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The Great Attention Heist

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Re: The Great Attention Heist

#31

Post by brndnmtthws »

onion2k wrote: post #4

Do people really click more ads the longer they spend on Facebook? It feels like an unreasonable assumption to me. Clicking on an advert takes you away from the app, so if you design an app that people never want to stop using then they're never going to click an ad. The 'ideal' (for Facebook, not for users of Facebook) is an app that people want to use enough to be aware of an ad that's displayed on the page, but th…

It's probably mostly accidental clicks. Facebook doesn't care (in fact they love it), because they get paid whether the clicks are intentional or not.

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#32

Post by christophilus »

cdubzzz wrote: post #28
colmvp wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It reminds me of Cal Newport's book Deep Work, where he argues those who can deliberately focus in the 21st century and actively deny themselves from being distracted (scheduled e-mail reading, banning Slack, only reading news certain times of the day) and go deep in subject matters will have massive advantages in the knowledge economy. The open office trend certainly hasn't helped. One of my friends who is a ML code…

Another thing I did recently - shut off all alerts on my phone other than text messages and Telegram (both of which are pretty rare in my case). Before doing that I would get alerts from my personal email, a family email and multiple work emails. Now I get hardly any alerts and already feel much more productive throughout the work day because these things aren't catching my eye/ear so often. It's really interesting.

My phone spends 99% of its time either off or in silent mode. I turn it off/down during work hours so I can focus, and then I forget to turn it back on/up. It annoys the crap out of my friends / family, but it's worth it. I use it as an answering machine, GPS, and casual web browser.

What I haven't figured out how to do is do the same thing with work communications (Slack et all). Since I work remotely, it's important that I have a virtual office door that people can knock at. The problem is that if you too often have your door closed on Slack, people complain that you're never available. If you have your door open too often (the default), you always have this nagging feeling that you're going to be interrupted soon, so you may as well not start on anything that requires focus.

^^^ Does anyone here work remotely and have a good solution for this?

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#33

Post by whitten »

"Do not feed the monsters. Some are wandering thought forms, looking for a place to set up house. Some are sent to you deliberately. They come from arrows of gossip, jealousy or envy–and inadvertently from thoughtlessness. They feed on your attention, and feast on your fear." - Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems (via dukeofbookingham)

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#34

Post by pc86 »

sandov wrote: post #24
tzahola wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The decent way is to unfollow them.

The decent way is to stop using facebook.

Before the anti-FB circlejerk gets started in all its predictable glory, a lot of people use FB without any negative effects, including those of us who use it mainly for business (managing brands, etc).

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#35

Post by hi41 »

whitten wrote: post #33

"Do not feed the monsters. Some are wandering thought forms, looking for a place to set up house. Some are sent to you deliberately. They come from arrows of gossip, jealousy or envy–and inadvertently from thoughtlessness. They feed on your attention, and feast on your fear." - Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems (via dukeofbookingham)

Rightly said. Bitterness and jealousy do occupy one's being and then there is nothing left to give.

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#37

Post by chaseha »

onion2k wrote: post #4

Do people really click more ads the longer they spend on Facebook? It feels like an unreasonable assumption to me. Clicking on an advert takes you away from the app, so if you design an app that people never want to stop using then they're never going to click an ad. The 'ideal' (for Facebook, not for users of Facebook) is an app that people want to use enough to be aware of an ad that's displayed on the page, but th…

That is exactly what they've done, training you to quickly open the app to check for notifications/messages/event invites.

More recently, after running a script found on here to unfollow everyone in my feed, I've noticed that Facebook will "invent" notifications - someone's birthday, an event near me, etc - to keep the dopamine slot machine going

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#38

Post by greggman »

old news I guess but I recently realized I could block elements with ublock origin so I blocked the "hot meta questions" and "hot questions from other stack exchange sites" elements from stack overflow because I'd see some slightly interesting topic and get sucked in.

not sure what other similar helpful things I can do. I unfollow agressively on Facebook. use Fbpurity to filter as much as possible. don't use Twitter.

I still get distracted all day long. should probably ban HN from my life for the 4th time . it's not easy. I changed my hosts file once but VMs don't use the same file. tried using parental controls on iOS but they ban way too much. used noprocrast but can open incognito window although it helps not being able to comment. Wishing there was a fake VPN app for iOS I could use to block sites

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#39

Post by tomjen3 »

christophilus wrote: post #32
cdubzzz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another thing I did recently - shut off all alerts on my phone other than text messages and Telegram (both of which are pretty rare in my case). Before doing that I would get alerts from my personal email, a family email and multiple work emails. Now I get hardly any alerts and already feel much more productive throughout the work day because these things aren't catching my eye/ear so often. It's really interesting.

My phone spends 99% of its time either off or in silent mode. I turn it off/down during work hours so I can focus, and then I forget to turn it back on/up. It annoys the crap out of my friends / family, but it's worth it. I use it as an answering machine, GPS, and casual web browser. What I haven't figured out how to do is do the same thing with work communications (Slack et all). Since I work remotely, it's importan…

Have the door closed during certain hours (slack has a dnd mode, which can be overridden if it is important) then people will learn to contact you during those times, especially if you down prioritise those who accept the system.

You are going to catch some slack, offset that by producing more/better than anyone.

Re: The Great Attention Heist

#40

Post by tschellenbach »

I'd really like my phone to be able to prioritize notifications and only bug me for important things. Calls, SMS, notifications etc should all be hidden and prioritized. A call from my wife, or someone I know should be immediately shown. Notifications about important emails as well, not so much about the latest offer available on amazon.com. Phones make it hard to control the level of notifications and could do a better job at that.
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