221–230 of 231 posts
There are so many interesting blog posts and long-form content out there. Over the year, I trained my mind to not consuming them on my phone/computer. Instead, I send those articles to my Kindle. At some point, I decided to build a tool to support more than just web articles[0]. Give it a try if you're looking for a better way to consume online content.
[0]: https://ktool.io
Since I haven't been commuting or going many places, my phone mostly sits idle for days, unused. I watch my wife and daughter constantly in front of theirs and I don't understand. I hate using those little screens with terrible input and fundamentally boring distracting apps. The problem is though, I'm addicted to my computer. I'm not actually sure it's that much better.
Schedule a time where everyone agrees to not use screens. Dinner is a good starting point but ultimately, whatever works. Practice conversing and talking. Socialising is a muscle, and smartphones (and other devices) are a crutch that lets us avoid using that muscle.
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As a fiction author who spends hours worrying about individual sentences and whether they're carrying their weight in the overall story--is it advancing the narrative, or deepening characterization, or delivering important information, or furthering my thematic goals, or (ideally) doing more than one of these things at once?--I'm pretty resistant to your claim that books are "often teeming with filler content." Possi…
I'm terribly sorry. I know some people delight in carefully chosen phrasing and meandering narratives. It's just a shrinking set. Other just want only relevant information at a snappy pace and internet makes them aware that's what they actually like. Your comment deserves tl;dr and it doesn't have one. You have no idea how tempting it is not to read it. However I did and it was a slog. So let me tell you what I got f…
I don't mean this as an attack. It seems interesting to me that the way people can communicate in writing can be influenced by what type of media they consume.
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I think you made a great observation about the 5-10 breaks but I disagree with your assessment that we're just replacing one random behavior with another. The fact that I am "compelled" to look at my phone instead of staying with my thoughts is not an innocuous pattern. Why do I, with perfect predictability, prefer reaching for my phone rather than staying with my thoughts? And it's a fact that this compulsion to loo…
Good point. Would you say that all your "interruption slots" are taken by a need to look at a phone or particular app? Aren't there still situations where you break your current focus (be it something important or just waiting in the elevator) with an actual thought not related to the phone? I agree that position I've presented probably stands to some degree on the assumption that there still is a noticeable amount o…
I am of the inattentive type so I am more prone to this reflex but I am also more mindful than most who doesn't actually go through social media at all. The reflex is most likely to just check HN or Reddit. Maybe you'll be more aware and notice this reflex in other people you're in conversation with.
I recently deleted 100% of my Reddit and Quora posts (10-15 years worth) - didn't even bother to save anything. Just better to pull the bandaid off fast. Such an improvement.
If I get bored and feel the urge to go online, I take a walk outside.
I'm seriously thinking about getting a dumb phone and tossing my iPhone entirely. I don't actually use it for more than literal phone and text. I disconnected e-mail on it a year ago. Of course, never had social media.
Note: I've been on the internet since it was called Arpanet and I was heavily involved in the 1G web. No stranger to being online but my views have its utility and value have changed - I now believe it's nearly the worst thing that has ever happened to humanity.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, this can also be a classic case of ADHD. If you also resonate with the post, ask yourself - do you have issues planning and completing long projects? Time management and procrastination issues? Lacking motivation? (Dis)organization problems? (Bonus: frustrated with yourself/your progress!) If (like me) you say "damn that's a lot of things I have to a significant degree" then you sh…
Could it be that smartphones and TV can cause ADHD? Before such electronic media, books were the main media, and inherently required and trained users to concentrate on one thing at a time for extended periods. TV and smartphones do the exact opposite
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I'm terribly sorry. I know some people delight in carefully chosen phrasing and meandering narratives. It's just a shrinking set. Other just want only relevant information at a snappy pace and internet makes them aware that's what they actually like. Your comment deserves tl;dr and it doesn't have one. You have no idea how tempting it is not to read it. However I did and it was a slog. So let me tell you what I got f…
I am not attempting to take a side in either direction here, but I noticed something interesting about the format of your reply in contrast with the person you're replying to. The person you were responding to broke their post up into paragraphs that were organized into sentences (sort of like you'd expect in a book). Your reply seems to be broken up into individual paragraphs that are >240 characters (coincidentally…
I'm not quite sure that my style comes from the content I consume. I think I acquired it earlier, by doing math problems at school, by learning math in college and by learning programming. In all of those contexts I needed to extract meaningful stuff from all the baroque elements.
So I developed appreciacion for high ratios of important elements to fluff words and for writing that has clear, traceable backbone that has a point.
I think shortness of what I wrote is a result of my preferences not the key factor that shaped them. Best writing advice for clear communication is to write short sentences. Information split in short portions provides natural places to pause to appreciate it and is easily skimmable where you can skip sentences or paragraphs that you already understand to get a grasp of how they fit in the surrounding context.
This is btw not an endorsement of twitter which I personally hate and didn't manage to find a single reasonable use for it since its inception.
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>Any spare or idle moment? It wouldn't even be that bad if it was just idle moments. If you're ever sitting in a cafe or restaurant or at the movies look around and see how often people bring their phone out during personal conversations or stuff they paid actual money to see. It is wild that barely anyone talks about how pervasive this is now.
I think that this is the worst part. We gradually forget how to do nothing, how to stare out a window and just daydream or read something. Not being busy or productive every moment.
Does it fragment your attention if to the outsider you're able to focus on this device for several hours without a break?
Or does it not work like that?