Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?

* Use the CLI for everything - reduce the amount of time you have a browser open

* An egg timer - use this every time a tedious task needs completing

* A dumb phone - small and minimal functionality, easy to forget about

* A watch - stop using your phone for checking the time

* Cook your own food - excellent use of time

* Exercise - no headphones, a gym provides background music and enough human contact to keep boredom at bay

* Long-form media - books, films, music

* Return to things you know you like - 'it is better to know one book intimately than to have read one hundred'

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone"

...but maybe that better sums up OP's issue rather than a solution.

Either way you'll need to take steps to make it harder to do the things you're currently doing (e.g. get a dumb phone, set up a firewall rule to block these sites, set a timer) but there might be a deeper underlying issue of having nothing better to do.

Perhaps making other aspects of your life more difficult will eat up this idle time while also providing more fulfillment. I've personally found that riding a bike to get food at some place farther away (as opposed to eating at home, ordering food, or just driving somewhere) is an excellent way to detach digitally, get some exercise, and force yourself to see new parts of your town/city. Obviously this doesn't work for everyone but the gist of this is to force yourself to take time to do something unexpected and difficult and find your reward in that instead of reading every HN thread, checking every email, and responding to all the memes your friends send.

1. Quit it all entirely. 2. Wean yourself down to a lower intake. 3. Do nothing and suffer the consequences.

For myself, I still consume a lot of content, but I decided to be more picky about what content I consumed. Furthermore, I decided to start doing something with the knowledge, the results of which you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqirAnnqaCZ8lT8w7p2P...

In general I’m persuaded that the Graph Mind is not evil (https://joeldueck.com/graph-mind.html), and that FOMO and being plugged in are good, functional instincts. So I don’t really make an effort to tamp down on my consumption.

However I’ve also found that using my creativity, making things, and being able to share things I’ve made ARE crucial to how rewarding it feels to “be online” in general. (https://joeldueck.com/being-in-the-graph-mind.html)

Your consumption probably feels shallow because you don’t have anything creative to work on that feels more interesting and rewarding than whatever else you’re doing.

The only way for that to change is to force yourself to start working on something. It isn’t until you start that ideas start to come. But of course, when you’re tired, this is EXTREMELY difficult.

Here’s how I’ve been able to climb out of that hole:

1. My kids got old enough to sleep through the night.

2. Eventually my wife and I had a hard conversation about how important creativity is to me and how to make space for it in our lives. This unblocked me mentally and creatively quite a lot even though nothing materially changed for some time after. Up till then I had been silently martyring my personal time for anything that came up and never having anything left over. Having the issue out in the open and understood by those close to you is a huge relief by comparison.

3. Months before this conversation, we had another hard conversation about my work schedule. I’d gotten burned out on a huge project, which had finished, but gotten me into the habit of leaving work at 6 or 7 every day. Another case of poor boundary-setting and not being honest with myself. I stopped doing that; I now leave work at 5pm every day. Fortunately I’m in a position to be able to do that.

3. I focused (and still focus) on small, achievable projects (example https://dicewordbook.com), where I’d be able to make good progress in the one or two hours of time I have in a week where I’m both free and have energy.

3a. Nothing is too small. Anything counts. A well-written tweet counts. A handwritten page. Buying an item for a project counts.

Regarding the last one, Robin Sloan just had a newsletter (https://www.robinsloan.com/newsletters/sunshine-skyway/) where he articulates it very well:

> When you start a creative project but don’t finish, the experience drags you down. Worst of all is when you never decisively abandon the project, instead allowing it to fade into forgetfulness. The fades add up; they become a gloomy haze that whispers, you’re not the kind of person who DOES things.

> When you start and finish, by contrast — and it can be a project of any scope: a 24-hour comic, a one-page short story, truly anything — it is powerful fuel that goes straight back into the tank. When a project is finished, it exits the realm of “this is gonna be great” and becomes something you (and perhaps others) can actually evaluate. Even if that evaluation is disastrous, it is also, I will insist, thrilling and productive. It’s the pump of a piston, preparing the engine for the next one.

> Unfinished work drags and depresses; finished work redoubles and accelerates.