Neal Stephenson: Why I Am a Sociomediapath (2015)
nealstephenson.com
nealstephenson.com
This feeling of unfinished business really set in after the birth of our second child. I had always claimed to be one of the best developers around, yet, I could not master myself to be truly productive when working of personal projects. Overcoming my self imposed limits is where I'm at now. Has anyone else experienced this?
Is that what all us 45+ programmers become?
Just finished my second day in an 'open layout' office of 20 somethings as a front-end lead (react/redux) after working remotely from home with a small team of 'seasoned' pros for the last couple of years.
I'm sure there were some raised eyebrows when I showed up but that seems to have passed now mostly because they see I know what I'm doing. I've had a few moments of reflection wondering what the hell am I doing here but I love software development and made a conscious choice not to take the management route.
Had my first of 2 kids @ 40 and find when I start slipping into a regrets of what I haven't accomplished I see them and am reminded of my real purpose these days.
I still feel young on the inside but sometimes look in the mirror and have to acknowledge I'm not 20 something anymore and that's a bummer. But I was walking to work this morning pondering all of this and walked passed someone sleeping on the street and checked myself.
I remember the first time I saw Doug Crockford and had a profound realization that you don't have to outgrow programming. Seems silly now but not at the time.
My dad is 77 and can still kick my ass on a squash court so I try to focus on what is still possible instead of reflecting on what I haven't done.
From my (perhaps still rather young) perspective, both the best and worst thing about getting older is that I don't care as much about things.
The good part is that I stopped caring so much about having lots of friends, doing crazy things, partying/drugs, a fight with my partner, having a partner, pleasing/angering my parents, etc. But the bad part is that if I'm not careful, I end up not caring about anything. I forget to make sure I pick enough 'things' to care about, and before I know it I spent months just 'existing'.
But even just 'existing' sometimes feels preferable to me to the extreme ups and downs of (my) youth.
I'm curious, excited and a bit anxious about finding out how things will progress as I get older though...
The question is indeed, as you hinted, if those limits are largely self-imposed or not. There are certainly some external penalties, but what really keeps me up at night is the fact that past performance is a huge indicator for future performance. If I want to set out to accomplish anything of scale, I feel I have to delude myself into ignoring the nagging feeling that if nothing ever came out of anything I did in the last 20 years, it's more than likely the next (and also last) 20 years will be very similar.
Lots of authors, for example, write for +-20 years before writing the book that breaks them out - some of them even have HN accounts :) The calculus is similar for starting businesses, films (although the odds there are even more terrible), etc.
And experience accumulated reduces failure chance. I recall there's a statistic that most successful businesses are started by people your age, not people in their 20s.
is the fact that past performance is a huge indicator for future performance
It keeps me up at night too. But fuck that thought. If it's true, then I may as well go and kill myself now, and spare world the carbon I'll waste living. Faith in man's capacity for improvement is what's keeping me functioning.
I know you're generalizing but I don't think vanity "monuments" is accurate of most techies' aspirations.
People just want FU money: comfort, security, and freedom. The "starting a succesful software based company" is a reasonable shorthand for FU money for techies because if programmers are going to get rich, they're not going to do it by striking oil in their backyard or acting as leads in Star Wars films. If people don't have fu money by the time they're 40-something, they question their current job, their previous life choices, and their future possibilities. People can get bummed out and even question their abilities -- aka wondering why they procrastinate and can't focus (e.g. "Damnit! I'm too distracted with social media!")
I think most programmers would be absolutely fine with being "not so famous" like Chris Hughes[1] with a net worth of $450 million instead of the more well-known Zuckerberg with $40 billion. Zuckerberg's face is on all the magazine covers but most programmers would be ok with no publicity and $450 million.
I don't think the percentage of techies with the ego to be the next Larry Ellison or Steve Jobs is that high. Maybe I'm wrong.
There are going to be things that I wanted to do, that I won't do in my life. Some may never have happened no matter what, like winning the Super Bowl or becoming an astronaut. But some of them will be things that I could very plausibly have actually done--but instead I did other things. The challenge of happiness is acknowledging that I made those choices for reasons that seemed good at the time, and anyway I can't go back and change the past. To be happy, I have to accept that it's possible to be happy, even knowing that I gave some things up for other things.
Essentially I'm working on believing that goals and happiness are separate things, each of which can be achieved independently of the other.
The link:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/12/the-real...
A quote:
> Long ago, when I was 30 and he was 66, the late Donald Richie, the greatest writer I have known, told me: “Midlife crisis begins sometime in your 40s, when you look at your life and think, Is this all? And it ends about 10 years later, when you look at your life again and think, Actually, this is pretty good.” In my 50s, thinking back, his words strike me as exactly right. To no one’s surprise as much as my own, I have begun to feel again the sense of adventure that I recall from my 20s and 30s. I wake up thinking about the day ahead rather than the five decades past. Gratitude has returned.
What I have become, is two things - more aware of time, and how limited it is. Second, selfish with my time. I do what I want to do, and no longer do what my girlfriend or anyone else wants me to do, unless it aligns with what I want to do.
What's remarkable to me is how content both those with and those without children seem to be with their respective choices. (I know, a massive generalization, from purely anecdotal evidence.)
Disclaimer: in my 20s, with no kids... yet
Is it a given that magnifying life's amplitudes is a good thing?
I don't find this surprising at all. Generally speaking, people make these choices because they know in their heart that it is what they want for themselves.
Besides, regrets tend to come in the form of "wish I've done something" (this applies to both sides), as can be seen even in earlier comments of this chain. Regret of having kids is likely to manifest in the form of wishing to have done more/ different things.
Furthermore, just on the basis of the number of single mothers I know, I would posit that at least one man you know has kids, regretted it, left the mother and just hasn't volunteered that information to you.
[edit] Also, my wife was adopted when her parents were in their 40s, so it's probably not too late to raise a kid.
The hard part is that parenthood changes people in ways that go beyond life experience. There are actual, measurable physiological changes that happen to parents. In many ways, children are like a drug to their parents. Just like addicts will sacrifice much of their lives to their habits, so too will parents sacrifice much of their lives to their children.
So asking your question is like asking whether a drug addicts wants another hit. That person will undoubtedly want one, but the person that person was before their addiction might look at the reality of the situation and decide they didn't want to start the habit in the first place. Likewise, someone not 'under the influence' of their parenthood might look on the situation differently.
But, in both cases, it's impossible for someone to understand both sides of the choice simultaneously.
But to follow on my other comment above, I also have a pretty clear idea that I gave up some things to become a parent. And I think people who skip having a kid, and then feel doubts later in life about that decision, are really just feeling the other side of that coin.
I feel fairly confident in my opinion that there is always something worthwhile to spend money on.
We're in our late 40's / early 50's.
On the other hand, some of them might not and I sure as hell don't want them having kids. How miserable for everyone involved.
In the end, having children is the only thing in life that really makes any sense.
There are moments when I wish I didn't have kids.
But then there are moments when I see my son's or daughter's face and am in utter awe at their amazing beauty and realize a kind of happiness I can never imagine having from anything else.
When I sum it all up, I think that I am better and happier with them in my life than I would be if I didn't have them.
You're giving me hope I still have time!!!
Yes, if your wife/girlfriend is around 35, the window is starting to close, but more and more women are having kids well into their 30's and early 40's.
I'm young---I'm 26, and I have a wife and two young children (2 and 4). I'm at that age where I could have gotten involved in so much, personally and professionally---and still could. And I know that this will be a bit setback for things I'd like to do in the future. But time with my family is more important, and we also bought a house that needs a lot of work.
And I fully expect to be feeling exactly as you are describing. And I'm trying to come to terms with that today, while I'm still young: focus on what I can be happy for today, recognize how my decisions affect my future, how I might adjust my plans, and recognize that the decisions I made (or didn't) have desirable consequences that I wouldn't change if I had the option to go back and do it again.
Thanks for sharing your experiences.
From your name, I'm going to guess you're Jewish, so you would have had even harder of a search, if you wanted to marry someone Jewish, than if you did not have this additional filter. So, don't worry... you've succeeded in choosing your wife, starting a family, and now you have plenty of time to keep improving in your career. Consider the opportunity cost of doing the reverse - career first, then kids.
I'm not Jewish, but your comments stand all the same. Thanks for the kind words.
I was just contemplating this the other day. I concluded that it is better to look at what you gained with your choices vice what you lost.
Yes.
This might get long-winded. I should note that, I too have a family and the first digit of my age is a 4. Allow me to tell a story...
Around WWDC 2014, I started working on a game for iOS. I wrote it in Swift, at a time when the language was still in beta (i.e., Xcode 6 Beta 1; you couldn't deploy Swift apps to the App Store at that time).
Even though the game was essentially an 80s-inspired space shooter, I became singularly-focused. I just knew that this was going to be my "make or break" moment. I pounded through all of the struggles of working with a language that was still being developed.
It was rough. I'd never even owned an Apple product before, so everything was foreign to me. I'd retire to bed at a reasonable hour, but be "eyes wide open" at 2:00am or 3:00am, literally waking up from a dream that's an answer to a problem in the code. The urgency kicks in... I'd try to fall back asleep, but it was always futile, so I'd throw myself in the shower, get dressed and light the fuse.
This feeling was exacerbated near launch, because you're literally a few hundred meters from the summit, but you're exhausted, delirious, hungry, thirsty, sleep-deprived, and everything else. The wind and the cold is cutting through your gear, making it feel as if you are wearing nothing but your small-clothes. Your visor is completely frozen over, and nightfall is looming, but you still have to summon everything from within you to bring it, because there is no one who can bring it but you. No one is going to summit for you. No one is going to slide their stacks "all in" but you.
Even the people around you won't understand the mental suffering that you are silently muscling through; you, torn between two worlds as you push and strain to your personal limits. You measure the day's progress in centimeters rather than meters. You will either summit, or freeze to death on the mountain in your boots; the summit in sight, but just out of reach. Which-ever event happens, you feel alone, either way, because no one is carrying the sheer weight of The Vision than you. It is all you. It has only ever been you. There is no one to save you.
It turned out that there were too many days of this... and it was my "break" moment: I ended up in the hospital in the winter of 2014, physically exhausted. Completely spent. I recovered after 4 days of IV.
I went on to launch the game in early 2015. It didn't launch me into super-stardom like I had believed that it would, but I did finish and I learned an incredible amount about game development... and, as it turns out, about life and myself, which included a number of things, but two of them in particular might help you at this time:
1. Balance - Everything must be balanced. The Middle Way, if you will. This is absolutely vital. Work on your projects for the sake of working on them, not to drive yourself to some goal, because in reality, you have little to no control over what will result. So, learn to love the process. Also, live in balance by bringing exercise into your life, eating right, meditating, etc.
2. Comparison - Comparison must be silenced. It is truly a source of suffering. There is great danger even in seemingly harmless comparisons, such as, "I'm in my 40s, and I haven't achieved X, Y and Z." This is quite harmful to personal growth and production. The reality is that comparison is the ultimate puzzle: it has no solution. That is to say, it will never end. The mind will always set up more to achieve, more to do, more to conquer. And then, even when you have achieved, the mind will say, "Well, what's next? So and so has done Y... sure, you did X, but what about Y? You haven't done that." We can carry these weights of comparison to the bitter end, and let them drag us down like a stone into an icy, freezing river, where we will drown to death in our own self-pity and sorrow. Alternatively, we can free ourselves by deciding to care only about what is important for us, and on how we can bring our light into the world. This will allow us to break the chains that we have allowed to bind us. This is our choice, and it is up to us.
I hope this helps you. I wish you every success. Evolving yourself is a never-ending process. Be gentle with yourself. Set your goals, go for them, but live in Balance.
I leave you with this quote, which speaks powerfully to me:
"To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other." - Carlos Castaneda
It seems to me that goal reaching is a skill like any other, to be practiced with discipline and diligence. Many goals will be missed (I'm 1 for 8 in business so far), but when you're striving it's never boring!
Thinking about my father at my age he would constantly tell me I was lucky to be allowed to go to school rather than being pulled out and being put to work in the fields when I was 14 like he was; after WW2 there was a lot of poverty in some areas of Europe, meaning, he had to go hunting/fishing to be able to get something to eat poverty, or going in the fields after they were harvested hoping to score some ears of corn poverty.
On the other hand his generation benefited by the later years, when he ended up making a really good living first being a musician (in the 60s it was definitely feasible, not like now where I see bands being paid less than I was in my 20s for bar gigs) and then being a blue collar worker, at my age he was working in a very low stress factory job for a solid middle class salary, and he was able to retire with full benefits at 53 due to having had to start working so early.
In our generation we've been lucky a lot of us were able to go to school rather than have to work in the fields, but the lack of pensions and general different economic trajectory in our lifetime is definitely making me long for the guarantees his generation was able to have in terms of retirement. It's a lot easier to suffer privations when you are younger and healthy and strong than when you are old and are affected with all that old age brings.
I have read plenty of times the U-shaped-midlife-crisis articles and I really hope that they are true, because honestly I am not seeing how there can be an uptick of the U without a sense of financial stability, which seems hard to have in the 50s and 60s given that pensions are not on the plate for us, and savings are vulnerable to market vagaries as well as medical expenses.
Add to this the normal what-ifs about how we'd be able to retire NOW (or at least have enough saved up not to worry about retirement) if we had invested in stock X vs stock Y, or joined startup X vs startup Y, or bought house X vs renting apartment Y, and it's hard to remain positive at times
We recently hired a super sharp guy in his late 40's. Guy is brilliant. His age is completely irrelevant.
I also worked with a guy in his late 40's and early 50's who thought that the pinnacle of innovation and best development practices is to write all your business logic in Oracle PLSQL. Also, he'd never heard of HTTP even though he used a browser every day.
I mean I'm sorry but...it's not that the guy was old, but his ideas definitely were. We're an industry that is always moving. If you're not learning new things, you're stagnating. And if you're stagnant, you're screwed, eventually.
But you can be stagnant at 25 just as easily. I know people my age (I'm 35) who never moved past Visual Basic and think a REST-ful API is an API that likes to take naps maybe.
I guess my point is - age discrimination probably does exist, but I'm willing to bet it's because the ideas the person being discriminated against are old. I really haven't experienced any kind of bad attitude towards women, or "minorities", or older people. If you can get your shit done, you're golden.
It would be like saying "gender discrimination probably does exist, but I am willing to bet it's because the person does not fit within the broculture that they are not hired"
If you have never experience discrimination you have been very lucky, but it does not mean it does not exist, and all the many articles about it would not have been written if it was not something that's going on.
I've noticed this (all logic in the db) is common among those developing financial applications. Also .net ms sql server seems to favor it as well. Maybe because they overlap. It's not an inherently bad thing to put business logic in the db; auditing and logging can be simpler, and change control can be more tightly enforced. Be aware that as a developer, it's really common to eschew things not in your code, and check your prejudices. Are they well founded?
I too had a revelation after my second child and took a different turn in my career. And I enjoyed the Longfellow quote too.
I think I never knew what busy was before kids.
Can't really help with the productivity issues, other than to counsel compassion for yourself and urge you to remember it is a marathon. I always think of career effort as spinning a flywheel (any effort really).
Authors you might like to check out that talk about habits and productivity:
Amy Hoy Gretchen Rubin Charles Duhigg
But companies want me to be REALLY EXCITED like I could always get in my 20s. I just can't get that excited anymore; it takes too much extra energy that I'd rather conserve for doing real work that matters to me.
Thankfully, I found an amazing consulting firm constructed of around 15-20 folks with a similar history that really valued work-life balance and carefully chose its clients based on respecting those boundaries. We did really great work, within those boundaries. As a starting point for a search for that kind of company, I would recommend weworkremotely.com (where I found that firm), because they're generally companies willing to make convenience/control tradeoffs (such as working with remote employees) in order to get stuff done.
I have a work from home job with a low stress company, doing complicated, but not overwhelming or ground breaking, work. I live in a small city with a decent cost of living. I get paid decently... One of the big three offered me a significant amount more than what I am making now, and felt comfortable rejecting the offer.
My goals have been simplified down to making sure that I do right by my children. Watching them succeed is #1. Me not being there because I'm trying to run a business or getting overworked by one of the big three is not going to do her any favors. I make more than enough to pay for lessons for whatever she wants to do, and still be able to make sure my wife and I can retire. I would rather sit down with her and discuss life and its myriad positives and negatives than chase money. Or play video games with her, or an instrument, or make sure I make her parent teacher conference.
It took a bit of meditation to actually convince myself that the money and recognition pipe dream just didn't have the same value as her success, and it really helped me understand my father who was a welder, putting so much focus into my siblings to try to make sure we succeed -- why he sold his business and took a job where he would have a steady income in exchange for the joy he took working long hours, but having complete control over his work. And he did take joy in it, I totally get it. I now understand the sacrifice. When he sees his children attaining success, he is overjoyed.
My children are my monument. Their grand adventure is mine.
Success is happiness. I want their adventure to be easier than mine, with more tools, mentally and otherwise, than I had. I have that opportunity and it's awesome.
I don't think that I necessarily want to defend my parenting experience as something for everyone, but it's definitely the primary source of joy in my life, for all the difficulties it brings.
Oddly enough, it was the movie Click that really showed me the way. How weird is it that it would be an Adam Sandler movie that would be a primary driver in my life philosophy?
You know, I don't have kids and I'm not you, so I truly have no opinion about that. It's your call and I'm sure you've made it carefully and are doing what's right for you and your life.
However, I just want to say that when this attitude is repeated over and over, with a whole population of people using their children as their contribution to society, and then the children make the grandchildren their contribution to society, and it repeats generation after generation, you can end up with essentially a bunch of families who are taking care of themselves, and sort of punting social responsibility down the line perpetually to later generations.
When I look out at the world I see a lot of people trying to make sure their kids are better off than they were... which is great. It's like bubbles in a glass of water that are all slowly rising. But it also seems like with everyone looking upward, we stop noticing that down below there are people whose bubbles are sinking down. Or maybe you're actually closer to that reality and you're fighting like hell not to fall below that line. And again, I would never question that choice.
But as a group what it adds up to is that there are families that are just trapped below that line. And we can focus on helping our kids rise, and they can help our grandkids rise, but at some point I think as a group we need to look beyond our families and realize that there are kids—and grown ups–out there who aren't our blood but are just as deserving of our support.
And I do see people make that choice, to really try to support someone beyond their immediate family, and it's amazing. But sometimes I worry that the attitude you describe is a little too easily accepted.
Yes, I agree with you, it's very easy to be a hypocrite about this statement. There exists a serious moral bankruptcy in many areas of modern US society that allow people to be hypocrites, to take what they say at face value and just accept it (TV Evangelistic preachers with private jets???).
I like to believe I am taking the job seriously. Having a baby is basically 'Congratulations, you had sex'. Raising a child ranges from tossing a baby in a dumpster to making sure that they are the temporal and financial focus in your lives, and probably further.
Is that really what you want? Or is that what society told you you want?
What do you when you are 40+ and filled with regret of roads not taken?
It seems if you have developed your calling/skill to a sufficient level by 40+ like Stephenson already did at 30 , then you can dedicate yourself to polishing that skill.
However, I am acutely aware that at 40+ I am not going to be mastering anything NEW any more. Maybe improve a little bit on something I already know but that is about it.
Trivial example: I started learning German along with my daughter at the same time, she is so far ahead of me it is not even funny, even though she spends less time than me on practice.
Slightly more complicated example: in programming I am coasting on the basics I learned at ages 15-17, I am not acquiring any new unconscious mastery in programming.
Depressing example: I spent a year on 750words in daily practice and my skill level did not improve.
I am just not convinced that my 20s spent gaming/consuming was the right one for me when the other road of deliberate practice in something useful like programming or science was just as valid and ultimately more satisfying.
Does it really get better at 50+ ?
At least that's my experience. My mind gets more and more busy with racing thoughts the older I get. It's hard to put that aside because the older we are the more responsibilities we generally have (and or worries)
That's the long way of saying age has nothing to do with your daughter doing better at language. Rather it's that her mind has far less distractions.
ps: yes I know there is research on this topic but I have not personally found it compelling
Second: About your final question, I run a decently successful business despite not being near the top of the totem pole in terms of technical knowledge. I have met plenty of smart people who just don't have it in them, typically they easily get lost in the details. People with some academic smarts backed by a healthy dose of street smarts appear to fare better. I feel one has to always set some type of goal (it does not even have to be clear, but there has to be a goal) to get going. As well that allows you to quickly gauge the opportunities you unexpectedly run by. That's how I roll anyways. Good luck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliott_Carter
He died at 103, still working (composing). Not many composers get stuff they wrote in their 60s and 70's described as their "middle period".
Pierre Boulez just died at 90, still working (until very recently).
If you're from a privileged background (and let's be honest; most developers are) there's no reason why you can't pause at 40 or 50 and decide what to do next with no fear of burnout or senility. Some people just get bored of programming, or decide that it's just more fun playing with their kids or whatever. You can always pick up a laptop and start a new project in a new language. You'll never be able to play with your favourite daughter as a five year old again.
With a divorce 5 years ago in the rear view mirror, years of being rather non-traditional and pursuing a fairly spiritual/self-awareness focused path for most of my life I can feel pretty foolish at times. Things I didn't pursue as far as career and personal interests mostly bring up those uncomfortable feelings.
otoh - relationships with my daughters are improving as the oldest heads off to college. And there's understanding connection with self and others that has come from all that inner work. Those two things feel like gold to me.
It's the me that recognizes retiring may be for other people for rather pragmatic reasons that is the most troubled by the situation. Feeling a little late to starting a long deferred career in info security is just something my ego will have to get over.
I do take some comfort in my grandfather having lived to 98. We'll have to see how much opportunity there is for people in there 80s in 30 years. My guess is maybe quite a bit. Gotta stay healthy to be able to do it though!
Starting a successful software company is hard. Building one that sustains you and grows 10% ARR is hard, building one that grows 5% MRR is much much harder. Starting a software company--unless you stumble upon it--is NOT a side project.
The Longfellow poem resonated with me as well, but what I've come to realize is that the source of my happiness has shifted. Rather than focusing on the things that make ME happy, I prefer--and like--to focus on the things that make members of my family happy. This in turn, brings me (more) happiness.
Being my own boss was something I wanted to focus on. I'm VERY fortunate to be able to live in the SF Bay Area and have a spouse that earns enough so I can work on running my own business. There is no way my company would be where it is now if it were a side project. It required full-time(+plus) dedication to get it up and running, and now rolling.
I do look back and realize there are (literal) mountains I have not climbed or cars I have not bought, but if my kids can have happier and better lives, that's what I want more than anything else, and taking steps to that end bring me contentment.
My first interpretation: knee-jerk reaction after reading it that it's a very typical lament about social media getting in the way of doing more important things in life. There are thousands of blog posts repeating this message and this variation of it happens to be on HN because it's from N.S.
My second interpretation: I lingered on his chosen word "sociomediapath". Since it's a riff on "sociopath", I think what he's saying here is that he's going to give the impression that he's a social media hound but behind the scenes, he's doesn't care. Likewise, a sociopath like Ted Bundy on the surface can shake your hand and charm you with his smiles but underneath it all, he'll kill you.
N.S. has to be a "sociopath" in media because he's a published author. He can't go full Howard Hughes detached-from-society-mode and therefore, has to at least fake out the public with a social media presence.
Maybe that means there's a need for a web service that generates random and periodic posts on behalf of users to give the appearance of "Facebook normality". E.g. the website service posts random inspirational quotes from dead people or TIL from random wikipedia pages. You never have to log into Facebook and yet it seems like you're "with it".
I believe other celebrities accomplish this with "public relations" staff. The PR firm makes the celebrity look "connected" to the fans via Reddit AMAs and Twitter updates but in reality, he/she really isn't.
For a large percentage of my Facebook friends, if they were silently replaced with bots like this, I doubt I'd ever notice. Sigh.
Thanks for posting that! My interpretation was an admission of social media addiction, and an attempt at recovery.
Sociomediapath is a bit different though. Instead of disconnecting completely from social media he's decided to disconnect emotionally. By acting like a sociopath on social media he can ignore what people post and stop it from consuming his time and his life.
That's actually interesting. I'd expand it to other types of activity too, but then there's the risk of alienating your friends because your bot "liked" that they divorced, or something. :)
Many years ago, I threw my TV out and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made.
Internet is the new TV.
I see the irony of writing this on HN but I really try to find the internet analogue for throwing out the TV.
The problem is that you need services like maps, online banking and tickets, mobile payments, etc.
What I want to get rid of though, completely, is news and noise. I tried and tried but self-regulation is too hard; I still waste so much time and poison my brain with all this crap; I think the time has come to try self-binding.
My current setup is to not have internet at home (where I work) except for a mobile connection, and to pull the SIM card out by default. I only put it back in when I need to do something specific (or when I am on the go, for maps).
Obviously, this is not a perfect solution yet (as I somehow found my way back to HN, grrr…) but I'm working on it.
I should probably get a dumbphone for emergencies, and I also want to habituate myself to a weekly rhythm where I bunch all the stuff (like emails, software updates, articles to be downloaded, references to be checked, etc) to one day a week (say Sat) and do all my "internet errands" in one go.
The rest of the time, I rely on my books and articles and downloaded documentations and offline Wikipedia. If I want to watch something, I can make a note and download the movie or entire season along with the other "internet groceries". To keep in touch with current events, I can read weekly news magazines. That also dials down the noise. Something like that. Interestingly, since I got a big tablet, I read news magazines like The Economist or Die Zeit in PDF format and it seems to also affect me somehow. There is no outside clicking and endless linkbait anymore, and I feel less monitored and stressed (even though I already have all these adblockers and Little Snitch and whatnot). It also gives me back a feeling of a natural end to my reading session when I reach the final pages of the PDF. On the web or online, the next article or curiosity is always right behind.
Best thing I ever did was to get rid of TV. Having one is like inviting the worst people in the world round your house.
I think the internet might be next. I think I might offline things I want to learn. My phone can do for maps when I need it but for the rest it's a pain. I really should learn my TV lessons WRT the internet.
http://priceonomics.com/why-every-movie-looks-sort-of-orange...
Whilst I'm on my high horse, because I don't watch tv when I see CNN in our building lobby I always find it so weird how the reporters, especially the women, employ body language to emphasize their point. There is no volume on just the image and they are nodding so vociferously and making hand gestures. They look deranged.
They obviously all get taught this as a way to get their point across but look quite mad.
What I find disconcerting is that this shorthand seems entirely about ornamentation--the worry is that maybe some future TimeCube-like site will be subtle enough that it won't trigger my "is the author a kook" filter.
We also use the TV for gaming/DVDs.
Initially we went cold turkey on the TV but then we used one for DVDs only and eventually slipped back to watching shows (primarily via BBC iPlayer). Partly because we hadn't accounted for the cost of the hobbies we dreamt of filling our time with; instead we continue to live vicariously through the on-screen experiences of others.
On the flipside of the coin, physical nudges seem to work quite well for me. I can usually not be bothered to get up and fiddle with the SIM card. It's an experiment, we'll see how it goes.
I use this feature to block news sites, forums, hn etc. It will prompt you for the restrictions pass, but I've found it's still enough for me to close the tab and do something else.
Use your device's parental controls, set yourself up as the child, and pick some other random person to be the parent.
Why? I'm being serious.
Everyone assumes that our lot in life is to be productive. For Americans it seems we need to be as productive as possible. It's untenable.
The most productive person is the one who dies at 40 because they didn't get enough sleep because they drank too much caffeine and augmented themselves with other drugs to maximize wakeful productivity. Is that worthwhile?
I can definitely see a problem with spending considerable amounts of time keeping up with social media because ultimately the thoughts, pictures, and videos posted by your "friends" aren't important. You, them, and everyone else will have long since forgotten what was posted in a week and nothing of value will be lost.
On the other hand, "keeping up with the news"--especially news in your industry--is important. There's a lot of things going on all the time that could make a huge difference in our lives and careers. Things we need to stay on top of not just because we care but because they have impact.
I don't know about you but at my job it is a common occurrence for me to solve problems with tools and techniques I've learned about through sites like HN. Keeping up with these sorts of things also gives you insight on how to schedule things. For example, if you just read that the next release of ProductX will include a feature that you need you probably won't bother to spend time writing your own implementation since it will be obsoleted soon.
Then there's the entertainment aspect: What's wrong with "wasting" time if you're enjoying yourself? I enjoy reading the news and the occasional entertaining Reddit post. When I laugh at a meme was my time truly "wasted"? Or perhaps the time I spent trying to discover "something good" was wasted?
"Getting things done" in spite is the opposite of happiness.
So there must be a better way.
About the entertainment aspect. I think the point here is following: modern web media/pics/etc is too attractive and people can't focus on things what really matter. Every website with "funny cats" tries very hard to retain you as user and your attention -> entertain you more. I think many people (myself included) fall in risk group and can't actually measure/control time spent on procrastination while browsing infinite number of subreddits or something for interesting stuff. Even when i really need things to be done - there is something that can immediately capture my attention. And I have to say I am not alone.
The root cause here is inability to focus on important things and finally quit procrastination.
"Anyone who bothered to learn the history of the developed world in the years just before Zero understood perfectly well that Tavistock Prowse had been squarely in the middle of the normal range, as far as his social media habits and attention span had been concerned. But nevertheless, they called it Tav's Mistake. They didn't want to make it again. Any efforts made by modern manufacturers to produce the kinds of devices and apps that had disordered the brain of Tav were met with the same instinctive pushback as Victorian clergy might have directed against the inventor of a masturbation machine."
You see those kinds of choices being made at a cultural level all over the world. Developed countries where nobody uses leafblowers, or in-sink food waste disposals, or what have you. People understand how those things work, they just don't want the effects.
Hamilton Beach is an example of an early 20th C manufacturer that made a lot of consumer products which used similar motors, for example a now-classic catering-grade blender for milkshakes. That seems like a clear example of a market being created by the development of the device, which itself existed to apply a technology (the motor).
I use a rake, which works faster for my consumer-level yard than a mid to high-range blower, to get the leaves all in once place. Then, I use the blower in reverse to chop the leaves for compost. Not the intended purpose at all, but it works for me.
1: As I read your post more, it seems that your blower does not officially have a reverse - you just rig it that way. That is pretty cool though any bit of debris in the leaf pile might break up the impeller if the latter is plastic.
But do the leaves actually change and drop in Florida?!? Yes, yes they do but leaf blowers aren't really for leaves here...
They're used to blow grass clippings and dirt back on to your yard!
You see, if you don't use a leaf blower all those grass clippings will end up washing down into the storm drains (Note: Not the sewers) or pile up at the end of your driveway where they ultimately decay into dirt. This causes two problems:
* The dirt that slowly builds over time will completely screw up drainage and create flooding problems.
* The fertilizer-enriched grass clippings will ultimately make their way to our ridiculously important fresh water systems (rivers, lakes, streams, etc) resulting in nasty algae blooms and similar environmental problems.
Is that really a cultural difference or just a socioeconomic/generational one? My parents' generation talked about the evils of the dishwasher - but mostly when they couldn't afford one; my generation buys them without a second thought.
>my generation buys them without a second thought. //
My parents have one, I think they're great, can't afford one.
"Places that are not America"
(OK, people will use leafblowers in the UK, especially professional gardeners, but the in-sink waste disposal is quite rare)
I'm considering doing the same "fast and then reduced consumption" for my other social media habits: reddit, HN, twitter. When I traveled full-time, in the past, I would often find myself with little or no Internet connectivity for a week at a time, and that imposed periodic social media fasting, and it was sufficient to keep the addictions in check. After living in a fixed house, with very fast Internet, for a little over a year, the urge to check my phone/tablet first thing in the morning and last thing at night has become notable and annoying.
In short: He's right, and I notice my own inability to do things of substance has been significantly impaired by the time and attention I give to social media, and it's only reasonable to abstain in the interest of spending more time doing the things I truly value. It can be hard to make that choice, however...one more shot of dopamine (or whatever chemicals the constant affirmation of social media provides) seems harmless.
(I note the irony of this being an HN comment.)
I've taken other measures in the past. Someone else in this thread mentioned unfollowing everyone on Facebook, that helped quite a bit. But there's a lot to be said for declaring social media bankruptcy and being freed from that involuntary compulsion to open up a new Chrome tab and waste time.
I did this recently (unfollowing (almost) everyone on my FB friend list), and it has resulted in me spending less than 10 minutes a week on the site. I didn't do it so I would use FB less, I did it because my feed was full of nothing but hatred and negativity, and to see that from friends and family is extremely depressing. If I didn't use FB to promote a couple of projects I'm running, I'd drop it altogether and rely on my wife to keep me updated on family and mutual friends who choose to only have contact with the outside world via the FB window.
I've also set up facebook notifications to send me emails for calendar invites and private messages because I'd feel like a jerk for missing things that are actually important.
All of this has worked incredibly well. I definitely spend less than 20 minutes on facebook per week.
[0] http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/01/05/the-book-facebook-does...
I never even put internet on my phone. All maps are downloaded at home - an amazing amount of people seems to have never considered that and were astonished to find me navigating without signal.
That's pretty much what it's designed to do. Really recommend reading "Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products" http://www.nirandfar.com/hooked or watch some of the authors videos like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVDN2mjJpb8 or his talk at The Next Web https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z29RvrHPp1s
Without her I'd probably feel pressure to at least have FB for close family, however I'm not sure it would be enough to lure me back in, given the use of group texts etc.
Is there a way to make it so it screens out all the content that comes from content factories ("You won't believe....!"), but still see things such as pure text or user-created photo posts?
I unfollowed a bunch, and now I rarely see that kind of thing.
That said, I agree with Stephenson (I really enjoyed his latest book Seveneves) that it's use can get in the way of doing more creative and productive things.
I am a big fan of "self monitoring" to keep track of types of food eaten, time spent on social media, TV, etc. Personally, if I spend more than 15 minutes a day on social media that is a warning sign that I need to do better time management.
I understand why he's managing it this way and I might do the same if I were in his position. My hope is that Facebook, etc. start to realize that their current approach isn't the best fit for everyone.
I liked that the article is not vehemently chastising social media as the bane of modern civilization nor praising it as the second coming. There are pros and cons to adopting most new technologies.
It's better to develop a discipline to use them in moderation rather than to cut it off completely or depend on them excessively.
I feel like I should probably read Seveneves now, even though I know it's just a coincidence they're named similarly.
Do you like orbital mechanics?
After quitting I realized how much I need all those small breaks. I am less stressed and much more productive. Jobs kept coming by word of mouth.
For me personally the cell phone is a bigger problem than the internet, since people get annoyed when I don't pick up the phone, but I also notice I need to stop clicking endlessly all night on web sites to calm my mind down to get to that mental space for creativity.
Basically the best periods I've had were when others were on vacation or I was, and there was some natural unbroken few days where there was no anxiety at all about being interrupted. The question is how to make it happen. I basically just turn off my phone, close the browser, go for a walk, try to get the nerves calmed down, and hopefully something comes out of it that night.
It's really quite annoying though, because 7 years ago it wasn't like this. I don't want to be a recluse, I just want to balance the two things and have that be okay.
I think a rendering issue in Safari hid them, or something, but I thought it was humorous to have that article, followed by no way to follow him on social media! (presumably unintended.)
I find amazing the fact that he manages to write 3 or 4 novels at the same time.
Cryptonomicon & SnowCrash - I've read the first book of the Baroque Cycle too!
FWIW my favorite Stephenson novel is still Anathem.
I couldn't make it through the article because my eyes kept getting lost between the lines.
http://www.carlkingdom.com/neal-stephenson-why-i-am-a-bad-co...
I really struggle with white on black text. Most of the internet is black on white, so, when switching back to a light screen I see black line after images. I really dislike it.
If Neal read this and meet Charles please tell him to stop post photo of his cats on twitter and go back to work.
The quality of his writing is going down, and the only thing that make me stay away from social medias are good books.
I get it. I am a Sociomediapath because of him in fact. I blame him 100%!
PS neal makes good funny books, but he has difficulty making ends that don't involve deus ex machina. (REAMDE ending is a tad disappointing after quite a good development. Still it is a good essay on virtual currencies).
I am not suggesting he do anything to be more or less of a Luddite (IIRC, he uses a very nice fountain pen).
[0]Do a Google search for "first draft pen and paper" and there are scores of hits from both authors and writing websites advocating for this [1]http://www.medicaldaily.com/why-using-pen-and-paper-not-lapt...