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Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

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Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#361

Post by sunnyps »

satysin wrote: post #167
djsumdog wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Google/FB just for the IM. I rarely ever read status updates. But when I get frustrated on a problem or am knee deep in technical debt, you can be I'll flip over to Hacker News.

I have quit FB a few times but the reality is that FB Messenger is the main IM platform for many because it works so well going from mobile and computer. I don't use or care for any other features of Facebook. I also don't bother with Twitter anymore. I still have an account but don't ever open it. Instagram and Snapchat are rather boring for me also. So while I like social I don't really care for the media .

You can use FB messenger even after deactivating your FB account. But there are still things that can cause you to reactivate your account e.g. accessing two factor settings.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#362

Post by heartbreak »

rjromero wrote: post #345
hashtagMERKY wrote: post #31

This part really resonated with me: > Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit…

I'm curious, what is it in the human psyche that causes us to have such a desire to stay plugged in to social media? Especially when the content we go through usually only ends up white noise to us.

Fear of missing out, or FoMO: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#363

Post by r00fus »

Veen wrote: post #35
hashtagMERKY wrote: post #31

This part really resonated with me: > Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit…

> I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work I've overcome my Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter problems, but I can't seem to shake Hacker News.

It may seem trivial, but during the US primary season I had to modify my /etc/hosts file to block several political sites for my own sanity.

Yes, I can very easily `sudo vi /etc/hosts` to undo, but I never did.

Helps that I could really pull it up on my iPhone if I needed, but this way I could focus when I needed to, and if I was on my mobile I was clearly doing other stuff.

HN is problematic because signal/noise ratio is relatively high.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#364

Post by johan_larson »

sixstringtheory wrote: post #172
thenomad wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a big fan of social media, but the argument here seems specious. Here's another way to put it - "If the first thing a person does when they get up is eat, you'd say they're a glutton". True? (Or indeed "if the first thing a person does when they get up is go to the toilet, you'd say they're incontinent.")

The "first thing in the morning" idea is pulled from the CAGE assessment for addiction, as the "E" which stands for "eye-opener", the others being "cut down", "annoyance" and "guilt" https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/johns_hopkins_healthcare/dow... You're right that this one thing alone doesn't spell addiction, but if someone talked about how they should use the bathroom less, felt bad about how many times a day they w…

Thanks for sharing that link. The test seems to be setting the bar pretty darn low, however. It's enough that you think you should be doing less of something, and others have criticized you about it to the point of annoying you. That includes things I would put in the category of bad habits rather than clinically actionable disorders.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#365

Post by chaosphere2112 »

r00fus wrote: post #363
Veen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work I've overcome my Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter problems, but I can't seem to shake Hacker News.

It may seem trivial, but during the US primary season I had to modify my /etc/hosts file to block several political sites for my own sanity. Yes, I can very easily `sudo vi /etc/hosts` to undo, but I never did. Helps that I could really pull it up on my iPhone if I needed, but this way I could focus when I needed to, and if I was on my mobile I was clearly doing other stuff. HN is problematic because signal/noise rat…

My old strategy for this involved a cronjob to update my host file every five minutes, so I could edit the file and read for a few minutes when I legitimately was waiting on something to compile, but would get yanked away from the browser black hole and back to work in a reasonable amount of time.

Then I got a better job, and now I feel a lot less compulsion to sit and read the internet.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#366

Post by frostymarvelous »

Reedx wrote: post #178
Veen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work I've overcome my Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter problems, but I can't seem to shake Hacker News.

Same here. Although I never got pulled in by Facebook and only a little with Twitter, I did with Reddit and especially Hacker News. HN is the one where I find myself checking several times/day and I constantly have 20+ HN tabs. The pattern is something like this: 1) "Oh, interesting topic!" 2) Open in a tab 3) Read existing comments & the link (I don't always do the latter, admittedly) 4) Come back N hours later, rea…

Similar pattern but on mobile. Now chrome doesn't bother with the tab count, just a ':D'

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#367

Post by greggman »

Veen wrote: post #35
hashtagMERKY wrote: post #31

This part really resonated with me: > Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit…

> I've recently been finding it really hard to concentrate on my work I've overcome my Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter problems, but I can't seem to shake Hacker News.

I've blocked HN in my /etc/hosts on my laptop. I also recently blocked it on my phone. I can still read it in a VM on my laptop but at least I have to make a conscious decision to view it where as before I blocked them I'd literally type `n` and chrome would auto complete to `news.ycombinator.com` and I'd be 20-30 minutes in before I realized I never consciously decided to start reading.

I have similar problems with the net in general. This happens to me all too often. I decide to do something like take a shower. I walk to the shower and turn it on letting it heat up. I remember something that I want to remind myself to do. I walk over to the computer to type in a reminder. Before I even start typing the reminder something on the screen distracts me. 5-15 minutes go by. I go back to the shower and just before getting in I realize I never typed the reminder. So, I walk over to the computer to type the reminder and the same thing happens again. This type of thing has happened on more than one occasion. For example I'm walking out of the house, at the door I remember something tiny I want to do on the computer (send a mail, write a reminder, ...) same things happen as above.

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#369

Post by johnorourke »

mihau wrote: post #19

Great article :). Cal Newport has some reaaaallly important ideas. I encourage you to read his book Deep Work in which he explains how to create deep, complex stuff.

I can't believe there are only 3 Cal Newport mentions in the comments so far!

Re: Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It

#370

Post by tcrews »

kowdermeister wrote: post #262

I've read the whole article, but this is where I should have stopped. > I’ve never had a social media account. He basically summarized that procrastination is harmful and social media is to blame. He doesn't really share anything I haven't known as a social media addict. Kinda like saying to a smoker that smoking tobacco causes cancer. I know that, what now? I tried shutting down social media sites with plugins, bloc…

Exactly. Whenever I increase my consumption of social media, it's because I'm doing something I'd rather not be doing at work. Even these little 5-10sec wait times make me open a new tab and check HN.
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