I had a similar awakening moment about 5 years ago. Felt like I wasted my 20s on consuming content and only playing video games outside of work.
I had a similar journey. I’m even writing a book on it.
I have found that the one thing that has helped bring enlightenment to this problem is reading books and thinking each day on how to apply them or just simply observing those around me instead of being glued on a device.
I’m a bit further in that journey than the author and there are some great premises out there about the damage tech and our fragmented attention causes to our lives.
There are even great titles mentioned in this blog bringing awareness to them, but some of the more old and interesting perspectives are those of Thoreau(Walden) and Emerson(Self-Reliance).
While there’s a number of titles talking about internet or tech addiction, all we're doing is pointing out a problem rather than taking actual steps to improve our character to rid ourselves of these things to begin with. This problem is only going to get harder for the individual, and it’s up to each one of us to battle our own battles. No amount of reform will solve it for us.
Most days within the last few weeks I've been leaving my phone at home. Not having one on me makes me actually look around at my surroundings more. It takes a bit of getting used to but after a while it no longer feels bad during downtime, just normal.
Why did you feel this pressure to meet some self-defined obligation outside of work? Were you missing something in the work itself that you felt you had to recover in the time outside of it?
In my experience, if I feel the value of my work output itself is meaningful, then I don’t need to worry about what I’m doing outside of it. If you start a business or work for yourself, then your career goals “at work” and “outside of work” are equivalent, thus freeing that time “outside of work” for you to make progress toward non-career goals (or to simply relax and recover).
I’ve always found discussion of side-project optimization to be silly, because it’s missing the forest for the trees. The optimization is to take the risk and work on it full time.
If you want to maximize the meaningful activities you do in your life, then it makes sense to start with the category of activity you spend the highest percentage of time performing.
I don’t quite understand your comment, but my comment was just talking about how empty I found myself just stuck in a loop of attention grabbing activities outside of work.
I believe all lives require work, but not all lives are fulfilled by certain kinds of work. Hitting OKRs or KPIs at work can be satisfying but ultimately mean nothing when you approach retirement age/wealth.
> I had a similar journey. I’m even writing a book on it.
I'd be interested to hear more. Do ping me if you have time.
> While there’s a number of titles talking about internet or tech
addiction, all we're doing is pointing out a problem rather than
taking actual steps to improve our character to rid ourselves of
these things to begin with. This problem is only going to get harder
for the individual, and it’s up to each one of us to battle our own
battles. No amount of reform will solve it for us.
You might be interested to read Digital Vegan [1]. The food metaphor goes
quite a long way. I really see it as a public health issue.
I love the metaphor. I especially love using the Michael Pollan quote of “If it’s a plant eat it, if it’s made in a plant, don’t” or similar. I think that can be applied to our use of technology and especially content/digital consumption.
I’ll have to send you an email when I get back from vacation. Thanks for the kindness.
When I was writing my thesis I told myself to get separate room & computer without all those distractions like discord, hn blocked, etc.
so I can perform context switch easier
95% of the work was coding and it actually helped me to sit for 1-3 hours per two weeks and do solid step ahead
Unfortunely now I do not have such privilege to have separate room to learn :(
I believe environment may make things way easier.
Also I feel like I'm music addicted, very often the very first thing that I do on my PC is start playing some music. I do wonder how it affects e.g learning, focusing and similar.
I did notice that in competitive video games I play worse when listening do music, and when it's "spiky music" e.g some Disturbed's song, then I play riskier.
___________
I do wonder whether there is some "distraction meter" for workplace - e.g 3 meetings a day (all of them with 2h gaps) + scrum + 5 emails that require at least 5 minutes of attention = not much can be done
Can you try to play something that isn't musical and note the differences? It might be easier than just turning it off. White/brown noise or nature sounds or something.
> I do wonder whether there is some "distraction meter" for workplace - e.g 3 meetings a day (all of them with 2h gaps) + scrum + 5 emails that require at least 5 minutes of attention = not much can be done
Cal Newport's Deep Work goes into this a bit, and I found it to a good read for understanding why there were certain things I was struggling with in my job at the time.
I did a digital detox in July of 2020, I had become overwhelmed with Discord and Reddit moderation and trying to Keep Up. I burned out hard. I turned off all electronics for a month and uninstalled the apps and restricted my phone use to calls and responding to 3 close friend's texts at a set time each day--I didn't keep it on me at all. No video games, no TV, no watch or music streaming. I had my library of local music loaded to my trusty Zune and used that exclusively for music as the only device I carried with me.
I read through the entirety of the Percy Jackson books and the Heroes sequels, the Mortal Instruments, the Seven Realms Novels, and the complete unabridged HHGTG. All it took to get my book-a-day self back was bringing myself back to my teen years when I wasn't allowed on the computer with access to the internet and my texts cost .3 minutes to read or send and I only got 100/mo. I was averaging roughly 350 pages per day.
When I wasn't reading I was drawing or writing or outside being active when it was cool enough which improved my mental health even in spite of my heat based SAD.
At the end of the month I had the attention span when I got back online to attend to a cross country move and secure a job and an apartment by the end of August. I had been intending to move for the 3 years prior.
I wonder how I could go about taking advantage of the burst of creativity and focus while still being online enough to develop some of the software ideas I have that I never follow through on without getting overstimulated and distracted.
Amazing story and anecdata. It seems almost impossible to attain this today since real-life events require being online - Airbnb requiring Facebook login, needing WhatsApp, Instagram DM, messenger to keep in touch. And Facebook for real-life events. Of course have to use instant msging now through Slack (email used to set the right expectations)
I've heard that reading from a novel daily, with a large continuous story, increases empathy. This effect is said to last for 5 days after the last reading session. Unfortunately I can't find the source, but I think that this is a helpful data point. With the moral of the story being that it's something to continuously keep up, to have the benefit.
I know of someone who has undergone a similar detox. From what I've heard it's been somewhat life changing (in a positive way). I don't necessarily think it's lead to more _material_ success, but they seem happier and more positive generally.
I'm trying to do a light version of this. I'm not sure I can ever completely give up the internet and video games. They're a big source of enjoyment for me. How much of that enjoyment is rotting away at my ability to focus and do great work for long periods of time? I'm not sure... but I'm also not sure I'd want to give up the things that I really enjoy, just to work more?
I'm trying to just find a balance in life. I don't necessarily need to be producing code 24/7. I just want to enjoy myself the times when I am working, and feel positive at the end of the day that I wasn't ultra distracted and fragmented.
Regarding reading ...
I have been reading a lot more lately, but I'm not sure I could ever reach 350 pages a day. I just get bored after a while. I'm sure that's directly related to a life of internet + gaming, but, I have a super hard time believing I will EVER find books as interesting or engaging as the internet and video games. That cat is out of the bag. So I can give about an hour or two a day to a book, but then I'm pretty much disinterested and find myself "reading" but not actually paying attention.
Interestingly I've been trying to reintroduce video games in my life, in moderation, because video games are fucking great and I'm sad that I'm not playing anymore.
Due to RSI long ago I replaced video games with board games.
I do play some video games now on occasion, for example interactive fiction and VR dance games and The Forest VR.
Now that app makers have realized we're muting our phones and disabling app notifications, they're doing them within the apps... It creates dependency and anxiety. The best way I've found to deal with the constant prodding is to simply leave my phone at home or in the car nearby whenever I want to enjoy a day or moment. It's a device I paid for, it shouldn't cause me stress.
Google and Apple can easily set up reasonable standards for app makers, but they chose not to, because they themselves are tied to the constant financial greed of the ecosystem. There is now no way to buy a highly useful device that isn't laden with advertising capabilities, and robust enough for you to disable tracking... The only way to limit all of that is to simply leave the devices and step away from them for sanity.
Talking to real people creates more dopamine for me than the Internet does now, it's a gift... We shouldn't ever take our ability to talk in real life with people for granted, because the Internet is turning fast into a distorted reality bent on spamming us for profit and scams now more than ever, and no one there cares about the damage they do until it shows up in their own households (far too late to fix the problems they caused).
I recently find that anything on my phone or computer that tries to grab my attention, whether it's in an app or on a website, produces immediate annoyance from me. Even some genuinely helpful (but unnecessary) notifications. Popups, badges, dings, etc.
I hear about how "people" get a dopamine hit from the dings or whatever, and meanwhile I'm basically the opposite.
Stress. Especially on Twitter, every news today starts with “NEWS ALERT!” + a boring news or analysis that everyone knows. It produces stress. The content of the news is always highly disappointing.
If they're replies to messages you've sent (i.e. the continuation of a conversation) or your latest instagram post getting a like, you're gonna get that hit. Namely, for the validation that someone out there is interested enough in something you put out there to respond to it.
At the other end of the spectrum it's Uber Eats promos∆, news headlines, or Google Maps begging for a review. Maybe you'd place them elsewhere on the dopamine-spectrum but you get my point.
∆especially annoying because I want them on when I have a delivery coming, but off at all other times!
> Now that app makers have realized we're muting our phones and disabling app notifications, they're doing them within the apps... It creates dependency and anxiety.
This is so true and so widespread that I haven't even realized it's happening. I disabled most push notifications on Android and have the phone muted almost all day. Still, I'm fighting with attention fragmentation, decreased memory etc. Nowadays most apps/web apps you open have a 'notifications' tab, menu item etc. creating yet another inbox for us. (Which we probably don't need unless it's work related or something.)
In terms of developing software without distractions, I like to recreate airplane conditions.
I load devdocs.io in a persistent tab, get all the software I think I'd need for the day/weekend and turn on airplane mode. I don't need to Google everything - between devdocs, man pages and just figuring stuff out by myself, it can be very fun to code disconnected.
I've recently realized I'm uncharacteristically productive on airplanes. I did a deep read of the first 8 chapters of a book I've been meaning to read on my last long flight. I had every intention of continuing at the same pace through to the end as soon as I checked into my AirBnB.
The moment I got internet back at touchdown marked the end of my progress on the book. This was... four days ago. I think some airplane condition replication might be just what I need. I'm curious if I could go as far as to get some uncomfortable airplane seats and a simulated sky window.
I used to be able to code on airplanes but i just can't type in most seats given how cramped they are now.
that said I flew economy plus on lufthansa from seattle to frankfurt in 2019 and sat in the front left bulkhead seat. Being a premium seat they completely ignored the 3 bags I had up against the bulkhead at takeoff (safety rules and plastic utensils are for the cattle, comfort and metal cutlery are for those who pay). It was great. I had my latop comfortably on the folkd out tray, and I watched big hero 5 and 2 other shameless airplane movies on the pull up tv. I reviewed over 30 docs in offline mode, and was able to build a very good root cause and action plan (I was doing failure analysis).
A offline/online docs site would be quiet helpful as what styimies me from coding is not having that one dependency or one doc I need and having to pivot.
When I want to read, I go to the local park and grab a bench. I’m a productive reader when I get away from distractions, but not at home. I was able to read effectively as a teen, but not since we got super online.
I've been working on an app (for myself, but I guess I'll share it if it ends up working for me) that pretty much asks me every two weeks to fill two lists: 1) things in my life that I want to accomplish (in the next two weeks) and 2) things that I want to do more of, or less of. Every two weeks it asks me to summarize how I did for every item I had listed, and if I want to keep/remove/add more to list 1, and what I want my new list 2 to be.
The idea is to make it a browser plugin, that forces me to fill that form every two weeks by making every new tab that form until I fill it.
I've learned to steer clear of the "hot topic" threads with over 200 comments. Usually the conversation has long since derailed from the original topic of the link.
There are also smaller, more frequent threads that focus on recurring topics such as big tech power, cryptocurrency, Elon Musk, H1B visas that also head in predictable directions and can be avoided.
I always feel like garbage during the summer, but always chalked it up to allergies, some kind of low level chronic dehydration, or poor schedule discipline (used to be, when classes ended, my bedtime became about 3 am almost immediately. I'm older and that doesn't [can't] happen anymore, but since the sun sets very late now, I still get a minor version of it).
There are a lot of external factors that I thought might contribute also. For one thing, every weekend of the summer is pretty much booked up, which becomes exhausting. Back in college, I also remember feeling kind of bluesy in the summer. I guess I didn't have the <whatever> to activate my brain by myself, so I looked forward to fall/learning time again.
I'm rambling, but interested to hear a little more about what you mentioned.
Since I haven't been commuting or going many places, my phone mostly sits idle for days, unused. I watch my wife and daughter constantly in front of theirs and I don't understand. I hate using those little screens with terrible input and fundamentally boring distracting apps.
The problem is though, I'm addicted to my computer. I'm not actually sure it's that much better.
It's much better just because your desktop it's yours. Even if it run Windows or OSX it's still give you less strict cage, surveil you less and give you more options.
Unfortunately even if you run a FLOSS OS you run on crapload of proprietary fw down to the CPU but again, you have some ability to move and act, on a mobile you are just free to do what the OEM decide you are allowed to, with it's right to change policy as it wish.
Browsing through my distractions websites- HN, Twitter, Reddit, Dilbert - only take me about 15 minutes to note everything interesting. I do that thrice a day, and it’s more than enough.
Ultimately, if you are using the smartphone for a deliberate purpose, that's probably fine. Looking up a recipe, contacting a loved one, reading an ebook.
The problem is when you are just "on the phone", not really doing anything, not anything you planned to do, and not really getting anything done. Even this can be fine, as long as you go "I'd like to see whats on twitter for half an hour", rather than just opening things up and doing them because the algorithm pulls you in.
Do that in the other 22 hours of the day that isn't dinner.
There's nothing wrong with smartphones per se. It's that the smartphones become a crutch to avoid socializing in person. All the excuses come out to prevent that crutch from being removed.
We try hard to eat at the table together for all dinners and weekend breakfasts. Screens are strictly prohibited, even for guests. Some guests... hahaha, think this is quite the sacrifice. So what? My daughter has brought the convention to her group house.
When we eat out we try to do the same but because of the damn menus, translation app, etc. the screens still come out. We still are usually doing much better than the other tables in the restaurants. Helps to turn the devil device face down.
We think it is just so sad to see people out on a date, or even a clearly married older pair, each staring at their (own) screens.
Yes, I own a kindle and rarely use it, because i much prefer the smaller form factor of phones for fictions.
Technical books are better on larger screens, so the Kindle only gets used if I read that kind of book. Though the Kindle has way too few pixels imo, so I often read these on my desktop or ipad too.
Because computers are for nerds (the bigger it is, the MORE computer it is); only boys should be nerds; therefore, girls select against using computers. It sucks.
Using a mobile is like reading while looking through a toilet roll, and typing by using a straw in my mouth :P
I often get questions from people on WhatsApp saying "How can you reply so quickly??". Well duh... I use a real computer :) Anything I can do on the mobile I can do twice as fast on the computer.
For me it just 'hurts' when my brain cycles are forcibly wasted. Not just with this, also with those stupid mandatory trainings in work where the narrator is so slow to make sure even the most mediocre non-native numbnut can keep up. It just frustrates me so much when I'm forced to listen to that (usually I spend my time looking through the javascript to find a way to turn off the non-skip setting :P )
I actually got caught out by that once when an intern noticed I had only spent 1 hour on a course everyone else spent at least 3 hours on :P But I told her I was on a plane so when I finished it I was in a different time zone :D
I do wonder how much web design contributes to the apparent epidemic of attention difficulties.
There is very often (even some in the article) visual noise in or around the text. Ads are designed to draw attention to themselves, and ignoring them wears on your cognitive resources.
Sometimes the text is "enhanced" to fight back against the surrounding noise by adding images or color or highlighting portions of the text or any number of tricks. That just makes the visual noise worse, and further adds to the habit of skimming.
It's like talking in a bar. The noisier it gets, the more the communication turns into shouting short simple sentences, further adding to the noise level, further imposing restrictions on what's able to be communicated.
What's scary is that having a clean distraction free layout becomes an exception on the web. Most articles "regular" ppl read can probably only be read via reader layout in safari
The summaries are mediocre at best. If you are willing to have someone you don’t know summarize a book for you, then it’s good. There’s plenty of people posting book summaries online that are a bit more reputable. I personally think it’s filling the exact niche of people not spending more time being analog to find out for themselves by reading and redeveloping their attention.
Thank you for that Twitter thread. Unfortunately quite a lot of books end up with criticisms that feel like it undermines a lot - Gun, germs and steel and Why we sleep both come to mind as having inaccurate or misleading information.
One thing that I have done to help keep focus is to turn off as many notifications as possible and put my phone out of sight when I need to focus on something. The goal is to claim agency around where I put my energy. Conversely, if I'm bored and have a few minutes to kill I don't beat myself up about scrolling twitter.
You can control what takes your attention, but at the same time everything is _designed_ to take your attention. Ad blockers are an example of this sort of exercise - you can limit what tries to take your attention, but it requires action.
I got iPad with Cellular, magic keyboard and the cheapest prepaid SIM card with 4Gb of data so I know I can not just browse forever. I got Nokia 6510 and I absolutely love it. New Nokia feature phones don't have the same level of attention to detail and quality of plastic. I don't take my iPad anywhere usually. If I want to take photos I use Pentax ME Super, for reading - Kindle. For music I got iPod Video and upgraded it to 120Gb sd card, new battery, sounds magical with Marshal Mode earphones, I also had iPod Classic 7g but the sound quality was much worse, its like components of music track were decoupled. It sounded consistently worse to me for all genres.
Had a coworker who lived life the old way, distinct online and offline modes of operation. His phone was a classic flip phone. During the day, he'd be online working his software engineering job. Outside of that, he may stay on the computer some more, but if he stepped away from the office, there was no other device in his home to that'd allow him back online.
We discussed it a few times, and my belief is that small amount of friction, entering a particular room to go online, was enough to help him get more intentional about how he spends his days.
Needless to say, the man had a lot of interesting hobbies and was well read.
So glad to see I'm not the only one taking drastic action after falling into the phone/attention trap.
This won't work for everyone, but maybe 6 months ago I got a phone safe (this kind of thing: <https://shorturl.at/drzMT>, I refer to it as the "phone jail"), which I leave my phone in from bedtime every night to ~4pm the next day. And I leave the whole rig on my bedroom shelf while I go to work at the library/cafe/kitchen table.
There are obvious drawbacks to this that I don't think most people would accept (especially regarding being reachable or having a way to place emergency calls). But it's been invaluable for me to make the mental space I need to finish my manuscript. Plus you can still use the phone through the holes in the cover if you need to, it's just really annoying and not very portable.
In the long run, I'd like to become a fliphone guy like some other commenters here, but I genuinely do get a lot of value from having a smartphone. I just need to get away from it during working hours.
I have a landline in my home, it's great. Can't get texts so people have to call, they can leave a message if it's urgent. I can leave my phone off as long as I want and still be contacted when I'm at home.
You don't a landline. As you mention yourself it's very hard to waste much time on a mobile phone with no internet access. OTOH, a laptop with internet can be as just much of a timesink as a smartphone.
The internet, it's a hell of a drug. Can't live with it, can't live without it.
> especially regarding being reachable or having a way to place emergency calls
I love being unreachable, it's one of the reasons I'll often turn my phone off during the work day or leave it at home. This means I won't have a phone to make emergency calls, but I'm not really bothered by that (it's how I lived over half my life).
I did something similar for a while, but I still found myself distracted when the phone was out of the case. I ultimately opt to simply make the phone less addictive.
On Android, I used Digital Wellness to monitor how I was spending time. Then I uninstalled all the timewasting dopamine-trap apps, set limits on Firefox (10min day), disabled vibration/sound notifications except for phone calls, removed all app icons from the home screen, and set a complex unlock passcode (disabled face unlock). I also started using the phone for "harder" things, like writing long emails.
At this point, my ADHD brain just sees the phone as a tool... because that's all it is.
Next step is figuring out how to apply the same lessons to my laptop.
I think that smartphones merely illuminate a pre-existing problem.
That problem is that people, as a rule, live in a dream-world. The smartphone just provides the most convenient exterior manifester of dreams that we've invented so far.
The cellphone is a dream-amplifier. The natural evolution from books, radio and tv.
But the central problem isn't the phone. It's our habitual-dwelling-in and preference-for the dreamworld. The phone is just the enabler.
I agree with most of the points in this article and try to practice them, but I wish the author would have waited before offering his take. There are too many bloggers who read a self-help book or two, get really energized, and then, before testing the long-term results, suggest their readers to follow suit. Often, a few entries later, the blogger will then modify their take, which gives them more content for the blog, but seems like a waste of the reader’s time.
This piece was written as if it had lived a year in my mind.
Every time I take a vacation, I spend much less time plugged into the world. Each time, I come back refreshed and more in touch with myself.
The phone and our collective reliance on them is not healthy. It will take some collective effort for me, and some of my friends, to try to plan events more regularly, in order that I am not feeling the need to have my phone with me so much.
I'm also going to make a few more MP3 discs for my car, which thankfully has a CD player (2014 model).
I can't emphasize enough how important it was for me to read this article. At least I know I'm not alone.
The addictive nature of those devices is exactly why I don't have one, I'll end up with even less time in my life and that's pretty much the only currency you never get more of. It's bad enough with just a desktop/laptop.
I just stuck to my Nokia 'dumbphone' while it still worked and after the last of the networks that it used went dark I switched to the N800, it's not perfect (technically a smartphone, it runs KaiOS), but it still has buttons and I refuse to go online with it (you can't do much on that silly screen anyway). In a pinch it will serve as a mobile hotspot.
This article was describing more and more about myself. In between the article I drifted off to another site without even realising. I am going to do my digital detox right away...after I browse through my youtube feed. I need help :(
Articles like this are interesting for me because I have trouble relating to "feed addiction" and the attention issues often associated with social media. I understand how it gets the way it is and I can imagine how it must feel, but I just haven't really experienced it, and I don't think that it's quite the drug it's made out to be.
My work makes me eager to throw my phone/laptop away as soon as possible; I'm definitely a workaholic and rather dangerously at that, so maybe I'm getting the same result via a different means; but there is almost always a point at the day when I just need to zone out on a dumb show I've watched a ton of times or just take a run with a bit of music or a nice walk and zone out on some music or even just the sounds of the city for awhile.
My work more or less has roped me into social media to some degree for some part of the day, and I really don't like social media at all; I don't dismiss it, it's just not the way I like communicating and because I deal with a lot of awful customers via social media (often fruitlessly) I have a very dour understanding of it as the same communication mechanisms that the awful customers implement are what I see elsewhere. When I do see non-negative/complaining content on social media, it's just not that interesting, and I'm more relieved that it's not some non-sense I have to deal with than I am interested in what someone has to say.
For me, modern social media even makes it easy for me not to get into it. Instagram floods sponsored objects when I just want to go and like my friend's pictures/stories. Reddit kills itself for me with its comment/voting system and the efforts to make it readable in a way I like just isn't worth it for the content I find. Twitter is the best at keeping me out of social media as it actively does its best to ensure I can't read Twitter content without signing up and giving a bunch of information I don't want to give, so I don't even have a chance to get hooked on something before the login modal hides the content. The less said about Youtube and its social media aspect, the better but it's absolutely unintelligible; even trying to follow older conversations (less than a month) is impossible sometimes as there are so many orphaned responses that you can't follow the context of a given answer as it was deleted or hidden somewhere else or someone changed their username(? I'm not sure if this is a thing but it's one of the only other ways I can understand what I see).
I can at least respect TikTok in that you can access everything without an account or even an app, and more or less it's the same experience, but there is so much repeat content that it's just not interesting.
When I want to check something nowadays, I just check it. If I want to go for a walk and just think for awhile, the most distracting thing is just that I'm processing too many projects/problems from the week, and I need to physically move a bit to calm down a bit. Cooking, running, reading articles, taking a crack at some code project, it's calming because it's easy to focus on, and the only challenge I have is just exhaustion most of the time.
This is precisely why I haven’t purchased a smartwatch. These devices decrease our ability to solve problems that require analysis for extended periods of time.
I feel the same way. I found it interesting that when smartwatches came out, people were excited about being able to see text messages or other notifications on their wrist.
As someone who felt the need to be on top of things, receiving notifications was slightly stressful as it meant something I'd have to evaluate and make a decision on "right now". (Obviously, feeling like I should react to things immediately was something I had to work on in myself, but the phone didn't help.) Feeling a notification buzz on my phone gave me slight anxiety as I'd immediately react with, "oh, what is this that I might need to take care of?" Putting the phone aside for periods helped, so the idea of not being able to escape it with notifications on my wrist was a little terrifying.
In the last few years, I've set my phone to always Do Not Disturb mode, so it doesn't vibrate or even light up when a notification comes in. I do the same on my Mac. It's helped quite a bit with my stress levels. I just manually check periodically to see if there's a notification instead of always feeling like it could go off any minute.
Oh, it's what I started to think about today. That I use my phone way too much and I have to fight it.
Unfortunately, fight it again, because a few months ago I tried, it worked for a few weeks and then was back again even bigger :(
I want to read some book and play some computer games. Neither is working for me because of some "problems"(?). In case of books I was aware that the phone is the problem. But in case of games I was pretty sure that I'm just "too old". But more and more I think about it, the phone is again the cause of this.
I also think that we use our phones as a way of coping with how shitty our quality of life is in the modern world. Many people, including myself, are so stressed and exhausted from modern life that I think being able to zone out on my phone is a gift in some ways.
Yes phones are designed to be addictive in a negative way, but I think we should also recognize they are a safety blanket we can take anywhere with us that costs almost nothing to use as much as we need. We should partially put the blame on the society around us that makes us need thar safety blanket so badly.
You could try to establish Systems (instead of pure motivation).
* Disable unnecessary notifications
* Get an app like Daywise to batch notifications that are necessary but not timely.
* Use Digital Well-being on Android or Action dash to set timer on your apps (owned by a marketing company though)
* Track streaks of days where your usage is < x hours using a Habit tracker such as Habits
Although the attention span myth is one of those things that is taken to be almost idiomatic, there’s actually very little empirical evidence for it.
There’s no such thing as an ‘average’ attention span, and even for those individual tasks it would be very much context dependent (where I’m sitting, what I’m doing at the time, my general opinion of the author, the mood I’m in).
It’s a nice story, and it will invariably generate a nice stream of anecdata in a comments section like this, but there’s very little evidence for it at all.
This is an extremely crucial point. Though I do think social media apps are designed to be addictive in a negative way, the narrative that they are destroying our attention spans has absolutely no backing in science and yet it is taken almost as common sense.
Totally agree with both of you. I don't see this issue in terms of "attention span" per se, rather we now have an ever-present device that most often contains software engineered to grab as much of our attention as it possibly can. I can't think of anything similar past generations had that was close to this in terms of magnitude and accessibility. We all know the rat in a box will tap the dopamine button as many times as it can and now, unprecedentedly, we carry that button in our pocket every day.
There's no such thing as an average. Dividing sums isn't real.
We can't even measure what attracts the attention of people. We can't track their eyes. We haven't been improving our techniques for catching someones attention and focus for the last decades+. We don't try to keep people hooked to our websites by making sure they stay engaged. FarmVille is a only a myth, too. "Endless scrolling" doesn't actually exist either.
Chatbots on websites, which try to engage you in a conversation within seconds of inactivity, don't actually do so to keep your attention on the site.
Man ...
If all your understanding is based solely on data other people have gathered, then you not only are completely unaware of all the potential data that hasn't been gathered yet, you also have only very little understanding of pretty much anything out there.
There's simply no empirical evidence that you love your wife/mother, so it would be foolish to believe that you do. Until a study is funded there's just no way for you to know. Trust science
Tom Johnson appears to be the poster child for ADHD.
He's been so busy noticing everything else that he didn't bother to pay attention to the hugely disruptive distraction everyone's been talking about for over a decade now.
And then he blames his inability to focus on some externality instead of realizing it's his condition.
>He's been so busy noticing everything else that he didn't bother to pay attention to the hugely disruptive distraction everyone's been talking about for over a decade now.
230 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 254 ms ] threadI had a similar journey. I’m even writing a book on it.
I have found that the one thing that has helped bring enlightenment to this problem is reading books and thinking each day on how to apply them or just simply observing those around me instead of being glued on a device.
I’m a bit further in that journey than the author and there are some great premises out there about the damage tech and our fragmented attention causes to our lives.
There are even great titles mentioned in this blog bringing awareness to them, but some of the more old and interesting perspectives are those of Thoreau(Walden) and Emerson(Self-Reliance).
While there’s a number of titles talking about internet or tech addiction, all we're doing is pointing out a problem rather than taking actual steps to improve our character to rid ourselves of these things to begin with. This problem is only going to get harder for the individual, and it’s up to each one of us to battle our own battles. No amount of reform will solve it for us.
Most days within the last few weeks I've been leaving my phone at home. Not having one on me makes me actually look around at my surroundings more. It takes a bit of getting used to but after a while it no longer feels bad during downtime, just normal.
Why did you feel this pressure to meet some self-defined obligation outside of work? Were you missing something in the work itself that you felt you had to recover in the time outside of it?
In my experience, if I feel the value of my work output itself is meaningful, then I don’t need to worry about what I’m doing outside of it. If you start a business or work for yourself, then your career goals “at work” and “outside of work” are equivalent, thus freeing that time “outside of work” for you to make progress toward non-career goals (or to simply relax and recover).
I’ve always found discussion of side-project optimization to be silly, because it’s missing the forest for the trees. The optimization is to take the risk and work on it full time.
If you want to maximize the meaningful activities you do in your life, then it makes sense to start with the category of activity you spend the highest percentage of time performing.
I believe all lives require work, but not all lives are fulfilled by certain kinds of work. Hitting OKRs or KPIs at work can be satisfying but ultimately mean nothing when you approach retirement age/wealth.
I'd be interested to hear more. Do ping me if you have time.
> While there’s a number of titles talking about internet or tech addiction, all we're doing is pointing out a problem rather than taking actual steps to improve our character to rid ourselves of these things to begin with. This problem is only going to get harder for the individual, and it’s up to each one of us to battle our own battles. No amount of reform will solve it for us.
You might be interested to read Digital Vegan [1]. The food metaphor goes quite a long way. I really see it as a public health issue.
[1] https://digitalvegan.net (can send you a review copy of you like)
I’ll have to send you an email when I get back from vacation. Thanks for the kindness.
so I can perform context switch easier
95% of the work was coding and it actually helped me to sit for 1-3 hours per two weeks and do solid step ahead
Unfortunely now I do not have such privilege to have separate room to learn :(
I believe environment may make things way easier.
Also I feel like I'm music addicted, very often the very first thing that I do on my PC is start playing some music. I do wonder how it affects e.g learning, focusing and similar.
I did notice that in competitive video games I play worse when listening do music, and when it's "spiky music" e.g some Disturbed's song, then I play riskier.
___________
I do wonder whether there is some "distraction meter" for workplace - e.g 3 meetings a day (all of them with 2h gaps) + scrum + 5 emails that require at least 5 minutes of attention = not much can be done
> I do wonder whether there is some "distraction meter" for workplace - e.g 3 meetings a day (all of them with 2h gaps) + scrum + 5 emails that require at least 5 minutes of attention = not much can be done
Cal Newport's Deep Work goes into this a bit, and I found it to a good read for understanding why there were certain things I was struggling with in my job at the time.
I read through the entirety of the Percy Jackson books and the Heroes sequels, the Mortal Instruments, the Seven Realms Novels, and the complete unabridged HHGTG. All it took to get my book-a-day self back was bringing myself back to my teen years when I wasn't allowed on the computer with access to the internet and my texts cost .3 minutes to read or send and I only got 100/mo. I was averaging roughly 350 pages per day.
When I wasn't reading I was drawing or writing or outside being active when it was cool enough which improved my mental health even in spite of my heat based SAD.
At the end of the month I had the attention span when I got back online to attend to a cross country move and secure a job and an apartment by the end of August. I had been intending to move for the 3 years prior.
I wonder how I could go about taking advantage of the burst of creativity and focus while still being online enough to develop some of the software ideas I have that I never follow through on without getting overstimulated and distracted.
Hard to eliminate smartphones in day to day life but no need for Facebook to use Airbnb. You can sign up with your email address
I'm trying to do a light version of this. I'm not sure I can ever completely give up the internet and video games. They're a big source of enjoyment for me. How much of that enjoyment is rotting away at my ability to focus and do great work for long periods of time? I'm not sure... but I'm also not sure I'd want to give up the things that I really enjoy, just to work more?
I'm trying to just find a balance in life. I don't necessarily need to be producing code 24/7. I just want to enjoy myself the times when I am working, and feel positive at the end of the day that I wasn't ultra distracted and fragmented.
Regarding reading ...
I have been reading a lot more lately, but I'm not sure I could ever reach 350 pages a day. I just get bored after a while. I'm sure that's directly related to a life of internet + gaming, but, I have a super hard time believing I will EVER find books as interesting or engaging as the internet and video games. That cat is out of the bag. So I can give about an hour or two a day to a book, but then I'm pretty much disinterested and find myself "reading" but not actually paying attention.
Google and Apple can easily set up reasonable standards for app makers, but they chose not to, because they themselves are tied to the constant financial greed of the ecosystem. There is now no way to buy a highly useful device that isn't laden with advertising capabilities, and robust enough for you to disable tracking... The only way to limit all of that is to simply leave the devices and step away from them for sanity.
Talking to real people creates more dopamine for me than the Internet does now, it's a gift... We shouldn't ever take our ability to talk in real life with people for granted, because the Internet is turning fast into a distorted reality bent on spamming us for profit and scams now more than ever, and no one there cares about the damage they do until it shows up in their own households (far too late to fix the problems they caused).
I hear about how "people" get a dopamine hit from the dings or whatever, and meanwhile I'm basically the opposite.
If they're replies to messages you've sent (i.e. the continuation of a conversation) or your latest instagram post getting a like, you're gonna get that hit. Namely, for the validation that someone out there is interested enough in something you put out there to respond to it.
At the other end of the spectrum it's Uber Eats promos∆, news headlines, or Google Maps begging for a review. Maybe you'd place them elsewhere on the dopamine-spectrum but you get my point.
∆especially annoying because I want them on when I have a delivery coming, but off at all other times!
This is so true and so widespread that I haven't even realized it's happening. I disabled most push notifications on Android and have the phone muted almost all day. Still, I'm fighting with attention fragmentation, decreased memory etc. Nowadays most apps/web apps you open have a 'notifications' tab, menu item etc. creating yet another inbox for us. (Which we probably don't need unless it's work related or something.)
I silenced a few websites that way. I also removed some feeds and distracting elements.
I load devdocs.io in a persistent tab, get all the software I think I'd need for the day/weekend and turn on airplane mode. I don't need to Google everything - between devdocs, man pages and just figuring stuff out by myself, it can be very fun to code disconnected.
The moment I got internet back at touchdown marked the end of my progress on the book. This was... four days ago. I think some airplane condition replication might be just what I need. I'm curious if I could go as far as to get some uncomfortable airplane seats and a simulated sky window.
I didn't know about devdocs.io—thanks!
that said I flew economy plus on lufthansa from seattle to frankfurt in 2019 and sat in the front left bulkhead seat. Being a premium seat they completely ignored the 3 bags I had up against the bulkhead at takeoff (safety rules and plastic utensils are for the cattle, comfort and metal cutlery are for those who pay). It was great. I had my latop comfortably on the folkd out tray, and I watched big hero 5 and 2 other shameless airplane movies on the pull up tv. I reviewed over 30 docs in offline mode, and was able to build a very good root cause and action plan (I was doing failure analysis).
A offline/online docs site would be quiet helpful as what styimies me from coding is not having that one dependency or one doc I need and having to pivot.
The idea is to make it a browser plugin, that forces me to fill that form every two weeks by making every new tab that form until I fill it.
Genuinely curious.
There are also smaller, more frequent threads that focus on recurring topics such as big tech power, cryptocurrency, Elon Musk, H1B visas that also head in predictable directions and can be avoided.
I always feel like garbage during the summer, but always chalked it up to allergies, some kind of low level chronic dehydration, or poor schedule discipline (used to be, when classes ended, my bedtime became about 3 am almost immediately. I'm older and that doesn't [can't] happen anymore, but since the sun sets very late now, I still get a minor version of it).
There are a lot of external factors that I thought might contribute also. For one thing, every weekend of the summer is pretty much booked up, which becomes exhausting. Back in college, I also remember feeling kind of bluesy in the summer. I guess I didn't have the <whatever> to activate my brain by myself, so I looked forward to fall/learning time again.
I'm rambling, but interested to hear a little more about what you mentioned.
[1]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL21618775W/How_to_Break_up_wi...
The problem is though, I'm addicted to my computer. I'm not actually sure it's that much better.
Unfortunately even if you run a FLOSS OS you run on crapload of proprietary fw down to the CPU but again, you have some ability to move and act, on a mobile you are just free to do what the OEM decide you are allowed to, with it's right to change policy as it wish.
Practice conversing and talking.
Socialising is a muscle, and smartphones (and other devices) are a crutch that lets us avoid using that muscle.
Then within those categories you have easier and harder games (and better made or less better).
Try a sampler platter and see what works and is fun.
Some specific suggestions:
Love letter, Takanoko, munchkin, elder sign.
Staying in touch with friends, finding new interesting people, browsing local events, deciding where to meet, etc.
The problem is when you are just "on the phone", not really doing anything, not anything you planned to do, and not really getting anything done. Even this can be fine, as long as you go "I'd like to see whats on twitter for half an hour", rather than just opening things up and doing them because the algorithm pulls you in.
There's nothing wrong with smartphones per se. It's that the smartphones become a crutch to avoid socializing in person. All the excuses come out to prevent that crutch from being removed.
When we eat out we try to do the same but because of the damn menus, translation app, etc. the screens still come out. We still are usually doing much better than the other tables in the restaurants. Helps to turn the devil device face down.
We think it is just so sad to see people out on a date, or even a clearly married older pair, each staring at their (own) screens.
Technical books are better on larger screens, so the Kindle only gets used if I read that kind of book. Though the Kindle has way too few pixels imo, so I often read these on my desktop or ipad too.
Using a mobile is like reading while looking through a toilet roll, and typing by using a straw in my mouth :P
I often get questions from people on WhatsApp saying "How can you reply so quickly??". Well duh... I use a real computer :) Anything I can do on the mobile I can do twice as fast on the computer.
For me it just 'hurts' when my brain cycles are forcibly wasted. Not just with this, also with those stupid mandatory trainings in work where the narrator is so slow to make sure even the most mediocre non-native numbnut can keep up. It just frustrates me so much when I'm forced to listen to that (usually I spend my time looking through the javascript to find a way to turn off the non-skip setting :P )
I actually got caught out by that once when an intern noticed I had only spent 1 hour on a course everyone else spent at least 3 hours on :P But I told her I was on a plane so when I finished it I was in a different time zone :D
There is very often (even some in the article) visual noise in or around the text. Ads are designed to draw attention to themselves, and ignoring them wears on your cognitive resources.
Sometimes the text is "enhanced" to fight back against the surrounding noise by adding images or color or highlighting portions of the text or any number of tricks. That just makes the visual noise worse, and further adds to the habit of skimming.
It's like talking in a bar. The noisier it gets, the more the communication turns into shouting short simple sentences, further adding to the noise level, further imposing restrictions on what's able to be communicated.
You can control what takes your attention, but at the same time everything is _designed_ to take your attention. Ad blockers are an example of this sort of exercise - you can limit what tries to take your attention, but it requires action.
A man of culture!
We discussed it a few times, and my belief is that small amount of friction, entering a particular room to go online, was enough to help him get more intentional about how he spends his days.
Needless to say, the man had a lot of interesting hobbies and was well read.
This won't work for everyone, but maybe 6 months ago I got a phone safe (this kind of thing: <https://shorturl.at/drzMT>, I refer to it as the "phone jail"), which I leave my phone in from bedtime every night to ~4pm the next day. And I leave the whole rig on my bedroom shelf while I go to work at the library/cafe/kitchen table.
There are obvious drawbacks to this that I don't think most people would accept (especially regarding being reachable or having a way to place emergency calls). But it's been invaluable for me to make the mental space I need to finish my manuscript. Plus you can still use the phone through the holes in the cover if you need to, it's just really annoying and not very portable.
In the long run, I'd like to become a fliphone guy like some other commenters here, but I genuinely do get a lot of value from having a smartphone. I just need to get away from it during working hours.
Most people wasting time on smartphones would put it down almost immediately if it had no internet access.
You could use a VOIP number but then it would go down when the Internet goes down.
The internet, it's a hell of a drug. Can't live with it, can't live without it.
I love being unreachable, it's one of the reasons I'll often turn my phone off during the work day or leave it at home. This means I won't have a phone to make emergency calls, but I'm not really bothered by that (it's how I lived over half my life).
On Android, I used Digital Wellness to monitor how I was spending time. Then I uninstalled all the timewasting dopamine-trap apps, set limits on Firefox (10min day), disabled vibration/sound notifications except for phone calls, removed all app icons from the home screen, and set a complex unlock passcode (disabled face unlock). I also started using the phone for "harder" things, like writing long emails.
At this point, my ADHD brain just sees the phone as a tool... because that's all it is.
Next step is figuring out how to apply the same lessons to my laptop.
That problem is that people, as a rule, live in a dream-world. The smartphone just provides the most convenient exterior manifester of dreams that we've invented so far.
The cellphone is a dream-amplifier. The natural evolution from books, radio and tv.
But the central problem isn't the phone. It's our habitual-dwelling-in and preference-for the dreamworld. The phone is just the enabler.
Every time I take a vacation, I spend much less time plugged into the world. Each time, I come back refreshed and more in touch with myself.
The phone and our collective reliance on them is not healthy. It will take some collective effort for me, and some of my friends, to try to plan events more regularly, in order that I am not feeling the need to have my phone with me so much.
I'm also going to make a few more MP3 discs for my car, which thankfully has a CD player (2014 model).
I can't emphasize enough how important it was for me to read this article. At least I know I'm not alone.
I just stuck to my Nokia 'dumbphone' while it still worked and after the last of the networks that it used went dark I switched to the N800, it's not perfect (technically a smartphone, it runs KaiOS), but it still has buttons and I refuse to go online with it (you can't do much on that silly screen anyway). In a pinch it will serve as a mobile hotspot.
My work makes me eager to throw my phone/laptop away as soon as possible; I'm definitely a workaholic and rather dangerously at that, so maybe I'm getting the same result via a different means; but there is almost always a point at the day when I just need to zone out on a dumb show I've watched a ton of times or just take a run with a bit of music or a nice walk and zone out on some music or even just the sounds of the city for awhile.
My work more or less has roped me into social media to some degree for some part of the day, and I really don't like social media at all; I don't dismiss it, it's just not the way I like communicating and because I deal with a lot of awful customers via social media (often fruitlessly) I have a very dour understanding of it as the same communication mechanisms that the awful customers implement are what I see elsewhere. When I do see non-negative/complaining content on social media, it's just not that interesting, and I'm more relieved that it's not some non-sense I have to deal with than I am interested in what someone has to say.
For me, modern social media even makes it easy for me not to get into it. Instagram floods sponsored objects when I just want to go and like my friend's pictures/stories. Reddit kills itself for me with its comment/voting system and the efforts to make it readable in a way I like just isn't worth it for the content I find. Twitter is the best at keeping me out of social media as it actively does its best to ensure I can't read Twitter content without signing up and giving a bunch of information I don't want to give, so I don't even have a chance to get hooked on something before the login modal hides the content. The less said about Youtube and its social media aspect, the better but it's absolutely unintelligible; even trying to follow older conversations (less than a month) is impossible sometimes as there are so many orphaned responses that you can't follow the context of a given answer as it was deleted or hidden somewhere else or someone changed their username(? I'm not sure if this is a thing but it's one of the only other ways I can understand what I see).
I can at least respect TikTok in that you can access everything without an account or even an app, and more or less it's the same experience, but there is so much repeat content that it's just not interesting.
When I want to check something nowadays, I just check it. If I want to go for a walk and just think for awhile, the most distracting thing is just that I'm processing too many projects/problems from the week, and I need to physically move a bit to calm down a bit. Cooking, running, reading articles, taking a crack at some code project, it's calming because it's easy to focus on, and the only challenge I have is just exhaustion most of the time.
As someone who felt the need to be on top of things, receiving notifications was slightly stressful as it meant something I'd have to evaluate and make a decision on "right now". (Obviously, feeling like I should react to things immediately was something I had to work on in myself, but the phone didn't help.) Feeling a notification buzz on my phone gave me slight anxiety as I'd immediately react with, "oh, what is this that I might need to take care of?" Putting the phone aside for periods helped, so the idea of not being able to escape it with notifications on my wrist was a little terrifying.
In the last few years, I've set my phone to always Do Not Disturb mode, so it doesn't vibrate or even light up when a notification comes in. I do the same on my Mac. It's helped quite a bit with my stress levels. I just manually check periodically to see if there's a notification instead of always feeling like it could go off any minute.
You can do some things quickly without sinking into the infinite scroll of the phone. I.e. you can check your calendar and that’s it
I want to read some book and play some computer games. Neither is working for me because of some "problems"(?). In case of books I was aware that the phone is the problem. But in case of games I was pretty sure that I'm just "too old". But more and more I think about it, the phone is again the cause of this.
Maybe, it's not the right month. Too hot to do anything remotely complex.
Yes phones are designed to be addictive in a negative way, but I think we should also recognize they are a safety blanket we can take anywhere with us that costs almost nothing to use as much as we need. We should partially put the blame on the society around us that makes us need thar safety blanket so badly.
* Disable unnecessary notifications * Get an app like Daywise to batch notifications that are necessary but not timely. * Use Digital Well-being on Android or Action dash to set timer on your apps (owned by a marketing company though) * Track streaks of days where your usage is < x hours using a Habit tracker such as Habits
There’s no such thing as an ‘average’ attention span, and even for those individual tasks it would be very much context dependent (where I’m sitting, what I’m doing at the time, my general opinion of the author, the mood I’m in).
It’s a nice story, and it will invariably generate a nice stream of anecdata in a comments section like this, but there’s very little evidence for it at all.
It was such a disruptive technology it lead to fake news plunging Europe into a century of wars and genocides: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wars_of_religion
We can't even measure what attracts the attention of people. We can't track their eyes. We haven't been improving our techniques for catching someones attention and focus for the last decades+. We don't try to keep people hooked to our websites by making sure they stay engaged. FarmVille is a only a myth, too. "Endless scrolling" doesn't actually exist either.
Chatbots on websites, which try to engage you in a conversation within seconds of inactivity, don't actually do so to keep your attention on the site.
Man ...
If all your understanding is based solely on data other people have gathered, then you not only are completely unaware of all the potential data that hasn't been gathered yet, you also have only very little understanding of pretty much anything out there.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2954158/
Cute quip, but wrong.
He's been so busy noticing everything else that he didn't bother to pay attention to the hugely disruptive distraction everyone's been talking about for over a decade now.
And then he blames his inability to focus on some externality instead of realizing it's his condition.
What?