I wish I had time to read this, but there are too many other new posts on HN that need my clicks.
Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
11–20 of 179 posts
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#12Allowing 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.
The three most productive locations for solving complicated long form thought problems are sleep, shower, and shitter. In reverse order.
All three have the commonality that, traditionally, you’re not disturbed and you can think at a relaxed pace.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#13This blog kinda orbits the idea that intent is more important than the activity itself. Browsing Reddit can be a brain-dead time sink or it can be a thought provoking exchange of ideas. I used to play World of Warcraft and I still have fond memories of “wasting” 300+ hours on it. Rather than viewing specific activities as bad or good just be aware of what your intentions are going into them. Distracting yourself from responsibilities you don’t want to face? Who cares if you do that with chess or Twitter?
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#14For the last few weeks I have been successfully blocking time wasters via DNS using nextdns.io.
The nice thing about this is that you can't get around it by altering anything that you are doing on your computer other than changing DNS settings. For example if you are using a browser extension you could have switched to a different browser.
Perhaps because I am independent/rebellious by nature it is helpful that there isn't a program actually telling me that it is blocking me.
It also helps with a layered approach: you can use this with any other tool such as a browser extension. Another simple layer that I like to use is to locally remove some sites via an /etc/hosts entry.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#15For a year I've been constantly thinking about this state and how there must be way way more people with the same experience.
I recently managed to ask a few people about their current situation. And indeed, they too share this experience.
Thank you for the short "Absence of more meaningful activities" paragraph. I was about to head down a rabbithole and procrastinate higher priority tasks but the text reminded me of more important things.
One thing I'd like to share with you all, it was by far the most helpful regarding this topic: Dr. Andrew Huberman (hubermanlab.com) recently published a video called "ADHD & HOW ANYONE CAN IMPROVE THEIR FOCUS", I couldn't possible summarize it nearly as good as Dr. Huberman did and I kindly ask you to use your favorite search engine to look it up. It opened my eyes to new options to get out of this time wasting loop that I wasn't aware before.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
yeah it does suck, so I blocked hn and reddit and a bunch of other sites on my ipad (I guess I can override it but I can resist that urge for some reason) and only look at hn/reddit on my laptop
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The three most productive locations for solving complicated long form thought problems are sleep, shower, and shitter. In reverse order. All three have the commonality that, traditionally, you’re not disturbed and you can think at a relaxed pace.
I'd add bike to that list.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#18If 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…
Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
(Many credits https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/11/time-you-enjoy/)
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#19Allowing 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 think it's good for health.
I used to be one of those guys who prided themselfs on a few hours sleep, and always working.
I had a nervous breakdown. Well a Panic Attack that didn't concern me until the next day the anxiety didn't go away. It went from days to years.
Looking back I should have played Mortal Combat with Rick at 7-11.
Re: Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time
#20That'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…
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