I am surprised nobody brought up
“Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” by Cal Newport. The book explores the idea of the post in more detail and argues for concentrated work (“deep” work) lifestyle that’s devoid of shallow activities such as reading Twitter or Facebook feeds. It heavily affected my view on the harm of addictive and distracted habits. Decreasing shallow activities has improved my ability to focus both for work and for leisure reading.
Internet addiction and the habit of book reading
111–120 of 383 posts
Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading
#112Millennials and especially Gen Z are thought to have higher rates of depression and anxiety than previous generations. I would be very surprised if social media weren’t a factor. Despite making a career in tech I believe some of what we’re doing is very harmful to culture, mental and physical health, the environment, and democracy. At some point I would like to focus on mitigating these problems.
Do they have higher rates, or better access to information, introspection, tools, awareness, and common understanding of these things? I am curious about that.
Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading
#113If one wants to read more and willing to try few ideas, here are few that works for me and our family. - Have physical books always around — at your desk, bookshelf, bedside table, etc. My current ratio is roughly 1:4 of physical against Kindle. - Read multiple books at a time. - If you get bored, don’t feel like finishing a book; let it go. May be you can come back to it later. - Always try to carry your Kindle or o…
adding to this: if your issue is one of focus, try a pomodoro timer. it's a great way to shut off that voice nagging you about all the other things you need to remember to do, because you can forget about all of those and know that in 25 minutes you'll have an opportunity to reconsider them. if you're really strict with your time management, another approach is to use detailed calendars, but that's a lot more work than just a simple timer.
Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading
#114Having failed to truly "disconnect" in the past, my recommendation in order not to be distracted by the internet is to first and foremost write down everything that you would have the urge to google. Instead of googling it, put it on paper, and continue your activity. Once you are done you can review the points that you have wrote down, and think whether they are really worth pursuing. And if they are: stop right there! Don't google it. Think about how you could get this information without the internet.
This process has helped me rediscover atlases, dictionaries, and many other forms of offline knowledge. I almost see it as a form of survivalism: asking yourself how would you learn without electricity?
Of course there will be failures, either due to loss of focus, or maybe because of perceived boredom. But if one sticks with it, it really does become a good habit.
Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading
#115HN represents a wellspring of deeper reading than is generally afforded by the current entertainment cruft portals of the web - reddit, FB, insta, USA today, financial times, etc etc down to the SEO hellholes of recipe sites, youtube product placement; you get the idea. Let's appreciate HN for the quality of reading material and its curb on our drift to the rest of the 'popular' web. And I don't think I'm alone in al…
I used to read books all the time. I spent most of my waking hours as a teenager reading books. I’m 35 now and can barely hold attention on anything, I read maybe 3 books a year if I’m lucky. Even on Hacker News I almost exclusively read and comment on the comments, not the actual article unless I see someone says “have you read the article?” I don’t really know why. I have 8+ hours a day screentime on my iPhone, whi…
I kinda feel like we were trained to be maximally receptive in an era when information was just recently proven to be the most valuable thing, but also was still kinda rare. And then they just fucking dropped the information hose into our livingrooms and... now I'm blinded.
Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading
#116Without facial expressions, it's a problem that its hard to tell how serious someone is being on the internet. So every comment is treated like the persons solemn sworn testimony for which they should be judged not just in the current moment, but forever into the future, and everything they every said in the past is relevant, if need be, to show how bad of a person they've been.
To any future digital archivist reading this line, please know that I smiled while I wrote it.
Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading
#117An alternative perspective. The reason we don’t find them engaging and are so easily distracted is because they’re not very good and we didn’t have anything to compare them with until recently. This includes classics as declared by some entirely subjective arbitrary literary authority. It’s no different to wine tasting; status is more important than enjoying the thing. Practicers of Tsundoku are a fine example of the propagandists pushing the literary agenda forwards when in reality they read 5% of every book and are too ashamed to throw it in the paper recycling where it belongs and mistake the physical presence of the book as the value of the words.
For me, peak book-reading was the 80s and involved dragging myself through the local library because the other option was smoking, lurking around in public parks drinking or being a petty criminal. There are better things to do now, like complain about this on HN. There are also far more interactive communication pursuits these days and better story telling mechanisms.
I do still read books. I think I knocked about 15 on the head this year, mostly Pratchett and The Expanse series. But it’s on a Kindle, it’s not a magical romantic experience and I tend to read while pooping, waiting for someone to do the shopping, when picking the kids up from school or stuck on a really long Zoom meeting which I don’t need to speak during.
One notable disaster book this year was The Complete Navigation Manual. I am attempting to relearn map/compass based navigation again after a 25 year hiatus. This entire book could have been condensed down into a single markdown file in github that I could have read and understood the key points in 30 minutes. Such low information density is not something I am used to or like.
Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading
#118Having failed to truly "disconnect" in the past, my recommendation in order not to be distracted by the internet is to first and foremost write down everything that you would have the urge to google. Instead of googling it, put it on paper, and continue your activity. Once you are done you can review the points that you have wrote down, and think whether they are really worth pursuing. And if they are: stop right the…
The first part makes sense. Not to distract and interrupt a productive activity.
But the second part just seems pointless improductivity, doesn't it?
I mean, to counter lack of exercises due to excessive use of cars, you would at times avoid it. But not every time, when you really can benefit from its speed, safety and comfort.
Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading
#119HN represents a wellspring of deeper reading than is generally afforded by the current entertainment cruft portals of the web - reddit, FB, insta, USA today, financial times, etc etc down to the SEO hellholes of recipe sites, youtube product placement; you get the idea. Let's appreciate HN for the quality of reading material and its curb on our drift to the rest of the 'popular' web. And I don't think I'm alone in al…
I used to read books all the time. I spent most of my waking hours as a teenager reading books. I’m 35 now and can barely hold attention on anything, I read maybe 3 books a year if I’m lucky. Even on Hacker News I almost exclusively read and comment on the comments, not the actual article unless I see someone says “have you read the article?” I don’t really know why. I have 8+ hours a day screentime on my iPhone, whi…
You might be interested in the book „dopamine nation“
Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading
#120I'm not in the whole anti-Internet camp, indeed my viewpoint is far closer to Randall Munroe's[1]. But it is a little sad how few of my peers read books. I just finished three volumes of the Robert Caro series on Lyndon Johnson along with The Power Broker. Now, granted, these are big tomes. They also cover a topic that most people would not find interesting. Yet I still find it very depressing how almost all of my pe…
the quality of any body of work is incredibly subjective. take a look at any best-sellers list and pick a random book off it: chances are (if you're like me) that you'll think it was a waste of time after having read it. so then how do you find good content? 1) have friends with common tastes, and consult them. this becomes difficult if you're a millennial surrounded by peers who don't read. 2) find short-form blogs for which the sunk cost in deciding if you like them and want to follow them is low; expand into adjacent blogs & writers. blogs don't link to each other quite like they did in the past (e.g. webrings), so this almost always puts you back into some form of social media for the aggregation (reddit), and those aggregators quite often degrade/drift over time. 3) follow the algorithm. the only platform i've found that's semi-decent at introducing me to new, quality, creators is YouTube (or TikTok, but that's a substantially different genre).
books are cool, but if any of the above tracks with you, the barrier to entry is actually a lot more substantial than the other forms of media we're accustomed to (tv shows, video games, etc). writers shoot themselves in the foot by writing massive tomes that take 800 pages to say what could have been better communicated in 200. introductions are the epitome of authors totally losing track of what the value they provide is -- and yet new authors still include them freakishly often.