231–240 of 440 posts
Another thing I'm testing is having VPN OFF with its kill-switch ON.
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If you haven’t read it, Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism is mostly about this topic. The value of giving your brain time to simply exist without any outside input, with many examples from history of people who carved out time explicitly for this, especially when needing to make big decisions or figure out answers to problems.
I haven’t read the book but I like this idea and intend to check out the book. I’m not on social media but I find Hacker News – and even Wikipedia – to be addictive enough. When I was younger, I found it very hard to just sit there without some form of external stimulation, e.g. I couldn’t sit down to eat by or have a coffee by myself without reading a magazine or newspaper at the same time – or listening to the radi…
For me, the very act of everyday living has become very enjoyable and fulfilling in recent years. Doing the dishes, cooking, gardening, sweeping the floor, putting out the trash. Those are not "chores", that's what life's made of. Some of it creative, some not, but the difference is you're simply present in the moment and in the world.”
Next time I do the dishes, I will appreciate being alive, and be thankful to be doing something healthy for my brain. Thanks!
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I do the Do Not Disturb + whitelist thing on my iPhone. I also disable any and all notifications of apps other than direct messaging apps. No group message notifications.
I’ve been 24/7 do-not-disturb mode with all notifications disabled, for the past 10 years. It’s been wonderful for “intentionality” and agency over my time. I use my phone when I want to do something on it, not when the phone beeps and buzzes telling me to use it. I don’t even whitelist anyone anymore. If it’s important they will leave a message and I’ll get back to them.
I can't really do that. For some things (urgent and important), loved ones need to be able to reach me.
But yes, a lot of this advice would work.
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ADHD isn't something you suddenly develop at 30 or 40. You can get diagnosed later, but the signs are meant to have been there since childhood.
ADHD is something you can rapidly develop an inability to manage at that age, though — after trauma or burnout. Or maybe following RTO after a couple of years of a more peaceful WFH environment. You can get through school without failing, you can get through university and early jobs with hyperfocus, you can be known for being the person who gets bored easily but can do incredible things. Maybe you are late paying bi…
Except it's everyone everywhere. Hands up in the thread anyone who doesn't recognise some of these symptoms. Our jobs, tech and societies are making us ill.
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The current situation was foretold 20 years ago in the prescient documentary named Idiocracy.
I’d argue Idiocracy is actually quite the opposite of what the OP was talking about. It has a mildly eugenics-y vibe where the world is bad because poor, stupid people have poor, stupid kids that outnumber the smart ones. OP is talking about something environmental that can affect anyone.
> Educated women delay the onset of childbearing and have fewer children overall compared with less-educated women
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I wish people could just admit to themselves how irrelevant all this social media content is, lose interest, and keep the apps shut (or uninstall in case there's no DM feature that keeps it installed). I can't imagine needing to switch devices for this. I couldn't give a single shit what friends or acquaintances (much less strangers) are doing in their free time day to day. They can tell me next time I see them. I ha…
>My biggest distraction? Hacker News. Don't you see it's the same thing? Why can't you just admit to yourself how irrelevant it is and lose interest? I suppose you could use it just to read an article or two, but you're in the comments as well. The apps are just their Hacker News.
I like this line, but respectfully disagree that they're a 1:1. The difference being relevance and some of the dynamics of use.
Hacker News pertains to my profession. It's high relevance tech news with comments from peers.
I'm not following anyone just because I know them personally (or worse, because they're famous). I'm not posting photos or videos of activities that I want friends to know about.
There's no infinite doomscrolling either (I view the front page a couple of times a day) nor are there notifications interrupting me.
Hallowell and Ratey, who write about ADHD, suggested a new entity for the current world: VAST, the variable attention stimulus trait. It is like ADHD but it is culturally induced and not presumed to be due to an innate deficiency in executive function. "Beyond the sources of biologically based ADHD, there are a lot of people who act as if they have ADHD but on close inspection turn out not to have the diagnosable con…
Please also note that ADHD-like symptoms can present from sleep Apnea/UARS-induced sleep deprivation and the probability of having Apnea/UARS rises with age. Smoothly for men and a with a sudden jump after menopause for women. So if you feel like you are getting more ADHD-like issues, do consider a sleep study. Early tells are easy: you often feel like shit in the morning.
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Using your phone in a cinema was, is and ever will be a massive faux pas. I have no idea at all why you think it might be otherwise.
Faux pas or not, it now happens much more than it used to.
Strangely I think it's why I like roadtrips so much. Sitting doing absolutely nothing for even 15 minutes is difficult for me, but I can drive for hours doing nothing but watching the world go by, even without music or podcasts on, and it's fine. And that feels good.
Plane flights. I hope the ‘free internet all the time’ era that airlines have been threatening us with for a decade now never arrives.
The author doesn’t mention it, so it seems appropriate to suggest asking a doctor for attention deficit disorder screening. The cultural forces in play encouraging us to flit and switch constantly are a perfect distraction from the possibility one’s own brain is complicit.
ADHD isn't something you suddenly develop at 30 or 40. You can get diagnosed later, but the signs are meant to have been there since childhood.