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Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain

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Re: Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain

#81
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you decide what to block? Wikipedia or Stack Overflow can be extremely useful but you can waste time there as easily as on Facebook, Twitter or Hacker News.

Feeds. Gotta block feeds out of your life. The never-ending treadmill of new information is what's really problematic, at least for me.

Ironically feeds made me spend way less time on the internet. Instead of jumping around half a dozen different sites and dealing with their ass engagement-focused ux, I just skim their RSS feeds once at the end of the day. ~150-200 new articles a day and I scroll and skim through them in about 20 mins.

Maybe I'll read 2-5 particularly interesting articles in depth, but even from what I'd call great websites a lot of the content is just noise and not worth the time spent to read. That really becomes apparent when you have a pretty barebones, super focused and condensed list.

Re: Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain

#82
post #16

I consider my information addiction as one of the top 2 personal problems that are holding me back in my life. The only thing that works for me every once in a while is going cold turkey and blocking off as many websites as I can in my hosts file. I'm surprised there isn't a serious accessible product that helps people manage this addiction, because unlike drugs you can't realistically not use the internet ever again…

i just go outdoors and leave my phone at home.

Re: Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain

#83
post #16

I consider my information addiction as one of the top 2 personal problems that are holding me back in my life. The only thing that works for me every once in a while is going cold turkey and blocking off as many websites as I can in my hosts file. I'm surprised there isn't a serious accessible product that helps people manage this addiction, because unlike drugs you can't realistically not use the internet ever again…

There is https://freedom.to/ , which seems to be remarkably successful at charging people to cut off (all our some of) their internet access...

Re: Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain

#84
post #80
post #36

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful i…

Arthur Conan Doyle was no neuroscientist. Useless facts don't elbow out the useful ones, except perhaps in the time taken to acquire them.

Yes, it has since been “disproven”. But not all the way. I bet that spending all your time memorizing useless trivia will take away resources — at least in terms of time and opportunity — from, say, learning a language or a scientific discipline. Opportunity cost is a thing! And I think that’s true on the level of memory also.

Re: Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain

#85
post #16

I consider my information addiction as one of the top 2 personal problems that are holding me back in my life. The only thing that works for me every once in a while is going cold turkey and blocking off as many websites as I can in my hosts file. I'm surprised there isn't a serious accessible product that helps people manage this addiction, because unlike drugs you can't realistically not use the internet ever again…

In my experience the issue isn't so much cutting off the supply but what to do to fill the time. It's not as easy as taking up a new hobby, for me at least. I think information addiction is really tricky because it's compromising a key part of what humans are, information processors. We are always processing some kind of information, all the time. I can go straight from video gaming to reading a book, but my mind tak…

I broke out of a long term video game addiction (I think we can call it that now) a few years ago. I still go back to them from once or twice a year and I'm always surprised by how hard the grip of them is even after just a play or two. Not all games grip me hard but some just suck me in and suddenly I'm burning 5-6 hours a night

Have you tried graphic novels? I've found them good for when I get restless.

Re: Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain

#86
post #16

I consider my information addiction as one of the top 2 personal problems that are holding me back in my life. The only thing that works for me every once in a while is going cold turkey and blocking off as many websites as I can in my hosts file. I'm surprised there isn't a serious accessible product that helps people manage this addiction, because unlike drugs you can't realistically not use the internet ever again…

Addiction is a symptom of something else, usually trauma (which I include forgetting fundamental ways to use the mind as an item, eg. how to be still and not suffer from boredom).

For me, there were several issues. Anxiety was my normal state, though I didn't know it because I'd been cultivating my addiction since around age 8 & was largely disconnected from my emotions. They were also seemingly locked up from denial of the trauma stemming from being molested (saying "That traumatized me" aloud to myself led to a flood of emotions all at once). I grew up in a codependent family and culture. I was born into the psychosocial slavery of capitalism and taught I had to have a job and money to survive. This disconnected me from my need for community support, which I was also shamed from seeking. I was bullied by my best friend growing up, as well as most of the adults in my life. All of these things had a lasting impact on my relationships.

What worked for me was healing from all of that. I use RescueTime to keep an eye on my usage, but have no other controls anymore. Early in recovery, someone else monitored my screen time, I used MManager (I think) for locking down my phone and a boot password for the laptop, with my roommates & therapist knowing the passwords. Basically, setting up accountability systems for myself. But that's just what kept me from lapsing, which isn't as big of a deal as addiction specialists told me, because I started using them as learning opportunities to observe how my mind worked in those situations.

Basically, any app that isn't helping build mindfulness, learn about what life needs to thrive, build a supportive community, and identify/heal from trauma is operating from the current mainstream approach to addiction and is only going to have marginal effects. Don't look to current addiction science...I turned my info addiction inward and healed that way.

If you'd like to talk more about what you're going through and would like to add someone to your support network, I'm available for it.

Re: Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain

#87
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience the issue isn't so much cutting off the supply but what to do to fill the time. It's not as easy as taking up a new hobby, for me at least. I think information addiction is really tricky because it's compromising a key part of what humans are, information processors. We are always processing some kind of information, all the time. I can go straight from video gaming to reading a book, but my mind tak…

I broke out of a long term video game addiction (I think we can call it that now) a few years ago. I still go back to them from once or twice a year and I'm always surprised by how hard the grip of them is even after just a play or two. Not all games grip me hard but some just suck me in and suddenly I'm burning 5-6 hours a night Have you tried graphic novels? I've found them good for when I get restless.

Graphic novels are another form of escape.

Have you tried mindfulness? I've found it useful for literally everything, ESPECIALLY when restless.

Re: Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain

#88
post #16

I consider my information addiction as one of the top 2 personal problems that are holding me back in my life. The only thing that works for me every once in a while is going cold turkey and blocking off as many websites as I can in my hosts file. I'm surprised there isn't a serious accessible product that helps people manage this addiction, because unlike drugs you can't realistically not use the internet ever again…

If you use technology to break the addiction, you risk obsessing over the tech. If you rely on will power to break the addiction, you may face internal conflict. The stress is just as bad as the addiction [1]

In my experience, mindfulness is the best solution: Clear your mind by experiencing the sensations of your environment.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironic_process_theory

Re: Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain

#89

I, for one, don't care about my phone. I routinely forget where I put it. I use it a total of ~15 minutes a day. My desktop computer, on the other hand, I check hacker news every 5 minutes. Even if I know there's nothing of interest or I've already read all the comments about things I care about, I check just in case.

this site has been useful for me to stop checking HN regularly. It keeps track of all Top-X threads per day. So I can check it on the weekend or whenever and see if I missed anything important. http://hckrnews.com
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