OT, but the font used in the blog makes it very hard to read. Font face rendering seems to differ depending on OS and browser so I'm not sure if it's just my system (OSX / Chrome).
It's not brilliant here either (XP/FF6)
My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
21–30 of 85 posts
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#22I wouldn't suggest an internet diet to anyone over 15 years of age. Brains feed on information and the information on the internet is vastly more interesting than what most people encounter in an everyday "offline" life. Seems like the problem is the distractions caused by social sites. It's easy to turn that habit off, you are not missing much anyway. If you feel you are feeding too much on web fragments, read some…
You know how in the old days people used to travel to experience something new?
This is similar.
Also there's the idea that we get really good ideas when we have time to process the information we have collected. And I do in fact use this to great advantage when developing algorithms. Learn about a problem, then just go do something else.
Let's say for the past few years I've been cramming information into my head, now I'm taking a break to see if I can't come up with some insight.
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#23coding reference, wikipedia, blog writing, foursquare, skype, one hour HN every day... that's hardly what we can call an Internet diet. What about taking some holidays with no Internet at all? Like 2 or 3 weeks hiking in some remote area - it takes a few days to stop thinking about checking emails, twitter, HN etc. Bring a notebook and take notes about your ideas. Hiking works wonders for that, you'll get tons of ide…
You'd be surprised how big a diet this can actually be.
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#24I don't think the Internet has had any detrimental effect on the quality of my ideas, but it certainly has had a detrimental effect on my ability to execute them.
When I wrote my MA dissertation, I suffered from the problem that I would write a few sentences, then check the internet or a book or paper, to make sure I wasn't asserting something false, or to see if I could find something to support my assertions or whatever.
It made for exceptionally slow progress.
To fix this, I took my laptop to a coffee shop where I would have to pay for internet access, without taking any books or papers (or only taking the specific one I knew I needed to refer to). Any time I felt I needed to look something up, I would write it in my notepad, and carry on writing.
Once I had hit my target word count for the day, I would go home and look up the things I had noted down, and make any necessary corrections or footnotes.
Basically, I physically separated the act of writing from the act of research.
I've not tried it for coding, so I'm not sure how well it would work. On the one hand, you can find example code, handy boilerplate, or whole libraries for many problems, saving you masses of time over actually coding it yourself, but on the other hand, I know I've wasted hours looking for existing solutions to problems, when it would have been faster to just do it myself.
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#25With that list of yours, you are not being hard enough on banning the internet. I would suggest limit total internet usage to 1 hour (there are browser extensions to help with that), delete all social apps on phone, use IE6 so most good stuff won't work, remove flash plugin etc.
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#26This isn't radical enough. Allowing one hour of Facebook / HN per day is kind of like saying, "I'm going on a diet where I only eat ice cream between 8:00 and 9:00 pm."
Wikipedia is a huge time-sink. Needing online coding references is mostly laziness and habit. Download the docs you need, and if you still get stuck, read the source code of whatever it is you're stuck on. On the whole this is usually more efficient since there's no time lost in collateral browsing. (This is what I do on planes, trains, or when I've got Freedom.app turned on.)
I used to regularly go offline for 2-4 weeks at a time. I'd just go on vacation without a laptop or cell phone. One of the big lessons of being unplugged is just how wrong you are about needing to be all the time. Even as a founder I've managed to get away with going camping for a week by setting up everything so that emergency stuff goes out via SMS notification and throwing a netbook in my backpack (which effectively puts me in "push" mode for going online, which I've never needed or done on said trips).
Pull the plug completely. It'll be a much more instructive experience.
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#27I wouldn't suggest an internet diet to anyone over 15 years of age. Brains feed on information and the information on the internet is vastly more interesting than what most people encounter in an everyday "offline" life. Seems like the problem is the distractions caused by social sites. It's easy to turn that habit off, you are not missing much anyway. If you feel you are feeding too much on web fragments, read some…
You know how in the old days people used to travel to experience something new? This is similar. Also there's the idea that we get really good ideas when we have time to process the information we have collected. And I do in fact use this to great advantage when developing algorithms. Learn about a problem, then just go do something else. Let's say for the past few years I've been cramming information into my head, n…
"You know how in the old days people used to travel to experience something new?"
What do you mean "in the old days"? From what I can see people are still travelling a hell of a lot to "experience something new" and this is often facilitated by the Internet. And it's hardly an age thing - most people I know in their 20s seem to be very keen on travelling.
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#28I've been thinking about this lately, too. A long time ago, I spent almost no time on the internet, because there wasn't really much of an internet to speak of. Instead, I wrote code. Lots, and lots, and lots of code. Some of it in assembly; some of it, even, in hex, with tons of printed pages of processor instructions in front of me. Feats like that required a level of concentration that I find almost impossible to…
I can relate. For the last five months I have finally been committed to working full time on the idea that has been ruminating in the back of my mind for the last 10 years.
My time is spent in front of the computer doing research and writing code, and lately I have noticed that "insidious" thing too. Hacker News has become the biggest culprit so last week I enabled noprocrast mode for the first time. I was noticeably more productive.
However, even with it enabled I found myself habitually clicking on HN during context shifts -- evidently it is now wired in as a conditioned response (having it on my Chrome start page is probably one of the triggers).
Whatever it is, it's definitely noticeable and not something easily avoided because of the entanglement issue. This weekend I deactivated noprocrast to do some casual browsing and didn't turn it back on -- I probably should switch it back :)
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#29Not much of a diet, that. You pretty much described what I use the internet for, about 14 hours a day. OK, perhaps I visit HN more often, but otherwise I would fit the mould.
Re: My ideas are shitty so I'm going on an Internet diet
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mmmh, he probably refers to things like developing Farmville. It is unclear why this solves any problems and not just wastes the time of users. But to be fair, if people wouldn't play Farmville doesn't mean they wouldn't find another way to waste their time :-)
That strikes me as one of those perfectly logical justifications for contributing to a problem: "Well, if we didn't produce cigarettes, someone else would anyway." It's also a red herring; it doesn't matter if someone else would or not, all that matters is whether or not we did the deed.
Well, you are right here, but that's essentially the point I try to address. Everyone of us has to decide on his own if he wants to work on something, which has no positive effect on overall society.