171–180 of 221 posts
Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The main challenge is that the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control and other things, only fully develops around age 25. The problem with that is without some explicit instruction or guidance or invention before they have full control of their impulses, not everyone tames the beast unscathed.
> The main challenge is that the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for impulse control and other things, only fully develops around age 25. This factoid has been repeated for decades but it’s essentially a myth. Brain development continues into your 20s, but there isn’t a threshold at age 25 where someone goes from having poor impulse control to being capable of good impulse control. 18-25 year olds are not chi…
Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…
I put my phone in a drawer. Everything's in silent mode. I have a fully disconnected, distraction-free iPad for reading and writing. Work only happens on the computer. There are no emails on the phone.
Yet, I can't fully disconnect. Every device, every account, every app mixes work stuff and personal life stuff. And software is so sticky! I can't just check one thing without my attention getting stuck on a notification badge, an email, a feed or some other thing that I should not pay attention to right now.
How do you people handle it?
Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…
Your Phone Isn't a Drug. It's a Portal to the Otherworld. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46115659
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I feel that most kids with a supportive backgrounds will tame this beast for themselves eventually, so I hate to make hard "no phones" rules. I would rather they come to terms with this addiction for themselves That approach doesn’t work so well for people with drug and alcohol addictions/dependancies. What makes you think this is different?
That approach works more often than it doesn’t — outside of certain spiraling situations most people don’t became alcoholics and drug addicts. Some however do, which is why drugs and alcohol are controlled to some degree.
Following your argument shouldn't anything that can induce addiction be controlled? Seems that is not the case e.g. looking at sugar.
Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…
I'm trying, but it's so hard! I put my phone in a drawer. Everything's in silent mode. I have a fully disconnected, distraction-free iPad for reading and writing. Work only happens on the computer. There are no emails on the phone. Yet, I can't fully disconnect. Every device, every account, every app mixes work stuff and personal life stuff. And software is so sticky! I can't just check one thing without my attention…
My phone's SIM no longer has any credit on it. I actively cannot browse mindlessly in a lot of places. Doesn't work perfectly, half of public transport around here has free WiFi, as do some shops, but it helps.
I have three laptops. One with the games on (Steam, Windows and nothing much else, no passwords installed except Steam… oh and Discord but I don't actually log in because the content was never interesting enough to get addicted to in the first place); one as a work machine (mac with Xcode, claude etc. installed); and one as a down-time machine (also a mac, but only co-incidentally).
Facebook itself isn't installed anywhere, though the Messenger app is for family I otherwise can't reach; various time-hungry sites (including FB, X, here*, reddit, several news sites) are blocked as best as I can block them (harder than it should be: on iPhones the "time limit" tool doesn't allow "zero" and reflexes to tap "ignore limit" are too quick to form, on desktop it's increasing ignoring my hosts file).
YouTube has so many ads, it's no longer possible for me to habit-form with it. Well, that and the home suggestions are consistently 90% bad, and the remaining 10% includes items in my watch-later playlist that I don't get around to watching.
* see my comment history for how well that attempt at self-control is actually working.
Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…
I'm trying, but it's so hard! I put my phone in a drawer. Everything's in silent mode. I have a fully disconnected, distraction-free iPad for reading and writing. Work only happens on the computer. There are no emails on the phone. Yet, I can't fully disconnect. Every device, every account, every app mixes work stuff and personal life stuff. And software is so sticky! I can't just check one thing without my attention…
One reason might be some kind of physical/psychological addiction (either to apps themselves or the act of looking at your phone). One reason might be that what you're doing is more boring than what you normally do on your phone.
Back in the late 90s, when I first entered the video game industry to work (when it was quite scruffy, countercultural, and populated by some pretty odd people), one of the first things I encountered was a new co-worker who, next to his giant tower of used Mountain Dew cans, had a black and white TV in his cubicle. This struck me as very odd at that moment in time - as I understood things, obviously the point of work…
I'm trying, but it's so hard! I put my phone in a drawer. Everything's in silent mode. I have a fully disconnected, distraction-free iPad for reading and writing. Work only happens on the computer. There are no emails on the phone. Yet, I can't fully disconnect. Every device, every account, every app mixes work stuff and personal life stuff. And software is so sticky! I can't just check one thing without my attention…
Here's my script: https://gist.github.com/matthewaveryusa/8257de0083abdecc612c...
I'm not particularly old yet, in my mid-thirties, but I reacted like someone much older when I learned kids are allowed to carry around their phones all day at school. Back in my day (when we walked to school uphill both ways), we weren't allowed to carry around basic flip phones. They had to be in our locker and only used before or after school. When and why did it become acceptable for much more distracting and sti…
I'm a little older than you (mid forties), and back in my day (when we walked to school uphill, both ways, in the snow, with no shoes), they banned pagers. (And the penalties could be pretty bad, since "only drug dealers have pagers".) (The thing that annoyed teachers was when we played games on our graphing calculators, which they of course couldn't ban, since the school required them in the first place!)
Block Dude! I also spent quite a bit of time writing functions and tools on my TI-84+, probably the closest thing I'll have to "growing up writing BASIC" since I missed that bus.