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A receipt printer cured my procrastination

laurieherault.com

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Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#231

Post by tines »

This is a topic that's really interesting to me, and I've thought a lot about it.

The approach that this guy is taking to break out of the addicting loop of gaming/scrolling/whatever is to try to take the principles that make those things appealing and port them to the things that we know we should be doing. Video games have these short feedback loops and quick rewards, so his idea is to make real life more like a video game, in some small way. I was surprised to see that even this website has little achievements in the bottom right corner, when you scroll or see a section for the first time you'll get a little popup congratulating you.

There's nothing evil or wrong about this on the surface, of course. But I wonder if it's not making the situation worse by ingraining a need for quick feedback and frequent external affirmation into wider and wider areas of our lives. In one of my favorite books of all time, Amusing ourselves to Death, Neil Postman talks about the "entertainmentification" of education. The book makes the brilliant and alarming insight that over the centuries, all of humanity's efforts have gone into dealing with the problem of lacking information (and, I would add, entertainment). But now we have the opposite problem: we are so flooded with information, and entertainment, we don't know how to handle it, and society is totally unprepared. If memory serves, Postman warns that we are becoming a people who can't do anything that isn't entertaining. And this was published in 1985, long before Tiktok and its ilk.

Another approach, which admittedly does require some mental strength, is to allow oneself to get bored. Boredom is the mother of invention. I have a theory that our brain has a preferred level of stimulation; if external stimulation is high, internal stimulation will diminish to achieve the desired total; and if external stimulation is low, internal stimulation will increase. The most productive and satisfying times I've ever had in my life have been when I cut myself off from cheap entertainment. When I do that, suddenly I enjoy the hard things again.

I have another theory, that great things are accomplished by people with nothing else to do. If we allow ourselves to swim in an environment of endless entertainment, we're effectively kneecapping our ability to do great things.

---

Also, isn't handling a lot of receipt paper bad for you or something?

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#232

Post by unshavedyak »

xanthor wrote: post #194
unshavedyak wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defeats the purpose of 2FA though. I'd argue a cheap 2FA-only phone would be good, if they're struggling to touch their real phone without being consumed by distractions.

It does not defeat the purpose of 2FA as possession of the decrypted 1Password vault is the second factor.

Well i'm assuming 1Pass is also storing the password. Ie if it's in the same place for your pass and token, it's 1FA, no?

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#233

Post by tigereyeTO »

al_borland wrote: post #95
jvanderbot wrote: post #65

> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email? OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun . And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation t…

> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. This is one of my big objections do 2FA. My work has been pushing it hard, and from a security perspective, I get it. However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone. We can no longer set down our phones and simply work. To start working, and periodically throughout the day, we are now forced to pickup our phones to authenticate. This invites the chance to s…

Use a yubikey

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#234

Post by shayway »

akavel wrote: post #215

There's also a kind of super-cheap Bluetooth "Chinese" thermal receipt printers, also known as "kitty printer" or "cat printer". There's plenty of reverse-engineered software for printing to them in a number of languages; one I use is: https://print.unseen-site.fun/ The disadvantage is they don't cut automatically, and their "cutter teeth" are super crappy. But cheap!

I have a version without cutter teeth at all, what I did was take a piece of the cutter thing from an aluminum foil roll and attach it to the printer. Works perfectly. Looks a little menacing though.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#235

Post by tigereyeTO »

Sanzig wrote: post #108
al_borland wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. This is one of my big objections do 2FA. My work has been pushing it hard, and from a security perspective, I get it. However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone. We can no longer set down our phones and simply work. To start working, and periodically throughout the day, we are now forced to pickup our phones to authenticate. This invites the chance to s…

Hmm. I wonder if there would be a market for a super simple TOTP authentication device with an e-paper display. Kind of like those RSA tokens with the LCDs, but more modern and able to hold any number of TOTP credentials. Getting the credentials loaded could be a bit of a pain without a camera for QR code scanning. Easiest solution would be via Bluetooth to a companion app, which you would probably want anyway for pe…

A yubikey works great for this

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#236

Post by Viliam1234 »

guztaver wrote: post #221
infogulch wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure my commenting pattern is similar. I write a bunch of comments in a short period then none at all and just lurk for a while. All the HN comment data is published, right? (BigQuery?) I wonder if we can find cyclic comment patterns for individual users. It might be harder to find patterns if the user creates a new account every cycle like parent, but maybe just users that have been active for 2+ years.

That’s also occurs with me, but in games! Sometimes, I feel “obligated” to play, the urge of playing that unique game , then suddenly, it disappears. I’m not a psychologist, but I believe that occurs often, some things just lose that sparkle with the time, and it’s okay, you just need to find a new way to make your task. This article is a good example of how you can do this, and, with some time, change your methods!

I believe that having urges come and go is the natural way human motivation works. Doing something every day, whether you feel like doing it or not, is the artificial thing that you need to be trained to do.

Some things require larger blocks of time. For example, you need several days in line to take a vacation; you can't simply take "5 minutes of vacation" every day. Some things are done much better if you dedicate an entire day, or at least a few consecutive hours to them: whether it is learning something new, writing a blog article, relaxing, hanging out with your friends, etc.

It would be more natural to work 16 hours a day when you feel like it, and then take a day off.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#237

Post by tigereyeTO »

Sanzig wrote: post #219
hbn wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yubikey?

Yubikey does TOTP on-board, but you need to connect it to a phone or computer (no display or on-board power). It solves a different problem, where you want to have your TOTP credentials on a tamper resistant hardware security module. It doesn't solve the "don't want to carry around a phone for TOTP" problem.

If you read a six-digit pin from an e-ink display, you have to type it into your computer.

If you grab it from a plugged-in yubikey, you can copy and paste it. That seems way easier

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#238

Post by krustyburger »

ambicapter wrote: post #102
al_borland wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure phones are just as stimulating for some. This is one of my big objections do 2FA. My work has been pushing it hard, and from a security perspective, I get it. However, it’s all via an Authenticator app on the phone. We can no longer set down our phones and simply work. To start working, and periodically throughout the day, we are now forced to pickup our phones to authenticate. This invites the chance to s…

Time to get a “work” phone.

The optics of that can be questionable. Just ask Skyler White or her brother-in-law.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#239

Post by bradley13 »

Interesting system. There is also a simpler idea, that works well for some people: at the end of each day, leave something simple and easy undone. Use it as a starting point for your work the next day. Doing that simple task gives you the initial momentum to start work the next day.

Re: A receipt printer cured my procrastination

#240

Post by Viliam1234 »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #192
jvanderbot wrote: post #65

> Why can I focus for hours on a game but procrastinate when writing an email? OK I got a bit triggered by this sentence. Not at TFA, but sharing my own experience: Games are fun . And I don't mean Type 1 vs Type 2 fun and the email is somehow type 2 fun. I mean that the stimulation / "hit" from a game is just higher than 90-99%% of work tasks (writing a new CLI or optimizer excluded!!). We pile on much stimulation t…

>When I "fast" from those "treats", work takes on new enjoy-ability. Dopamine diet is probably the wrong technical term, but it nails the practical effects well. Man no offense but this sounds devastatingly sad. "We must starve ourselves of fun so that the barest excitement at work feels good."

> "We must starve ourselves of fun so that the barest excitement at work feels good."

Don't worry, that rule only applies to poor people!

.

More seriously, how long does it take to stop the dopamine high? Could we schedule our lives so that we would e.g. spend one month doing the most exciting things ever... followed by three days of meditation... which would make us ready for a few months of hard work... and then do it again?

You know, so that we are still productive at work, but don't have to sacrifice most of the joy in life to achieve that.

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