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Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

zan.bearblog.dev

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Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#161

Do you even lift? I mean that seriously. Lifting heavy weights helps one get rid of all that mental bullshit. It's a cornerstone habit. So lifting can form a base for all other beautiful stuff in your life. It's hard to care about trivial shit on Youtube or Instagram when you just lifted dumbbells until fatigue and did some good squats.

Or browse the internet between sets. It’s big brain time. I’m not even joking, if you’re going to waste time at least multitask and get stronger/healthier in the process.

For that reason I never take my phone to the gym. I just enjoy resting between sets. I also try to make my workout as efficient as possible.

Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#162
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to spend a lot of time on youtube, in part because I had the free time to spend on it, and had gaps in my schedule that were convenient for watching certain content creators. Since moving into the workforce, my free time is no longer segmented into so many pieces. I don't get as much value as I used to from 10 to 15 minute chunks of entertainment, so I stop keeping up with the sources, and just lose touch. It…

I'm coming to a realization across all facets of my life, where I am interested or engaged in many more things than I have time for. I am starting to prepare myself for the uncomfortable process of sacrificing a few (in fact, many) things I've previously mentally and emotionally invested in, but I know it's going to be a big shift and the dread causes my feet to drag. There's just not enough time... and I don't belie…

Curiosity can be a curse, and has killed several cats.

I may have been on psychedelic mushrooms at the time, but something I took away from the trip was an acknowledgement of a feeling of 'shedding' in life, in terms of hobbies and interests.

Stuff will get boring and be forgotten, or fall to the side and be ignored while it collects dust. This is something that I should expect to happen, and be prepared for. So long as you derived some value from those once-great things, it hasn't been a waste, and is just a symptom of time passing.

Maybe you pick those things back up later, and maybe you don't. For myself, I think my 'best life' would be one where I had the space and tools to be able to pick up or put down whatever ideas come to me.

Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#164
sometimes i wonder why do i waste so much time high, not even doing productive work. Just drinking and smoking and sometimes doing lines. Its not like I enjoy them 10/10. So why do I do this? I even made a stratergy to stop this, but no matter what I do, it just...doesn't work. I will follow that thing for 2-3 days then back to that unproductive and mindless pithole. I haven't achieved anything in life, but i want to, i want to own things...i want to have friends...i want to have fun....but this....something is just holding me. I could simply just say i'm lazy, but is that a good reason..why would i even need a reason.

I would like to think its not laziness, but then what even is it? And again i will search on the internet about this, find some videos that talk about this, then some people in the comments will say the "i suffer from the same things",,,and then? then i will feel better that there are people that are similar to me....and? guess what? back to the same routine. I am sick of this...its like i know i will not have these comfortable days, these days where i just sit down and stay sober. But what will be at the other side of it? A person who i would envy and want to be like or someone who no one cares about and is pathetic

Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#165
It sounds like their habits are influenced by your environment. Just tie the habit to a new productive habit. Make it work for you.

Example 1: start learning a new natural language, and also switch all your social media feeds to only provide content in that language. You'll either lose interest in learning the language and start withdrawing from social media, or your unbreakable habit will sustain your new language learning habit.

Example 2: I listen to a lot of music. I don't feel right unless it's running in the background. So I tried learning french and listen to only french pop. It worked for a few months, but then I hit the problem of not being able to pick up spoken (not written) french and parse its grammar while also trying to pick up the phonetics of native speakers. But I then learned about creole and its more flexible and simpler grammars and phonetics. I was able to start thinking in the language using french vocabulary. So I pivoted my habit to learning Haitian Creole and listening to Haitian music.

Re: Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

#169
post #17

Just speaking for myself, I've noticed that my habit is to eat what is in front of me, and clean my plate. I mean this both literally and figuratively. If I have dessert in the house, like a bag of chocolate, then I eat one after dinner. If I don't have it in the house, then I just don't eat dessert. If I have a social media feed full of content, then I'll scroll through all of it until there's nothing else that's ne…

Thought this was just me and it’s so refreshing to hear. I can never eat just part of a bag of chips. Or save the really good sandwhich for later. Or not drink another coffee because I already had one. Etc. etc Do lots of other folks experience this? I seem to only have self control when it hurts my job or income, and even then, barely.

Yes indeed, many of us do. Nearly everyone I've ever dated gets mad at me at some point because I can't keep cookies in the house or I will eat them all. You are far from alone, and in fact I suspect the overwhelming majority of people are the same. Hence the obesity epidemic.

Personally I find that my self-control is limited to the same extent that my time and energy are limited. If I'm tired, it's harder for me to be disciplined, and the place that I most often tired is at home at the end of the day, when temptation to over eat is at the greatest. I believe there is a fairly substantial body of evidence that shows I am not unusual in this regard. This phenomenon is why groceries stores put candy in checkout lanes, when you are mentally tired from exercising discipline by not picking up the delicious-looking tray of cupcakes in the bakery aisle and thus are most susceptible to temptation.

I think some people can just use willpower to maintain their discipline in every situation, but those people are extreme outliers. Like Navy SEALs or Olympic athletes or other extreme high performers, and not even all of them. Those who can are experts at delayed gratification and are able to visualize what they want and then never deviate from their plan for how to achieve it, regardless of their current emotional state or energy levels. But that is vanishingly rare and often their behavior is a result of some deep trauma (eg someone who is super disciplined about their diet because their dad died early from an obesity-related illness) rather than a positive focus on a certain outcome. The truth is that the vast majority of people just follow their natural inclinations and do whatever is easiest for them. The path of least resistance.

As one such weak-willed person, my approach has been to structure my life to remove temptations, much as the GP comment above described their approach to curating their internet content. For example, I have lived almost exclusively in big cities for my entire life until the last year, when I moved to the middle of nowhere. Which means I can't get takeout food delivered and it's much harder to go out and get ice cream on a whim. Compared to living in a major city where I could get Michelin star restaurant food delivered in a matter of minutes, the temptation is just much, much less powerful. I order my groceries online too, which also dramatically reduces the tendency to impulse buy anything unhealthy (I get to skip the checkout lane with the candy, for one thing). On the other side of the caloric equation, I set up a home gym so that travel time to the gym doesn't become an excuse not to exercise. Basically I add barriers for bad choices and remove them for good ones. I am in the best shape of my life as a result.

I guess what I'm saying is that most people achieve good behaviors in part because of their intentional discipline and in part because their environment is conducive to those behaviors. The real trick is figuring out how to intentionally structure your environment to match whatever behaviors you want. It's effectively borrowing motivation from your peak-energy level periods to provide discipline during periods when you don't have the energy to generate it yourself. It can be incredibly hard to figure out, because you need to know how to change your environment and how you will actually react to that new environment, which isn't always predictable.

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