Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

I relate completely with the comments here. I have only recently even managed to finish reading a couple of books, but it took me months.

I would really like to blame how busy I am (new startup, 3 kids, other commitments), however I see my wife who is a physician who works in 2 departments and also teaches and runs a residency program and I know she is quantitatively much busier than I am and has far less control over her time.

However, she manages to read a couple of books a month at least.

I think that during the 2000s/2010s when I was sucking in a firehose of information and learning to consume exclusively in places like HN, she was still researching, studying and learning through long form papers, textbooks and experiments. Our brains are trained on very different cadences.

So when she sits down to read, there is almost no distraction, her comprehension is far better than mine, and she sort of shoots through a chapter with much better momentum than me.

I've recently resolved to stop trying to read anything popular/trendy that I might be attracted to just because it's there and instead only read history, which is my real interest. No more business books or novels I don't really enjoy. That has made a difference and it's already becoming much easier as I am more disciplined about it.

You're both right. (I'm half in the in-group and half-out.)

It's nice that there's no political litmus test to post here. My gay butt would rather have to read some eyeroll inducing things but receive a greater variety of opinions because I favor variety in topics and opinions. This is because I think opinion and topic variety is important to synthesizing new ideas, to discovery, and to serendipity, which is what I like about tech.

On the other hand, it means if you point out that these demographics impact the tech world or its discussion centers, you get poo-poo'ed.

As somebody who would love to discuss things like the benefits, unexpected consequences, and drawbacks of more women in STEM or how, if all developers on a project share traits, they're more likely to miss needed features or key bugs depending on their audience (something I've also seen on all 'marginalized' teams), there's not anywhere to have those discussions that don't turn into shit-flinging contests that would make chimpanzees proud.

After reading a few of the dialogues, love reading these BTW, I highly suspect that Plato often misrepresented Socrates- would often put words in his mouth. With that said..

I think it’s very OK for Socrates to be wrong or to disagree with him. He’s the kind of guy who would change his opinions in light of conflicting evidence or an iron clad logical argument. Just because he said that about writing doesn’t mean he’s right nor does it mean he’s done with the tangent.

With regards to blocking sites to concentrate, adding a comment as to why it was blocked in the first place might help. It is something I try now to see how effective it is.

My etc/hosts:

# This should never be commented out unless my life depends on it. If # We get an article or there is CRITICAL information there it is OK, but # in 99% of cases you will just waste your time on these websites. GO OUTSIDE INSTEAD! 0.0.0.0 dn.no dinside.no nettavisen.no itavisen.no e24.no vg.no www.dn.no nrk.no dagbladet.no https://dn.no https://www.nettavisen.no/ www.nettavisen.no shifter.no www.shifter.no nettavisen.no nrk.no www.nrk.no

# FB might be relevant for work, but ONLY uncomment if you have something CONCRETE to do on the platform. # Delegate to someone else if possible, which can be done in most cases. # TRAIN or GO OUTSIDE instead of wasting time here 127.0.0.1 facebook.com login.facebook.com secure.facebook.com latest.facebook.com inyour.facebook.com beta.facebook.com static.facebook.com touch.facebook.com developers.facebook.com newsroom.fb.com pixel.facebook.com apps.facebook.com graph.facebook.com m.facebook.com upload.facebook.com www.facebook.com https://facebook.com # LinkedIn should only be used for marketing, DO NOT COMMENT UNLESS YOU HAVE A CONCRETE THING TO DO. # TRAIN or GO OUTSIDE instead of wasting time here. 127.0.0.1 linkedin.com www.linkedin.com https://linkedin.com

Decent comments and recommendations. I've started to purchase more physical books. But I have the same problem as when I purchase kindle books - they sit there. When I get the chance to read a book and get in, I find that I forget the content. In general I don't have a great memory, anyways. Even when I code, I generally can't tell you where a file is. I think through all the logical steps, from front to back to reach where I need to go.

Nowadays with a young daughter that I need to drive to extracurricular activities (2x a week) it gives me 1 hour to sit in the car by myself...half of which I am able to get some reading done (the other half, on social media of course :( ).

The funny thing is the last book I read, I was able to complete it because I thought it was longer than it actually is (it had a huge appendix). I have a tendency to finish things to 90%...