The book Walden by Henry David Thoreau would be a nice read for anyone interested in additional experiences from this article. I wanted to start gardening at a local club, but due to the situation it has been hard to do so. I encourage anyone who might not want to travel to participate in community organizations that involve gardening or related activities. Or alternatively, taking long walks also helps! Thank you for sharing!
I Got My Attention Back (2017)
61–70 of 188 posts
Re: I Got My Attention Back (2017)
#62The text starts with "there are a thousand beautiful ways to start the day that don’t begin with looking at a phone. And yet so few of us choose to do so.". Is it really so? I'm only a single datapoint, but checking my phone is the last thing I do in the morning. Getting children up, coffee, shower, planning some today's work in my head - if the phone isn't ringing then I may well not fiddle with it until later in th…
Unfortunately my phone is literally the first thing I do when I wake up, and last thing at night. Is sometimes an hour on the phone before actually getting out of bed. I had to quit Reddit years ago because of the addiction. Don't really use Facebook. But Twitter currently has its hooks in me. It is a news source to me, about the pandemic, election, protests. But it manages to suck me in to reading extra comments and…
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Re: I Got My Attention Back (2017)
#63The book Walden by Henry David Thoreau would be a nice read for anyone interested in additional experiences from this article. I wanted to start gardening at a local club, but due to the situation it has been hard to do so. I encourage anyone who might not want to travel to participate in community organizations that involve gardening or related activities. Or alternatively, taking long walks also helps! Thank you fo…
At age eight I was persuaded into taking a job as a newspaper carrier, which I kept until I was 16. I regularly wonder how much those few hours, six days per week, to let my mind wander during those formative years, gave me, me.
Re: I Got My Attention Back (2017)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not the person you replied to. However, when I used to browse reddit - my phone logged an unhealthy amount of time spent on that app (in roughly the same ballpark).
I don't use an app to browse reddit, so it usually went like this: close reddit tab. Open new tab. Automatically type in reddit.com. And I'm sure, 100% sure, that I'm not the only one with that problem...
Same here.
I've found many tricks that help. For example, erasing some urls from autocompletion (fn mayus backspace for chrome in mac) helps fight against the muscle memory, when you have to type the whole thing. There are also extensions like stayfocusd that help. In a smartphone, switching the icons (for example putting ibooks or spottify in place of the broweser) helps.
It's basically a reverse UX problem: you try to create as much friction as possible.
My problem is that it works for a few weeks or so. Then for whatever reason I get to a point where reddit is super useful (like buying a specialized products, where the communities can help get somewhat unbiased opinions and reviews) and I'm back to square one.
This site produces the same effect btw. It's just that the content is at least somewhat limited to a point where checking more than once or twice a day isn't worth it.
Re: I Got My Attention Back (2017)
#65The text starts with "there are a thousand beautiful ways to start the day that don’t begin with looking at a phone. And yet so few of us choose to do so.". Is it really so? I'm only a single datapoint, but checking my phone is the last thing I do in the morning. Getting children up, coffee, shower, planning some today's work in my head - if the phone isn't ringing then I may well not fiddle with it until later in th…
Unfortunately my phone is literally the first thing I do when I wake up, and last thing at night. Is sometimes an hour on the phone before actually getting out of bed. I had to quit Reddit years ago because of the addiction. Don't really use Facebook. But Twitter currently has its hooks in me. It is a news source to me, about the pandemic, election, protests. But it manages to suck me in to reading extra comments and…
I'm with you wrt Twitter.
It is an amazing source of information, but much of it is daily drama that is a form of entertainment -- a modern Jerry Springer.
These tweets and videos serve as a conversational currency of sorts. Not sure it's worth it.
Re: I Got My Attention Back (2017)
#66The book Walden by Henry David Thoreau would be a nice read for anyone interested in additional experiences from this article. I wanted to start gardening at a local club, but due to the situation it has been hard to do so. I encourage anyone who might not want to travel to participate in community organizations that involve gardening or related activities. Or alternatively, taking long walks also helps! Thank you fo…
At age eight I was persuaded into taking a job as a newspaper carrier, which I kept until I was 16. I regularly wonder how much those few hours, six days per week, to let my mind wander during those formative years, gave me, me.
Exactly! Before the virus hit I would walk long distances just wandering, mostly because I liked to move from place to place. I think of a lot of things while walking, but even more, it's a great and easy way to benefit the body and mind.
Re: I Got My Attention Back (2017)
#67Great read thanks for posting.
Re: I Got My Attention Back (2017)
#68I'd actually appreciate anyone's opinion or advice on this... I grew up on computers and the internet (absent, technophile parents made that very easy) and by the age of 13 or 14 my computer really just felt like an extension of myself. When I was in undergrad, I realized that the only way I'd ever actually properly study is if I had someone on my dorm floor take my computer from me and refuse to give it back for som…
1) Even very minor changes, like leaving electronics in a different room, help.
2) The best website blocker for me isn't one that that blocks me from Facebook/reddit/etc for a week -- I just start to rebel against it and eventually uninstall. The one I use is called "Focus" and blocks me out for 20 minutes. Enough to get work done, but also not enough for me to start resenting it.
3) I figured out that I could actually read books again if I biked to the park without my cell phone and read in a hammock. To get internet again, I have to bike all the way home and I'm too lazy for that. It worked great until it reached 1000 degrees in Texas -- maybe you're in cooler climes.
Re: I Got My Attention Back (2017)
#69I'm the worst about this, but I found a trick: bike to the park with a book. Leave your cell phone at home.
In order to get my hit of internet I have to bike all the way home again, so I'm forced to focus.
Re: I Got My Attention Back (2017)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Love the service - I've just signed up to give it a go. I also use the "send to kindle" chrome extension which takes the web page page you are looking at and sends it to your kindle. I find it really useful for long reads I need to pay attention to and I like having a queue of them on my kindle.
Thanks! Yeah I've used that extension. If anyone's curious here's the official Amazon one: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/send-to-kindle-for...
I tried using Kindle this way earlier… but it only worsened for me. :-(
I think the issue is with scrolling itself. Scrolling erodes the attention span because it kinda goes against the grain of saccadic perception. As opposed to that a page turn on a physical book transitions to the next page and stays there in a state of rest until we have comfortably absorbed all of the content on page and are ready to move on to next.