Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
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Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
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Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#2Man Wow! I did not get a chance to read the whole thing carefully (read the first bit properly and skimmed the rest) but man that is exactly the " "blog" post I've wanted to write since so long.
It pains me to not be able to send advice with a straight face.
Three of the rare things that have been kinda helpful and consistent (ie. not in a motivational bursts way) has been: seeing a social worker and getting diagnosed with ADHD (not gonna claim that I conquered my productivity yet, but having a deeper understanding of ones self, and having the words to describe my self-observations is really valuable), doing things with people/close friends, and religion.
Not claiming that I am satisfied with myself or anything, but these are things that I have found made a small consistent deltas in my life, unlike the bursts I get when I understand a new programming paradigm or watch a Rich Hickey talk.
I with to write more and edit better, but it's in the AMs here and I have a meeting early morning.
Bey for now, fellow earthling
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#3That's an important problem that most of us struggle with. All these sites like hn/twitter/reddit/youtube are not a waste of time, they provide value if you use them correctly, like this blog post that I just read. I think the reason they become a waste of time is addiction - assuming you're mostly a consumer of these websites, instead of checking your twitter/reddit/etc feed once a day (or once in a few days), you check it every hour. That's a huge problem. There's no added value in checking it frequently, it's just an addiction. A nice benefit of checking it only once a day is that there's a lot of new content so you actually get value instead of seeing the same tweets again.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#4That's an important problem that most of us struggle with. All these sites like hn/twitter/reddit/youtube are not a waste of time, they provide value if you use them correctly, like this blog post that I just read. I think the reason they become a waste of time is addiction - assuming you're mostly a consumer of these websites, instead of checking your twitter/reddit/etc feed once a day (or once in a few days), you c…
I have a browser plugin set so I can only spend 15 minutes/day on hn and reddit. Literally nothing else works for me
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#5Allowing oneself to be bored, or at least idle, without self-judgement, can be extremely valuable. You're likely processing things in the background (often without realizing it), which will make your active decisions and activities easier.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#6Allowing oneself to be bored, or at least idle, without self-judgement, can be extremely valuable. You're likely processing things in the background (often without realizing it), which will make your active decisions and activities easier.
I do most of my best software design when bored. I used to drive with a podcast on every time. Sometimes I put nothing on and do design.
A lot of my shower time is “free range boredom” where I just think about anything. I really enjoy both of these things.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#7If you have such a hard time not reading reddit or hackernews maybe the correct conclusion is not that you're 'wasting' time but that there's something enjoyable about so called low quality or idle activities and that they're normal part of a healthy life.
I think it's deeply ironic that people will judge videogames on that basis but then to proceed to gamify and min-max their entire life because of this rat race mentality. If you think that kind of stuff is meaningless when it turns up as a hobby the correct conclusion is probably to not structure your entire personality that way.
Just be less judgmental with yourself. things don't need to be highbrow or particularly meaningful to be a good use of time. It's mostly just a cultural artifact of our time that puts ripped busybodies and entrepreneurs, and celebs and intellectuals on pedestals.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#8That's an important problem that most of us struggle with. All these sites like hn/twitter/reddit/youtube are not a waste of time, they provide value if you use them correctly, like this blog post that I just read. I think the reason they become a waste of time is addiction - assuming you're mostly a consumer of these websites, instead of checking your twitter/reddit/etc feed once a day (or once in a few days), you c…
I have a browser plugin set so I can only spend 15 minutes/day on hn and reddit. Literally nothing else works for me
Can't you just click "15 more minutes"? I find the iOS screen time limit to be worthless for this reason (as pointed out in the article).
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#9That's an important problem that most of us struggle with. All these sites like hn/twitter/reddit/youtube are not a waste of time, they provide value if you use them correctly, like this blog post that I just read. I think the reason they become a waste of time is addiction - assuming you're mostly a consumer of these websites, instead of checking your twitter/reddit/etc feed once a day (or once in a few days), you c…
Yeah, specifically, I will occasionally read things of great value on HN/Twitter, but most of the time there's nothing good on there. But intermittent rewards are more addicting than consistent rewards, so I keep checking them.
If I go on Twitter/HN a few times and see nothing good, I try to convince myself that they're on a cold streak right now and stay away for a few days, at least
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#10If you have such a hard time not reading reddit or hackernews maybe the correct conclusion is not that you're 'wasting' time but that there's something enjoyable about so called low quality or idle activities and that they're normal part of a healthy life. I think it's deeply ironic that people will judge videogames on that basis but then to proceed to gamify and min-max their entire life because of this rat race men…
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