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How to Stare at Your Phone Without Losing Your Soul
131–140 of 145 posts
Re: How to Stare at Your Phone Without Losing Your Soul
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I really believe this social aspect of reachability of people (friends, haters or some people on internet you follow) is crucial. It's not about apps or a screen time, it's about social connection (even ephemeral) that gives this gratification and makes our brains summoning the apps. This. I've concluded the same, observing my own interaction patterns. I use very little social media (would've ditched Facebook if no…
I made the move from Facebook > Reddit > HackerNews for similar reasons. I've been looking for the next step. Is it > magazines? > books? > phone calls? > irl networking? It’s all of these, yes, but I still open HN every time I get some down time. While it feels very useful to me, I feel that I would be better served with a more condensed version of what I’m after here. I think I’m proposing a mailing list?
Figured it out. I'm craving more Discord.
Re: How to Stare at Your Phone Without Losing Your Soul
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might ask to get limited. My account is limited to a about three comments per hour. If I exceed I’m told to slow down. dang didn’t like one of my posts—not sure why this solution was chosen but it was. I’ve also set my maxvisit and minaway on my profile. So I can get more things done.
TeMPOraL has extensive experience with trying to limit HN distractions, see in part: http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2020-05-25-blocking-distraction... > But see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36125138 > I also recall him specifically asking dang to disable his account, which ended up being accomplished through either the "noprocrast" or "limit" features, though I can't find the comment (it was likely either on H…
When I quit a site, I change the recovery email to a burner, change the password to line noise, and log out. It doesn't stop the pangs, but it does stop me from logging in. I halfheartedly planned to quit HN at 10k karma, but that came and went. One of these days...
Re: How to Stare at Your Phone Without Losing Your Soul
#134Apropos of this topic, I'm in the middle of reading Dopamine Nation, recommended reading for everyone. Just about anything that gives us pleasure has the potential to be addictive, and unfortunately our entire system is based on getting us to indulge in what makes us feel "good", ergo addictive behaviors are highly encouraged. The tech industry is no exception as UX is generally predicated on making us feel "delighte…
Looking at you flow state (I wonder if that also relates to my ADHD hyperfocus.
Re: How to Stare at Your Phone Without Losing Your Soul
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might ask to get limited. My account is limited to a about three comments per hour. If I exceed I’m told to slow down. dang didn’t like one of my posts—not sure why this solution was chosen but it was. I’ve also set my maxvisit and minaway on my profile. So I can get more things done.
TeMPOraL has extensive experience with trying to limit HN distractions, see in part: http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2020-05-25-blocking-distraction... > But see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36125138 > I also recall him specifically asking dang to disable his account, which ended up being accomplished through either the "noprocrast" or "limit" features, though I can't find the comment (it was likely either on H…
Yup, I asked 'dang to ban me for 2-3 months, to force myself to have a break. 'dang suggested me to instead just put some large number in the 'minaway field and turn on noprocrast, achieving the same thing, and then to e-mail him if I need the setting to be reset.
I did just that, set noprocrast to a large number (IIRC, I copy-pasted MOST-POSITIVE-FIXNUM from a Lisp REPL), which amounted to banning myself for (IIRC) ~3000 years.
I planned the break to last for those 2-3 months. It actually lasted a year. In the process, I've learned a few things about myself:
- Somewhat quickly, I found myself commenting a lot on Reddit; when I tried to limit that, I ended up posting a lot on Mastodon; there were also brief moments spent on some niche discussion boards;
- My procrastination problem did not get better;
- Both Mastodon and some of the subreddits were... OK. They satiated (what I finally realized was) my need for interesting conversations on-line. At the same time, something always felt off. I eventually realized that those communities were a bit short on civility, intellectual curiosity, and related qualities. Switching to them from HN felt like switching from home-cooked meals to living on McDonald's and party food diet.
Which is why, after a year, I mailed 'dang to reset my noprocrast, and came back here - if this type of conversations are to be my drug either way, I could at least stick to a high-quality supply.
Re: How to Stare at Your Phone Without Losing Your Soul
#136You can only replace an addiction with another (healthier) one. For instance: intense outdoor activity, time spent working in a farm, etc. The tech we’ve built is insanely addictive.
Isn't the strength of addiction inversely correlated with how healthy it is? Or put another way, how the fuck does one begin to like intense outdoor activity at all , much less to the point of it replacing a social media problem (including HN)? There's only one somewhat reliable "trick" I know that makes people do these kinds of switches: falling in love , or at least getting a crush on, someone who's already doing t…
It's tautological if you phrase it that way.
Hiking is just fun. Like, actually fun. If you set up the mental barrier that exercise is bad and sucks and feels bad, then sure, now it's bad.
If you're super unfit it might suck, much like sitting down and bashing out some cool scripts in Python would suck if you had no programming knowledge, but that's fixable for most.
Re: How to Stare at Your Phone Without Losing Your Soul
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
TeMPOraL has extensive experience with trying to limit HN distractions, see in part: http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2020-05-25-blocking-distraction... > But see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36125138 > I also recall him specifically asking dang to disable his account, which ended up being accomplished through either the "noprocrast" or "limit" features, though I can't find the comment (it was likely either on H…
Yup, I asked 'dang to ban me for 2-3 months, to force myself to have a break. 'dang suggested me to instead just put some large number in the 'minaway field and turn on noprocrast, achieving the same thing, and then to e-mail him if I need the setting to be reset. I did just that, set noprocrast to a large number (IIRC, I copy-pasted MOST-POSITIVE-FIXNUM from a Lisp REPL), which amounted to banning myself for (IIRC)…
I wonder how often dang gets asked to do that, because I just came off the same thing.
Re: How to Stare at Your Phone Without Losing Your Soul
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
TeMPOraL has extensive experience with trying to limit HN distractions, see in part: http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2020-05-25-blocking-distraction... > But see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36125138 > I also recall him specifically asking dang to disable his account, which ended up being accomplished through either the "noprocrast" or "limit" features, though I can't find the comment (it was likely either on H…
When I quit a site, I change the recovery email to a burner, change the password to line noise, and log out. It doesn't stop the pangs, but it does stop me from logging in. I halfheartedly planned to quit HN at 10k karma, but that came and went. One of these days...
The most effective method I've found has been to start using a Google service and wait for it to be sunset.
Other than that: yeah, I've generated and set some very long (40-80+ chars) passwords which I've promptly deleted from my own records on occasion. I don't think I've swapped out email addresses though that's an option. I could see that resulting in an account being hijacked though, depending on how email addresses are handled in the account-recovery flow.
Re: How to Stare at Your Phone Without Losing Your Soul
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
TeMPOraL has extensive experience with trying to limit HN distractions, see in part: http://jacek.zlydach.pl/blog/2020-05-25-blocking-distraction... > But see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36125138 > I also recall him specifically asking dang to disable his account, which ended up being accomplished through either the "noprocrast" or "limit" features, though I can't find the comment (it was likely either on H…
Yup, I asked 'dang to ban me for 2-3 months, to force myself to have a break. 'dang suggested me to instead just put some large number in the 'minaway field and turn on noprocrast, achieving the same thing, and then to e-mail him if I need the setting to be reset. I did just that, set noprocrast to a large number (IIRC, I copy-pasted MOST-POSITIVE-FIXNUM from a Lisp REPL), which amounted to banning myself for (IIRC)…
The real bonus for me is bouncing ideas off of people who can comment meaningfully on them.
That is becoming harder with time, and there are few sites which satisfy my need. I've taken largely to reading and commenting on my own. A closed discussion (or several) might also be useful.
I've found myself becoming increasingly annoyed at the general noise level on HN (and elsewhere). I'm not sure it's gotten worse here, though it doesn't seem to be improving. (There are exceptions, of course.) There's also far too often a lack of follow-through --- an exchange such as we're having here is quite rare.
I've also been doing some analytics of the HN front page over the past few days (some of that's in some recent HN comments, most is in my Mastodon stream, #HackerNewsAnalytics). I'd scraped every front page from 20 Feb 2007 to present (updated to 28 May 2023, and I can grab additional pages and update data fairly quickly).
Looking at the HN Leaders page, it's interesting to see how wildly different individual members' activity is. Quite a few of the leaders have very few front-page submissions (at least one has none at all), others have many hundreds. I notice you've had few FP submissions (though you do submit a fair number of items). I don't know quite how commenting on others' stories vs. submitting your own changes site dynamics and usage, but it's another element to consider.[1]
Mastodon occasionally clicks for me, though it's mostly with people I've known for a long time, and often across multiple platforms, typically HN & Google+ (you'd be in that group).
Mostly, though, I'm less enchanted by the state of online discussion of late.
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Notes:
1. For the curious: highest number of front-page (FP) stories from a Leaders profile is 1,183 (795 distinct sites). For 7 profiles there are no FP stories. Mean is 164.09, median is 104.5, standard deviation, 199.988. 10%ile: 3, 25%ile: 11, 75%ile: 217, 90%ile: 493.5. Distinct sites range from 0 (obviously) to 795, mean 102.77, median 53. It's quite a range.
It's quite a range.
Re: How to Stare at Your Phone Without Losing Your Soul
#140I am able to focus on work but even when I am super busy with work I will spend a lot of time on mobile. So it doesn't interfere with work but does interfere with health and overall well-being. I have removed all social media apps from my device including Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I don't use media streaming apps on mobile like YouTube. I do spend a lot of time reading on mobile that is helpful but it does tr…
SelfControl for Mac is ridiculously effective. I just leave my mobile phone in another room. TOTP can work with a password manager. I can walk to another room to log into my bank account as needed.
SMS is another one that is hooked on to the mobile. To some extent Messages app helps on Android regarding this.