I noticed a huge number of benefits, but one of the most surprising was that it forced me to confront a number of difficult decisions.
There were a few times in which I was bored (waiting at the passport office, sitting on a plane) in which I started to think about decisions I had to make that were very difficult in ways that caused me anxiety: firing a person I'm good friends with, shutting down a company, stuff like that.
I realized that ordinarily I would simply refuse to engage with the decision: I'd get on my phone or "get busy" somehow and so simply postpone thinking about the issue indefinitely.
But when you're stuck at the passport office for 2 hours with nothing to do, you can't but help think about the thing that is top of mind, anxiety be damned.
For someone that is prone to anxiety around certain topics (conflict avoidance, "disappointing" people, etc) having times in which I was forced to engage with the topic had truly enormous benefits.
This really captures what I think is the main problem with our state of being constantly distracted: it feels at first like a relief from anxiety, but ultimately results in even small anxieties never properly being dealt with. The end result is a vicious cycle (or I guess virtuous if you sell online ads) of becoming more and more anxious causing us to rely more and more on the screen to distract us, which in turn only increases that backlog of anxiety.
I see this happen in a lot of younger people that are constantly on screens: they frequently mention their need to "chill for a bit" and yet spend most of their time doing nothing but staring at a screen. It's clear that they are living in a lukewarm vat of anxiety that they can't face while staring at a screen, but also one which causes them immediate stress when they do look away.
Sometimes my inner thoughts can crowd aside the podcast and I'll get home and realize I didn't hear anything from the podcast, but more often it keeps me distracted the whole time. I think unplugging from podcasts on walks and in the car is definitely worth a try.
which sounds a whole lot like a word that starts with "a" and ends with "ddiction"
Seems to me this is the floaty feeling when swimming in stress-induced high levels of cortisol, though I could be wrong. Bit heady and dissociated.
That’s exactly what’s describe in a book [0] I finished last week about addiction to nicotine. That book made the quit process easy by making you believe there’s nothing good about smoking, even the social aspect. They circle through every supposed advantages and disassemble one by one. There’s a few official rewrites for quitting "bad" sugars and taking good habits, not sure how they perform.
0 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Easy_Way_to_Stop_Smoking
A generalisation in itself. And I find your username interesting, given your comment.
Banter aside, there is A LOT of scientific literature about how porn is literally a damaging drug-like addiction.
It's like saying smoking is not bad for some people because they can quit whenever they want. Well, lucky them, but maybe they should, because having that capacity doesn't mean their lungs aren't getting irreversibly vandalised.
OP specifically says, "quitting since quitting implies there's something valuable in porn. there isn't." That's an insanely broad claim to make, and it ostracizes all non-addicts with healthy sexual proclivities and boundaries, and again we can replace porn here with a multitude of other things. In a general sense, OP's argument is flawed.
In the meantime I see how GP post was ambiguous and led to your rectification: he was writing as it's his own words, but in fact was paraphrasing the book series we're talking about [0]. But whatever it's GP or book authors' viewpoint, you are right to point out the logical fallacy. However I mostly disagree with this:
> there is also no value in making sweeping generalizations.
Those book series use this kind of generalization everywhere. You may argue those sentences are false - ok, but they still have a tremendous value: help the reader with their goal! One of the fondation of that method is the use of those sentence and in a sense (with extreme words) it's a brainwashing with false informations. But a very useful brainwashing that readers engage themselves consciously.
Also on a more linguistic side: people make generalizations everywhere to simplify the communication (Dogs are nice - Python versions management is always a pain - The internet has made everyone more connected...) and it often don't bother readers. But that's not the point here I guess.
0: just one exemple but there's plenty in every chapters, but I like this one because it's very factually debatable : > porn provides no genuine pleasure or crutch and you aren’t making a sacrifice. There’s nothing to give up[...]
I don't think your excerpt is very factually debatable though, as "genuine" and "pleasure" are both vague and subjective words which reduces the discussion to one of semantics.
I rarely drink alcohol, I had my first drink yesterday in a year and a half and it was a small one. But I certainly won't preach that it has no value or provides no genuine pleasure. Or that everyone uses it as a crutch. I have a healthy relationship with it. It's not hard to imagine someone having a similarly healthy relationship with pornography. We can certainly speak on the toxic environment in the industry, and even on capitalism in general and how it subverts consent, which complicates ethical consumption. But as far as the consumption of porn, it's just like any other source of pleasure: stay away if you have trouble with moderation or compartmentalization. And in general, don't succumb to vices, keep a clear head and spend your limited time on this earth wisely. But we cannot be making proclamations about the objective value of subjective experiences.
The reasons themselves can be anything. Ethic is a powerful one, we often see life changes for psychic and/or physic health, time gain (time/benefit of an activity), money, whatever. Those methods are tools to self-help achieve your own goal. When it worked, we’re proud and keen to share it with friends and the world.
"You really can't say 'anything' about almost everything without a proximity quantifier like 'almost'".
(i apologize in advance but this really feels like an "uhm akshually" on your part )
Which part?
Someone with a $FOO addiciton wants to quit - that's not a moral judgement at all, and it doesn't magically become one when $FOO === "porn".
Humans need downtime to process emotions - in the olden days there was a lot of menial work which served this purpose, but we automated most of it since, freeing time for more productive, but stressful activities.
Meanwhile looking at screens allows one to leave all that for later. Unfortunately unprocessed emotions don't go away - they pile up.
I've been using this to gauge how well I'm doing mentally and address whatever issues there might be. My ideal state is that of a chimpanzee who was finally let outside after years in captivity which, upon leaving the building where it was kept, just stares at the sky.
I had a summer job once at a production line, pick up foam piece, place on plastic piece, repeat for two hours, then a break. I did have a CD player at the time and earbuds, but other than that it was completely devoid of mental effort or stimulation. There was something weirdly meditative about it. Not something I'd want to do as a day job but I wouldn't mind for a bit.
What I ended up with is literally a time of day where I "sit with myself" and just think about things. I just sit down for some minutes and try to get my bearings on where I am in life right now. Also, I eliminated a lot of background noise and music - I often do menial things without any other distractions for example. Good opportunities to think about something deep.
But if it's important enough you'll remember or it'll come back to you next time you shower. Or not. Either way is fine.
Should true inspiration strike while soaking in the bath, it is traditional to run through town shouting "Eureka!"
For lesser ideas, a waterproof (usually non-electronic) notepad and pencil may suffice.
Learning to just sit still and let the universe (including whatever your mind does) flow around you... It makes a huge difference in mental health. It really cannot be overstated how beneficial for humans it is to just have downtime and do literally nothing but breathing.
But I know it's hard. Our whole culture is predicated upon being busy. But we can just put everything down and be empty for a bit every once in a while and it is so beneficial.
But when I run I don’t bring anything, no music no phone just a watch to track speed and time.
I get all my best thinking done during those runs. I run slow and it hurts and it never improves but I go for 1-2 hours just so I can get more disconnected thinking done
Either way, I find I feel much better when I take a break from screens, news, and podcasts, and give my mind time to do its thing.
Be open to having others talk with you by having an inviting look. And perhaps recognize when others are being inviting and feel out if they seem keen on yakking.
Imagine a subculture developing where some people just recognize other sociables. Maybe we need masonic-like rings or something else to identify us as welcoming random conversion.
Concentrating on your phone is as much of a conversation stopper as headphones.
I did a screen time detox a few years back. After hearing a similar idea about needing to get to boredom sometimes and not just escaping to a device. Only used a computer for work and exclusively worked on it, then no screen time whatsoever. Maybe lasted 3 weeks or so and made me more interested in stuff like reading, drawing, etc.
From time to time I follow a policy of 'no idle screen time'. Essentially this means if I am using a screen I must have a definite purpose in mind. It really cuts down on how much time I spend on my phone or computer in general, but ironically increases the amount of work I get done (I work almost exclusively on a computer).
Some benefits I noticed after a short while include feeling much calmer (low level feeling of anxiety largely absent), actually actively listening to music again (instead of just using it for background noise), reading books again (even renewed my library card after 10+ years), keeping a more organised home, eating better, getting more exercise, and organising more time to spend with friends and family.
Everyone else is already glued to their screens so it makes it really awkward to start a conversation
- Navigation (can be solved with a dedicated device, but it's a lot less convenient) - A good camera at all times (I used to not care about this, but it's become more important now I have kids) - Mobile payments (pretty essential in my country, not all places accept cards or cash)
In every other aspect, it was a net positive in my life to get rid of my phone.
(I'm not affiliated with minimal company in any way, nor have I actually tried the phone)
Curiously Mininal Phone didn't show up when I did research half a year ago, it seems new.
You can get ~4 day battery life if you limit your apps to phone, text, music, email, wallet (with no lasting background activities*)
- Uber
- Banking
- Google Maps
For a camera, I suggest buying a real, standalone camera (I have a fuji x100). The photos it takes are VASTLY better than an iphone. For something smaller that fits in a pocket, people say great things about the Ricoh GR III.
Unfortunately, I found that being out without a smartphone did cause certain anxieties for me: What if I forgot about an appointment? What if I get an urgent email or whatsapp?
The answer would be having an actual assistant (ie, a secretary). Someone I could call to order me an uber or look up a restaurant, and someone who could call me to say "hey, X just sent you a whatsapp message that seems pretty urgent."
I that an AI powered assistant that communicates via phone or text could be a great use for AI and something I hope to code up whenever I have some spare time.
Pausch gave his boss the number of his new mother in law. In case of an emergency, the boss could explain to the mother in law why it was worth interrupting her daughter’s honeymoon, in which case the mother in law would relay the message.
There mother in law was never called.
The main things I needed to remove are the web browser and email client to make it ~ a dumbphone. I don't find myself wasting time staring at maps, or a weather app, or a calorie tracker, or camera/photos so I don't feel there's any reason to forgo those. (YMMV of course!)
I have never logged into anything except signal on a phone. I haven't removed the browser but I don't have any interest in using it and have only used it to look up wikipedia stuff while traveling and what not. If I did feel some temptation to web browse on it I could remove the browser.
I find it surprising that anyone wants to browse on their phone, I find the tiny screen infuriating.
I would love to get rid of my smart phone, but the problems I dwell on are very rarely present or future decisions, and realistically what is top of my mind anxiety be damned is useless energy, it's like running a wind turbine off the grid, and forcing it to spin as if it were a big fan instead of running the grid off wind turbines. The thoughts are more like did I disappoint that friend last weekend, or did I dissapoint that coworker at the Christmas party 6 months ago, or did I do <x> that definitely didn't create <y>, but did I do <x> that made <y> happen?
I use chess apps on my phone to at least put my brain off those thoughts entirely because I have a different problem to solve, and that is magnificent, and if If I didn't have that I don't know what I would do. I know there's something probably not quite right, but I'm wondering how much time you end up spending on problems that "can't be solved," and how much is time spent actually solving problems in your life. If that makes any sense.
Other benefits:
- Vastly improved mood
- Renewed interest in creative endeavors, specifically writing
- A sense of well-being
- A "the scales have fallen from my eyes" realization/epiphany/gnosis around the nature of reality and the effect "weaponized language delivery mechanisms" (ie, social media) have on our perception of it.
Pretty fucking worth it, if you asked me. And yet I fell off the wagon and have a smartphone again.
Distraction free can also mean, “free despite distraction”.
You created some very positive grooves in your thought patterns, that you can keep using, to recall and reset awareness of what matters at any moment.
10 seconds meditating on what you experienced and learned can reset a day.
Knowing and remembering the contrast is a great way to wade through the complications of life, but avoid drowning again.
A another superpower is to have clearly defined personal missions. Then continually asking “is this helping?” quickly exposes and resolves both mundane and profound derailments. Vast time can be wasted by things that are healthy, but just not the optimal path, too!
For me, the only extreme measures I take are to avoid any exposure or giving attention to advertising. And zero exposure to opinion media (whether views “lean” in a way I sympathize with or not). That stuff just constantly models a norm of sleepwalking into a flattened reality.
After that, I just pay attention unintended wasted time and course correct whenever healthy exposure to novelty flips to low quality or extended hit seeking. We do benefit from some of the former.
I was lucky to grow up without television. Nobody had to teach me the difference between influence and inspiration and I won’t ever let that get watered down.
It scares me how most people’s world views get smashed into low artificially discrete dimensions, down selected empathy and synthetically narrowed concerns, when the if, buts, mostly, sometimes, in general but often not in particular, …, nature of reality and people seems to become invisible to so many even though it isn’t hidden at all.
And I am talking about the smart high intentioned people!
It is important to remind each other to think, each for ourselves. Don’t ever categorize one’s world view as an allegiance to any school of thought, or take any of the other common steps that subtly channel our awareness away from unfiltered reality, hand us menus of default views, or numb our ability to spy the omnipresent gems of value in the most alternate views.
So thanks for posting your experience!
We can live a high contact life and benefit from the roughness and stickiness of untamed social reality, instead of being sanded down by it.
Processing things that give us anxiety is the way to get rid of it.
I've got a vacation planned, I should make a point of it to leave my phone alone for distraction / entertainment / interstitial moments.
Long walks help. No music or podcasts, just me, my mind and the city.
Having a mobile, networked computer with us at all times has been a huge benefit in many ways and I find it hard to believe people would chuck it all due forming habits they don't like. Habits can be molded pretty easily if approached in a conscious way.
The two ways I get to strategic reflection are really:
- Doing lego. I find thhat doing lego is actually really good at helping me consolidate thoughts and ideas. It takes up just enough mental energy to not get bored, but it lets me think about things with an unstressed mind.
- Walks. The other way to generate new perspectives is to take a walk at lunch though non-interesting territory. I really do not find walks in a busy downtown to be relaxing, too much activity intruding on me to actually be low stress, but if it is in a forest or even just a long parkway that works for me.
The absolute worst way to come up with new ideas is in front of my computer trying to work. Good for doing the next obvious thing, but really hard to think outside of the box.
You really do need a mix of the two, otherwise you are either doing the obvious or never actually doing anything.
I do highly recommend getting the kids involved in the various Lego competitions, it forces problem solving and creativity.
I can second that long walks work great for daydreaming but they too feel painfully boring before the daydreaming kicks in.
Lego still sells products which are just big boxes of parts, as well as things between (the 3-in-1 sets that have several different models). I’m not sure why kids are missing out on this—some kids do enjoy it, and some kids don’t. But Lego caters actively to both.
Also showers are very good for the right state of mind.
The part of your brain that's like "you should be fixing the leaky faucet right now" will be quelled when you're in the shower because, I guess aside from consuming audio media, there really isn't much else you can do.
Same thing happens for me, and that’s my working theory.
Pressure comes from duration as well as frequency of encounter. A feature encountered infrequently but consistently across many millions of years can exert a pressure equivalent to a feature encountered more consistently for a shorter period.
Also note that the effect size to be explained here is not that large - just a nudge towards relaxation in what seems to be a subpopulation of humans.
What do you think about that?
But, if the science minded shy away from such areas completely, they will be (and are) filled with explanations from people with completely unscientific worldviews and values.
The Dawkinsian selfish gene framing is unfalsifiable. Even Darwin is practically unfasifiable. It kind of comes with the territory.
I think the degree to which such an explanation is a just so story depends on how many aligning aspects we can observe in reality. An example in this case - the more a shower shifts from utilitarian to luxurious, the more it happens to resemble a hot spring. What would be the most luxurious shower? To me, natural stone walls in a natural looking pattern (impractical to clean), no obvious drain, instead the water drains into crevasses in rock (which is mimicked even in run of the mill shower designs), some natural light but not too much, etc.
Disagree. The whole thesis rests on genetic determinism, which was hypothesized early on - around the time the book was written - but discredited later.
> Even Darwin is practically unfasifiable. It kind of comes with the territory.
Which thesis in Darwin do you think is unfalsifiable? The null hypothesis of the time was that nature was created the way it is and variety was evidence of god's handiwork, and he proposed, argued and in my opinion convincingly established how a well structured system of rules could indeed lead to change and variety.
A false framework producing false explanations does not falsify frameworks in general.
The theory of evolution was conceived way after the middle ages, so that seems beside the point.
- Best: walks, running, walking in circles, walking in circles talking over the phone (1:1 planning), walking in circles talking out loud to myself
- Good: showers, daydreaming in place, daydreaming on trips where I'm not driving, "pair program" white boarding with one other (exceptional) person
- Okay: white boarding by myself, trying to put ideas to pen and paper by myself, meetings with the right people in a physical space
- Bad: at the computer, on the phone, walking or running to podcasts, walking or running to the wrong type of music, video conference meetings, and generally all other meetings
- What are you even doing: YouTube, Netflix, or podcasts on in the background at any level
Podcasts kill this mode for me, so you can't have the brain thinking about other people's thoughts or words.
Playing a video game doesn't work, so I think your spatial thinking has to be free too.
It's as if distracting the brain's non-verbal/spatial modes or burning some amount of calories from those centers gives the "thinking" parts of the brain some "alone time". That's an incredibly non-scientific and unserious hypothesis though.
Walking in some easy nature is great too, somehow relaxes subconsciousness so I end up with few todos marked in my phone after each such walk. When I occasionally smoke weed at such walks somehow this feed becomes a firehose and sometimes struggle to note it all. Nature is amazing in any form, recharging, healing and somehow at lowest level that connection just feels right.
And sure, I booked like 6 hours that day with no concrete immediate result, but 2-3 days like that a year or two ago shaped how applications function in the company today and it does so effectively.
Another thought the article provokes is the idea of mindfullnes and living in the moment. Sometimes it is easy to open up the phone and just escape. But in those situations, it can be quite interesting to just be in the moment, meet people and see where it goes. If you're in a shitty situation -- like a train stopping in the middle of nothing and dropping all passengers at a train station too short for the train -- it can be interesting to interact with and observe people. It can teach how all of us have very similar basic problems, no matter how we look or who we are. And I'm saying that as an introvert -- sometimes the anonymity of never meeting people again is a good thing.
This is a really good observation.
Lately, knitting has been scratching this itch for me.
One of the things I appreciate about knitting is how accommodating it is as a hobby. If I want to really focus on knitting, I can choose a project that uses a lot of complex stitches, cables, etc. If I just want to zone out and feel like I'm making progress, I can choose a simpler pattern that just does the same stitches over and over.
If I want to make something large and intricate, I can pick a pattern that uses multiple colors. But if I want something portable, I can pick a pattern that just needs a single ball of yarn and a single circular needle.
https://jaisenmathai.com/articles/latent-product-development...
those bricks helped me out of burnout towards the end of my studies (14 exams in 3 months…yes, you can do that in Italy)
now I keep new unopened boxes (+ my childhood stash) ready for future dark days
This week I ordered a SIM card compatible with my Nokia dumb phone. I have a smartphone for work, and I intend for it to be off and in a drawer when I get home in the evenings.
I’ve realized also that having a dedicated space to do computing activities, the kind encouraged by having an immobile desktop computer rather than a phone, tablet or laptop, is immensely important for my mental integrity. I’m bringing that back too.
I also wonder if the aging brain is particularly vulnerable to some of the darker patterns these platforms employ? It certainly seems like it from the small number of data points I've seen.
Recently I've had to find things for myself to do in order to make sure my time is better filled otherwise I will "fill" it with doom scrolling. I don't know that my brain is more susceptible (hard to self determine something like that) but my time is certainly more open than it ever was in my life previously.
24 hour "news" is a great example; we leave it on in the background, as Radio or TV, but we're not listening to gain information, we're listening to be entertained - amygdala activated.
With AM radio and broadcast TV, low efforts were mostly limited to 2 hour segments from the 80s-90s; then in the late 90s, cable tv became standard, then in the 2000s the internet (chats, reddit, hacker news), and then the smartphone...
On the computer monitor(s), I could lose the entire day here on HN or (less often now days) reddit. I still can't understand the appeal of gluing my eyeballs to a phone screen.
Surprisingly, the one thing that occasionally manages to distract me is this very forum - Hacker News! :) If I observe myself spending too much time on Hacker News, I block it at the /etc/hosts level. I have a little shell script to point news.ycombinator.com to 127.0.0.1 when I don't want to be browsing HN. HN provides a nifty solution of its own too in the form of the "noprocrast" setting in your HN profile page. If you haven't checked it out yet, it is definitely worth considering.
Apart from that, I think I've been able to escape the traps of modern social media. Also, I still depend quite a bit on physical textbooks, a rollerball pen, and a stack of plain A4 paper for most of my learning, thinking, and exploration activities. This routine has helped me to stay away from modern social media too. So, fortunately, I still have the luxury of boredom in my life which I find to be an essential ingredient for digesting new knowledge as well as finding creative solutions to difficult problems. I've found that letting my mind wander aimlessly sometimes leads to new insights when I least expect them. I think it also helps with creativity and reflection, in general, which is likely a nice bonus too.
I can relate to INTERNET addiction, but not phone addiction
Because I always found that phone UI is a frustrating bottleneck. The rate of information flow is not very high, with the small screens and the limited keyboards (although I can type long chats just fine on phones now)
I was a slightly late adopter of smartphones, and I also don't use social media apps. I use them on the web on my desktop, not on my phone
---
Though a caveat is that HN does look reasonable on a phone's web browser, and it loads quickly, so it's an exception!
This forces me to get up and walk into the other room every time I have to do 2FA at work which has a ton of benefits. I'll bring dishes or cups to the kitchen on the way, very frequently have useful thoughts about whatever I'm working on, get up out of my chair more frequently, and look at things farther away than my screen which relaxes the eyes.
In general, I advocate for avoiding any product with an infinite scroll as I find them detrimental to my own health, extremely addictive, barely rewarding, and frequently enriching to people I barely have any good impressions of.
I have been thinking about this lately. Not just in the context of smartphone use but being devoted to some mind consuming endeavour like building a startup.
I have been building and operating company for over 15 years now (I am 43 now). During those years I had amazing quality of life due to success of the business. However, at the same time I spent most of my daydreaming hours on thinking how to grow my business. Now when business is about to be sold and I don't think about the growth that much I am starting to realise I don't remember as many things from my childhood as most of people around me. I keep wondering whether this is common to other people who have been obsessed about something for many years and forgot to daydream about their earlier years.
Because the world is interesting, yes, but only in spurts, and only for some people.
It's been this way before and after the arrival of smartphones. Some of us have always felt the need to disconnect from what didn't interest us. But it's never been as easy and convenient as it is now. In a second, you can access all of human knowledge, record a memory, see where you are on a map, or simply entertain your brain with a game. Everything we used to carry in a bag now fits in the palm of your hand.
Maybe I'm just rude, but if someone snatched a book from my hands just because I wasn't enjoying a sunset, I'd be mad. If they then called me a slave or a zombie, I'd throw the book at their face. Or the puzzle. Or the iPad. Well, maybe not the iPad, because it's really heavy and expensive, but you get the idea. Why? Because I decide what to dedicate my mental resources to at any given moment.
I decide when to pay attention. There will be times when I want to share a look with the person I'm with, and others when I simply won't have anything to say or do. And still others when I'd prefer to be far, far away, somewhere else entirely. My mind is like that: it wanders and rebels. Perhaps others prefer to cling to the apparent certainties of what's in front of them; I don't dislike that, but I can't and don't want to do it constantly. Nobody can.
ON Saturday was waiting to meet people on a road that had just been reopened after a May Day (traditional British style with May Queen etc.) parade. Other people were doing the same.
I looked around and noticed people (some still in costume etc. so interesting crowd) and looked at buildings (its a pretty street, even though I know it well) and was quite happy.
One thing I noticed was the everyone else who was waiting for people was on their phones, almost all the time they were there.
Obsessive business is the opposite of mindfulness.
It also kills casual social interaction. Talking to someone who is standing next to you.
I do active thinking about projects I have, I recapitulate human interactions and reweight my decisions, I decide stuff that is going to happen. Someimes I do nothing, its not like I plan this stuff. I just plan not using any devices. (I also dont listen to music).
A friend and me worked for like a year back to back on a project and I like forced him to split work-time and come with me with the dogs. He absolutely loved it and said recently that he still forces himself to take a longer break for walks because that just makes him more productive.
The rule I apply is that I can only use my phone if I'm walking on hard surfaces.
Once I'm on a beach, a country path or rolling fields then it gets turned to flight mode and put away.
20 years ago was the mid 2000s, and I had a cell phone for 7 or 8 years at that point. Also, the Palm Pilot (1997) had been around for about 5 years before the Axim (2002).
It is like Pavlov’s bell—the important part being the randomness, of course.
I always find it funny to see, on any social media site, “I’ve quit almost all social media sites, except this one.” Well, we have successfully identified which one was most addictive I guess.
The whole point of this discussion is that daydreaming is not a worthless activity, therefore time spent daydreaming is not "squandered."
In reality, one does not simply sit down on a whim and go into Book Reading mode. Maybe others are built for it, but I have to set aside time in advance, drive to a cafe, and really hunker down. And I don't always have the bandwidth or gas to do that.
If you frame daydreaming as a mentally expensive activity with variable return (5% eureka moments, 95% tedium), and I'm starved for time already, you'll be much more tempted to reach for the mental junk-food. Low-mental expense, immediate, guaranteed reward.
I'm learning I can't have my cake and eat it to. I can't fill my schedule yet also try to pursue these activities that ask me for sustained, long term attention. Something has to give.
For me, it isn’t rewarding. When I look back at my time doomscrolling, it doesn’t feel restorative, rewarding, fulfilling. Resending I have been kind of forcing myself to do more things, instead of telling myself that I “need” that mindless downtime.
And I have found that it actually gives me more energy to force myself to read a book instead of mindlessly scrolling around, to commit to one episode of quality programing instead of rewatching something easy while also playing around on the phone.
Much like committing to physical exercise gives you more energy, stamina, etc. over time than just “resting around”, training to lengthen my attention span gives me more bandwidth for things that take an attention span. Practicing reading 30 mins a day on the bus makes me better at reading on the bus and other places that aren’t hunkered down in a very specific setting. It’s not easy at first and some days are better than others, much like working out or eating healthy, my long term satisfaction is much higher than junk food, digital or otherwise.
I agree. I hate how I feel after doom scrolling. But the initial impulse is hard to fight.
I'm encouraged to hear about your intentional movement towards healthier digital habits.
> force myself to ... instead of ...
Where does this energy come from? Are some people better at forcing themselves to do things they need to do? Is it genetic? Is it biology[1]?
[1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/10/society-is-fixed-biolo...
For instance for people reading around a hundred books a year, would they want to spend more time daydreaming instead of reading ? Probably no.
I don't think anyone is forcing this on you, I think it's your choice on how you spend your time. Allowing for periods of boredom is just more choice available to you. If you're already saturated, I understand that you wouldn't want to embrace that.
Obviously, that is the extreme on the opposite side of the spectrum. But from what I recall reading, daydreaming, evenly moderately, can be somewhat unproductive. I mean that in the sense that daydreaming can provide the brain with a shortcut to a feeling that would be better served if an action provided it.
For example, one can daydream about going to the gym and becoming more healthy. One can follow the daydream all the way through. However, at least in my case, I have caught myself enjoying the pleasurable feelings and the "one day, I will..." too much to the point that I never go to the gym.
I think my brain has learned that I can quell whatever feeling I am having in the moment by daydreaming. It's my brain's shortcut. It's as if my mind say, "Why spend the effort to do something when we can just imagine how it feels and enjoy the reward now?"
Like anything in life, the key is balance. However, creating that balance is not easy in my experience.
But I'd wager that, deep down, you know that the feeling you get thinking about it is far different from the actual feelings (both physical and mental) you'd get if you'd actually done it, no? I know that's been the case in the past for myself with regards to some thoughts - I know what I'm doing and I know that nothing will improve until I do it, and then I'm thrilled in ways beyond just what the thought provided when I actually execute.
This also kinda misses the forest for the trees. Not acting on a desire you think of is separate from the idea that people don't give their brains a break.
I suppose there is probably some ratio for any given task that is amount of effort:reward. So, for some tasks, I would gladly take a quarter of the reward to avoid spending ten times the effort to acquire it.
> Not acting on a desire you think of is separate from the idea that people don't give their brains a break.
I agree and disagree. While there are obvious differences, I do believe not giving one's brain a break is partly causative in depleting one's desire/ability to act.
We all have different experiences, but I do not think daydreaming is really giving my mind a break. I find my mind to be quite active while daydreaming. But everyone is different, I suppose.
The response I am flippantly tempted to argue is that it's good for people to not be acting/doing all the time and that downtime is essential, but, as we've both acknowledged, there's nuance there, and it all boils down to what the desire is and what the consequence(s) is/are should we not act.
>I find my mind to be quite active while daydreaming. But everyone is different, I suppose.
Totally! I mentioned elsewhere in this thread that I love backpacking in silence and without using my phone. These are 3-4 day trips deep in the wilderness, completely disconnected from the rest of the world and entirely in my own headspace. I love those moments, but I know plenty of people in meatspace who've expressed to me that they don't know how I can do that because of the way their own trains of thought run/work.
Of course, when I looked up citations on this I found some links on maladaptive daydreaming as well ._.”
I went through a really bad spell of this in my life. I was pacing in my house for 6-8 hours a day just imagining scenarios. My feet would hurt and I knew I was making myself miserable, but it was obsessive. The scenarios weren't high stakes arguments, they were things I wanted to do. Quite bizarre.
I don't miss that time, and I think I would prefer scrolling, even if it's objectively bad for me. I am curious if Maladaptive Daydreaming will be a real medical term someday, or if it's just a specific symptom of anxiety and ADHD.
Given this, I find that daydreaming is in a way an expression of a freedom and luxury that we have. I find myself starting to think deeply about some topics in those moments. Spending that time on a smartphone/social media is wasting a freedom that we have. I used to check news or watch something more frequently before I had this realization and not doing that has greatly improved my state of mind.
As a parent I highly value boredom. At ages 6 and 8 electronics limited to 30 mins per day.
Our phones stay in my wife's home office during the day, since we want to model not staring at them.
They come to my work sometimes, and I've had a few people express how they're impressed when they watch them entertain themselves, and my response is always, "They have to learn how to be bored".
I am often surprised when we are out at restuarants and cafes, and other kids that age are staring into tablets with their headphones on. How are these kids going to develop adult social skills when they are oblivious to them going on around them?
Also car journeys. We enjoy things like playing I-spy, and singing along to songs together. I would hate it so much if my kid was glued to a tablet watching stuff.
Boredom is very very important for a childs development. I feel that the reduction in kids boredom time is a big reason we are experiencing epidemics of mental health revolving around concepts such as FOMO and personal image.
I love your point about social interactions, too - we'll tiptoe around certain subjects occasionally, but for the most part I love when they (especially my oldest, but only because my youngest is still coming out of the toddler phase) listen in and ask questions and try to understand what we're chatting about. It always reminds me of being a kid and thinking it was super cool to be able to hang with the grown-ups and learn about whatever they're chatting about.
Noticeable on pubic transit particularly
I'm sure it happens, but it seemed rare to me. People read books or magazines, or were just too cramped and crowded to bother trying to interact
For college students they likely almost always find themselves surrounded by familiar faces, even classmates, because they are all going to class at the same time on the same transit
So yeah, it would be easier to strike up a random conversation with people you recognize from campus or just people who are all part of your similar demographic
I never saw anything like that happen.
Neither here nor there, but the photographer was Stanley Kubrick
Maybe this is true for the author, but before smartphones I wasn't just chatting up strangers while I waited for the elevator or reflecting on my life. I was staring at the elevator light getting angry that it was taking too long.
I spent a lot of time being bored and being angry that I was bored. Now I can consume information and learn new things ALL THE TIME. It's amazing!
The fact that we can each curate our own choice of media or news means we can also create our own echo chambers, so our chosen "realities" aren't as similar to our neighbors as they were when people all watched the same few channels on TV.
I agree though that it can also mean we're experiencing more of the world through other people, strangers, instead of experiencing it for ourselves. I think our exposure to so many different experiences (but not direct experiences) also has an effect on our perception of what's normal or ideal, i.e. sitting being idle feels even worse when you see other people online doing amazing things.
To me at least, it does feel like however optimized a thing is to take your attention, imagination is more attention-stealing.
I remember myself and my siblings often complaining, “Mom! I’m bored!” With the “bored” long and drawn out.
This post caused me to stop and reflect that I haven’t heard my kids complain about boredom in more years that I can recall. They have audiobooks on demand, movies on demand, YouTube on demand, game consoles on demand, etc. It’s almost impossible to become bored. What to do? I remember how much I hated being bored, is it cruel to enforce boredom on my kids (that are still at home) or cruel not to?
Notice the voice of protest within you as you seriously consider doing this. Why is that part so unwilling to give up something so trivial for just a few minutes?
It's a truly good exercise for mindfulness/meditation/re-calibration of our dopamine system. Obviously the principles apply everywhere in life, I just love this example because it is so relatable for most and highlights the issue so clearly.
All the talk about smartphones as a source of dopamine just convinces me that people think they understand what dopamine is but don't know the first thing about it and are using it as a synonym for literally any form of pleasure.
But I also can't see the fun in gambling machines, and clearly some people just can't get enough of them, so it seems not everyone gets a rush from the same things.
The point is, we've been driven to be more "productive" than creative. After a while, that productivity creates burnout. Being prohibited from collecting your thoughts or wandering about other stuff has created more problems.
Discouraging daydreaming then making it into a commodity to be exploited by capitalism is probably the most terrible thing we have ever done.
We need to create a society that allows for daydreaming again, gratis. The phone is not the problem, only part of it. I can leave my phone on my desk or in the bedroom. We just need to stop being on-call for people who don't need--nay, deserve--our attention.
Different from when I'm on my smartphone, I do not feel any anxiety to check social networks using my computer. So I can focus more on learning some stuff, coding, organizing my personal data, checking my appointments, checking the tech news, or even playing some games (to have some fun).
Another part of this for me is not going to sites that have infinite scroll. This means that even on my laptop, I will not go to sites where I cannot finish consuming whatever content was there.
For sites like HN where there is a rotating front page, I have an RSS feed of the front page that refreshes infrequently so I can sample what was there without always needing to return to the front page to look for new content. Currently I have this set to 1 hour. This has been a decent mix between missing interesting content and having a feed that shows me way more articles than I can consume. My RSS reader is self-hosted at home, which means when I leave the house I am not tempted to use my phone to read that RSS content.
While, yes, social media gives us a more pronounced dopamine hit-and-crave cycle, we've always had means of escape at our fingertips.
A book, however, is just a book.
Same: escapism.
This line never hits right to me. I used to religiously carry around the New Yorker and / or NYRB and / or London Review of Books etc, often with a book too, so that I could read while waiting for friends, appointments, public transport etc, so I was never bored or daydreaming when I didn't want to be. I think this needs to be rephrased to account for the difference in quality between printed material and the infinite, deliberately-addictive makeup of the modern internet, which is the real issue.
edit: even a steam deck is somehow less distracting than a phone, despite distraction being one of its main purposes
this is bliss.
I often wonder if we would focus politically on different topics.
I often wonder if I would procrastinate less in the real world and face important decisions much faster.
2. Not very different except for the fact that there wouldn't be groups trying to make smartphones into their favored scapegoat for society not going exactly how they wanted.
3. Not any more likely than that keeping teens out of dance or pool halls would keep them devout and in church 'and on the right path'. Procrastination is an emotional regulation mechanism and emerges as a natural consequence of activities conditioning yourself against wanting to engage in them. Sometimes it is your mind saying "I don't want to do this right now." Other times it is is "I literally cannot do this right now!".
Reference: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25525/old/25525-h/files/2151...
There are 4.5 weeks a month, which is 9 MegaMillions tickets. At $5 a pop, that's $45 a month.
I suggest the MegaMillions tickets get you better daydreaming than the phone does ...
When letting our mind wandering (and walking actually helps me to remove some distractions) can bring some peace and eventually some new perspective.
Btw phones worsen your eyesight if you use it often, like playing games.
But I guess there's always chatgpt
Commuting by car doesn't hit the same nerves. Listening to the radio or something, angry at other drivers, stuck in a cage in traffic. But walking works as well.
Anyone who was a bookworm before the late 90s will also be familiar with the problem of your consumption rate vastly outpacing your ability to obtain books, leading to more of those alternatives.
It's not like books are a universal positive either though. It's possible to read so much that your ability to be creative suffers, which is what "phone critics" are alleging here. Putting down the research material is a common bit of writing advice.
When I go hiking/backpacking, I don't listen to music at all, as I enjoy the peacefulness of the forest and the break that my mind gets from the noise of life. I also typically default to paper maps after having done a lot of research via guidebooks, old and new, about where I'm heading. I'll reach for my phone if I really need it, but usually I don't, and I don't roll with a GPS track I downloaded from someone's past trip. I'm there to enjoy the environment around me, and that means hearing it, too.
Same for driving. Maybe I'll use Waze if it's somewhere I've never really been before, but typically I'll just look it up beforehand and find my way there on my own.
When it comes to those navigation choices, wrt both driving and hiking, it gives me a better understanding of the area, and a stronger sense of route options, and therefore a stronger sense of myself being able to find my own way, than if I were to rely on a screen (or Google Maps/Waze audio telling me where/when to turn and me following blindly).
A garmin or something would likely be better for this, but I don't particularly want to buy one and the phone does a fine job.
if you are listening to a podcast or music, your mind is following those rhythms and thoughts. Not clear this is better when running that listening to the rhythms of your own body; breath, heart, footfall, and the sounds of the world around you.
If you are driving using a GPS for navigating, how much of your mind are you using to track where you are, spotting landmarks, etc. This is a FUNDAMENTAL aspect of almost all motive forms of live, the circuitry is deep in the brain, and if you are not activating it, you don't even know what you are missing.
Daydreaming is extremely important to mental processing. It's not just spare cycles firing off randomly, your brain is designed to spend lots of time basically operating your body on autopilot and using the spare resources to collate, analyze and integrate information that has come in since the last cycle. Making sure you get enough DMN/daydreaming time is important, as is recognizing when the DMN is spending your spare cycles on things that aren't useful to you. For example, trauma survivors often manifest symptoms that are linked to a hyperactive DMN. The thinking is that in a threatening environment there's a pretty direct payoff to being hypervigilant and focusing on finding threat patterns and that maladaptive behaviors start out as adaptive behaviors in a different environment.
tldr - Doug Funnie was actually the model of a healthy boy with a rich inner life
If it's a big project like a complicated real estate deal, investment plan, large line of business program, or the business itself I am guaranteed to encounter zero surprises because I'm that good. But I can't visualize the kitchen I'm about to remodel or what accessories I should get on the car I'm about to buy.
Put another way, think of it as an opportunity for more conscious reflection and exploration. Like sleep, but not just 'run the garbage collector and predictive simulation pre-cache' routines, instead time to consciously consider and critically cultivate new perspectives on issues that might have been vexing the individual.
