Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time

Humans are in large part "information foragers", in the sense that information has been vitally important to our survival as a species, and potentially a part of why we've developed larger brains than similar animals. [0] For example: A poisonous berry has a very different utility from an edible berry. Or: A monsoon season changes the climate enough to make an important difference for your tribe's survival whenever it happens. Querying your surroundings, or other humans for this information might have a large impact.

In that sense, it makes perfect sense that we "can't stop seeking novel and potentially interesting information" on these sites. Of course the way some of them are designed to be addicting doesn't help. But it illustrates why it's hard (or impossible) to quit doing this activity in it's entirety.

Maybe we shouldn't strive to quit searching for information, but make sure we have a satisfactory information scavenging activity as our go-to? I don't know what that would look like in practice, but the first thing that pops up in my mind is something like having a list of topics that seem interesting, and that you actively seek out information on, where you partially investigate some of the forks in the road.

Then there's the problem of being too exhausted to do something actively, which might need another solution entirely of course.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3n5qtj89QE Sadly I don't remember the timestamp of Jordan Peterson's statement saying humans are information foragers, but intuitively it holds up.

I highly recommend the book 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.

The main point is that yes, these sites and activities are terrible and addictive, but let's face it, we partly desire to enter their gates and escape the notion that we are limited beings, in time and energy, with pending important tasks.

Procrastinating is an emotional issue, not a planning issue. On the one hand, it relieves us from the anxiety of the pending task, and on the other hand, wasting hours is a subtle and psychological way to make it seem like we have plenty of time (that's why we "allow" ourselves to waste it), until one day it is too late and the deception has caught up with us.

Facing an important task is the difficult thing to do because it reminds us of our finitude. That's why we do it now, because the clock is ticking and it's now or never. We are doing the right thing, but it's the disturbing thing too. I think that important things always have mixed feelings intertwined.

Sorry for my English, it's not my mother language.

All the best in this fight.

+1 for this. It helped me a lot to reduce usage. I can now go for weeks without checking news sites, and I must say my mental health has been much better for it. The need for information consumption is still there, but I started reading books and papers, not blogs and news articles.

To get the /etc/hosts block going on your machine, follow these steps:

1. run: `sudo vim /etc/hosts` and press `i` to enter insert mode

2. add a line with `127.0.0.1 domain.com` for each website you want to block, e.g

   127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com
   127.0.0.1 hckrnews.com
   127.0.0.1 twitter.com
   127.0.0.1 www.bbc.com
   127.0.0.1 bbc.com