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Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

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Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#241

Post by Swizec »

lr4444lr wrote: post #235
wincy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to read books all the time. I spent most of my waking hours as a teenager reading books. I’m 35 now and can barely hold attention on anything, I read maybe 3 books a year if I’m lucky. Even on Hacker News I almost exclusively read and comment on the comments, not the actual article unless I see someone says “have you read the article?” I don’t really know why. I have 8+ hours a day screentime on my iPhone, whi…

Can you get absorbed in a movie or binge watch a TV show? If so, I suspect your attention ability is still intact. You just need to re-practice consciously directing it again. I still struggle with it too, but was able to "get lost" in a book again. It was key though to move my phone way out of the room, and was hard to get started.

> Can you get absorbed in a movie or binge watch a TV show?

As a fellow 34 year old, no. Most movies these days are way too long and boring. Most shows it's tough to watch even a full episode in one sitting. Let alone binge a season.

I think, for me, it's because there's just too many things on my mind. And a lot of stuff just feels like it isn't worth my time. Why am I sitting here watching a dumb thing that kinda bores me when I could be working on any of the multiple dozens of tasks on my plate?

The only thing that works is getting a little high. Because you do need to give your brain a rest.

For reading books, audio and going on a long run is great. I read dozens of books per year that way. It's great and far less boring than shows.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#242

Post by aw9f70gae »

toper-centage wrote: post #233
Fannon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I come from where you come from. However, I have mostly (60-80%?) retained my ability to focus on reading without distraction. But there has been something lost and sometimes it feels like an uphill battle to retain your ability to concentrate on one thing at a time. Would be curious what makes a difference here? I did some conscious choices, not sure how they contribute but I have the impression that each of them…

It's funny you place games in the "bad" side of things, this hich need to be reduced. I group gaming with reading because the kind of games I play require a level of focus and engagement, and my brain rather spend hours scroll HN and Reddit. It really is an uphill battle.

What kind of games? I’d like to stop playing addictive games and start playing games that are better for my mind.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#243

Post by aw9f70gae »

I was never a reader. I’ve played video games since I was a child, for over twenty years, and social media for almost as long.

I wonder how much harder it will be to develop mental patience and critical reasoning as someone who has never known what it’s like to slow down and enjoy the thought process of reading a book.

I have never not felt like my mind’s going 100mph

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#244

Post by wazoox »

I spend way too much time on the internet, listening to a deluge of podcasts and videos at high speed, reading gobs of articles, but I still manage to read 30 books a year.

However this overconsumption of information indisputably harms my ability to create in general; I write less content, less code, less drawings, less music than I used to.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#245

Post by tbonesteaks »

mountainb wrote: post #149

The way to cure this is to develop a habit that severely limits undirected online browsing and socializing. Part of it is just an education of your own aesthetic sentiments. I read James Clear's "Atomic Habits" (not that this is a special book, I was just on another kick in which I really needed to improve my productivity and picked up a suggestion to use a physical counter of some kind to make a habit stick. I bough…

Thank you writing this. This was such a succinct explanation. Really helpful!

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#246

Post by Void_ »

CubsFan1060 wrote: post #226
ivansavz wrote: post #205

I'd like to share two hacks that have made a big difference for me: /1/ black-hole certain websites in /etc/hosts, see here for details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29217297 /2/ making the computer read books to me using the text-to-speech feature. See here for instructions to setup keyboard shortcut for Mac OS users https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mApa60zJA8rgEm6T6GF0yIem... and this is the command line…

For 1, I use Focus: https://heyfocus.com/ It used to be much cheaper, but it really helps to stop the surfing urges for a time. Well, not stop them so much as force me to realize when I have them.

FocusLite (https://focuslite.app) has interesting business model - you purchase a consumable ($7.99 I think) to start a streak. If you wanna cancel blocking, you have to delete the app. And once you've done that, you have to purchase the consumable again.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#247

Post by richardw »

I used to read non-stop. My kindle is now filled with hundreds of books I haven’t read.

I don’t generally do New Years resolutions but fixing that seems an excellent candidate.

Edit: I’ve just deleted all my standard newsy favourites and moved my Kindle app to where browser usually goes. Browser in same “distractions” folder as Tweetbot.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#248

Post by jmfldn »

aw9f70gae wrote: post #243

I was never a reader. I’ve played video games since I was a child, for over twenty years, and social media for almost as long. I wonder how much harder it will be to develop mental patience and critical reasoning as someone who has never known what it’s like to slow down and enjoy the thought process of reading a book. I have never not felt like my mind’s going 100mph

It will be hard but by no means impossible. Your brain is trainable in the same way, that your body is when you exercise. I'm by no means unaffected by all this, but being 40+, I experienced my entire pre-adult life without the Web or with a very different form of it at least.

I highly recommend making the effort to slow your mind. My brain works best when relaxed, not multitasking / not too many "tabs" open. I find that the best ideas come to me when I'm not even thinking and grinding the cogs of my conscious mind at least. I'm not sure what's going on but when the mind gets quiet, ideas and insights bubble to the surface. I guess the background processing (of which most of the brain is I guess) somehow has a chance to emerge.

Apart from this, I find it a much more satisfying state of mind to inhabit. It feels like relaxed contentment, not anxious and dissatisifed grasping at a million things underpinned by FOMO that I need the next bit of info / distraction. Don't get me wrong though, I get days when I fall down the hole of distraction too. I'm just really trying to hang on to what I developed many years ago. These days you have to actively cultivate this, whereas it came more naturally in the past.

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#249

Post by TriNetra »

wincy wrote: post #36
senortumnus wrote: post #22

HN represents a wellspring of deeper reading than is generally afforded by the current entertainment cruft portals of the web - reddit, FB, insta, USA today, financial times, etc etc down to the SEO hellholes of recipe sites, youtube product placement; you get the idea. Let's appreciate HN for the quality of reading material and its curb on our drift to the rest of the 'popular' web. And I don't think I'm alone in al…

I used to read books all the time. I spent most of my waking hours as a teenager reading books. I’m 35 now and can barely hold attention on anything, I read maybe 3 books a year if I’m lucky. Even on Hacker News I almost exclusively read and comment on the comments, not the actual article unless I see someone says “have you read the article?” I don’t really know why. I have 8+ hours a day screentime on my iPhone, whi…

Try the Black Lotus app [0]. It has well-researched, applied framework called RARE to help you gain back your control on attention, build concentration and mindfulness. It's basically exercising of the brain/mind which we usually tend to ignore. The founder is an expert meditator and he has demonstrated voluntary activation of any region of the brain just by one-pointed concentration, under lab conditions [1].

0: https://blacklotus.app/ 1: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8717094./autho... (An EEG based Quantitative Analysis of Absorbed Meditative State, IEEE, 23 March 2019)

Re: Internet addiction and the habit of book reading

#250

Post by osense »

aw9f70gae wrote: post #242
toper-centage wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny you place games in the "bad" side of things, this hich need to be reduced. I group gaming with reading because the kind of games I play require a level of focus and engagement, and my brain rather spend hours scroll HN and Reddit. It really is an uphill battle.

What kind of games? I’d like to stop playing addictive games and start playing games that are better for my mind.

I would recommend The Long Dark and Sable. Heavily focused on exploration and immersion. But really any game with an open world that doesn't hold your hand too much and lets you make your own choices.
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