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Why do you waste so much time on the internet?

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

#391

Post by billti »

bityard wrote: post #196
joaomacp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be a common trait in programmers, since we're rewarded by getting to the bottom of things: "why is this function failing? who calls it? in which possible states?" Most programmers have experienced being so immersed in code that we don't notice time is passing, forgetting to eat or sleep. It's similar with immersion in social media / food / whatever. We become lost in the activity and lose our sense of self. I'…

I identify with all of this, but this: > to make pauses, take a deep breath and think about "what am I doing right now? What should I be doing instead?". this too can have its pitfalls. In my case, I always feel like I have BOTH too many things that I WANT to do and too many things HAVE to do and whenever I step back and try to look at the bigger picture, I realize that I don't feel like I'm making tangible progress…

I joke about my procrastination with my team: "I looked at my TODO list for the day and there's no way I can get to 90% of it, so I might as well just not get to 100% of it". Sometimes there's a lot of truth to the joke, however.

As much as I know I should prioritize it based on urgency, highest impact, what I could delegate etc., if the willpower required to do that is more than the ramifications or not doing it, it can be a losing battle.

On days when I push through a ton of work, I'm energized at the end of the day. Compared to the feeling of guilt that I just wasted a day when there's so much to do and I achieved little. Yet knowing that still just doesn't provide the necessary motivation some days. I've yet to figure out a reliable solution for it.

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

#392

Post by 30944836 »

muwtyhg wrote: post #357
30944836 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's much shorter now, that article is almost 8 years old. With the ubiquity of digital cinema, I suspect the average shot length is 1.x seconds.

What movies are these? An average shot length of less than 2 seconds sounds like it would give me a massive headache.

Here's a list I stole from Quora: https://www.quora.com/What-films-have-the-lowest-average-sho...

ASL 1.55 - Doomsday (2008) : 4052 shots over 105 minutes

ASL 1.72 - Transporter 3 (2008) : 3360 shots over 96 minutes

ASL 1.73 - Domino (2005) : 4046 shots over 116 minutes

ASL 1.83 - Quantum of Solace (2008) : 3198 shots over 98 minutes

ASL 1.84 - Crank: High Voltage (2009) : 2718 shots over 84 minutes

ASL 1.92 - Transporter 2 (2005) : 2524 shots over 81 minutes

ASL 2.01 - Band of Ninja (1967) : 3424 shots over 114 minutes

ASL 2.01 - Moulin Rouge! (2001) : 3594 shots over 120 minutes

ASL 2.03 - Gamer (2009) : 2502 shots over 84 minutes

ASL 2.03 - The 6th Day (2000) : 3418 shots over 116 minutes

ASL 2.08 - Hot Fuzz (2007) : 3304 shots over 115 minutes

ASL 2.10 - Dark City (1998) : 2982 shots over 104 minutes

ASL 2.15 - Armageddon (1998) : 4025 shots over 145 minutes

ASL 2.17 - The Transporter (2002) : 2420 shots over 87 minutes

ASL 2.17 - The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) : 2910 shots over 105 minutes

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

#393

Post by ineedasername »

grappler wrote: post #390

I set a points threshold on what hacker news stories I see. This article broke through that threshold even though it is not worth my time, so the thing I'm going to do immediately after posting this comment is raise the threshold some more. That's the action that should always follow, any time something gets through the filter. Make the filter more restrictive. Over time, that should clear out the low value things.

Out of curiosity, what's your threshold?

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

#394

Post by ineedasername »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #265

I'm approaching my 50s, and for me, it's because I am still astounded by the achievement of a global, low-cost, communications network. When I was a child, international phone calls were still rare, expensive, and unreliable things, and if you left your home country, staying in touch mostly involved getting newspapers from home (24 hours late), or maybe getting lucky and receiving shortwave radio broadcasts like the…

Yes, I remember that early thrill of a chat room or forum where I was communicating with someone on the other side of world. And not only that, the marginal cost to do so was practically free once I already had a cheap second hand computer and a dialup connection, and during college my school ran a free dialup ISP for times when I was at home.

The shine has worn off though. The fact that you might be 10,000 miles away or even typing you comments from the International Space Station no longer thrills me. It's all become mundane. (Well, if it was the ISS then I suppose that would still be pretty awesome)

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

#395

Post by Terry_Roll »

reggieband wrote: post #253
aantix wrote: post #42

I wonder if this is because we're lonely..? Just wondering out loud here. E.g. Twitter - feels like many of the "thought leaders" I follow, their "friends" are also on Twitter. And they tweet/respond so much I often wonder if they're really ever "building a business". And are they ever interacting with their real-world friends or family? Or if their lives just consist of a constant refresh of their feed. Even at dinn…

People often say they will keep old TV shows like Friends, How I Met Your Mother or The Office on in the background. I think it simulates the feeling of having familiar social connections in ones life. In Fahrenheit 451, the protagonist's wife Mildred "finds herself more involved in the "parlor wall" entertainment in the living room – large televisions filling the walls" [1]. She frequently calls the entertainers tha…

> In Fahrenheit 451

The rewriting of online history is going on right now, its like Fahrenheit 451 is a blue print.

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

#396

Post by arcticfox »

acwan93 wrote: post #133
aantix wrote: post #42

I wonder if this is because we're lonely..? Just wondering out loud here. E.g. Twitter - feels like many of the "thought leaders" I follow, their "friends" are also on Twitter. And they tweet/respond so much I often wonder if they're really ever "building a business". And are they ever interacting with their real-world friends or family? Or if their lives just consist of a constant refresh of their feed. Even at dinn…

I've read that the decline of religion also plays a role here. Aside from the religious aspect, the sense of community and regularity you get meeting the same people on a regular basis is lost. It's kind of the mix of a loss of "third place" (institutions, coffee shops, etc.) and the increase of social media bubbles that pushes us to be more polarized, I think.

That's a really good point... These days a lot of us work-from-home or independent contractor types don't even have much of a "second" place.

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

#397

Post by rakejake »

65 wrote: post #332

If you live in the boring suburbs where you have to drive everywhere to do things and see people, then yeah there's basically nothing to do except watch television and browse the internet. My general theory of existence is that your environment makes up a huge portion of your overall wellbeing. Boredom, happiness, depression, anxiety - it all comes from your environment. If you set your life up in such a way that the…

+1. I came to the same conclusion. The pandemic sped up the timeline of my mental processes and illustrated all the holes in my model of the world. That way, I am glad this lockdown happened before I made any life-altering and hard-to-reverse decisions.

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

#399

Post by iamhamm »

dcchambers wrote: post #21

My completely unprofessional opinion is that almost everyone that uses the internet throughout the day has developed some form of undiagnosed ADD/ADHD. The modern internet has broken our slowly evolved brains. We are not built to cope with these types of attention destroying activities and media. At least 20 years ago you had to sit down at a specific place and use a chunky computer. Smartphones have made it 1000x wo…

I have diagnosed ADHD and I can waste just as much time on my amateur radio as the Internet. I guess we get a pass due to the technical neediness, but I spent 3 hours yesterday listening to static trying to hear a specific station…

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

#400

Post by rchaud »

jordanpg wrote: post #379
senjin wrote: post #322

I know exactly why I do it and it feels impossible to stop. I scroll endlessly to avoid the pain of everything else in life. Doing work, doing chores, doing hobbies, talking to anyone, making decisions even about projects I'm excited to work on, it all causes a small hit of emotional pain. I don't really know where this pain comes from either. Maybe some childhood trauma that I can't even remember? I don't know. The…

I believe the sociologists of the future are going to look back at this era and cite the manifest lack of meaning in human life as source of the ennui that is the subject of this thread. For a long time, religion filled this void, but for almost everyone, it no longer does. I don't even think most people who hold themselves out as religious really find any significant meaning there -- not doubting their sincerity, on…

> For a long time, religion filled this void, but for almost everyone, it no longer does.

Did religion actually fill this void? Or did enough people simply go through life not voicing any of their troubles for fear of exclusion or even institutionalization in a religious and highly superstitious society that didn't understand mental health?

Religion didn't prevent alcoholism, out of wedlock pregnancies or domestic violence. It did however force families to take brutal measures to keep their missteps a secret from the rest of society.

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