh irony, a post about overcoming distraction gets 232+ comments.
marcinreal 4y ago
Great article and important message. > Lifting the phone should not unlock it. This setting is called “Display & Brightness/Activate on Lift” on the iPhone On my phone it's called "Raise to Wake". I didn't know that you could turn this off, but I just did so because it's inconsistent and sometimes doesn't work. I like predictable behavior, even at a minor cost to convenience.
pphysch 4y ago
It should frankly be criminal to predate on user's attention to the extent that most popular apps do. I keep my phone on DnD 100% of the time and ruthlessly disable notifications, but have a semi-smart watch that vibrates for texts/calls. I'm still addicted to checking my news feeds but at least they aren't literally yanking my attention.
going_ham 4y ago
I disabled chrome and youtube for most of the time. Unless I am looking for something specific, I keep them disabled. This alone reduced by HN scrolling and YouTube binging by factor of 2-3 hrs/day! Finally I have free time to relax and do nothing!
- abawany 4y ago
  Same here - I installed "Distract Me Not" on my Firefox instances and it has been a great improvement.
smoussa 4y ago
I went on a zero news diet a while back and have recently got back on this diet again. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve made for my productivity. For those with fear of missing out on current affairs — events are really only worth knowing about if someone has made you aware of it in real life. Otherwise it’s likely not that important.
- ckosidows 4y ago
  You're on HNews?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
adverbly 4y ago
It always seems odd to me when it is literally writers or other online content creators who are complaining about being distracted by other writers or online content creators. I'd love to see someone write a blog post about why they think their own content is good for others to consume while the content that they were willfully consuming was not.
paulpauper 4y ago
During the aforementioned train ride, I cancelled my subscription to my formerly favorite online news portal (the German “Spiegel-Online”) and deleted the associated app from my iPhone. I used the initial motivation to cancel additional news subscriptions and deleted the related apps from my smartphone and iPad so that I wouldn’t be tempted. Here is what he should have done: replaced his smart phone with a dumb phone if possible. It does not mean he gets rid of the smart phone but deactivate it. And have two computers: one for business and one for leisure and keep in different rooms. If possible disconnect the work computer from the web. That way there are fewer possible distractions. It's not enough to just remove apps. The device itself is addictive.
vinny2020 4y ago
I'm proud of myself for reading the article to the end without distraction. I have been news free since the 2020 US election results were broadcast so I agree that a news diet is an immense boost for productivity. Why worry about things you can't really change. If it's important enough, trust me, you'll find out about it. I also use screen time to limit social media apps, but they are truly the crack cocaine of the the 21st century.
fleddr 4y ago
I think the follow-up needs some more elaborating. "I won a lot of time back so that I can go back to writing 15 novels" is a little off putting for many. Start simple with usage of your reclaimed time. Put your phone in another room and watch a 2 hour movie, uninterrupted. That's a thing a lot of people today can't even do, so already an accomplishment. Even pure boredom, doing absolutely nothing, is healing. The point is that you have uninterrupted time, it doesn't matter if you spent it "productively".
epolanski 4y ago
Removing social medias reclaimed lots of my life, the absolute peak of my happiness was when I stopped following any news at all. There's some sort of stigma agaiinst people who don't follow the news but I ask, what positives doesfollowing the news brings to your lifes? I realized none and there is a huge proven link between following news and anxiety/depression. Sadly I felt back to watching news with the war in Ukraine.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ineedasername 4y ago
>Since about 2020... There were no external causes, even the pandemic didn’t affect me, thanks to a nice home office and online work options — so no excuses It seems strange to disregard the pandemic merely because it didn't impact your work environment. It very likely impacted the ability to do any of their usual activities that took place outside of their home. And even if it didn't, having the entire world go through such a disaster is a reasonable possibility for a subtle or subconscious reactions. This may not at all have been the cause, but neither is it inconsistent with their eventual solution of drastically reducing news/media consumption. If the awful things going on in the world were in some way impacting motivation & productivity then it certainly makes sense that turning them off might help. Chalking up the mere possibility of that as "bogus excuses" is extremely dismissive for a global crisis as well, and a bit insulting to people who probably had identical issues that were very much linked to society shutting down combined w/ awful news creeping into any glance towards the outside world. The author's next statement of "“You’ve got to do something about that,” is the right attitude to take when faced with a problem of this sort, but a reason for a problem only becomes a "bogus excuse" if it's used to avoid trying to find a solution, not for its own sake.
bexsella 4y ago
For me, reddit was a big hurdle. It was such a time hole I didn't realise but I finally got sick of my reply when my partner asked about what I was reading, it was always: "Nothing" I deleted facebook years ago for the same reason, but I convinced myself that reddit was different in some capacity, and it is in ways, but after one too many evenings of looking at "Nothing", I'm happy I've kicked it to the curb. Even at work now, I have a ublock rule to block reddit. Occasionally, I find the need to temporarily allow it due to searches on a particular topic, but it's gone as a pastime.
- nivenkos 4y ago
  How do you replace the technical subreddits though? Like the Rust subreddit has really good discussion and it's harder to keep up on Zulip, etc.
techsin101 4y ago
Is there a service that gives thorough but weekly/bi-weekly news and you can select what subjects it's about. Well written, concise, factual (exclude all opinion pieces, celeb/sports news, and shopping stuff.. just tech, science, and business)
- j7ake 4y ago
  Sounds like a wide selection of magazine subscription like Nature, Science, quanta magazine, nautilus, natural geographic, wallstreet journal, and maybe the economist.
throwaway81523 4y ago
Well intended article that is a long winded recommendation to turn off your phone notifications and stop reading news. It could be a lot shorter. Aaronsw had similar thoughts about the news, back in 2006: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews It is advice worth following, I think, though not so easy a lot of the time. My main trick for online distraction avoidance is to use separate computers for goofing off and for getting work done. Needless to say, reading HN or posting on it = goofing off.
stereoradonc 4y ago
The HN forum pushes through many "articles" around improving "productivity", while all the solutions are in plain sight. We justify our bad habits-social media because work colleagues are there (so as not to miss the water cooler conversations) and YouTube because there is a lot of "educational content". We forget that our actions determine outcomes. The imperative to act lies solely on the individual. Most notifications systems have been designed based on UI/UX dark patterns to "maximise" interaction. Instead, I see the younger generation slipping into a complete lack of concentration. My way to handle the onslaught of notifications is to keep them switched on for family instead. Work colleagues get a different tone (I use Telegram) because it's cross platform and inherits notification settings from the main applications. This way, it helps boost my interaction. It offers me tabs to organise my intake, and all high post channels are archived, which I rarely check. I use Inoreader extensively; use Twitter lists to follow specific accounts (that add to my knowledge base) instead of following futile "success stories" or "collaboration" or "publications".
lutarezj 4y ago
A book and a half per year? Neither asimov nor herbert could do that. Maybe jules verne? No. Even if tech is different than SF, I strongly doubt the quality of such high book/y delivery
WuxiFingerHold 4y ago
Quitting news had a huge positive effect of my live. Besides the benefits of better focus I'm much less (if at all) angry and anxious. The papers and news on TV that once did neutral coverage now act like the rainbow press. Every click is measured, so the boring stuff vanishes. FUD and politics everywhere. I'm still too much on HN, but since I strictly browse to https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=200 https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=200 it's much better.
digitalbase 4y ago
I really enjoyed reading this post as I experimented with something similar 3 months ago which has drastically changed my mood/attention span: - removed all social media apps from phone - lock down all access to apps (screen time) and not know the password (give it to someone else) - only allow photos, podcasts, spotify, navigation and the dial/SMS app Screentime went from a few hours per day to about 15 minutes or so. But it has also changed my mood for the better. I still have to find a way to do the same thing on my desktop which is a lot harder (I need a browser)
ExtremisAndy 4y ago
One thing that’s worked for me is going old fashioned and getting my news in a daily 20-minute news video recap, not unlike the “old days” of watching the evening nightly newscast of your choice. These are often on YouTube nowadays, so you don’t even need a set schedule. I’ve done this with a Spanish language daily newscast (mainly to keep my Spanish sharp), and, unless there is something going on that requires my further investigation, I’m made aware of the big stories that any informed person should probably be aware of, and then can go about my day being productive. Only a 20 minute sacrifice. Just an idea if you feel you’ve let news improperly invade your time!
thejammahimself 4y ago
I realise I'm responding to this far too late for anyone to actually take notice, but I'm gonna do it anyway because there is a major criticism I have of the article: that all news is bad. I think the issue here is not the problem with news in itself but rather the consumption of news. I think what is problematic is that people are consuming news like they would consume posts on a social media platform in that they're endlessly scrolling few news stories, and keep checking the app to make sure they're on top of everything that is happening. And I completely understand how problematic this is. However, that is not to say that news itself is bad. There are several reasons that lead me to come to this conclusion. While I'm sure not everything in the news might not be directly relevant to you, I think it helps you make better life choices when you know the state of the economy, and issues others are facing. But, I think, most importantly: it is democratically empowering to be aware of the news. Let's take the UK system of government as an example. Some things are obvious: we vote for our representatives (MPs) every 5 years at the most, and this is one opportunity to influence government but its not the only one. We can: write letters to our MPs; create, and sign petitions; join pressure groups; protest; take industrial action etc. But we can only do this effectively when we have a good awareness of current affairs. Additionally, in the UK we also vote for our local government as well. This can include councillors, and (if your area voted for it) directly elected mayors. I hear many people complain about what their local council are doing, but a lot of these people don't even vote for any councillors. I once went for a coffee, and told the person at the till that I was volunteering at the council election. His response? "I didn't even know there was an election on today." Many of us are fortunate to live in countries with the right to vote amongst other civil liberties. We ought to use them effectively in order to improve living standards for us all. On the topic of how we consume news, if we feel it is unhealthy to scroll through a constantly updated app, we can turn to bulletins instead. In the UK, the BBC produce half-hour bulletins on weekdays at 1, 6, and 10 o'clock (shorter bulletins also exist at similar times on the weekend). You could watch, say, the 6 o'clock news in the evening, and then be done with news for the day. You could also read a newspaper. This doesn't have to be in print as some newspaper websites are either not updated frequently (e.g. The London Times/Sunday Times which is only updated for major breaking news, or in the evening to give articles for tomorrow's paper), or provide a webpage that just shows you what was printed in that day's edition of the print newspaper (e.g. The Guardian/Observer).

671 points by aiobe 4y ago

zorg42 4y ago

thanx - pragmatic collection of suggestions

ph1p 4y ago

the "zero news diet" should really be done more often. For myself, it would be "zero Twitter diet".

cocoflunchy 4y ago
I managed to completely stop using Twitter by removing all my follows. Then when I'd mindlessly open twitter I'd be presented with a blank screen. After a few days I just stopped opening it.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  This is a very smart strategy. You effectively trained yourself that there was no reward to be had from the behaviour and so broke the habit. Someone should make a browser extension that does this for other sites, essentially allows the masthead and other boring trim to load but removes all of the content.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    The browser extension kinda already exists — I've accidentally done that to a few sites with Adblock Plus.
Kiro 4y ago
Zero HN diet would be the most effective.
jansan 4y ago
I put Twitter on my router's domain blacklist. The only way for me to read Twitter is through nitter.net, which is not much fun and readonly, so there is no risk to get addicted.

khaledh 4y ago

For me, the zero news diet would be really hard to apply to HN. Any suggestions (in addition to noprocrast)?

pella 4y ago
try check only 1x weekly AND only the "top 10%" go https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/ -> set "top 10%"
- khaledh 4y ago
  I've seen this one before, but never tried it. I'll give it a try. Thanks!
pacifika 4y ago
Use one of the Havkernews Digest services to get a periodic email. Fomo is the biggest reason for me to keep checking back.

Scarblac 4y ago

I see that Rolf Dobelli has a book on avoiding news now. But he made his point crystal clear in an article he wrote in 2010 already, and put as a freely downloadable PDF on his website. I can't find it there now, but here's a link to that PDF on some other site: https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf

planarhobbit 4y ago
One would think he would also avoid the great majority of books out there too, as they’re just as trashy and toxic as news are.
walleeee 4y ago
Gwern's site is a gold mine of various interesting tidbits

throw93232 4y ago

》CNN, WSJ, and BBC That is a news equivalent of junk food. Clickbait partisan outrage generator. I would suggest some independent podcast with daily or weekly summaries. Much higher information density.

ben_w 4y ago
Given the junk food analogy, things with much higher information density would be like drinking neat olive oil. I think a more useful thing is to filter news down to only that news which is important rather than merely engaging, and leave engagement for either friends or hobbies with a ratio depending on your personal level of introversion/extroversion.
- throw93232 4y ago
  I just checked front side of CNN, first 6 titles are about some unofficial trip. They do not know if it will happen, what will happen, where it may happen, what that means... There is no value for me there. Even if I invest time into filtering, there is no value to gain from that. Maybe it is important, but I am not policy maker or investor, it is not important right now for me! I can find out about that visit week later, after it actually happened. Without all the speculations and opinions. And since it will be podcast I can listen while running or exercising, and with much lower investment from my side.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    I think you've underestimated what I mean by filtering in this case: unless you're a politician, almost literally all political news is pointless; unless you are a game developer or unsatisfied with your VR headset, literally all news about VR headsets is pointless; there's no point watching a weather forecast for any place you are not going to be in; unless you're an investor or looking to invest or borrow, financial news is pointless; unless you're in the royal family or selling memorabilia, gossip about any royal family is worthless; … Does CNN have any content that's genuinely important to you? But the argument also applies to podcasts: no value in any fact-based podcast if you don't act on the information it gives you, just as there's no point in fiction-based podcasts if they don't entertain you.

hvs 4y ago

As someone with serious concentration issues (unless I'm hyperfocused, I may have undiagnosed ADHD) I found the biggest help for me was cutting out caffeine.

saos 4y ago
Even tea? :(
- hvs 4y ago
  You might be able to get away with a cup of tea every once in a while, but I tend to be an "in for a penny in for a pound" type of person, so it's complete elimination or 4-5 cups of coffee for me.
- gatane 4y ago
  I stopped drinking tea and my daily anxiety halved :)
- WuxiFingerHold 4y ago
  To me green tea had a similar effect as coffee. Both feels great and gives huge energy and motivation boost, but at the costs of calmness, clarity and sustainability over the day.
swah 4y ago
Was this on the short term?
- hvs 4y ago
  No, it's complete. I was drinking 4-5 cups of coffee a day and my brain was a cluttered mess. Now it's just mildly cluttered.
  - EForEndeavour 4y ago
    On a much smaller time scale, I have noticed that when I skip my usual morning coffee (say, running out of coffee, going for a run with an accountability buddy, or traveling and staying in a "coffee desert"), I feel remarkably clear-minded and calm, even though I crave the smell, taste, experience of coffee. When I let it last, this mental calmness lasts until early afternoon, when I'd usually get coffee #2 of 2, as the dull withdrawal headache sets in and I chemotactically writhe my way toward increasingly desperate sources of caffeine. I've been drinking at least 2 cups of coffee ("cups" is a fuzzy measure) for maybe 15 years. Maybe I should power through the withdrawal and discover for myself if I've accidentally been undermining my mental clarity and life quality this whole time, instead of giving myself energy and helping concentration as I'd been assuming.

giantg2 4y ago

My distraction is from all the family stuff I have to deal with. My lack of concentration is because I lack motivation - I don't see any reason to try hard at work since it's all politics and BS.

tenebrisalietum 4y ago
Work for money.
- giantg2 4y ago
  What money? There's no way to get a raise at my company without a promotion and they won't promote me. I have no motivation to work hard if it won't be rewarded. I do the minimum to get paid my shitty salary.
  - TameAntelope 4y ago
    Who said anything about your current company?
    - giantg2 4y ago
      I don't have the skills to switch to a different company, tech jobs are limited in my area, I don't perform well remotely, and my wife won't consider relocating. My current shitty job is the best job I can get.
      - bumby 4y ago
        It's okay to say tech jobs aren't the right fit as well.
        giantg2 4y ago
        They might not be. I'm hesitant to admit that because 1) They used to be and I was a high performer at a mediocre non-tech company 2) There's nothing else I can do to earn enough to support my family.

endisneigh 4y ago

Ironically this page is a great example of why it’s hard to focus. Unnecessary images, stylization and colors. Unnecessary links to other distracting websites. Flashy flash.

pristineshatter 4y ago
Let the man create the blog he wants to create.
- dxdm 4y ago
  Maybe there's a lesson for him in that comment.

mprime1 4y ago

If you’re looking for a ‘lean’ source of news (just the facts, no commentary) try Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events (RSS feed available)

bananabiscuit 4y ago
Unfortunately, it is a mistake to think that just because you are only presented with high quality facts (statements that are very likely to be true), that you are getting an objective view of the story. You would be surprised how unrepresentative a story can be made purely through omission or selective emphasis, and Wikipedia is very guilty especially of the latter. The talk pages are usually very revealing of what the articles fails to mention, if you happen to catch them before the discussion gets archived.
- anonporridge 4y ago
  This is something a lot of people don't understand. It is impossible to have an objective and bias-free source of information, simply because the amount of information that exists is unimaginably enormous. It's impossible for any single human mind to absorb everything that's happening, so we have to rely on services whose job is filtering that information into a small set of important bits. By selectively choosing which bits of information you share or emphasize, multiple different sources can all technically be telling the gods honest truth, while also all pushing completely contradictory narratives. Everyone is pushing a narrative, and it's critical that we all try to understand the incentives of the pushers of information we ingest.
  - stripline 4y ago
    I learned this when I dated a law student while in college. They teach an entire class to the first year students dedicated to presenting the facts of the case, the way lawyers do in their opening statements. They actually had to create the set of facts for each side. It was really interesting how you could totally bias it by what you emphasized or left out and the different words used (i.e. word connotations).

jansan 4y ago

I think routers should have more fine grained settings, so I can block social media during weekdays, HN on weekdays except lunchtime and evening, and allow my children only to access their 5 websites that they need for homework/study during a few hours in the afternoon. This would help me a lot.

clydethefrog 4y ago
My German router (FritzBox) has some of these options. Blacklist, whitelist, limited time and scheduling.
terminalcommand 4y ago
A more extreme measure some users here used to take was not access the internet at all during their downtime. When you come home from work simply not use the internet. I guess exceptions can be made for streaming movies/music. Ideally you should download and stock up on these. I remember some users deliberately not connecting internet to their homes to stick with this. There were also some users who switched to "dumb" phones to reduce distractions. I guess these could work.
bishopsmother 4y ago
even with your router's domain blacklist, it may not be so easy to block all social media (specifically, apps[0]). I don't imagine cigarette manufacturers are keen on making it easier for people to quit smoking either. [0] https://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/tech/facebook-app-and-unnamed-domains-avoiding-dns-blocking/102501213/ https://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/tech/facebook-app-and-un...

davidkuennen 4y ago

Hard for me since I'm addicted to my own app that I'd have to be productive for.

freediver 4y ago

I collection of links and quotes on stop reading "news" We are what we read: https://tinygem.org/about#stopnews https://tinygem.org/about#stopnews Entire TinyGem service was created with the purpose of collecting content worth reading.

kzrdude 4y ago

I don't think there is a silver bullet or a tick box solution. You have to want to stop. Change your behaviour.

TimTheTinker 4y ago
Sometimes there really is - for people who want to focus but find it frustratingly difficult because of their brain chemistry (ADHD or whatever). For me, it's sleeping enough, nicotine patches, green tea, L-Tyrosine, Avmacol, and no coffee. This regimen has helped me improve my work performance significantly. It doesn't "fix" everything, but it sure makes it so much easier to function and to focus what I want to focus on.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  That sounds great, I've certainly too gone through a better sleep period where I focused on better sleep - no coffee for two years and lots of other measures like that. And it works. That's not a silver bullet, that's hard work. :)
  - ge96 4y ago
    For the last couple of years my sleep pattern has been crazy. Sometimes I would stay up two days in a row to rest my sleep pattern back to 9-5 schedule. I preferred to be sleep deprived as it made my job more interesting. But lately (since a month ago) I have been thankfully able to maintain a 12/1-8:30 range sleep pattern. I do a 15 min workout 5 days a week. I have been fasting so I eat a big meal a couple hours before sleeping. Read a book half an hour before sleep. So far it's been working. Fasting is weight loss reasons. Also helps me personally focus since if I eat too much I get lazy/tired. Other thing I'll comment on is regarding personal projects. I lay out a plan, when the day begins (weekend) I don't open anything (social media) I just immediately work on this project. Thankfully I can dump the most of the weekend days toward the project.
    - kzrdude 4y ago
      Sounds awesome. Thanks for the inspiration.

nonrandomstring 4y ago

Switching to text only [1] browsing changed my relationship to information and vastly improved my focus while using computers. I highly recommend it. [1] Text mostly (90+%). Those few occasions I want to see images as part of a web page it's possible to turn that on.

nunodonato 4y ago
do you use any particular browser or extension? or do you mean stuff like gopher/gemini?
- b215826 4y ago
  On Firefox, setting permissions.default.image in about:config to 2 blocks all images. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Permissions.default.image http://kb.mozillazine.org/Permissions.default.image
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  I use w3m a fair bit, because of emacs. Also have "Links" (variant of Lynx maybe) set up in some environments.

djohnston 4y ago

I've managed to consolidate all my distracted news consumption to HN but indeed I need to break myself from this reflexive habit.

bckr 4y ago
I'm in the same boat! I feel better because my twitchy fingers always lead to learning or discussing something new and interesting, but they're still twitchy fingers.

papito 4y ago

If you want to get your life back, read Stolen Focus. It has all these tips and tricks but it does a lot more - it explains why our focus is shot, and dissects the forces behind it. It's much more sinister than most people suspect. https://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Focus-Attention-Think-Deeply/dp/0593138511 https://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Focus-Attention-Think-Deeply/d... I was spending hours per day on Twitter, and then I learned that overusing social media rewires your brain, and you essentially unlearn to digest information in bigger chunks. This book will horrify you, and that's exactly what needs to be done. And if a book (to listen to) is too much for you to focus on - listen to Ezra Klein's interview with the author, at least: https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/its-not-your-fault-you-cant-pay-attention-heres-why/id1548604447?i=1000550779064 https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/its-not-your-fault-you...

eddie_catflap 4y ago
This book grabbed my eye too, but then I saw Matthew Sweet on Twitter (@DrMatthewSweet) kept questioning the studies used and suggesting that Hari has cherry picked results to support his point. I've no idea if this was the case but some interesting stuff to look at I think. A good summary thread is here : https://twitter.com/DrMatthewSweet/status/1479125910896975877 https://twitter.com/DrMatthewSweet/status/147912591089697587...
- papito 4y ago
  Sure, it's not perfect. The author's flaunting of his privileged lifestyle - taking months off a year to just chill - really ground my gears, but he seemed genuine in his quest to find the reason why he could no longer think clearly. Does that make him biased - of course, but whether or not the study of how topics get covered faster across decades was peer reviewed is rather unimportant. What I know is that I was able to read half a book in one session, and now I am struggling with a single page.

tessela 4y ago

Extra tip for iOS/macOS/iPadOS users: go to Settings / Accessibility / Display & Text Size / Color Filters and enable the Grayscale filter.

frostwarrior 4y ago

To me, mindfulness meditation helped me a lot with concentration because it was like learning mental aikido, in the sense of not trying to remove invasive information, but redirect it in a way that doesn't affect my focus. Everything stops being so important by default

woweoe 4y ago

So basically block the entirety of Reddit, which I agree would be good for all humankind.

shakow 4y ago
> which I agree would be good for all humankind. I disagree with that statement. I know it's fashionable on HN to spit on Reddit, but for all its flaws, Reddit also birthed fantastic communities that are hard to replicate somewhere else due to the network effect, e.g. /r/WarCollege, /r/hoggit, /r/AskHistorians, /r/Rust, /r/LinguisticsHumor, etc. – come for the dumb memes, stay for the niche communities.
- woweoe 4y ago
  But surely these are just commercialized versions of forums, the latter being a far more versatile medium to have discussions on? Reddit has monopolized the entire forum industry and ruined online communities.
PaulsWallet 4y ago
If you are talking about default subreddits then sure but there are some great communities on reddit that I think are great pieces of the internet. A lot of which I'm sure exist because people don't need 100 different forum accounts to access them. Also generally, I see no difference between reddit and Hacker News except Hacker News drips with a unique brand of elitist smarm you can't get elsewhere.

mingusrude 4y ago

I recently switched Twitter to strictly timeline and that pretty much fixed Twitter for me. I still use it but it no more doom-scrolling.

synergy20 4y ago

Block websites will help definitely. another "threat" is when you have a few kids, your daily life is cut into pieces with random and sometimes strong background noises 24x7x365, not much you can do there. personally, that impacts my focus the most and there is no cure, and it usually lasts for about 20 years when kids are finally into colleges. obviously there are many good stuff out of raising kids, and I enjoyed it, but focus-on-tech-advancement is not one of them.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
koheripbal 4y ago
This is why many people with kids want to physically return to the office - fewer distractions.
- ChrisPebble 4y ago
  Anecdotally all but one of the parents I know (including myself) prefer working remotely. I tried to find if there were any survey results and found a survey by Harris Poll on behalf of Zapier that said that "56 percent of parents want the option to work remotely" [1]. I have a private office in our home and know that's not a luxury for many others, but the quality of life as a parent working from home vs being in the office is dramatic. With the kids home during the summer the noise and distraction levels do go up, but honestly are still less bothersome then the open office floor plan I was in previously. I think it really depends on your home situation as well as how your office was setup, but my guess is that a majority of parents would prefer remote positions if available. [1] https://zapier.com/blog/remote-work-report-by-zapier/ https://zapier.com/blog/remote-work-report-by-zapier/
- jader201 4y ago
  I've WFH for the past 8+ years, my kids are now 18 and 15 (so they were 10 and 7 when I started WFH). They can definitely be a distraction, but I was able to minimize it by having an office with a door + setting reasonable boundaries. Also, they're out of the house at school for many hours (except for COVID -- that was a bit tougher, but that was the case for everyone). I have no regrets. One of the reasons I WFH is to have less time on the road and more time w/ family. My oldest has said that he's glad I WFH, and that he didn't like me being away when he was younger. Of course, every person/family is different. But for me & my family, I think minimizing the distractions in other ways while WFH + accepting the remaining distractions was worth it in the end.

closedloop129 4y ago

Did he regain concentration and focus? It's more like he just reduced distractions. That's not the same. What if being distracted is not a bug but a feature and his mind doesn't want to continue the path of constantly writing books? Instead of eliminating distractions, it could be more helpful to find the activities that don't create the desire for distractions.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
my mind doesn't want to continue the path of constantly working. I've done a lot of kinds of work and am not young, coding is my third career, and I've never found "the activities" that pay rent and don't create the desire for distractions. Want it or not (I don't want it) that's a problem it's on me to solve.
Digital28 4y ago
He also says the pandemic didn't affect him, but honestly, whether it was Long COVID or an indirect psych effect of isolation, I've had extreme issues concentrating ever since 2020 that have been absolutely bullshit to manage.
- andai 4y ago
  Re: wide-scale reports of cognitive decline since lockdowns: > In lab animals, isolation has been shown to cause brain shrinkage and the kind of brain changes you'd see in Alzheimer's disease — reduced brain cell connections and reduced levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which is important for the formation, connection, and repair of brain cells. https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/how-isolation-affects-memory-and-thinking-skills https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/how-isolation-a...
  - powerhour 4y ago
    Course we don't know if that would still be the case for rats that were capable of communicating with others online.

KindAndFriendly 4y ago

"...I cancelled my subscription to my formerly favourite online news portal (the German “Spiegel-Online”)..." Very good. Spiegel Online - unfortunately - became terribly bad over the last years, with click-bait headlines, sensational reporting as well as pushing fear & anxiety throughout their articles.

muffinman26 4y ago
Do you have a different German newspaper you would recommend now? I used to read der Spiegel regularly to keep my German from getting too rusty.
- zorg42 4y ago
  https://www.handelsblatt.com/ https://www.handelsblatt.com/

mberning 4y ago

It is said that Napoleon did not open his mail for 3 weeks after it arrived. His belief was that most issues would resolve themselves and were therefore unimportant for him to attend to. If you go back and watch the news from 2-3 weeks ago it is amazing how much of it is just nonsense. It's especially hard to go back and watch covid discussions from a year ago and hear just how wrong most information was.

kortex 4y ago
Sounds like a great way to get a bench warrant for avoiding a legal summons in today's day and age. Knuth has a secretary which prioritizes his snail mail. I think filters are a great way to go. I have tried to pre-bin my mail but my tray organizer has just been covered over with assorted cruft, which kinda makes the system untenable until I stop procrastinating...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

JoeAltmaier 4y ago

Get out and ride a bike or something. More blood to the brain; no digital distraction. Take a shower and bam! productive. That's how it works for me.

LesZedCB 4y ago
agreed the days where I get out for a morning bike ride are some of my best

121789 4y ago

Does anyone know how to block websites at something like the router level? I find myself able to get around normal browser-level blockers fairly easily. I'd love to use some parental controls against myself from like 6-5pm on weekdays

1123581321 4y ago
A custom DNS provider in the router is probably easiest. Use NextDNS or CloudFlare for Families with controls on, and then give the login for the DNS and the login for your router admin to someone else.
nop_slide 4y ago
Might be able to do that with a pi-hole
- rr888 4y ago
  I did this, works great until you realize how easy it is to pause blocking.
dehrmann 4y ago
If you have DoH enabled, it's hard. If you don't, with OpenWrt, it's easy enough to configure its DNS server to add IPs to ipsets after a lookup, then configure the firewall to drop those requests over a time window. > I find myself able to get around normal browser-level blockers fairly easily. You're still just 30 seconds away from disabling the rule.
cloudking 4y ago
Put Adguard Home on a Raspberry Pi, and point your router DNS to it. https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdGuardHome
bishopsmother 4y ago
If you're willing to be a beta tester - I'll set you up with a free account (see about[0]); I'm open to suggestions/implementing new features based on user demand (e.g. Slowdown as a Service). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bishopsmother https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=bishopsmother

semidetached 4y ago

I stopped watching 24-hour news channels in 1991 when I saw how the Gulf War coverage was turning so many into zombies. By 2010 I had stopped regularly reading a list of news web sites I'd constructed. HN is about the only thing I read regularly online, and I'm getting less regular with that. I watch local news sometimes but only to sneer at the local weatherman who's job here in central Texas could be performed by one of my pugs. If I'm going to starve to death pushing a pleasure lever it ain't gonna be one connected to the infotainment industry.

planarhobbit 4y ago
Hear hear. To add, I started treating most information outlets, including HN, as endless faucets of propaganda, misinformation AND misdirection. The outrage is, at best, a farcical play of human dramas unfolding on a stage. To take any of this seriously is borderline pathological.

ilikehurdles 4y ago

> Install a swipe keyboard app iPhone keyboards have built-in swipe typing now.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago

I did not see it listed here, so I will mention Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, who, among other things, discusses news in particular, but digital distractions in general and proposes a way to deal with it by changing our relationship with technology. I am currently going through the steps proposed by him and while not easy, it generally supports the point of the article. That said, it is not just news. edit: Just in case. No connection to the author other than being a happy reader.

rr888 4y ago
I really like his message but I feel each of his books could be a blog post. Good blog posts, but nevertheless something you could read in a few minutes. Instead you have to buy/borrow a $10 book, then he rubs it in by talking about how productive he as he has written so many books.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  I think you have a point here and brevity matters. At the same time, would his advice be more credible if he was struggling the way I was with various distractions ( and I am still in a lot better place than an average internet user these days )? Alternatively, would a blogpost take away from his point about digital distraction? Amusingly, as a result of all this re-arranging I did as a result of the book, I restarted writing a book for my kid. Not a lot, but a little bit each day should an inspiration strike. It helps to allow mind wander a little. TLDR: I don't disagree with your point, but I think it may have been a conscious decision beyond fiscal considerations.

namaria 4y ago

Turning off all notifications on my personal phone was a life changer. No longer I feel like I'm wearing an electronic collar. Giving everyone who has your contact information access to your attention is poison to the ability to concentrate. Another big thing for me was cutting down on infinite scrolling, blogs and videos and spending a lot more time with long form content (mainly books). Attention is our most precious resource and we should guard fiercely against attempts to monetize it.

ge96 4y ago
My phone is always on mute (no vibrate either) Only alarms to wake up
- andrewljohnson 4y ago
  Having a family and responsibilities made this infeasible for me. Most apps on my phone are denied notifications, but people can still text/call me.
  - namaria 4y ago
    I also have family and responsibilities. But I am very careful whom I give unfettered access to my attention.
    - copperx 4y ago
      Everybody who depends on you directly (partner, children, parents, and extended family) should be on you VIP contact list and have direct access to you. I find that reduces my anxiety. I don't get distracted by notifications, or the thought that someone might be dying and trying to reach me.
      - ge96 4y ago
        Just commenting about phone calls I have stranger phone call anxiety and the other thing is spam/scam calls. Which thankfully my phone has been good at flagging/blocking. Regarding notifications I used to have phones that either had LED blinking indicators or sound/beeping ahh, crazy used to just drop what I was doing to check it.

rr888 4y ago

What I did is tell my boss about my difficulty and now they check in on me twice a day to look at my progress. I hate being micro managed, but really helped me to work on delivering.

ramblerman 4y ago
I’m not sure if this was sarcasm, but if not … It’s a dystopian nightmare, that you would voluntarily request this.
- rr888 4y ago
  Lol I hate it but the extra eyes makes me focus.

tmaly 4y ago

The one thing I really like after switching from Android to Iphone was the consistent interface to be able to shut off all notifications in one screen.

Zanneth 4y ago

Aaron Swartz wrote a blog post about the news[1] and just how terrible it is for the brain. Reading his post had a major impact on me—since then I have always thought differently about the time I spend online. It’s interesting how people, including myself, try to justify various addictions. How am I supposed to stay informed about important topics without the news? How do I know how to help people in need without knowing what’s going on? There are much, much better ways than reading CNN/NYTimes every day. Also, there really is nothing new about the human condition today compared to a hundred years ago. [1] http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

mtnygard 4y ago
I hadn’t seen that post before. This paragraph hit me as a tragic irony: ‘This seems to be true, but the curious thing is that I’m never involved. The government commits a crime, the New York Times prints it on the front page, the people on the cable chat shows foam at the mouth about it, the government apologizes and commits the crime more subtly. It’s a valuable system — I certainly support the government being more subtle about committing crimes (well, for the sake of argument, at least) — but you notice how it never involves me?’
- Buttons840 4y ago
  Plus, whatever the news is talking about endlessly this week will most likely be far down the list of important events come next voting seasons (or whatever milestone is important to you).
- Balgair 4y ago
  Kinda like the Murry Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect https://loricism.fandom.com/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect https://loricism.fandom.com/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect
- stevage 4y ago
  The bit his argument is missing is about how the news gets funded. Me, currently I pay for a Guardian subscription, because I think it plays an important role in our democracy - although I don't actually read it.

webscout 4y ago

I use sites like https://biztoc.com https://biztoc.com once or twice a day and I'm more or less done with news. Just make sure you only read the headlines ;)

lordnacho 4y ago

Get one of those browser extensions that limits your use. This at least tells you how much time you've spent. It's easy to get carried away reading one long form article after another.

kortex 4y ago

"Trivial inconveniences" are a big hurdle when trying to build a habit, but are a great tool for breaking bad ones. Anything you can do to break the dopamine loop helps, however small it may be. I've had success with: - setting long passwords to social media that aren't autofilled (saved in bitwarden) and logging out after each session - nerfing addicting parts of webapps (plugins which block the facebook news feed but allow messaging/groups helped a TON) - forbidding dedicated social media apps and only using "worse" internet sites - router DNS blockers, even if I can get around them, the act of having to bypass it raises my awareness I'm doing something subpar for myself

LukeShu 4y ago
> and logging out after each session I started using a Cookie AutoDelete plugin for privacy reasons; but it's also been great for this purpose, so I don't have to remember to log out.
vbezhenar 4y ago
My method is using private browsing to open addicting websites. This way their address will not be saved in history and I'll have to type it which sometimes stop me from doing that in mid-way. Also helps with automatically logging out.
- kibwen 4y ago
  I've done this with YouTube and it's been extraordinarily effective for me. Without the history associated with my account, the recommendation engine just shows me the default junk, preventing me from falling down rabbit holes when I just want to watch some video. For keeping in touch with channels that I still want to follow, I've subscribed to them via RSS. If you need an extra push to enforce that you only use private browsing, you can install any browser extension that blocks sites and then tell your browser to not permit that extension to run in private windows.
  - gofreddygo 4y ago
    With youtube, on the phone, setup an alter account, go to settings, switch on "pause watch history" and "pause search history". You can then see how sick that algorithm is in recommending and pushing junk. Only now its junk you will despise.

aszantu 4y ago

may sound stupid... I recently started to test around with vitamin B supplements, inspired by some NMN interview, refined Vitamin B seemingly turns back age #inmice. Decided to play around with the real thing first... B3 itself helps me sleep better, Yeast tablets feel like coffee, a full vitamin B complex seems to aleviate focus issues. For the first time in a while I'm able to actually work on something without getting distracted much. Suffering from some adhd-like symptoms I used to be happy to be distracted. Now I'm even unhappy when a coworker wants something. AND I don't enjoy gaming... which is weird and frustrating because I consider myself addicted to video games.

flawn 4y ago
can you introduce me to that NMN iceberg? what the heck do these people using that experience, this undoubtedly can't be 100% legit
- aszantu 4y ago
  If you check out youtube, there are a few nmn experiences. They report some benefits without trying to sell anything. One critic warns though. Nmn if overdosed might suppress methylation which then can lead to shitty outcomes after a few weeks. Nmn is just refined vitamin b3, thiamine I think? That's why I decided to try b-complex first (no overdose ). I found it works fine, back pain diminished, mood feels stable.

mauliknshah 4y ago

Typo: It's Daniel Kahneman and not David Kahnemann.

zorg42 4y ago
thanx, I fixed that.

leobg 4y ago

Isn’t it funny how much attention these anti-procrastination posts are getting on essentially a procrastination site? (Tongue in cheek! I love HN. I just know that I sometimes do abuse it as a procrastination device.)

II2II 4y ago
When it comes to HN, I definitely have mixed feelings about the procrastination aspect. Yet I am unwilling to drop it since there are stories that I am genuinely interested in and make life better. So it is a net positive in my books.
mr90210 4y ago
Where would you go if you wanted to target procrastinators?
atmosx 4y ago
It’s also funny how all these posts are so “western” in style: ‘Hey look at me, I did something a bit difficult for 3 days, now I am a guru!’ Not trying to knock the author but the time window is simply too small and this approach is simply too common online. Let’s see if the author can actually change lifestyle for more than 5 years and then we can discuss about “lessons learned”.
- marcinreal 4y ago
  This is a bit harsh; the article does contain a lot of useful advice. I myself implemented many of these tips about two years ago, and am still going strong. I do fall off the wagon here and there and get sucked into my phone, especially when I'm avoiding something in real life, but I really value having minimal notifications. I also love focus modes (though I've only known about them for about a year I think) -- great for working, sleeping, and overall mental health. But I would stress this important point: if you have trouble implementing these steps, there may be a bigger issue in your life that you're avoiding.
- ninkendo 4y ago
  What does that have to do with being “western”?

HellDunkel 4y ago

I had a similar problem. My solution is to go offline in the evening- 3 hours before going to sleep.

leobg 4y ago

Ok. So the author tells us that news is bad for us. Isn’t that well known since like ten years ago? When opening the article I had been hoping for something new... ...if y’all catch my drift here ;)

smm11 4y ago

Duh.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

thenerdhead 4y ago

This is very surface level. These tips can help for periods of time, but they won't last forever. I think the things that do change your perspective forever though are philosophy and even other's philosophies on attention in general. Reading books like "Four arguments for the elimination of television" and "Amusing ourselves to death" changed how I view our attention. Reading older books like "tao te ching" or "meditations" gave me perspective into how much my attention matters.

Jeff_Brown 4y ago

I try to keep my productivity improvements secret, because any time I announce one -- especially if I also explain why it happened -- I immediately falsify whatever I just said by losing all focus and producing nothing of interest for a while.

jventura 4y ago
So, can you tell us your secret? :)
- Jeff_Brown 4y ago
  Not sure, but here are candidates. Staying healthy. Documentation, journaling, meditation, reviewing -- they're all different aspect of the same, uh, something. Thinking and writing a plan before doing anything complicated. Sensing when something might be complicated. Trusting the right people with the right tasks. Trading money for time. Picking my battles well. Finding prior art. Knowing when to learn a better way (tool, language). Knowing when to automate. Lacking creativity when it comes to leisure.
rpmisms 4y ago
This resonates deeply. It has to feel like a secret to me.

y42 4y ago

I'm doomed. Did not read more than the head line.

rwoerz 4y ago

Oh irony, a post about overcoming distraction gets 232+ comments.

marcinreal 4y ago

Great article and important message. > Lifting the phone should not unlock it. This setting is called “Display & Brightness/Activate on Lift” on the iPhone On my phone it's called "Raise to Wake". I didn't know that you could turn this off, but I just did so because it's inconsistent and sometimes doesn't work. I like predictable behavior, even at a minor cost to convenience.

pphysch 4y ago

It should frankly be criminal to predate on user's attention to the extent that most popular apps do. I keep my phone on DnD 100% of the time and ruthlessly disable notifications, but have a semi-smart watch that vibrates for texts/calls. I'm still addicted to checking my news feeds but at least they aren't literally yanking my attention.

going_ham 4y ago

I disabled chrome and youtube for most of the time. Unless I am looking for something specific, I keep them disabled. This alone reduced by HN scrolling and YouTube binging by factor of 2-3 hrs/day! Finally I have free time to relax and do nothing!

abawany 4y ago
Same here - I installed "Distract Me Not" on my Firefox instances and it has been a great improvement.

smoussa 4y ago

I went on a zero news diet a while back and have recently got back on this diet again. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve made for my productivity. For those with fear of missing out on current affairs — events are really only worth knowing about if someone has made you aware of it in real life. Otherwise it’s likely not that important.

ckosidows 4y ago
You're on HNews?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

adverbly 4y ago

It always seems odd to me when it is literally writers or other online content creators who are complaining about being distracted by other writers or online content creators. I'd love to see someone write a blog post about why they think their own content is good for others to consume while the content that they were willfully consuming was not.

paulpauper 4y ago

During the aforementioned train ride, I cancelled my subscription to my formerly favorite online news portal (the German “Spiegel-Online”) and deleted the associated app from my iPhone. I used the initial motivation to cancel additional news subscriptions and deleted the related apps from my smartphone and iPad so that I wouldn’t be tempted. Here is what he should have done: replaced his smart phone with a dumb phone if possible. It does not mean he gets rid of the smart phone but deactivate it. And have two computers: one for business and one for leisure and keep in different rooms. If possible disconnect the work computer from the web. That way there are fewer possible distractions. It's not enough to just remove apps. The device itself is addictive.

vinny2020 4y ago

I'm proud of myself for reading the article to the end without distraction. I have been news free since the 2020 US election results were broadcast so I agree that a news diet is an immense boost for productivity. Why worry about things you can't really change. If it's important enough, trust me, you'll find out about it. I also use screen time to limit social media apps, but they are truly the crack cocaine of the the 21st century.

fleddr 4y ago

I think the follow-up needs some more elaborating. "I won a lot of time back so that I can go back to writing 15 novels" is a little off putting for many. Start simple with usage of your reclaimed time. Put your phone in another room and watch a 2 hour movie, uninterrupted. That's a thing a lot of people today can't even do, so already an accomplishment. Even pure boredom, doing absolutely nothing, is healing. The point is that you have uninterrupted time, it doesn't matter if you spent it "productively".

epolanski 4y ago

Removing social medias reclaimed lots of my life, the absolute peak of my happiness was when I stopped following any news at all. There's some sort of stigma agaiinst people who don't follow the news but I ask, what positives doesfollowing the news brings to your lifes? I realized none and there is a huge proven link between following news and anxiety/depression. Sadly I felt back to watching news with the war in Ukraine.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ineedasername 4y ago

>Since about 2020... There were no external causes, even the pandemic didn’t affect me, thanks to a nice home office and online work options — so no excuses It seems strange to disregard the pandemic merely because it didn't impact your work environment. It very likely impacted the ability to do any of their usual activities that took place outside of their home. And even if it didn't, having the entire world go through such a disaster is a reasonable possibility for a subtle or subconscious reactions. This may not at all have been the cause, but neither is it inconsistent with their eventual solution of drastically reducing news/media consumption. If the awful things going on in the world were in some way impacting motivation & productivity then it certainly makes sense that turning them off might help. Chalking up the mere possibility of that as "bogus excuses" is extremely dismissive for a global crisis as well, and a bit insulting to people who probably had identical issues that were very much linked to society shutting down combined w/ awful news creeping into any glance towards the outside world. The author's next statement of "“You’ve got to do something about that,” is the right attitude to take when faced with a problem of this sort, but a reason for a problem only becomes a "bogus excuse" if it's used to avoid trying to find a solution, not for its own sake.

bexsella 4y ago

For me, reddit was a big hurdle. It was such a time hole I didn't realise but I finally got sick of my reply when my partner asked about what I was reading, it was always: "Nothing" I deleted facebook years ago for the same reason, but I convinced myself that reddit was different in some capacity, and it is in ways, but after one too many evenings of looking at "Nothing", I'm happy I've kicked it to the curb. Even at work now, I have a ublock rule to block reddit. Occasionally, I find the need to temporarily allow it due to searches on a particular topic, but it's gone as a pastime.

nivenkos 4y ago
How do you replace the technical subreddits though? Like the Rust subreddit has really good discussion and it's harder to keep up on Zulip, etc.

techsin101 4y ago

Is there a service that gives thorough but weekly/bi-weekly news and you can select what subjects it's about. Well written, concise, factual (exclude all opinion pieces, celeb/sports news, and shopping stuff.. just tech, science, and business)

j7ake 4y ago
Sounds like a wide selection of magazine subscription like Nature, Science, quanta magazine, nautilus, natural geographic, wallstreet journal, and maybe the economist.

throwaway81523 4y ago

Well intended article that is a long winded recommendation to turn off your phone notifications and stop reading news. It could be a lot shorter. Aaronsw had similar thoughts about the news, back in 2006: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews It is advice worth following, I think, though not so easy a lot of the time. My main trick for online distraction avoidance is to use separate computers for goofing off and for getting work done. Needless to say, reading HN or posting on it = goofing off.

stereoradonc 4y ago

The HN forum pushes through many "articles" around improving "productivity", while all the solutions are in plain sight. We justify our bad habits-social media because work colleagues are there (so as not to miss the water cooler conversations) and YouTube because there is a lot of "educational content". We forget that our actions determine outcomes. The imperative to act lies solely on the individual. Most notifications systems have been designed based on UI/UX dark patterns to "maximise" interaction. Instead, I see the younger generation slipping into a complete lack of concentration. My way to handle the onslaught of notifications is to keep them switched on for family instead. Work colleagues get a different tone (I use Telegram) because it's cross platform and inherits notification settings from the main applications. This way, it helps boost my interaction. It offers me tabs to organise my intake, and all high post channels are archived, which I rarely check. I use Inoreader extensively; use Twitter lists to follow specific accounts (that add to my knowledge base) instead of following futile "success stories" or "collaboration" or "publications".

lutarezj 4y ago

A book and a half per year? Neither asimov nor herbert could do that. Maybe jules verne? No. Even if tech is different than SF, I strongly doubt the quality of such high book/y delivery

WuxiFingerHold 4y ago

Quitting news had a huge positive effect of my live. Besides the benefits of better focus I'm much less (if at all) angry and anxious. The papers and news on TV that once did neutral coverage now act like the rainbow press. Every click is measured, so the boring stuff vanishes. FUD and politics everywhere. I'm still too much on HN, but since I strictly browse to https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=200 https://news.ycombinator.com/over?points=200 it's much better.

digitalbase 4y ago

I really enjoyed reading this post as I experimented with something similar 3 months ago which has drastically changed my mood/attention span: - removed all social media apps from phone - lock down all access to apps (screen time) and not know the password (give it to someone else) - only allow photos, podcasts, spotify, navigation and the dial/SMS app Screentime went from a few hours per day to about 15 minutes or so. But it has also changed my mood for the better. I still have to find a way to do the same thing on my desktop which is a lot harder (I need a browser)

ExtremisAndy 4y ago

One thing that’s worked for me is going old fashioned and getting my news in a daily 20-minute news video recap, not unlike the “old days” of watching the evening nightly newscast of your choice. These are often on YouTube nowadays, so you don’t even need a set schedule. I’ve done this with a Spanish language daily newscast (mainly to keep my Spanish sharp), and, unless there is something going on that requires my further investigation, I’m made aware of the big stories that any informed person should probably be aware of, and then can go about my day being productive. Only a 20 minute sacrifice. Just an idea if you feel you’ve let news improperly invade your time!

thejammahimself 4y ago

I realise I'm responding to this far too late for anyone to actually take notice, but I'm gonna do it anyway because there is a major criticism I have of the article: that all news is bad. I think the issue here is not the problem with news in itself but rather the consumption of news. I think what is problematic is that people are consuming news like they would consume posts on a social media platform in that they're endlessly scrolling few news stories, and keep checking the app to make sure they're on top of everything that is happening. And I completely understand how problematic this is. However, that is not to say that news itself is bad. There are several reasons that lead me to come to this conclusion. While I'm sure not everything in the news might not be directly relevant to you, I think it helps you make better life choices when you know the state of the economy, and issues others are facing. But, I think, most importantly: it is democratically empowering to be aware of the news. Let's take the UK system of government as an example. Some things are obvious: we vote for our representatives (MPs) every 5 years at the most, and this is one opportunity to influence government but its not the only one. We can: write letters to our MPs; create, and sign petitions; join pressure groups; protest; take industrial action etc. But we can only do this effectively when we have a good awareness of current affairs. Additionally, in the UK we also vote for our local government as well. This can include councillors, and (if your area voted for it) directly elected mayors. I hear many people complain about what their local council are doing, but a lot of these people don't even vote for any councillors. I once went for a coffee, and told the person at the till that I was volunteering at the council election. His response? "I didn't even know there was an election on today." Many of us are fortunate to live in countries with the right to vote amongst other civil liberties. We ought to use them effectively in order to improve living standards for us all. On the topic of how we consume news, if we feel it is unhealthy to scroll through a constantly updated app, we can turn to bulletins instead. In the UK, the BBC produce half-hour bulletins on weekdays at 1, 6, and 10 o'clock (shorter bulletins also exist at similar times on the weekend). You could watch, say, the 6 o'clock news in the evening, and then be done with news for the day. You could also read a newspaper. This doesn't have to be in print as some newspaper websites are either not updated frequently (e.g. The London Times/Sunday Times which is only updated for major breaking news, or in the evening to give articles for tomorrow's paper), or provide a webpage that just shows you what was printed in that day's edition of the print newspaper (e.g. The Guardian/Observer).