I know I am very bad at self-control, so I tend to go cold turkey whenever I lose control. Recently I decided to leave my phone at home whenever I can. I know that seems like a radical step, but it has been easier than I expected. I frequently go to coffee shops to knock some urgent work out, and since I carry a laptop and there is wifi everywhere, I can still check the buss schedule etc. when I need to. But the temptation of interrupting what I do to spend 20 minutes on the phone is gone.
Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?
101–110 of 216 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?
#102How do you deal with information and internet addiction?
I give into it and feed it more. I can never get enough information. More information has helped me throughout my life to make better informed decisions and sometimes the information is just interesting.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?
#103Tape my eyes open
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?
#104I handle it by collecting quotes that tell me to knock it off. I've since started to focus on just the things I really care about: The purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge. ― Aristotle Knowledge isn't free. You have to pay attention ― Richard Feynman "Information is not truth" ― Yuval Noah Harari If I were the plaything of every thought, I would be a fool, not a wise man. ― Rumi Dhamma is in your mind, not i…
I'm surprised to not see Pascal's quote in this list: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone" ...but maybe that better sums up OP's issue rather than a solution. Either way you'll need to take steps to make it harder to do the things you're currently doing (e.g. get a dumb phone, set up a firewall rule to block these sites, set a timer) but there might be a deeper underly…
> "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone"
I have that one in my quotes file but it's just a big text file and not easily searched by subject. I need to add tags.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?
#105Attending a software conference recently and speaking to developers who I admire has inspired me to get off my ass, learn and build instead of consuming content.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?
#106I handle it by collecting quotes that tell me to knock it off. I've since started to focus on just the things I really care about: The purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge. ― Aristotle Knowledge isn't free. You have to pay attention ― Richard Feynman "Information is not truth" ― Yuval Noah Harari If I were the plaything of every thought, I would be a fool, not a wise man. ― Rumi Dhamma is in your mind, not i…
It'd be cool if you could provide a brief explanation of what each quote means to you. Quotes can sometimes be hard to interpret when they're out of context.
Through self-awareness and self-knowledge comes right thinking, and it is right thinking that will bring peace and joy.
- Krishnamurti
What they mean to me is to focus on the questions important to me. An easier way to put it is the example of writing a book. For a long time you do a lot of research and collect information. At some point you have to start writing the book which means turning your collection into a story. Once I got in this mode, I stopped "fear of missing out" about things I was never going to learn. There's just too much. My mind is limited. I'm hopeful that AI will help me with this focus.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?
#107Consider committing yourself to organized things that essentially force you to turn that part of your brain off.
Take a yoga class (I found that to be a huge psychological relief after years of working in startup stress-land). Take a language class. Join a dining event on Meetup.com (I'm assuming that's still a thing).
Obviously this isn't going to help you attain some more personal goal, like "read a challenging book" or "work on my so-called passion project", but that's kind of the point. You need external factors outweighing your habitual behaviors, and you'll at least end up feeling like you made some personal accomplishment even if it's not some big, personal goal.
There's also a lot of self-gaming and time management that can help. Simple tricks like "I don't want to go to the gym today, but I know I need to, so I'll just commit to driving to the gym and going inside for five minutes". Once you're there, you'll almost certainly find yourself sticking around longer, and over time this builds a healthy habit. The Pomodoro technique really helped me with focus and procrastination. "I'll just spend 25 minutes on this task with no interruptions". Next thing I know, I'm five Pomodoro cycles in and I've made a lot of progress.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?
#108[dead]
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?
#109For YouTube, I never actually visit YouTube.com. I view my subscriptions via my RSS/Atom feed reader and I watch the videos with mpv. This has probably saved me many hours I would have wasted clicking through "recommended" videos in the sidebar.
Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?
#110here is a website which addresses this: https://defetter.com