Ask HN: I am sick of being connected, how do you unplug?
How do we unplug when our jobs are all bits? The information age is causing me distress by overbearing itself onto my existence. FOMO? Has anyone gone of the grid? Why are you back?
What I usually do is:
* Unsubscribe from all mailing lists and newsletters
* Unfollow everybody on Twitter/Facebook/etc
* Stop visiting HN
* Find something worthy to replace all that free time (book, meditation, vacation, hobby, etc)
After a while (12-18 months), these things start to creep in again. I don't have a long term solution.
I wish I were more disciplined and could keep meditating and having a hobby but computers and acquiring information is too tempting.
- Turn off notifications on your phone for everything but messaging apps.
- Learn to ignore/not be bothered by unread email/messages counts. ("Inbox Zero" isn't a cure, it's a trap and feeds into the disease.)
- Go through a period of being disconnected from the web. I did this for two weeks a couple of years ago when I was travelling. I thought I would be missing out on so much tech news and developments and falling behind (FOMO). When you end your self-imposed digital exile, you will see that you've missed nothing of importance, and catching up with any significant news is trivial (because there is so little of it).
- Don't have a Facebook account.
- Prefer face to face meet ups to communication over any other medium.
- Try to read more books than blog posts. It's the difference between nutritious food vs junk.
- If you are going to run a Twitter client on your computer use an app like Quitter to kill it after 5 mins of inactivity.
- Have a hobby away from the computer. Something physical and preferably social too. For me its fitness, but I need to get another one as well.
- Keep a log of your time day to day.
- Keep a log or portfolio of things you create. They dont have to be significant.
- The last two serve as nice way to check your level of creation vs consumption. "The Information Age" is mostly about low quality signals to disrupt your focus to serve someone else's agenda (aka "the attention economy")
- Don't argue with people on the internet, no matter how tempting it can be. If you want to participate in online forums, use your energy to try to help people and share your knowledge and experience.
But more important I think, is the mindset. We suffer from FOMO and information overload because we are curious people who like to learn, in an industry which pushes fads and fashion trends and self-promotion constantly. So:
- Recognize that there are an infinite number of things to learn in technology. Come to terms with the fact you cant learn them all, and that most of them wont matter to you. Realise there is a lot of value to be derived from learning about other, non-technical domains once you have mastered one technical one to some degree.
> Why are you back?
Once you know the game, you can come back and play it anytime you want - but on your terms. And you can switch it off easily too.
Edit: Formatting
The biggest change for me was getting off of social networking. I always told myself it was a great source of news and articles but the truth was it was mainly junk.
Once that was done I unsubscribed from any e-mail list I was on. As soon as a product marketing e-mail came in I'd find the unsubscribe link. This drastically cut down on the amount of e-mail I got each day and helped me avoid checking it every time something came in.
The only thing my phone alerts me for these days are text messages and real phone calls. Also uninstall slack or your work e-mail app ASAP. I work in a field where there should be no after-hours calls so any e-mail that comes in is likely not an emergency so it can wait until the next business day.
Exercise! I hated running but have taken it up recently because it has a low barrier of entry and can be done basically anywhere at anytime. Since I've started I've actually come to enjoy it a bit because I feel great afterwards.
Read books and/or find a hobby. Mine is woodworking with hand tools. Because I don't use power tools I setup a small work area in my basement and can work at all hours without worrying I'll be keeping someone awake in the house. Most of the stuff I make is shit but it's still a great way to really get yourself in "the zone" and stop thinking about everything else going on in life.
As an orthodox Jew I've been doing this my entire life. It feels great and it gives me lots of time to read and see friends and family. Try taking a 24-hour technology shabbat this weekend.
You can be asked for your attention, explicitly or implicitly, any time, for the dumbest stuff. Most of us have never learned to ignore it. And ignoring it is the only way to survive being constantly asked, because saying "no, stop bothering me" is pretty much just another way of saying "yes, you may take my attention right now."
It might help you to stop having a phone. I did this for a few years, and it was modestly helpful, and surprisingly easy to do. But in the end, there were some things I did need to pay attention to, and some I didn't, including on the phone. My partner, my kids, my family- they all really did need my attention.
Hacker News? Not so much.
Figure out what's important, pay attention to that. Might be that the feeling your having is precipitated more by the lack of connection that is really meeting your needs.
This puts you back into control without fine grain tuning the notifications of all the apps and services.
How many apps with notifications are installed on your phone?
How many hours do you sit behind a computer screen when you are not working?