I don’t have any subscriptions except for rent, transportation, a cloud VM, and a domain for my blog, and that has made an incredible difference.
This doesn’t mean I don’t watch movies or have fun—it’s just that watching movies requires jumping through a few hoops for me, so I plan carefully before settling in to watch something.
Also, not owning a device to play games and waste hours was another conscious decision I made a while ago. Kicking the TV out of your bedroom is a neat trick that works for many.
I still get distracted and doomscroll sometimes, but usually those are planned sessions. Not reading the news or caring about strangers’ opinions has done wonders for my psyche.
After a few years, all of this comes naturally to me, but when I talk to people, the first thing they’re amazed by is how I manage to live like this.
> This doesn’t mean I don’t watch movies or have fun—it’s just that watching movies requires jumping through a few hoops for me [...]
A little bee told me that VLC + most torrent trackers are still a better UX than most Netflix/Apple TV/Prime video.
None of them will crash after 30s of playback because your postcode changed for a week, because you have an ad blocker installed, or because you just plugged in an external display and some DRM magic kicked in. Just find the file, download it and double click.
> A little bee told me that VLC + most torrent trackers are still a better UX than most Netflix/Apple TV/Prime video.
I can never understand these claims as anything other than mental gymnastics. There is no way you can convince me that it’s better UX to navigate torrent sites, take all the time to download the file, hope it’s a good copy, and launch it in VLC.
Most of us have something like an Apple TV or other streaming box plugged into a TV. I can power it on and get to the show I want in seconds. It picks up where I left off. I don’t have to worry about quality or subtitles or torrents.
> Just find the file, download it and double click.
The idea of just finding torrents, waiting for them to download, then fiddling with everything to get it in my TV is in no way a superior UX to the streaming services. I think these claims are just attempts to justify piracy as being superior UX, but it doesn’t make sense.
>I still get distracted and doomscroll sometimes, but usually those are planned sessions. Not reading the news or caring about strangers’ opinions has done wonders for my psyche.
n=2 is a poor sample set to develop strong inferences, but I definitely see the upside to this behaviour.
Once I made a conscious decision to become one of those 'low-information voters' you hear about, my mental health improved notably and my screen time dropped by a few hours per week.
>I don’t have any subscriptions except for rent, transportation, a cloud VM, and a domain for my blog, and that has made an incredible difference.
Amazon Prime is a tricky one: bundle shopping deals with streaming video. Youtube is also tricky: it's free.
But despite having Amazon Prime and Youtube, I almost never watch movies, TV, play games, or doomscroll? How? I had a baby. No more time for any for any of that. Once he's old enough to want to watch movies or play games, then maybe I'll watch/play some with him, but he's too young currently.
Depends on what you mean by “keep going.” Does a decade and a half mean I became successful? Then yeah.
I come from a middle-class SEA family, where education and frugality are bolted into our DNA, even when we can afford nice things. So it’s a bit easier for me.
However, I see my left-brained Western friends struggle with this quite a lot. Many self-diagnose as having ADHD, need therapy, and can’t seem to win the fight against all the nonsense large corporations throw at us. So I understand that it’s probably difficult.
On a side note, I find that this flow state has it's addiction of it's own. I find myself doing whatever I can to find time for it. I feel like the reason mathematicians, physicists and artists of the past produced such great results is, they found the flow state so addictive, more addictive than balancing your health or family life, and thus dedicated almost entirety of their lives on it. Just have to be careful on that one. After all, our purpose is (I think) is not just working.
It is addictive, because it feels like living life at its fullest. It feels like life should always feel.
> After all, our purpose is (I think) is not just working.
Agreed, but I think that our purpose is also not just experiencing, nor is it just eating, pairing up, multiplying, and dying (like all life on Earth does, +/- the pairing up stuff).
I also feel that "working" != "working", specifically working for money usually stands in opposition to the kind of work you'd find fulfilling and that benefits from the state of flow.
We associate things and people with the experiences where we encountered them.
Once I made the same observation that GP did, I reflected back on conflicts over code. The most vitriolic arguments I’ve gotten into about design decisions at work have all, almost to a man, boiled down to the person who authored it having done so in flow state and how fucking dare you question the beauty of the output of that effort. They make it personal because the experience was deeply personal.
Flow state cannot make nuanced ethical decisions. It’s right in the characteristics. And both DevEx and maintainability come down to thinking about the people who have to deal with your code for the next four years.
The only way I’ve been able to avoid this trap myself is to spent more effort on refactoring, taking notes, taking breaks, and saving up the Deep Work for special occasions where I have choreographed much of it ahead of time. So I know exactly what to do and why. Exploratory dev in flow state leads to all of these sins. Because you get the bear to dance and then you stop.
>>On a side note, I find that this flow state has it's addiction of it's own.
For this reason, there are societies and cultures where Chess is treated more on the lines of a dangerous addiction one must stay away from. Co-incidentally I have seen similar damage in people with video game addiction. Years wasted online, or on board games. Often when people are young, they could be attending college, or starting a trade or learning new skills. Or just working and earning money.
People are instead playing video games, or chess, where you are not only addicted to gaming, but you also get a illusion that you are doing productive work, where all of your mental faculties are engaged, and you are thinking and executing. Its easy to fall into this simulated productivity trap. Given levels to these games, its easy to create a flow like situation for years.
>>I feel like the reason mathematicians, physicists and artists of the past produced such great results is, they found the flow state so addictive, more addictive than balancing your health or family life, and thus dedicated almost entirety of their lives on it.
Trust me, most people who warn against going into academia are saying precisely this. If you are not too good at Math or Physics, its possible to get addicted to intermediate or beginner intermediate levels for all life and never really go out and make a living.
The sheer amount of failed musicians, mathematicians, physicists who went to in to the field because of curiosity, but got addicted to 'flow' and could never really bail and go on to earn or have a good living is quite large, and in many ways this is a bigger let down than even gaming addiction.
I know quite a few musicians and even graduate level math professors, who have totally broken families and finances because they can't explain anyone why they like doing it, and families don't get why they must remain broke.
I'm a physicist and musician, though I'm certainly not one of the greats in either area. Musicians have their reputation for dealing with addictions, though I've avoided them myself.
But I've read that the stereotype of the musician needing the junk in order to be creative, is a myth. When people study the actual timelines, they've found that the great artists did their best work when they were relatively clean, and that the addictions detracted from their work.
I, for one, can do heavy bodily harm to myself if I attempt to live in this state for long periods. It turns out my mind is much stronger than my body. Perhaps the flow state removes the regular messages the body sends when it's had enough.
Either way, life without play is dangerous for me.
One of my tricks is keeping a glass of water at my desk. Filling the glass is a break. So is emptying my bladder. The break lets you reflect, and decide if you’re chasing your tail or doing something questionable.
Drinking is also a work appropriate fidget. Sip of water instead of tapping a pen or bouncing your leg. And easier on your kidneys than overdosing on caffeine all day.
Why don’t posts like this ever explain what the end goal is? The biggest problem in my life is that all this work and productivity feels meaningless. Everyone is always writing as if these goals are common knowledge but I don’t even know why I work anymore other than I can’t retire yet.
> The biggest problem in my life is that all this work and productivity feels meaningless.
This is an entirely different, more high-level problem (like software architecture vs. specific algorithms)
Commonly, some may have a short-term goal (get a promotion / climb the next step of the career ladder / finish university) which gives them intrinsic motivation in such a way that they can't rationally explain why they are attracted to that goal.
Motivation might be derived from responsibility towards others: Trying to get more done to have more time for kids / elderly parents / partner / hobbies / side-project startup idea.
"Feeling no purpose" however is a very common problem. There are coaching programs, retreats, therapy programs and books revolving around this topic.
It tends to be complex, and could be a learned behaviour pattern where one neglects their true intrinsic interests; undiagnosed depression; being in a field your parents forced you into which you have no intrinsic interest in, or a mixture of those and some others.
I agree that generally, the low-level optimization of flow states only makes sense once you have found your true calling.
I’m reading The Choice right now. I can’t tell you if it makes sense without having read at least The Goal, but I suspect not. But that book still sells 100k copies a year despite used copies being everywhere, because it’s worth reading. The Choice may offer you some notions about the silver linings in failure. Eli loved when things failed because they helped him find the boundaries of the problem. Like a human SAT solver.
Work and focus aren’t limited to your paid job. Focus states are helpful in everything to hobbies to inconsequential things like doing a puzzle alone or with friends.
These techniques can be applied anywhere. The goals are entirely personal, so you can’t expect to find them listed for you in someone else’s blog post.
I want to know where their goals and favourite source of flow come from. Do any of these bloggers know what they’re writing or does it just sound good to other people who are also aimlessly playing on the computer? I want more depth.
It’s a lot more enjoyable and “flow”y to get stoned and watch YouTube all day everyday but I know that’s not what he’s talking about. I want to know what’s so great about the work and personal lives of these productivity guru guys. Seems like they all just make another data analytics tool, AI toys, or write blogs for each other.
Nice post. It really is a challenge to find time and mental space for one’s creative moments when everything around us is literally optimised to maximise engagement.
Even places like Netflix/Prime/AppleTV where we’re supposed to go for recreation, would rather you quickly flick through several “shallow” productions than invest in something deep and meaningful.
Indeed. Even the deep and meaningful are part of the same goal, ecosystem retention. The aim is to keep serving slop and convincing you that you necessarily need entertainment of this specific type and no other.
The only answer is to not engage. Entertainment can be of many kinds, some simple kinds too.
> Even places like Netflix/Prime/AppleTV where we’re supposed to go for recreation, would rather you quickly flick through several “shallow” productions than invest in something deep and meaningful.
That’s not my experience at all.
I rarely watch TV, so when I sit down I’m often looking for a good movie to watch. Much of the content these days is long, multi-episode shows that they want you to get invested in for 5-10 hours per season.
Don’t pay for those—problem solved. No one is forcing us to do any of these things.
Yelling at the cloud will rarely solve this. Blaming profit mega-corps for our woes is like trying to warm up the Earth to battle winter instead of just getting a thermostat or moving to a warmer climate.
While we do have agency to decide not to use addictive technology, it's not always that simple.
For many of us, the addictive technology is tightly integrated with technology that we want or need to use. For example, I use local facebook groups for certain things, I use youtube to learn how to do things, I sometimes use instagram to communicate with certain people who prefer that. All of these have integrated those horrible short videos that can become very addictive - I've seen myself get stuck there, and many people I know who were never tech or phone addicts before this technology came around, including my mom.
I could and maybe should radically change my life and just not use these things - facebook and instgram I could get by without, but youtube would be difficult - I am a musician and use it for finding music, and also for how to do or fix anything.
I finally three months ago got a combination of firefox extensions and android apps to make it impossible for me to see these short videos, as well as all social media feeds etc, unless I specifically go change the settings to bring them back. And I've managed to avoid doing that. So in total over the last three months I've spent about 10 minutes watching the horrible short videos (when some slipped through the cracks) compared to before where I often found myself stuck there for an hour or two. I do still waste time on the internet often, but it's usually in a specific online community that's stuff I want to read and not random crap the algorithm gives me.
I think it's like trying to quit a sugar addiction while having a donut strapped to your hand at all times. It really makes it easier if you can get rid of the donut. But when the donut is tied to your work or hobbies and there's no way to do the work or hobbies without the donut being there, it's hard. It can be done, and many people do it, but there are also many people who would choose to never see the donut if that option was easily available, but it's not.
I really appreciated this line on the Vaticans' thoughts on AI:
The twentieth-century philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev observed that people often blame machines for personal and social problems; however, “this only humiliates man and does not correspond to his dignity,” for “it is unworthy to transfer responsibility from man to a machine.”
Ah yes, the dream where "vote with your wallet" was supposed to be a thing. The reality is though, these corporations are so big and have so much unbounded power in real life stuff (including legislation and policy) that my wallet is meaningless to their existnace.
Also, not paying for them just means they will try to find me whever I'm (through ads, notifications, related products) and push some emotional buttons so I will join them, or at least sign up for something that gives them data points.
Like with food one aspect to realize is that you can nudge yourself one way or another by making certain decisions in front.
It is harder to eat unhealthy if you don't buy groceries that allow you to make unhealthy food. And you buy unhealthy food when you enter the grocery store hungry.
Similar frontloaded decisions affect digital consumption. This is mostly about how we design the places where we consume, how we set up our devices etc.
A good way to start is to switch off notifications for certain classes of apps and setup an automatic do-not-disturb based on your schedule (e.g. between 22:00 and 10:00). Don't put distracting apps on Desktop and home screens, those should only be opened by you if you actively decided to do so — adding multiple steps to doing so is a feature, not a bug.
If you really wanna go hardcore you could DNS block certain apps during certain times, forcing you to read a book instead.
In the end it is just about creating an environment for yourself where the things you want to do are easier choices than the things you want to avoid.
I do this too. I’ve even managed to go years without opening the news. What I can’t deny, the news still sneaks in through WhatsApp/Telegram groups.
> or caring about strangers opinions has done wonders for my psyche.
The final bos !. Jumping into these kinds of conversations just to prove you're smart—or look smart—is the ultimate time stealer. The dopamine hits hard.
Yes, i proved i'm smarter than my average friends. friends also happy to get good insights from me.
The ironic part? times fades away while the quality of my work takes a nosedive.
>>I’ve even managed to go years without opening the news.
If only life was that simple.
If you are not Knuth or Einstein, you better be open to the world. Or you won't win at life.
Focus is for people are absolutely too darn good at what they do, and get rewarded for it. For everybody else, you have to be open enough to be informed about newer and rewarding things.
Tangentially related, I finished “You Should Quit Reddit” by Jacob Desforges yesterday, at the recommendation of a fellow HN user. Definitely worth a read if you are leaning that way already and just need a few well-reasoned arguments to seal the deal.
I found it difficult to work when connected to the internet. (Unmedicated ADHD.)
So I'd turn it off before sleep (as part of basic "hygiene"), and keep it off (router and phone) for at least the first hour the next day.
I'd wake up and begin working immediately. Usually I'd get so much done this way, that I'd choose to stay offline for a few more hours voluntarily.
This routine I developed to deal with a disability is now being promoted by YouTube influencers as a productivity secret used by billionaires, which I find endlessly amusing!
> So I'd turn it off before sleep (as part of basic "hygiene"), and keep it off (router and phone) for at least the first hour the next day.
How do you do this technically? Shutting down phone and router (so many things complain when no WiFi, you need a phd to disable iPhones), alarms, and still a way to be reached in case of emergency?
I unplugged the router from the wall, and turned off my phone. I also moved it to another room, as it's been demonstrated to make you stupider even when it's switched off. (I think it has to do with the subconscious expectation of constant interruptions associated with the physical object.)
The mere presence of a smartphone reduces basal attentional performance
The only thing I missed was documentation, so I downloaded offline docs. Then occasionally I missed Google. So I just kept a list of stuff to Google an hour or two later when I came back online.
I made sure my work was full of variety so if I got completely stuck on one task (rare), I could just switch gears.
I think while things may complain simply pulling the power to the ISP modem/router and doing a full shutdown of any phone would replicate what they are doing. If you wanted you could have a separate AP from the router that could stay running even when the router loses internet to keep the local network running, but if we're being honest... does it really matter?
Most devices might complain, but most will simply stop working silently and then reconnect when they have a chance. Some might need to be power cycled because they gave up trying to connect (I had a smart garage door that had bad connectivity and would sometimes do a version of this).
Readit News
This doesn’t mean I don’t watch movies or have fun—it’s just that watching movies requires jumping through a few hoops for me, so I plan carefully before settling in to watch something.
Also, not owning a device to play games and waste hours was another conscious decision I made a while ago. Kicking the TV out of your bedroom is a neat trick that works for many.
I still get distracted and doomscroll sometimes, but usually those are planned sessions. Not reading the news or caring about strangers’ opinions has done wonders for my psyche.
After a few years, all of this comes naturally to me, but when I talk to people, the first thing they’re amazed by is how I manage to live like this.
A little bee told me that VLC + most torrent trackers are still a better UX than most Netflix/Apple TV/Prime video.
None of them will crash after 30s of playback because your postcode changed for a week, because you have an ad blocker installed, or because you just plugged in an external display and some DRM magic kicked in. Just find the file, download it and double click.
I can never understand these claims as anything other than mental gymnastics. There is no way you can convince me that it’s better UX to navigate torrent sites, take all the time to download the file, hope it’s a good copy, and launch it in VLC.
Most of us have something like an Apple TV or other streaming box plugged into a TV. I can power it on and get to the show I want in seconds. It picks up where I left off. I don’t have to worry about quality or subtitles or torrents.
> Just find the file, download it and double click.
The idea of just finding torrents, waiting for them to download, then fiddling with everything to get it in my TV is in no way a superior UX to the streaming services. I think these claims are just attempts to justify piracy as being superior UX, but it doesn’t make sense.
n=2 is a poor sample set to develop strong inferences, but I definitely see the upside to this behaviour.
Once I made a conscious decision to become one of those 'low-information voters' you hear about, my mental health improved notably and my screen time dropped by a few hours per week.
Amazon Prime is a tricky one: bundle shopping deals with streaming video. Youtube is also tricky: it's free.
But despite having Amazon Prime and Youtube, I almost never watch movies, TV, play games, or doomscroll? How? I had a baby. No more time for any for any of that. Once he's old enough to want to watch movies or play games, then maybe I'll watch/play some with him, but he's too young currently.
Doomscrolling, buying random shit you don’t need, not having the headspace to think clearly are the issues we were talking about.
I actually got back into TV shows and books when we had kids. Lots of downtime holding and feeding the baby.
I'd rather support local retailers and not receive a fraud product.
I come from a middle-class SEA family, where education and frugality are bolted into our DNA, even when we can afford nice things. So it’s a bit easier for me.
However, I see my left-brained Western friends struggle with this quite a lot. Many self-diagnose as having ADHD, need therapy, and can’t seem to win the fight against all the nonsense large corporations throw at us. So I understand that it’s probably difficult.
> After all, our purpose is (I think) is not just working.
Agreed, but I think that our purpose is also not just experiencing, nor is it just eating, pairing up, multiplying, and dying (like all life on Earth does, +/- the pairing up stuff).
I also feel that "working" != "working", specifically working for money usually stands in opposition to the kind of work you'd find fulfilling and that benefits from the state of flow.
Once I made the same observation that GP did, I reflected back on conflicts over code. The most vitriolic arguments I’ve gotten into about design decisions at work have all, almost to a man, boiled down to the person who authored it having done so in flow state and how fucking dare you question the beauty of the output of that effort. They make it personal because the experience was deeply personal.
Flow state cannot make nuanced ethical decisions. It’s right in the characteristics. And both DevEx and maintainability come down to thinking about the people who have to deal with your code for the next four years.
The only way I’ve been able to avoid this trap myself is to spent more effort on refactoring, taking notes, taking breaks, and saving up the Deep Work for special occasions where I have choreographed much of it ahead of time. So I know exactly what to do and why. Exploratory dev in flow state leads to all of these sins. Because you get the bear to dance and then you stop.
For this reason, there are societies and cultures where Chess is treated more on the lines of a dangerous addiction one must stay away from. Co-incidentally I have seen similar damage in people with video game addiction. Years wasted online, or on board games. Often when people are young, they could be attending college, or starting a trade or learning new skills. Or just working and earning money.
People are instead playing video games, or chess, where you are not only addicted to gaming, but you also get a illusion that you are doing productive work, where all of your mental faculties are engaged, and you are thinking and executing. Its easy to fall into this simulated productivity trap. Given levels to these games, its easy to create a flow like situation for years.
>>I feel like the reason mathematicians, physicists and artists of the past produced such great results is, they found the flow state so addictive, more addictive than balancing your health or family life, and thus dedicated almost entirety of their lives on it.
Trust me, most people who warn against going into academia are saying precisely this. If you are not too good at Math or Physics, its possible to get addicted to intermediate or beginner intermediate levels for all life and never really go out and make a living.
The sheer amount of failed musicians, mathematicians, physicists who went to in to the field because of curiosity, but got addicted to 'flow' and could never really bail and go on to earn or have a good living is quite large, and in many ways this is a bigger let down than even gaming addiction.
I know quite a few musicians and even graduate level math professors, who have totally broken families and finances because they can't explain anyone why they like doing it, and families don't get why they must remain broke.
But I've read that the stereotype of the musician needing the junk in order to be creative, is a myth. When people study the actual timelines, they've found that the great artists did their best work when they were relatively clean, and that the addictions detracted from their work.
Either way, life without play is dangerous for me.
Drinking is also a work appropriate fidget. Sip of water instead of tapping a pen or bouncing your leg. And easier on your kidneys than overdosing on caffeine all day.
This is an entirely different, more high-level problem (like software architecture vs. specific algorithms)
Commonly, some may have a short-term goal (get a promotion / climb the next step of the career ladder / finish university) which gives them intrinsic motivation in such a way that they can't rationally explain why they are attracted to that goal.
Motivation might be derived from responsibility towards others: Trying to get more done to have more time for kids / elderly parents / partner / hobbies / side-project startup idea.
"Feeling no purpose" however is a very common problem. There are coaching programs, retreats, therapy programs and books revolving around this topic.
It tends to be complex, and could be a learned behaviour pattern where one neglects their true intrinsic interests; undiagnosed depression; being in a field your parents forced you into which you have no intrinsic interest in, or a mixture of those and some others.
I agree that generally, the low-level optimization of flow states only makes sense once you have found your true calling.
I recently listened to the following talk by Csikszentmihályi, which I found useful: https://youtu.be/7Vfw7Du3XLU
These techniques can be applied anywhere. The goals are entirely personal, so you can’t expect to find them listed for you in someone else’s blog post.
The idea is that "finding flow" or spending your limited and valuable time in the flow state is an ideal way to live your life. It's enjoyable.
By definition, it's not an "end goal", but a life goal.
It’s a lot more enjoyable and “flow”y to get stoned and watch YouTube all day everyday but I know that’s not what he’s talking about. I want to know what’s so great about the work and personal lives of these productivity guru guys. Seems like they all just make another data analytics tool, AI toys, or write blogs for each other.
The only answer is to not engage. Entertainment can be of many kinds, some simple kinds too.
That’s not my experience at all.
I rarely watch TV, so when I sit down I’m often looking for a good movie to watch. Much of the content these days is long, multi-episode shows that they want you to get invested in for 5-10 hours per season.
Yelling at the cloud will rarely solve this. Blaming profit mega-corps for our woes is like trying to warm up the Earth to battle winter instead of just getting a thermostat or moving to a warmer climate.
For many of us, the addictive technology is tightly integrated with technology that we want or need to use. For example, I use local facebook groups for certain things, I use youtube to learn how to do things, I sometimes use instagram to communicate with certain people who prefer that. All of these have integrated those horrible short videos that can become very addictive - I've seen myself get stuck there, and many people I know who were never tech or phone addicts before this technology came around, including my mom.
I could and maybe should radically change my life and just not use these things - facebook and instgram I could get by without, but youtube would be difficult - I am a musician and use it for finding music, and also for how to do or fix anything.
I finally three months ago got a combination of firefox extensions and android apps to make it impossible for me to see these short videos, as well as all social media feeds etc, unless I specifically go change the settings to bring them back. And I've managed to avoid doing that. So in total over the last three months I've spent about 10 minutes watching the horrible short videos (when some slipped through the cracks) compared to before where I often found myself stuck there for an hour or two. I do still waste time on the internet often, but it's usually in a specific online community that's stuff I want to read and not random crap the algorithm gives me.
I think it's like trying to quit a sugar addiction while having a donut strapped to your hand at all times. It really makes it easier if you can get rid of the donut. But when the donut is tied to your work or hobbies and there's no way to do the work or hobbies without the donut being there, it's hard. It can be done, and many people do it, but there are also many people who would choose to never see the donut if that option was easily available, but it's not.
The twentieth-century philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev observed that people often blame machines for personal and social problems; however, “this only humiliates man and does not correspond to his dignity,” for “it is unworthy to transfer responsibility from man to a machine.”
Ah yes, the dream where "vote with your wallet" was supposed to be a thing. The reality is though, these corporations are so big and have so much unbounded power in real life stuff (including legislation and policy) that my wallet is meaningless to their existnace.
Also, not paying for them just means they will try to find me whever I'm (through ads, notifications, related products) and push some emotional buttons so I will join them, or at least sign up for something that gives them data points.
It is harder to eat unhealthy if you don't buy groceries that allow you to make unhealthy food. And you buy unhealthy food when you enter the grocery store hungry.
Similar frontloaded decisions affect digital consumption. This is mostly about how we design the places where we consume, how we set up our devices etc.
A good way to start is to switch off notifications for certain classes of apps and setup an automatic do-not-disturb based on your schedule (e.g. between 22:00 and 10:00). Don't put distracting apps on Desktop and home screens, those should only be opened by you if you actively decided to do so — adding multiple steps to doing so is a feature, not a bug.
If you really wanna go hardcore you could DNS block certain apps during certain times, forcing you to read a book instead.
In the end it is just about creating an environment for yourself where the things you want to do are easier choices than the things you want to avoid.
I do this too. I’ve even managed to go years without opening the news. What I can’t deny, the news still sneaks in through WhatsApp/Telegram groups.
> or caring about strangers opinions has done wonders for my psyche.
The final bos !. Jumping into these kinds of conversations just to prove you're smart—or look smart—is the ultimate time stealer. The dopamine hits hard.
Yes, i proved i'm smarter than my average friends. friends also happy to get good insights from me.
The ironic part? times fades away while the quality of my work takes a nosedive.
Dumbest tradeoff i've learned the hard way.
If only life was that simple.
If you are not Knuth or Einstein, you better be open to the world. Or you won't win at life.
Focus is for people are absolutely too darn good at what they do, and get rewarded for it. For everybody else, you have to be open enough to be informed about newer and rewarding things.
So I'd turn it off before sleep (as part of basic "hygiene"), and keep it off (router and phone) for at least the first hour the next day.
I'd wake up and begin working immediately. Usually I'd get so much done this way, that I'd choose to stay offline for a few more hours voluntarily.
This routine I developed to deal with a disability is now being promoted by YouTube influencers as a productivity secret used by billionaires, which I find endlessly amusing!
How do you do this technically? Shutting down phone and router (so many things complain when no WiFi, you need a phd to disable iPhones), alarms, and still a way to be reached in case of emergency?
The mere presence of a smartphone reduces basal attentional performance
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-36256-4
The only thing I missed was documentation, so I downloaded offline docs. Then occasionally I missed Google. So I just kept a list of stuff to Google an hour or two later when I came back online.
I made sure my work was full of variety so if I got completely stuck on one task (rare), I could just switch gears.
Most devices might complain, but most will simply stop working silently and then reconnect when they have a chance. Some might need to be power cycled because they gave up trying to connect (I had a smart garage door that had bad connectivity and would sometimes do a version of this).