Ask HN: How do you stop time wasting on the internet?
I'm not on social media (Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, fb etc) and I don't use my phone that often but I spend a lot of time on computers and tend to waste a lot of time on Reddit/HN/ simular sources.
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 92.5 ms ] threadLike you, I also do not use social media beyond HN.
It's hard, honestly, to do work on computers, because they're rife with distractions. When I want to read, I deliberately leave my phone in the other room. When I can, work things out with pen&paper, again, phone and computer in another room -- but it's rare that a problem I'm working on can be approached with pen&paper.
For example -- "I've been anxious lately, I should sit down and journal in my physical notebook for 5 minutes" or "I haven't taken a lot of play time to myself lately, let's go read something offline for 30 minutes."
Re-framing it slightly so it feels like a practical suggestion to immediately do something from somebody else to myself helps break down a lot of the procrastinationation loops, imo. Triggers that "I want to be useful" feeling.
I also have almost entirely gotten off social media, helped by putting specific Twitter users and subreddits into my NewsBin feed, where it's much easier to avoid algorithm influence. I open the apps or websites only if I want to respond or ask a question.
https://linuxize.com/post/how-to-edit-your-hosts-file/
I spend a lot of time here especially when I don't have anything better to do but I wouldn't call it a waste.
If you had been on Facebook etc then yeah that is a total waste. I think you're doing pretty well already.
Of course shit posting is often much more enjoyable than "doing [x]" or we wouldn't be doing it in the first place, so there's some life balance issues - but it's a real consideration nonetheless. I often wonder how many Einsteins went without ever truly finding their niche; not because of lack of development in some area, but because of it! The internet can provide endless addictive entertainment and enjoyment, even of a higher brow nature. It's easy to lose yourself in it.
You can still do everything you need, but everything will be awful, and you'll not enjoy doing anything you only want to do.
Reddit/HN are less appealing when you can't interact with someone, especially if you feel they're wrong and correct info needs to be supplied.
If you really want to stop doing something, don't place yourself in a situation where it's easy to do so.
I can only keep away by "internally" rating the whole platform as trash.
For Instagram, Tiktok, and Facebook specifically, my only recommendation is to delete your accounts and exercise abstinence. Worked for me anyway.
Coin acceptor is connected right to OpenWrt router via USB. Once you put a quarter, it turns on Internet for 30 more minutes.
Dispenser is connected to PC with the app where he has to solve (not very hard) math puzzles. When you reach the score of 10, the coin is getting dispensed.
Internet usage is down 2-3 times now, compared to what it was before.
Even if you have a router in another room with a single physical button attached via USB, you'll be lazy going to another room to turn the Internet on. Have a book by your place and you'll see how much you started reading.
Reach out if you need OpenWrt router hacking help.
Is the router off for everyone when disabled or is it like an IP based block using the router's API to add and remove blocks on demand?
I've also turned off history auto-suggestions in my search/URL box, so that when I look for a website it only suggests relevant work locations I define in my bookmarks.
I can (and often do) open a secondary browser to waste my time with, but I don't do it quite as impulsively. And when I'm ready to go back to work, I just kill that second browser window, and I've effectively removed myself from the distracting context
It's a pretty simple and free solution, takes maybe 10 minutes to install and configure.
Yes there are fairly easy ways to get around the blocks, but 90% of the time I'm able to respect the block and so it saves hours of time daily.
It’s a lot tougher than /etc/hosts: Disabling it during a locked block is very hard. That’s perfect for me.
I permanently blocked all news sites and gave me an allowance for HN.
There are also extensions that remove the recommended feed from Reddit, so you can still interact with pages found from search, but can’t discover new content once on Reddit. That greatly reduces my time spent there.
Productivity is temporary, discipline is forever.
They let you create a highly flexible schedule (e.g. lunch breaks), and even support Pomodoro Timers (e.g. 20 on, 20 off, etc). But the biggest feature is privacy respecting (i.e. non-cloud, non-sharing data with advertisers) and non-subscription. It is just an old-fashioned desktop application with several browser extensions.
They have some nice website lists to save initial setup time like "social media" or "shopping" that will nuke all the big names. But they support wild cards or even application specific blocks. HN isn't in the "social media" list by the way.
It is designed to be hard to bypass/disable/modify. Even how each individual block's settings are locked is very configurable, which is nice.
The UI does suffer from the "invisible button" trend, so you'll have to figure out that there are three buttons under each block none of which look like clickable buttons (schedule config, break config, and settings-lock config). Also, the "On" button enables/disables the SCHEDULE rather than the block itself. So if a block isn't working after scheduling making sure it is "On" too.
PS - No doubt I'll get crapped on by the "just self-control" crowd. I'd argue that if this problem was easily overcome, people wouldn't be making threads on the topic and continuing to have problems. I don't think application enforcement should be anyone's long term goal, I see it more like a Nicotine Patch, a temp middle-ground to help make achieving your goals easier.
Whenever I find myself doing this it’s always because I am avoiding something (either doing something or thinking about something).
Find out what those things are, and deal with them.
That's up there with "just be more happy" (for depression), "just exercise," "just eat less food" (for obesity) in terms of being entirely unconstructive.
Yes, chronic procrastination is an avoidance technique but "just do it" isn't actually an effective strategy to overcoming it.
Here's a video that people suffering from this may actually find helpful:
https://youtu.be/sYhQMR8FrKc
It offers actionable advice and strategies.
The other advice given if “install this software to block sites” may not actually work since without the sites they’ll just find for another way to distract themselves