No.
Perfect argument.
Care to elaborate as to your reasoning?
Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment
31–40 of 126 posts
Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment
#32Boredom is useful for creativity, I’ve found. How do you set yourself up to be creative?
I find that boredom is death for creativity, but tedium is a goldmine. If I'm not doing anything, I don't think of anything. If I have a tedious but active chore, I need to bring a notepad along with me to capture all the ideas.
> If I have a tedious but active chore, I need to bring a notepad along with me to capture all the ideas
I find I'm quite mentally creative when doing tasks such as cutting the grass, which I don't find tedious, but instead require a sort of process-control mental activity. I actually enjoy cutting the grass for its physical side combined with the opportunity to get a good looking result from a task that takes about an hour. Hoovering doesn't inspire the same mental creativity.
Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment
#33It feels like the author here is accidentally right for all the wrong reasons. The central premise — that being constantly on digital devices prevents the boredom that ultimately inspires us to do something better — is pretty trivial to be honest.
But by framing it in moralistic language, it comes off as insultingly trite. For conversations like this I find it helpful to bring the focus to your personal experience. Say “this is what I did and how it affected me” and not “you have to do these things to be happy”. The former allows the reader to make an inference and decide for themselves if your experience sounds compelling, the latter is a command with no authority.
Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment
#34Can we just remove this? It's an abstract for this guys motivational book. We get that taking your hand off your penis allowed you to do something with your life. Good content for other teenagers maybe?
Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment
#35There's just so much of this that is the author insisting that his preferences are right and anyone else is wrong. "Modern music is like junk food." There's amazing modern music, and total crap. Labeling the millions of hours of modern music as all bad is at best lazy, and at worst has undertones of racism (the only good music is that produced by dead white guys). "Let me tell you: regulating your emotions with an ex…
You do realize that lots of popular old music was written by all races? Stop trying to see racism everywhere where where there is none, it'll do wonders for your blood pressure.
Even recent music history is steeped in racism. Its not imagining racism to notice that some peoples views and tastes 'just happen' to only include white people.
Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment
#36Boredom is useful for creativity, I’ve found. How do you set yourself up to be creative?
For me, I'll unplug the internet, but that's because my creative outlet is programming and it's really really hard to have the discipline to program and not browser the web (case in point I'm writing this reply.) As developers this is challenging since so many of our tools require network access. I've had minimal luck with various site blockers since you can always just disable them. So here's my plan: 1) Prepare. Do…
I totally relate to this. The Internet is so addictive it's easy to just switch away from getting useful work done. I can't turn off the whole Internet for the house or my family would string me up, but I may try something more localized. Here I am on HN commenting...
This also makes me want to put a lock on the refrigerator that can only be unlocked by running a certain distance on a treadmill. LOL. I have to create artificial grit, I don't have an overabundance of the natural kind.
Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment
#37[deleted]
Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment
#38This is ridiculously preachy. I do think the overall thesis is correct, in that boredom can be a powerful force for creativity and inspiration, but paragraphs like this make the article completely off-putting: "If you want to let music inspire you and enjoy its real beauty, I have few very simple rules: Classical Music and no “skipping”. Then I will trust my appetite." I do like sitting down and actually focusing on…
Funny way to spell “Techno”.
OnT: The title says overstimulating but with guidelines like that it feels more like criticism of stimulation from a broad range of bad entertainment. Is digitally distributed classical music a no go now?
Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment
#39"Classical music and no skipping"
LOL.
That's all I need to see from the author to know to ignore his advice. Logic dictates that if you're looking to suppress excess stimulation, then no music is better than background music. Likewise, if focusing is your goal, then a pair of simple noise cancelling headphones or maybe a nice nature sounds track would be better. Classical music, after all, was created at the whims of an elite ruling class. Big money and its influence on the art form didn't begin with modern music.
"I observe many people, interestingly the majority of it are girls, that seem to never stop messaging with their boyfriend, their friends, their mother,…"
Life advice from a child. What a brave new world, indeed.
Re: Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment
#40I struggle when I stay in a room alone with my thoughts. I start feeling heat in my head and desperation starts to kick in even though it's not physically painful. It's such a strange thing, my mind just wants to be distracted, kind of like a substance addiction. I've never taken it seriously to further investigate what's going on in there. I wonder if others experience something similar? I can tolerate a few minutes before my mind starts to wander and before I know it I am no longer in a room doing nothing, but engaged with a screen.
Makes me feel like I have no free will.