I wonder what I would be doing without it. Creating art? Going out? I'd have to do something. It's something I want to explore more. Maybe I'll schedule just an hour each day where every device is turned off.
I wonder what I would be doing without it. Creating art? Going out? I'd have to do something. It's something I want to explore more. Maybe I'll schedule just an hour each day where every device is turned off.
Procrastinators gonna procrastinate. And time-wasters gonna waste time.
But if it's social/multiplayer and your group feels a personal connection while playing (maybe w/people you know IRL), you might get a greater benefit from the game.
I don't think it would be SO bad if the news wasn't so depressing and horrible.
There are at least 2 incredibly sad stories on the front page of Reddit at all times it seems.
I wish there was something positive to fill the gaps.
> The pre-internet era was boring. Some may say that it was just as stimulating but in different, more "vibrant, outdoorsy" ways, but they are wrong. I have lived in both and the internet definitely makes life more interesting. In fact, combining the outdoors with the internet is one of life's greatest pleasures.
https://www.quora.com/How-did-people-waste-their-time-in-the...
I'm not sure I'm convinced but it was an interesting very short essay.
I only, only have Internet service because it lets me work from home and keeps my wife from having to stay at school until 7:00 4 nights a week for 9ish months a year (teacher) since friggin' everything they do is online now (Google, mostly). I mean I have a couple streaming services and such since we have to pay for Internet service anyway, but aside from those two (admittedly great) things that require it I wouldn't bother to pay for it.
[EDIT] and yes I get the irony that AirBnB requires the Internet. Occasional Internet is handy to take care of necessities and create convenience. Constant Internet? I'm a skeptic.
Humans evolved in environments where both calories and information were very sparse. Natural selection encouraged a continious psychological drive to seek those resources whenever and wherever possible. Over-consuming food or stimulus was such a rare condition that we have very few naturally in-built mental mechanisms to avoid it.
And then all of a sudden our environment drastically changed. Sometime in the 20th century the central risk related to food went from starvation to obesity. In the 21st century the central risk of stimulation has gone from mind-atrophying boredom to compulsive zombie-like wire-heading.
To resist obesity we had to re-evaluate our relationship with the feeling of hunger. Always giving into our base impulse would mean that we gorge on calorically dense, hyper-palatable, nutritionally poor food from morning to night. Modern people had to learn that feeling a little hungry sometimes is okay. It's necessary for a baseline level of healthy physiology, and actually not that unpleasant when you get used to it.
I think we have to re-learn the same lesson with boredom. The skeptics are right. The average level of moment-to-moment boredom in 1980 was extremely high, and well past the point of necessity or even marginal benefit. But virtually no one with a smartphone ever experiences anything like 1980 boredom on a daily basis. While a lot of boredom is bad, we have to learn that a little bit of boredom is necessary for healthy cognitive and emotional functioning.
Hike, play sports, build stuff with your hands, make art, write, go swimming, and a bunch of other things.
I don't recall being particularly bored growing up before the internet became a big deal. It's just that now I'm used to having online access to so many things, it's easier to be bored without access to that.
I’d like to set up a service to which you send in a book, and it texts you one page at a time (you can ask it for the next page), and nags you if it’s been a few days without using it.
Too often the information junk food turns into an hour-long binge. I could have made real progress towards my goals in that time.
In general, a service which can slice up your goals into very small units of work or very small exercises, and harasses you for constant engagement could be a huge win. Don’t get rid of the anti-patterns, harness them for your own ends!!!
What if you could add these to all of your info junk-food outlets, but instead of “subscribe to our newsletter”, it would be “are you sure you wouldn’t rather work towards accomplishing your goals?”
1) choose to focus on the sensory input you’re receiving. The view of the scenery around you, the noise around you, the wind on your skin. Cars and their passengers can be interesting in their own right- people watching still exists.
2) meditate or think about something.
Those are substantially better than refreshing HN, Instagram, etc for the hundredth time that day.
Being bored is a choice. It takes work to not reflexively pull open Reddit. I still struggle with this from time to time.
The only major downside is when I think of something I want to write down or look up.
Set up Anki, lichess, etc. anything that is better than brain junk food.
It's really easy to break the social media habit by replacing it with something semi-useful.