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We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

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Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#141

Post by ramphastidae »

imbnwa wrote: post #36
rubicon33 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am going to make a counter point, albeit one that I don't like: Advising kids to lean away from modern life and push back on the progress of distracting technologies will actually be a more anti-social move than not. What I mean is that to exist and live in the modern world increasingly requires adept skills at managing bespoke technological platforms. To be a social being in the 21st century is largely about navig…

I wager the sexual success of most young men does not hinge on their social media read/write frequency.

I wouldn’t be sure — being off social media is seen as a red flag these days among young people, esp on dating sites, where linking your Instagram / Snapchat in your profile is considered par for the course. This is obviously satire but there is truth to it too: https://youtu.be/GEWnXmDfVZg

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#142

Post by suketk »

warent wrote: post #17
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #7

It is interesting how manufactured distraction-free sessions like yoga, meditation, paid retreats, have emerged to fill the demand for idle time. We’re forgetting how to unplug unless it’s a product or service that we can buy. The distraction issue is the number one issue holding back most of the young people in the mentorship group I’m part of. They’re so glued to their phones to check minute-by-minute updates about…

> Bitcoin is especially distracting right now, as they’re all nervously watching the real-time changes of their $1000 portfolios to see if they need to be sad about losing money because it’s crashing or sad about not investing more money because it’s going up. Great way to articulate this! This very experience is relatable although in my case with normal stocks, and something very interesting happened. I sold some st…

Yes! I had this same realization recently, which led me to write about it because it was so striking. It's scary how quickly we can becomes engrossed in our perception as opposed to reality. https://suketk.com/thought-space-vs-reality

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#144

Post by Nasrudith »

thewarrior wrote: post #60

Glad I found this useful post while refreshing HN for some mental stimulus. A book I found silly when I read it was Future shock. It said that change and information would be so rapid in the future that people would be in permanent state of shock. Seemed like a ridiculous notion at the time but not anymore. 22 year old me read about the Jewish tradition of Sabbath day and found it so silly. A day where you’re not sup…

I think future shock is something for the non-young period. If you are young you don't have a set of norms embedded and are adapting to the new. Phenomenally messed up things like domestic violence can be assumed normal because that is their baseline. This is because of a lack of a strong baseline trained in to have dissonance towards.

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#145

Post by Viliam1234 »

p0d wrote: post #112
warent wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is especially distracting right now, as they’re all nervously watching the real-time changes of their $1000 portfolios to see if they need to be sad about losing money because it’s crashing or sad about not investing more money because it’s going up. Great way to articulate this! This very experience is relatable although in my case with normal stocks, and something very interesting happened. I sold some st…

I sold my $1000 in bitcoin as it was proving a distraction. I was constantly checking it's value. I also came to the conclusion I don't believe in bitcoin. I was just hoping to make money which doesn't resonate with my values. I am good for money. I am thinking of turning my attention to micro loans to get my mind off the topic of myself. It took a long walk to break the bitcoin distraction and start to see sense. I…

> I sold my $1000 in bitcoin as it was proving a distraction. I was constantly checking it's value.

One more reason to HODL. Buy some bitcoins, forget that they exist, check the situation 10 years later... either bitcoin doesn't exist anymore (more likely), or you are a millionaire (less likely, but the chances are better than in lottery).

My colleagues are watching bitcoin prices all the time... most of them don't even own any! I bought some, and they were like "hey, did you notice the price went up, are you happy?" or "hey, did you notice the price went down, are you sad?" every day. I told them "guys, please do not talk to me about bitcoins; I am going to check their price in 2030, and until then, I don't care".

I have an approximate idea of where the bitcoin is now, because seeing the headlines on HN, it is hard to avoid the information. But I don't know what happened yesterday, or during the last week. I could check the current price in 5 seconds... but I won't, because emotionally I just don't care. Instead I will submit this comment, and then try to forget that bitcoin exists.

(And this is not specific to bitcoins; I would do exactly the same thing with gold or stock market. Unless active trading is my job, which it is not, I do not need the daily numbers.)

I wonder why this is so emotionally easy for me, and many other people seemingly can't do it. It's not like I don't need money. I don't even feel particularly stoic. It is suspiciously similar to learned helplessness. Maybe I just focus my attention elsewhere... like writing comments on HN.

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#146

Post by nidgood »

spookthesunset wrote: post #132
p0d wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sold my $1000 in bitcoin as it was proving a distraction. I was constantly checking it's value. I also came to the conclusion I don't believe in bitcoin. I was just hoping to make money which doesn't resonate with my values. I am good for money. I am thinking of turning my attention to micro loans to get my mind off the topic of myself. It took a long walk to break the bitcoin distraction and start to see sense. I…

Stuff like that is exactly why I just invest in boring market-wife index funds.

Dude she might be boring to you.. but she is someone’s wife. Have some respect .. sheesh ..

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#147

Post by moneywoes »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #68
warent wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is especially distracting right now, as they’re all nervously watching the real-time changes of their $1000 portfolios to see if they need to be sad about losing money because it’s crashing or sad about not investing more money because it’s going up. Great way to articulate this! This very experience is relatable although in my case with normal stocks, and something very interesting happened. I sold some st…

I posted something recently here about a similar epiphany. We really do get to decide what we believe to be true, and we even get to decide how we respond to the truth. We can change how we feel about things over time. None of this is static. What sent me down that rabbit hole in a big way was stoic philosophy. I’m not 100% on board with it, but when it comes to this it has literally changed my life. I now take an ac…

Can you please detail how you would apply that technique on dealing with a break up

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#148

Post by mns06 »

lrossi wrote: post #56
latexr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just a few days ago I was thinking of adding a dns block for it. In your profile you’ll find noprocrast , maxvisit , and minaway , which you can use to limit your time on the site. > But that 1% of the links is sweet You can use RSS feeds to be notified of stories with over N points[1] (or another rule), lessening the desire to look at everything. [1]: https://hnrss.github.io/#activity-parameters

I had no idea about this. Thanks, I will try it out.

Also check out this feed of the top 10 HN stories daily: https://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ I find it cuts out a lot of the noise

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#149

Post by mackrevinack »

esperent wrote: post #34
ppf wrote: post #8

I've spent the last year or so trying to control my smartphone usage, by removing apps and trying to set rules for myself like "your phone stays in the kitchen for most of the day". I recently took the plunge and got rid of it entirely, and it was truly surprising to realise how much of my time and attention it had still taken, despite my best efforts. If you think you're ready for that step, I highly recommend it. J…

I've considered doing this, but it's not possible for two reasons: all my banking apps require using a smartphone. And second, I'm a web developer and need to test sites on a phone daily. There's also one killer app I don't want to stop using: maps (Google, Apple, Open Street Map, doesn't matter which). However, I have switched to NextDNS and locked out a large chunk of the internet on the phone. That helps.

if you're on android, there's an app you might like called "target home launcher" that will let you set your map app as the home screen. i have mine set to open metro so it feels more a like an mp3 player first that's also able to do other things if needed

you could then use something like zone launcher and only add one or two important apps to it, or use swiftly switch instead and set it up so you have to search for an app, basically making it harder to casually wander onto some social media app like you would if you had them all showing on your homescreen

Re: We live in an age of distractions, dealing with constant mental stimulus

#150

Post by mackrevinack »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #23
ppf wrote: post #8

I've spent the last year or so trying to control my smartphone usage, by removing apps and trying to set rules for myself like "your phone stays in the kitchen for most of the day". I recently took the plunge and got rid of it entirely, and it was truly surprising to realise how much of my time and attention it had still taken, despite my best efforts. If you think you're ready for that step, I highly recommend it. J…

Will it even be possible for many people to give up smartphones in favour of a dumbphone any more? Thanks to COVID, you may have to own an Apple or Android smartphone to do certain things. Several countries have announced that their vaccination certificate will exist mainly in digital form, with one official app that generates limited-time QR codes. For instance, I can’t find any information on what Israelis without…

what about an old smartphone then? one that can do all that stuff but one that is slow and has a small screen so it would be really annoying to use for any length of time?
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