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Ask HN: How do you deal with information and internet addiction?
573 points by rqtwteye on Feb 8, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 208 comments
I have noticed that I am getting more and more addicted to consuming information so I am listening to podcasts while working and I watch Youtube videos in my free time. This is all fun and interesting but I feel this makes me want to do things less and less. Instead of working on my own problems I distract myself by listening to ever more information. I get a lot of benefit from this information but somehow it feels shallow.

I think part of it is that my work is quite uninteresting and doesn't really keep my mind engaged. But the work is tedious enough that I am too tried in the evening to do something interesting. After a few years everything feels like it's a repeat.

Does anybody else feel that way? Have you been able to detach yourself from the constant flow of information and focus on your own stuff?




I handle it by collecting quotes that tell me to knock it off. I've since started to focus on just the things I really care about:

    The purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge.
    ― Aristotle
    
    Knowledge isn't free. You have to pay attention  
    ― Richard Feynman
    
    "Information is not truth"  
    ― Yuval Noah Harari  
    
    If I were the plaything of every thought, I would be a fool, not a wise man. 
    ― Rumi
    
    Dhamma is in your mind, not in the forest. You don't have to go and look anywhere else.
    ― Ajahn Chah
     
    Man has set for himself the goal of conquering the world, 
    but in the process he loses his soul.
    ― Alexander Solzhenitsyn
    
    The wise man knows the Self,  
    And he plays the game of life.  
    But the fool lives in the world  
    Like a beast of burden.  
    ― Ashtavakra Gita (4―1)

    We must be true inside, true to ourselves, 
    before we can know a truth that is outside us.   
    ― Thomas Merton

    Saying yes frequently is an additive strategy. Saying no is a subtractive strategy. Keep saying no to a lot of things - the negative and unimportant ones - and once in awhile, you will be left with an idea which is so compelling that it would be a screaming no-brainer 'yes'.
    - unknown


So the top comment/advice on HN about how to avoid information overload is to collect a list of information to remind you to stop addictively collecting information.

Sounds about right.


I know it's weird but here has been my ANALOG solution to HN information consumption and even to tab overload (a chronic incurable autoimmune disease I acquired when just leaving my teens, during college life, which may have impeded my growth).

I write much, sci-fi and always draft some articles (but never publish), so that keeping up with HN is a sort of reference material building activity, other than it I don't go on twitter, IG, reddit, slack, mastodon or whatever IRC channel, so I try to make the most of my constrained addiction, but it's always tough work to clean up a browser tab accumulation, as the Feynman quote quips, it's costly, you have to pay attention:

The method involves a paper notebook, which I use whenever I can in lieu of a PC for drafting, taking notes, planning etc. On a two-page spread I start sth like an index by arbitrary useful topics of my current researches. Each line is a one or two word topic, after the word I simply list the HN IDs separated by comma. It's nice to save individual comment threads or whole posts using the same interface. When useful I write a little two word note on top of the number. In this fashion I close dozens or hundreds of tabs and postpone/defer reading the interesting conversations to when I will take action upon it e.g. by writing a short story or poetry or articles. I also use the GTD golden 2-min rule: if I can read and/or take action on a useful discussion or link posted in a few minutes, I do it on the spot and close the HN post forever. Done.


I do something but on the computer. I issue `j w` on the terminal, which means journal write, to create a new time coded entry and open it on an editor where I copy the URL and any immediate thought I have in my mind. Most people will just bookmark and forget which I also do often. Anyway, we replaced a tab overload problem with a notes/bookmarks overload.


I used to swear by org-mode until I realized I’ll never look at nested folders and files again.

Maybe you could automate pasting the url by copying it beforehand and having the new entry draw it from the clipboard.


> I used to swear by org-mode until I realized I’ll never look at nested folders and files again.

I do look at mine extensively. Though I invested a significant amount of time organizing them. Having a way of quickly searching notes and previewing their contents does help. I use fzfx, which is basically opinionated shell functions on top of fzf to do the search. In the future I want to autosync the public notes to my site and implement an improved search system there.

> Maybe you could automate pasting the url by copying it beforehand and having the new entry draw it from the clipboard.

C-C + C-V isn't a huge hassle at least for me. I have a bind on Neovim to format the link in Markdown format so I don't have to type []() and carefully paste the link in the right place but honestly I always forget to use and lately I'm just pasting the raw link and not caring about formatting. I think formatting should be done automatically in the background. In the future I may adapt or write a formatter for those niche cases. It can be triggered by a save or pre-commit hook (everything is in a repo inside a single monorepo). Might even hook up a LLM to it. Developing my own Notion lol.


Yes, fzf is amazing, back when I used and customized my linux box a lot finding out about it was a breakthrough in experience and speed of usage. My dotfiles suffered so much bitrot after over five years of not using them (it's on GH goldfeld/dotfiles the mess of both nvim and emacs init files) that I still think of cleaning them up and using one of those editors again, someday.. I guess. Ironically today my only interaction with the world of tech is as a user (not API coding, just end user) of AI[1]. By the way you seem to be a portuguese-speaking fellow (I assume also by the username's gender) and so am I.

[1] as a matter of fact today I "launched" (on a barren desert let's say) a substack newsletter to feature code reviews by the chatG man (and soon feature open source AI projects too), and at first I'm having it review the old Vim plugins I once authored, including vim-seek on next issue, if you want to be my first subscriber, lol: https://generativereview.substack.com/p/the-generative-revie...


I see that you're a capixaba fellow. I added it to my RSS reader.


Thanks! now I’m curious! you can also reach me on tw @vicgoldfeld


I'm not on TW anymore but I'm danisztls on GH. And I'm dani at foostodon.


This sounds like a reasonable approach, with an explanation on how you personally execute it. The top comment is just a statement, and a very odd one at that, given the context of the original question.


There’s no need to be dismissive. If these quotes help OP then that’s great. They seem to be helpful to a lot of others here too.


I think there's a parallel to what someone (can't find the link) called "human vs elven" technology.

"Human" technology focuses on adapting the natural world to one's needs, the ultimate result being the whole natural world removed / replaced by said technology.

"Elven" technology focuses on adapting oneself, to remove the need to rely on, or change the natural world. The ultimate end being the complete removal of oneself from the natural world (while continuing to exist, of course). However that process still requires you to take "human" steps to ensure survival and progress.


I'm surprised to not see Pascal's quote in this list:

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone"

...but maybe that better sums up OP's issue rather than a solution.

Either way you'll need to take steps to make it harder to do the things you're currently doing (e.g. get a dumb phone, set up a firewall rule to block these sites, set a timer) but there might be a deeper underlying issue of having nothing better to do.

Perhaps making other aspects of your life more difficult will eat up this idle time while also providing more fulfillment. I've personally found that riding a bike to get food at some place farther away (as opposed to eating at home, ordering food, or just driving somewhere) is an excellent way to detach digitally, get some exercise, and force yourself to see new parts of your town/city. Obviously this doesn't work for everyone but the gist of this is to force yourself to take time to do something unexpected and difficult and find your reward in that instead of reading every HN thread, checking every email, and responding to all the memes your friends send.


One of my favorite pastimes (which allowed me to have a more fruitful relationship with my computer): Living in the Santa Cruz mountains, sauntering in the woods, swimming in a creek, basking in a meadow, biking down into town for coffee and bookstore scouring, and taking the city bus back up. It's just not the same in the Los Angeles greater area.


The bookstore scouring has sadly gone way downhill in Santa Cruz since the closure of Logo's used books.


I experienced the closure of The Literary Guillotine, the small, academic bookstore, in the fall of 2019. But on the other side of the same block, there's Bad Animal[1], a small bookstore/restaurant: they have an incredibly impressive used selection - it was my go-to spot.

There's wishing the town returns to being affordable because high costs only rids places of their proper energy. Despite being in my mid-twenties, these days I, maybe foolishly/naively, dream of living in Bonny Doon.

1. https://www.badanimalbooks.com/


> "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone"

I have that one in my quotes file but it's just a big text file and not easily searched by subject. I need to add tags.


> get a dumb phone

I've found a simple "productivity apps only" policy to be enough. Instant messengers, browser, email, banking app, bus ticket.


But the browser has everything.


Then you put a 10 minute timer on the browser. Enough for lookups, not enough to waste time.


In the context of quotes I will throw in what I read on reddit the other day:

  Addiction is giving up everything for one thing, 
  sobriety is giving up one thing for everything
Unfortunately knowing quotes is not enough to kick the habit. Too much time spent on reddit and HN :/


That's a great quote, probably heard in a meeting


Nice list. What helps me:

“A preoccupation with the means is a lack of commitment to the end.”

In this context, the means is knowledge. And for me, the end is building things. So, I try always to be building something (in my work or avocationally), and the high I get from that helps to resist the craving to know more about how to build things.


Thank you for this -- adding these to my quotes Anki deck.

I would also add to these the TS Elliot quote from his work, the Rock:

> “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”


I’m curious, how do you use quotes in your anki deck? Do you do a card like “What did TS Elliot say about knowledge?” And have the answer be the quote?


The approach I take with quotes is more subjective than it is with almost all of my other cards, since it would pointless to really judge whether or not I know some piece of maybe abstruse wisdom, I just rate it on a subjective grading of, how well am I living my life relative to this statement, and if it feels like it's something I'm really lacking I'll fail it or mark it hard. The card has no back, something that I also do for more axiomatic pieces of CS theory as well, where it's too difficult to meaningfully capture the whole idea in many different question-answers.


That seems like a reasonable approach, I’ll have to give that a try.


I'm also curious! If anyone has ideas, please let me know...


> The purpose of knowledge is action, not knowledge.

> ― Aristotle

If the quote works for you, that's all good.

But for the other people adding it to their quote list, it's unlikely to be a real Aristotle quote. In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle concludes that the highest activity of human life is contemplation or speculative thinking.


I like it, will steal some. I followed the same strategy and always added relevant content to this doc, then forcing myself to read it every day. It‘s a non-attributed mashup of several sources. because it‘s from my personal notes:

—- Core Question: Is what I‘m currently doing helpful to my goals?

Get Bored. Get Calm. Enjoy boredness.

Whatever happens on the front page, I’m never involved. It seems like the whole thing would work just as well even if nobody ever read the Times or watched the cable chat shows. It’s a closed system.

Breaking News is most often wrong and later corrected by more breaking news.

But if that’s true on a scale of minutes, why longer? Instead of watching hourly updates, why not read a daily paper? Instead of reading the back and forth of a daily, why not read a weekly review? Instead of a weekly review, why not read a monthly magazine? Instead of a monthly magazine, why not read an annual book?

Following the news isn’t just a waste of time, it’s actively unhealthy. Edward Tufte notes that when he used to read the New York Times in the morning, it scrambled his brain with so many different topics that he couldn’t get any real intellectual work done the rest of the day.

Its obsession with the criminal and the deviant makes us less trusting people. Its obsession with the hurry of the day-to-day makes us less reflective thinkers. Its obsession with surfaces makes us shallow.

I have not followed the news for a long time. My life does not seem to be impoverished for it; indeed, I think it has been greatly enhanced. But I haven’t found many other people who are willing to take the plunge.

News makes our inner opinion volcano boil and that is toxic!

Uncontrolled input prevents rest, relaxation and output. All this massive time that is lost is ultimately YOURS! I am good to myself. I am worth it to myself not to stuff myself with poison!

Bad news is toxic for your body:

By consuming all of this news (which is nearly all bad news), you’re stressing your body out, weakening its ability to fight off infection, and potentially causing digestive and growth problems.

The really bad news is that news consumption is a vicious cycle that’s hard to get out of. Stress weakens your willpower. Without the willpower to put your phone down or turn off your computer, you’re likely to consume more and more news. And so the pattern continues.

“We are training our brains to pay attention to crap.”

The more a person consumes multiple types of media, the fewer brain cells there were in the anterior cingulate cortex. This is the part of the brain responsible for attention span and moral deliberation. You can no longer concentrate on books and longer articles. Your mind gives up after just a few paragraphs without absorbing any of the content. And you begin to suffer from anxiety.

After all, it is also part of freedom of opinion not to have an opinion.

Reading the news doesn’t help you change the world for the better. Ignore it or do something.

You need to make a complete break. The best way to do this is to push through 30 days of no news at all. By the end of those 30 days, you’ll hopefully reach the point where you don’t feel the urge to peek at the headlines.

What do you REALLY want in life?

To be really successful at something, you need to dedicate yourself to it fully. Albert Einstein, Frida Kahlo, and Beethoven didn’t become greats in their respective fields by scrolling through news feeds every few moments. They simply couldn’t have done, wasting all of that time. —-


Totally agree. I've also disconnected from everything but the tech news and not missing anything. We had a discussion recently where people were amazed some hadn't heard of the Turkey earthquake 12 hours later. I only learned of it 1 hour before that.

But really what does it matter? Anything really important will reach me anyway. And there's nothing I can do about most of it. I also can't care about every single person in the world. Even if I know about bad stuff happening I can't help it.

I just read the local paper website once a day now, and that's enough. Anything important like this in Turkey will show up there too. And most of the local news is about stuff that actually affects me.

I also don't have a TV subscription anymore. I don't watch anything live, and have zero interest in watching sports so I just had no need for it anymore. Same with social media, if I could still just follow my friends like they used to offer I would, but they don't. They try to make me engage with low quality nonsense which pushes me away.

The only interruptions I get now is from instant messaging, but most of the people I know and all group chats I have muted and I just check in on their chats when I feel like it. So no notifications there. Only the most important people get through.


> Uncontrolled input prevents rest, relaxation and output. All this massive time that is lost is ultimately YOURS!

Love this take. Thanks for saying it, has enriched my day today.


“Beware the barrenness of a busy life” - Socrates


That's going in my file!


Don't listen to your brain, it doesn't even have arms, stop letting it push you into things or hold you back.

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMY6dDMx7/


I try to deal with it by action. But the best thing for me has been running. Get physically away from devices.


Sounds like an addictive hobby (:


It seems to me distraction hinges on some imaginative falsivity. Kafka, in effect: "Life is a continual distraction which does not even allow us to reflect on that from which we are being distracted."


It'd be cool if you could provide a brief explanation of what each quote means to you. Quotes can sometimes be hard to interpret when they're out of context.


Through self-awareness and self-knowledge comes right thinking, and it is right thinking that will bring peace and joy. - Krishnamurti

What they mean to me is to focus on the questions important to me. An easier way to put it is the example of writing a book. For a long time you do a lot of research and collect information. At some point you have to start writing the book which means turning your collection into a story. Once I got in this mode, I stopped "fear of missing out" about things I was never going to learn. There's just too much. My mind is limited. I'm hopeful that AI will help me with this focus.


I try to deal with it by action - try to use what I read. But the best thing for me has been running. Gets me away from the tech.


I like this, thanks


those are some potent quotes right there


Thank you.


Okay... so what about academic research?


What about it?


What "action" does the knowledge from academic research provide to a grad student?


It enables action. Knowledge is not pointless but it is not the end goal. An education is not pointless but it is meant to lead to some action afterwards like designing a house after studying architecture. That action might even be creating more knowledge (both by researching and teaching), if you are thinking about a career in academia.

I'm actually not sure whether I fully agree, I think that knowledge can also be a goal in and of itself sometimes.


I think the sentiment is not to avoid learning or reading, but to have a purpose.

If you are miserable reading academic research papers in your basement everyday for no reason, I would recommend you reconsider.

If you are reading them because you want to cure cancer or get a job, then that's really a different scenario.


I found HealthyGamerGG’s recent video really useful for this:

https://youtu.be/8PYhEWK2wVA

Some scattered notes from this video:

- when you're bored, your mind is looking for a particular stimulation

- when you allow yourself to resolve boredom with dopaminergic activities like video games, you reinforce for yourself the idea that this is how to relieve yourself of boredom. Your brain in turn will learn to immediately reach for unproductive, dopaminergic activities to make the boredom stop

- if you resist the boredom (procrastinate on boredom, procrastinate on procrastinating) your mind will start thinking creatively

- shower thoughts, hikes - times when your boredom is unresolved and creativity follows it

- capture your fleeting creative impulses

- instead of falling for a craving or a desire, jot it down and meditate on it, think it through. Ask yourself: "What else can I do?"

- Examples - jot things down, work on small business idea, doodle, anything but falling for your boredom resolution

- The reason why we typically don't do this is we don't have the habit of it and we don't reinforce it

- reflect on the work that do

- people are not good at it

- Playing a game a lot does not reflect on skill

- physicians who practice a lot are not necessarily the best at a specific task but the ones who reflect are

- It may help you to visualize this step as an IRL replay analysis. Bronze tier players in video games stay bronze because they don't actively seek out their mistakes and tro to correct them.

- rereading notes, revisiting older work helps create new ideas

- ride out boredom


I was thinking of the same channel, but the video "why you don't want to do anything after binging 4 hours of YouTube videos".

https://youtu.be/zBgCRJluWTc


> instead of falling for a craving or a desire, jot it down and meditate on it, think it through. Ask yourself: "What else can I do?"

I will quite literally "ride out boredom" by lying down in bed and ponder into nothingness at times as a means to procrastinate. Maybe even fall into choice paralysis and end up doing nothing as I spend all my time arguing over what is most productive. I thought video games and internet were the problems, but I think it's just coping mechanisms for loneliness and depression.


This is a wonderful video. Thanks for posting your notes too!


Man, this guy really communicates effectively. He goes on and on but each new sentence has high information density. Solid share, thanks!


I wonder if this can be a good forum for your question. You must suspect every answer here simply because everyone here is a self-selected group of people idly reading and commenting on Hacker News threads. It is like asking your friends at the bar for suggestions on how to quit drinking: many there have no interest in it, and the rest are interested but have not succeeded.


Several threads here seem insightful, particularly the top comment with quotes on avoiding the pitfall of information addiction. I often find pragmatic, applicable advice for fuzzy mental and emotional problems here, more so than in most other online communities.

In the end, it’s the poster’s responsibility to comb through responses to find useful snippets. The cliche of “admitting the problem is the first step towards recovery” could also apply to asking this question.

Rather than comparing HN to patrons at a bar, I’d counter that HN is more like a large courtyard on a tech campus. Sure, there’s bars, foam pits and foosball tables, but there’s also chess matches, spirited debate, and plenty of like-minded people around too.


Nothing wrong with bars. They're also known for spirited debate, like-minded people, and foosball tables, even more so than tech campus courtyards.

But you have a point. I'm being snarky, unfair, and, worse, unhelpful. One can consume media and also create stuff. Hanging out here doesn't mean that you aren't also creating neat things, and indeed there are a whole bunch of posts here every day showing the insane and wonderful things people are out there creating.


I do not feel so good about 30 items hitting my brain each time I open HN. (even though I am only scanning, sometimes just filtering by the vote count).

Is there a smaller number like 10 that might make me feel less guilty?


Check out https://hckrnews.com/


I’ve found that I give the best advice on topics that I struggle with the most. (Assuming I win some of my battles.)


This could be a good location, at least personally I think so. My time on here is maybe 15-20 minutes a time. Usually once or twice a week although the last week has been a bit more frequent. ;)


I’d bet your information diet has become mostly stuff recommended to you by algorithms. This kills our creativity because we are just thinking about the same stuff that every other person is getting recommended at this moment. There’s no room for us to think your own thoughts, we just jump from latest thing to latest thing and sound like a twitter summarizer bot at parties.

There’s a simple way to solve this. You get to indulge your love of information. BUT, only if you searched for it first.

Want to look at twitter? Don’t look at the feed, search for something relevant to you. Want to watch a YouTube video? Search for something you care about, something relevant to your perspective.

When you seek out information you are spontaneously curious about, it connects to real problems in your life, things you might have a genuine opportunity to influence. If you consume algorithmic content, your head fills up with problems you can’t do anything about. It’s paralyzing.

It’s important to write, take walks or sit and stare at a tree or even a wall. That’s where the ideas find their space to entire your mind.


> This kills our creativity because we are just thinking about the same stuff that every other person is getting recommended at this moment.

I agree with you on “no time to think our own thoughts” but I really don’t think this part about algorithms is true. 50 years ago, people were “recommended” way less stuff. Most televisions had less channels than there are videos on your YouTube homepage. And your page is different than mine.

I mean, I wouldn’t have even seen this comment of yours. Maybe in a letter to the editor?

It’s the extreme diversity inside non-diversity that’s the problem. The monotonous novelty. Want an opinion on last week’s F1 race? Sure, here’s a hundred from a hundred people. Video about pottery in Greece? Have a thousand of those, all slightly different, all engaging in their own way. And pick the political opinion of your choice and I can find more people than an ancient Human would meet in their entire lifetime all acting as if this obviously true. It’s enough to convince your brain that anyone who thinks differently is a danger and should be immediately exiled from the tribe.


Find out if your addiction is because you find the world boring, or if you're trying to escape from something you fear.

If it's the former, block the addictive content and replace it with other things you find fun (hobbies, books, movies, etc), paying attention to how it's more worthwhile to do so.

If it's the latter, find out how to overcome such fear / anxiety and to stop using addictive content as a crutch.


100% agree. I happened to do this this morning as I was dealing internally with another, somewhat similar, sort of addiction.

Earlier in my life, I was addicted because I was fearful/anxious/traumatized. It was a (shitty, yet effective) escape.

Now that my life has been stable for a few years the addiction came back up. I wondered why, and I realized it was because I was bored. It made things more challenging (which was a motivation to quit I thought), but it turns out the challenges introduced by this addiction actually make my mundane day-to-day more stimulating.

Sure is hard to code stoned huh?


I show similar bad behavior when I am overtired. It took me a while to see the pattern and put my phone aside when I need rest.


This rings a bell! Thank you for commenting this.


I argue that the former reason is an undercover version of the latter.


I made a list of my strategies for this: https://davidbieber.com/snippets/2022-03-18-attention-strate...

So you don't have to click through, here they are: * Using an outliner like Roam Research

* Working with another person (e.g. pair programming)

* Working with another person present (e.g. independent coworking)

* Running a “distraction detection” program

* Mentally noting the distraction-kind and returning my attention

* Keeping my phone in my kitchen

* Writing on Go Note Go, my headless keyboard

* Attending meetings/talks in “clamshell mode” (laptop closed, no keyboard or mouse available)

* Making TODO lists

* And explicitly writing down the ^^active TODO^^

* Going to sleep at a specific time (e.g. 10:10pm)

* Exercising regularly (or at least aiming to)

* Stopping watching TV in the middle of an episode (ends of episodes are more addicting)

* 50 minute working sessions (e.g. focusmate.com)

* Stretching

* Taking short deliberate breaks

* Using Pomodoro timers for working sessions

* Using the “Intention” Chrome extension by DK

* Keeping all notifications on my phone turned off

* Asking the people I live with to get my attention first before starting a conversation with me

* Announcing my current active goal publicly (e.g. in a chat room)

* “Hide feed” Chrome extension, also by DK

This is all in addition to what I call the "Nike strategy". i.e. "Just do it". aka pure will power. But you don't need to rely completely on the Nike strategy -- the rest of the list can be useful too!


Thanks for turning me on to Go Note Go. I’ve been contemplating a similar system for quite some time.

How often do you review your “Go” notes? I’m finding that’s now becoming the bottleneck in my mental model - I’ve reduced most of the friction in my output, but now there’s more activation energy for retrieval.

I’ve been using Obsidian for a week now, which I hope will pay dividends in time. Do you have a particular workflow or stack for your “second brain?”


I review them frequently -- opportunistically only, but frequently nevertheless. I gather I'm unusual in this regard; most people I talk to about note taking seem to be "write only".

For myself, I write notes on Go Note Go without seeing them, but I also use Roam at a computer where I do see my notes. When there, I'm often curious to read for the first time what I wrote blindly the day before. I also go back through my notes looking for ideas to expand on (tagged e.g. #[[Snippet Ideas]]), or for TODOs for projects.


> To use Go Note Go in the shower, acquire a waterproof Bluetooth enabled keyboard, and pair it with your Go Note Go Raspberry Pi 400. Go ahead and leave that waterproof keyboard in your shower.

ಠಿ_ಠ


> Does anybody else feel that way?

oh yeah, sure!

2 actionable things that changed my view on this things completely:

1) Huberman lab podcast on dopamine: https://hubermanlab.com/how-to-increase-motivation-and-drive.... It's not some self help BS, all based on science, backed by publications.

TL; DR, you might be riding too high on dopamine / layering too many dopaminergic activities. You might need to lower your base dopamine level.

2) for dealing with youtube specifically, block youtube recommended. Like youtube becomes only search bar, no recommended, no follow up videos etc. Complete game-changer for me.

https://pawelurbanek.com/youtube-addiction-selfcontrol https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29485064 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pawurb

@pawurb, thank you for changing my life by unlocking youtube for me, without the addiction. I am very grateful.


I think I've ran into some criticisms of Huberman for often citing animal studies as equally applicable to human studies. Tbf, I like Huberman generally, but I do also think he's very good at making every single thing he says "science based" as if the existence of a single finding from a one-off study on mice is somehow iron clad confirmation and proof in favor of his specific recommendation.

But his general recommendations are usually pretty good and he has good guests sometimes.


Indeed, citing animal studies for humans is a classic bio meme: https://twitter.com/justsaysinmice

I haven't seen huberman accused of this yet, interesting. Innocent until proven guilty?


Wow, the youtube uBlock rules hack is brilliant!

I think I will gain 3+ hours of my life back per day. Thank you so much for sharing!


A podcast would come up in a discussion about addiction to podcasts and other media.

But also thanks I'm gonna add this to my list as well.


This may be surprising as an answer but….just stop

I swore off TV for about ten years. Didn’t really miss it. Had watched a bunch before. Wanted to focus on other stuff so I cut it out. Same with video games.

It doesn’t sound like listening to podcasts/YouTube while working is adding anything to your life. So….don’t? Go cold turkey on it.

Pick some music instead to replace it, I find classical or brain.fm are good companions

Literally 100% of the efforts I have made to “manage” information consumption have failed. In the presence of compulsion, cold turkey is the only thing I’ve found that works.

I can now watch TV as a social activity or play Nintendo occasionally. Relationship to both changed and they aren’t compulsions as they were. That can happen with time. With a lot of time.

But right now just stop. Ask yourself why you would even multitask in this way when multitasking is known not to work? The only times I listen to podcasts while doing another activity is when it is truly mindless, like cooking or cleaning.

And maybe find new work. The space you gain from not filling your brain with chatter could let you figure out a path here


Some of the tools which have helped me rediscover my focus and discipline:

* Use the CLI for everything - reduce the amount of time you have a browser open

* An egg timer - use this every time a tedious task needs completing

* A dumb phone - small and minimal functionality, easy to forget about

* A watch - stop using your phone for checking the time

* Cook your own food - excellent use of time

* Exercise - no headphones, a gym provides background music and enough human contact to keep boredom at bay

* Long-form media - books, films, music

* Return to things you know you like - 'it is better to know one book intimately than to have read one hundred'


> A dumb phone - small and minimal functionality, easy to forget about

This requires more diligence, but can't you create the experience you want on a smart phone (no social media, disable all notifications, etc.) without giving up utilities that provide actual value, such as GPS / navigation?

> Exercise - no headphones, a gym provides background music and enough human contact to keep boredom at bay

Interesting. I feel like I am more distracted and unfocused when I listen to the gym's music (sometimes their music just doesn't match the intensity of the workout) or when I socialize between workouts.


The practical advantages of tiny dumb phones outweigh the technical disadvantages. There are 2 kinds of trip:

A - I travel across the city to visit friends/family/work or go somewhere far but familiar.

B - I travel across the country or for an extended period of time.

A dumb phone will cover A and a smart phone will cover B. The switching of sims is a non-issue as situation A covers almost all of the time.

For exercise, I just found that eliminating the concern of what to listen to was the real gain


GPS can be in not so malicious environment, I'm talking about separate GPS device instead of addictionful phone with no buttons, so-called smart but maybe not for end user's brain and free time.


> Use the CLI for everything

Interesting, can you explain what this looks like in practice?


Usually a black screen with a bunch of mostly white letters :)

Seriously though, I do this a lot too. All my instant messaging comes though a text interface, most of my note taking and other work. I use the browser a lot still because it's sadly unavoidable.

If I really need to focus I even use my old VT520 CRT terminal. The soft amber glow really helps to focus <3


Yeah it might sound ridiculous but I do this too…

I wrapped the GPT-3 API in a stupid little CLI the other day, just to poke a davinci w/o having to go the browser. I like it.


HACKER MODE ENABLED

PRESS RETURN TO HACK THE PENTAGON


I'm reading Deep Work by Cal Newport at the moment. It touches on this issue directly and offers up a lot of concrete suggestions.

At the moment I'm "stepping down" from my addictions. I created a Tampermonkey script which blocks Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Coingecko (crypto charts) and porn M-F. I still have HackerNews, Twitch, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Discord fully accessible, but this is just my first couple of weeks at it. I'm going to keep tightening them down and defining smaller windows with fewer tools until I actually look forward to the limited time I have to interface with them.

There are a LOT of suggestions throughout the book and they are quite compelling. Planning your day, reflecting on your values, creating pro/con lists of what you want to achieve in life versus the benefits these tools provide, reflecting on what sort of lifestyle you need to live for personal success. Could you thrive with a fully monastic lifestyle like Neal Stephenson or Donald Knuth? Or perhaps your lifestyle would better off being cyclical on a quarterly basis? Or perhaps you can only afford to weave deep work in for hours each day, sporadically, more like a reporter or journalist. Depending on your lifestyle your strategy for committing to deep work will vary.

I'd give it a read/listen and see what you think!


Coming on HN to ask that is about the same as going to the liquor store to ask how to give up drinking. You want real answers go to places where people don't have internet, then ask what they do.


For me, it was something I aged out of.

In my 20s, I was an information sponge. In my 30s, I realize information is commoditized, and the signal-to-noise ratio is very low. Even after I scaled back my consumption to only 'serious' publications and podcasts, I realized they have a ton of fluff too.

So now I primarily restrict my internet use to addressing questions that I personally have. No more opening a podcast app just to see who's on what this week.

The downside of this is that I'm not as interested in broadening the scope of my knowledge as I used to be. That's the point of taking a focused approach over time, but it's also bittersweet because I am intentionally narrowing my fields of interest to the essentials; I discovered a lot of cool stuff in my 20s that I may not in my 40s.


Consider committing yourself to organized things that essentially force you to turn that part of your brain off.

Take a yoga class (I found that to be a huge psychological relief after years of working in startup stress-land). Take a language class. Join a dining event on Meetup.com (I'm assuming that's still a thing).

Obviously this isn't going to help you attain some more personal goal, like "read a challenging book" or "work on my so-called passion project", but that's kind of the point. You need external factors outweighing your habitual behaviors, and you'll at least end up feeling like you made some personal accomplishment even if it's not some big, personal goal.

There's also a lot of self-gaming and time management that can help. Simple tricks like "I don't want to go to the gym today, but I know I need to, so I'll just commit to driving to the gym and going inside for five minutes". Once you're there, you'll almost certainly find yourself sticking around longer, and over time this builds a healthy habit. The Pomodoro technique really helped me with focus and procrastination. "I'll just spend 25 minutes on this task with no interruptions". Next thing I know, I'm five Pomodoro cycles in and I've made a lot of progress.


A 6-minute Bob Newhart clip from MadTV that is guaranteed[1] to fix all your problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0lr63y4Mw (tl;dw: stop it!)

> But the work is tedious enough that I am too tried in the evening to do something interesting.

Same; sounds normal.

> Have you been able to detach yourself from the constant flow of information and focus on your own stuff?

I put the xbox in the closet for while and made it just a little harder to indulge the impulse. Don't tell yourself you have to swear off podcasts or HN or whatever forever—just ask yourself if you'd be willing to try a brief but significant break, and make sure you have some ideas for what you'll replace it with.

I also rarely spend free time programming. Once in a while I'll get an idea and the motivation to do so, but I find that if I spend a significant chunk of my productive/creative energy during the day on work, I'm much happier if I then spend the rest of the day socializing, exercising, doing stuff around the house—basically anything not in front of the computer.

Habit change can be daunting, but the hardest part is often recognizing something that you want to change, and you're already there! Good luck with the rest :)

1) Not.


For me it was acquired as a buff to my career growth. The more I learned the more I was worth and it would directly lead me to promotions.

Once I got to a place where I wasn't interested in climbing higher (the stress/dollar isn't worth it for me), I felt a vacuum of inertia.

It's uncomfortable to not be buzzing as that's what I was used to, I associate it with progress and reward.

Without the excuse of upskilling for work, I notice that my scouring and crawling for information is associated with stress in my personal life. It's a something I do to distract myself and procrastinate from dealing with whatever stressor is in front of me.

I have now been trying to focus more on my personal emotional growth and looking for ways I can become a better person. Resisting the allure of distraction and dealing with my stressors head on is hard. I don't have an answer for how to yet, but at this stage I am aware of it and on that journey.

One thing I have come to realise is that life is desperately short and I want to strive to experience it in the best way I am wired to.


Books. Lots of books. Whether in my area of focus or in history, art, and fiction; just feeding the thirst in other ways helps tremendously. Also, hobbies that give you a chance to practically apply things that you learn. I believe the addiction comes from the absence of healthy habits.


Completely agree books keep me sane from digital overload.


Yes, I slowly unwound everything over time. Just realize it will be a slow gradual process and I think it's best to be patient with yourself.

This is what worked for me:

- Every week I unsubbed a subreddit until eventually there was only one left. It was so boring I stopped visiting Reddit.

- I installed an extension for Facebook and slowly unfollowed every one.

- I stopped posting to Instagram. Eventually stopped posting stories.

- Uninstalled Facebook and Instagram from my phone.

- Don't have TikTok, Snapchat, Reddit or any apps on my phone.

- Started using https://www.beeper.com so I can still chat with people on Facebook or Instagram.

- I turned off all notifications except vital ones (mentions on slack emails)

- I turned on screentime for news, financial stuff, everything really. Put it all for only 5 minutes a day.

This all has dramatically helped.


This is a LOT like what I've done. I just stopped reading stuff. I uninstalled apps, etc.

Another thing: Spend time outside, sans phone (off or on mute is fine). Humans have survived for millennia without the glut of information we have now, and they did it by getting outside and spending some time with the planet. Try it. It helps.


In addition to uninstalling the apps, I'd recommend changing your account passwords to random 64 character strings and then throwing those strings away. This prevented me from "cheating" by using the web.


What do you do with all your free time ?


I'm trying to read more; as in actual books. I've been spending at least an hour a day going for a nice long walk. Studying another language and doing at least one hour a day with a teacher. Work on a side project. Go explore the city.


You wouldn't find it very easy to quit smoking if you kept a full pack of cigs in your pocket at all times; the easiest way to stop using these habit-forming things is to prevent yourself from accessing them.

This could be via many means from parental-lock style apps and firewall setups to uninstalling problematic apps from your phone.

I recently removed the web-browser from my phone leaving no apps on it that aren't strictly for communication (with a few exceptions such as a camera app and file manager). This has been an excellent move, and I liked it so much I tore off maps and emails too - it feels pretty good to live in the real world again. (I accept this is a pretty extreme approach but I'll try anything once)


I made my devices much quieter, filtered out feeds, and generally got rid of distractions.

https://nicolasbouliane.com/blog/silence

It helped a lot. I spend more time outside, I read more, I watch fewer YouTube videos. I don't browse reddit as much. I check my inboxes less. I didn't really measure it, but there is an objective improvement, even in the dark days of winter.

However, it's not a magic pill. I'm here right now, am I not? I have good and bad weeks. I still reach for the internet to avoid starting a task I dread.


I use to get anxiety that I would miss out on something. Information FOMO? I think you need to identify the cause of your frustration.

You feel that the consumption is shallow yet you get value from it. Your work is tedious. If your desire is to do some work-like activities after work but you feel that you don't have the mental energy, you should try some activities like physical exercise, naps, or cold showers.

https://www.betterup.com/blog/mental-fatigue

If you're just feeling guilty pleasure from the Internet variety of "watching TV" I'd say get over it. You deserve it even if you've only been productive one minute today but your job is stressful.

If you want to do a different activity but you can't stop your behavior then you are addicted. In this case you should try to change your environment so that it becomes easier to do the thing you want to do and much harder to do the activity that you want to do less. If this doesn't work you might need professional assistance but that's not something to be ashamed of


You have 3 options:

1. Quit it all entirely. 2. Wean yourself down to a lower intake. 3. Do nothing and suffer the consequences.

For myself, I still consume a lot of content, but I decided to be more picky about what content I consumed. Furthermore, I decided to start doing something with the knowledge, the results of which you can see here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZqirAnnqaCZ8lT8w7p2P...


> I get a lot of benefit from this information but somehow it feels shallow.

I take a longer view to this. For example, a few years ago I read about an algorithm to calculate percentiles in real time. [0]

It literally just came up at work today. I haven't used that information but maybe two times since I read it, but it was super relevant today and saved my team potential weeks of development.

So maybe it's not so shallow.

But to your actual question, I have a similar problem. The best I can say is that deadlines help. I usually put down the HN and Youtube when I have a deadline coming up. And not just at work. I make sure my hobbies have deadlines too.

I tell people when I think something will be done, so they start bugging me about it when it doesn't get done, so that I have a "deadline". Also one of my hobbies is pixel light shows for holidays, which come with excellent natural deadlines -- it has to be done by the holiday or it's useless.

So either find an "accountability buddy" who will hold you to your self imposed deadlines, or find a hobby that has natural deadlines, like certain calendar dates, or annual conventions or contests that you need to be done by.

[0] https://github.com/tdunning/t-digest


>>Does anybody else feel that way? Have you been able to detach yourself from the constant flow of information and focus on your own stuff?

Yes, and to detach, I enforce little lifestyle changes. It's a species of declared war. Ideas to fight back:

1. No mobile or laptop, ever. I like big computers and I cannot lie...

2. Indulge when you do, disconnect otherwise. Use a smart phone like a phone; build apps, don't use them. Promise yourself to get out into nature at least once a week for several hours with no screens. While there, empty your mind, walk to walk, sit to sit. Do it every week.

3. Go back to doing things on paper with a pencil. So much to be said for this. I keep a piece of graph paper in my pocket all the time. Each different fold is like a different app. Best smartphone ever. Don't get me started on notebooks. Practice your handwriting.

4. Expand your hobbies and rotate through them when they start to bore you.

5. Fight, fight, fight.

6. Lose yourself in music more. Don't forget, "life without music is a mistake". Get a little boom box and some batteries and go outside to listen to music on that thing. Make information with your brain while you stare at the clouds. Do it every week like some kind of weird ritual.


I don't know about you but I find being alone in quiet distressing and I tend to, for example, listen to a podcast just to fill the void and feel like I'm at least passively absorbing something.

But long stretches of silence are the human norm. Even in social situations. I've found when I'm literally spending all day with someone, with no media to distract, that the conversation will have long lulls in it. I think I first noticed it when I went fishing with my boyfriend. Stretches of quiet that will go on for ten minutes until one of us thought of something worth saying, then some lively talk, then quiet again. And that was okay!

Does the thought of such stretches of emptiness fill you with dread? It usually does for me. I think that's where my own information addiction comes from. It relieves that discomforting sensation. But I have come to believe such experiences are essential to mental health, from time to time. I'm ill at ease with my own thoughts.

If this sounds familiar in some way, I suggest prayer and/or meditation. Though if you want a more practical prescription, take a long walk daily without your phone, in a quiet area.


Everyone here has great advice, but for the rest of us: I don't. It's fine. I try to use a laptop instead of scrolling TikTok on my phone endlessly, which is a TRUE time suck. Laptops mean I dick around with programming instead of just going on social media.

I'm not David Goggins on this one, and most people here aren't either.


I devote 30-45 mins each morning scanning and bookmarking HN and Reddit, and stay away from info-scrolling during the day. I completely stay out of twitter. If something is blowing up, it will surface on HN or Reddit. I also subscribe to several newsletters of interest in my field, and set up feeds in the Reader app, and I occasionally check what landed there.

I think it is essential to avoid the “raw” sources like Twitter or Google News, and instead scan what bubbles up into higher-level sources such as HN, reddit or newsletters.

I also meter my time on various projects using Toggl Track so I can monitor how I am using my time. Tracking also acts like a promise to myself that I will focus on something: e.g I start the timer to focus on X, and it acts as a subtle nudge to keep me honest and really focus on X.


I remember we live in an era where we are always optimizing ourselves, and seemingly being goaded to optimize ourselves by the media we consume. If I need a break I just take a break, because I remind myself of the articles I’ve read about how its beneficial to be bored.


I feel you 100%. Recently I have started asking myself "Is this what I want to be doing right now" and actually taking time to consider and answer the question. It is not a perfect solution but it gives me some space to reconsider whether what I'm doing is serving my needs. Sometimes the alternative is to go watch a movie/play a game/read a book instead, it doesn't have to be either Something Serious.

Also I think meditation helps. It is not a cure all but you are literally practicing letting your brain go unstimulated for a period of time.

If your phone is your main source of distraction then put it out of reach, power it down, put it in a drawer on the other side of the house, etc.


Before the internet (I'm that old :( life was dull and had no meaning. I used to pick up trivia (useless facts!) and was ridiculed for it (who cares! why do you learn these useless things!)

Now that I live inside the biggest library in the world I feel alive, any and all knowledge I want is an instant away (so many times I liken it to the Matrix scene where Neo downloads new learnings and exclaims that he "knows Kung Fu")

I still look at "useless" information, but my interests in Politics, Computer Science, and to a lessor extent Economics are properly satiated.

It might be an addiction, but it's a hang of a lot better than drinking/drugs.


I'm in a similar boat. I work full time but limited in opportunity there. spend a lot of time on youtube.

So, I'm working on a personal blog/platform, kind of, exactly for what your talking about. I've decided to be more productive but I haven't really settled on one idea. So, I'm building coolprojectideas.com so that I can blog(tutorials mostly) and build side projects. Plus I have like a million ideas and I wanted a place to idea vomit.

I think there are 4 phases to being successful on your own.

1. experiment publicly.

2. stumble onto something people are into

3. focus/grow that

4. repeat


Putting aside some time to do non-tech stuff is a good idea, things like going to the gym, reading books, going out and walking around, etc.

Also as an experiment I deleted Twitter which I used to mindlessly scroll, put HN on no procrastination mode and stopped reading digital news except for two sites that I trust and read sporadically about two years ago. It might sound strange but I ended up feeling a lot happier on the regular as a result.

Spending some time curating what you consume or limiting the amount of time a day could also be a good idea.


> This is all fun and interesting but I feel this makes me want to do things less and less. Instead of working on my own problems I distract myself by listening to ever more information. I get a lot of benefit from this information but somehow it feels shallow.

I feel this. The human brain is all too enticed by learning "secret" information that feels like it gives you some sort of edge or new perspective on the world.


Try to produce as much as I consume. Getting an iPad recently is really helping with this, because I can whip it out during every quiet moment on a train or a tram, and type towards finishing a book I'm working on, rather than doomscrolling instagram which is what everyone else seems to do in that downtime. At least by the end I'll have a bad book out of it, everyone else will have little.


I did a 3-part video series talking about setting up "Parental controls" (using a mixture of OpenWRT and PiHole), which can flexibly dial back access to certain websites - especially Social Media ones - on a given home LAN. This denial can be on a timed basis, and/or on a MAC-address basis.

Even when fully restricted, LAN access is still granted to a convenient library (served up by calibre-web) of edifying, much-more-wholesome ebooks on a Raspberry Pi, self-hosted. This flexible approach always leaves something to be accessed for those who still feel the need for an "out" of some sort (instead of total denial of all internet access).

Here's part 3, where I showed the setup and operation of OpenWRT and Pihole: https://bhikkhu.ca/buddhism/video/2022/12/19/Dhamma_Talk_098...

Part 2 talked about Calibre-web the most, which is linked to there.


For technical solutions, I would recommend the plugin DF YouTube to remove suggested videos on YouTube. You can search for videos but won't have a home page of fun stuff to watch. On my phone I have the Google newsfeed disabled. I also have YouTube and Chrome disabled and two apps that further block me from simply re-activating it, (ActionDash & FocusMe, as well as Google's built in time-limit on the app). If I do have to use Chrome I try to keep it under ten minutes a day for important things.

I've found that substantial efforts to get off of platforms that distract me can work, but it's very difficult and should very much be thought of as a hybrid problem of both your personal self, and your technological environment around you. If you're surrounded by distractions, you will find yourself distracted; however, if you simply crave distraction, blocking things will only lead to you getting distracted by the next best source of entertainment.


I've found that setting my phone display to grayscale has reduced my phone time by around 15% - 20%, with most of that reduction being in the YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter apps.

I still research topics for fun, but I actively have to Google for information and read wiki articles. It feels much more substantive, and I retain the information better.


My main source of "internet addiction" (I don't completely agree with the term) was compulsively checking Instagram and Twitter. I allowed myself to do this during the pandemic because it was often my entire social life. But afterward, I found it interfering with my IRL social life. The Twitter habit was broken when Musk took over Twitter, since I was unhappy with the changes and took the opportunity to delete my accounts. For Instagram, I've found the iOS app "ScreenZen" to be great at breaking up my habit. It adds a timer before opening selected apps, giving you an opportunity to change your mind, and a timer after which the app will automatically lock again, preventing mindless scrolling. Just 60 seconds to bail out is enough to reduce 90% of my Instagram usage, and after two months of this, I find the impulse to check Instagram is almost gone.


It's definitely a problem. I'm not sure how to fix it.

The crux of the addiction is that doing is hard and consuming is easy. I can watch a YT video on homotopy type theory (I'm not a mathematician) and feel good about myself and how much I'm learning and how I'm going to use this newly found knowledge. The reality of the situation is I'm probably not learning very much and just procrastinating.

The moment you sit down and try to create, you are almost immediately slapped in the face by your own limitations and this is an unsettling feeling. You then have a reflex to escape this discomfort by opening a new tab and navigating to YouTube and sedate yourself with that sweet, sweet content - where anything is possible.

If you're an engineer or product person, I would recommend perhaps turning this problem into an opportunity. Can you solve this problem for yourself as a product or service? If you do I'd love to buy it.


This is good!


I have tried a number of things over the years to cut down on my Internet addition.

For example:

- Getting rid of my smartphone and going back to a flip phone (lasted a year)

- Limiting my use of email to a few specific windows during the day (lasted a month or two)

- Requiring myself to write things down before looking them up on the Internet (lasted a month or two)

- Took the Facebook app off my phone (pretty much permanent)

- Periodically giving up Internet news for periods lasting from a couple of weeks to a month or two (works whenever I'm actively doing it)

Some of them have worked for a while, but I seem to eventually go back to the default.

The experiment I'm currently running is turning off the web browser on my iPhone. I started that about a week ago, and really like it so far. I don't have an email app on my phone (I use the Gmail web interface), so it really reduces the urge to pull out my phone and check email or look things up.


I encountered the same problem and had a pretty unique solution: I made the constant flow of information the focus of my own stuff. Instead of trying to detach myself from it, I just embraced it. I've never been happier.

I accepted that what I loved to do was gobble information and to gain more time what I really needed to do was kill my job. I started tuning all my information gathering and consuming towards balance sheets, SEC filings, hedge fund disclosures, quarterly earnings calls, investor conferences, etc. I started making money trading stocks on the side. I got comfortable and have replaced my salary for the last 3 years with trading profits.

Maybe stock trading isn't for you, but you could just find a job or career where you feed off the constant flow of information. Make that your stuff.


"Out of sight, out of mind." It's the organizing principle of my life, as somebody with ADHD and a slightly addictive personality.

1. Install App (such as Reddit) before use, delete after.

2. Scorched Earth Campaign on my Notifications settings on my smartphone

3. Stick to Hacker News, as most of it is boring irrevelant drivel these days.

4. Trained myself to recognize when I was instinctively cracking open a news website, or Social Media.

I've realized that my daily tendencies are really just repeats of some tendency from days ago, in my mind's helpless attempt to stay preoccupied. If those daily tendencies include a habit loop like "hey, this sucks, maybe crack open your phone to get out of the way of the misery", then as long as my phone is telling me to fuck right off, it operates as a reminder that I'm not interested in it.


You describe the feeling very well. I feel exactly the same way and have to actively make an effort to avoid getting distracted.

All "bad habits" I've been able to combat has been with some mechanism where I can stop the temptation from growing in my mind. Nip it in the bud, as they say. I lost a lot of weight by killing any thoughts about snacking with the mantra "no eating anything you didn't plan to eat, ever for any reason" for example.

Thinking to myself "focus means saying no" has recently helped me close a few background-opened tabs without reading the genuinely interesting articles hiding behind them, but I have found no silver bullet. If I let myself go one night, I'm at 20 wikipedia tabs and 12 HN tabs as bedtime approaches, easy. :)


I also find access to limitless information addicting, and get bored at work sometimes. Practical advice:

1) Cut internet to your house, or get someone to change the WiFi password if you can't do that.

2) Remove your SIM card and glue it into a dumb phone

3) Delete social media and things you find distracting (steam, instagram, etc.)

4) Organise your work tasks by priority if you haven't already. I use Kanboard for this. Otherwise the former steps will leave a void you'll fill by procrastinating.

That is essentially the only thing that worked after trying many other solutions over three years. Some people don't have to go to that extreme but... different strokes for different folks. One year later and I'm still going strong! I now rent in a co-working space, but a library was perfectly adequate before that.


I think there's a difference between consuming low value information like Tiktok content and spending hours on Wikipedia. I have the same addiction because my nature is to be curious and introspective, I won't get around that. Without internet I would be a bookworm and addict to librairies. My hack if it can help you is not to consume less information but consume more by filter a lot to keep only high value content, using AI to summarize text and audio, listening at x2 speed and always taking notes. If I don't, I feel my focus was a waste and that I won't ever capitalize on this high value information by making it a knowledge. We are just world explorers and this game has no end, I chose to explore faster.


For YouTube, I never actually visit YouTube.com. I view my subscriptions via my RSS/Atom feed reader and I watch the videos with mpv. This has probably saved me many hours I would have wasted clicking through "recommended" videos in the sidebar.


Excellent idea!

I found this on github: https://gist.github.com/jeb5/da22862e469dea21e873acabb562f63...

Was able to get all of my feeds exported to an OPML file, then imported into my RSS Reader of choice.


It's not that we're all addicted to the internet, it's that nearly everything else in life has been abstracted away to the point where the only thing the do is use the internet.

It's not a matter of you choosing to use the internet for hours a day, it's a matter of society's efficiencies removing any need to do things such as:

- Build a house

- Grow crops

- Talk to your neighbors

- Etc.

and therefore your are forced to use the internet.

Can you still do the things listed? Sure. Is society set up in such a way that those things are easy and done by the vast majority of people? No.

It's like online dating. A modern person is, in a way, forced to using online dating because the alternatives are out of fashion.

Software is eating the world, which means it's eating your life.


I haven't found this to be true. When I became unhappy with the volume of my Internet use, I made a conscious effort to take on physical meatspace hobbies, and found no societal pushback. Really the only limiting factors are time and (often) money. But, if you pick an inexpensive hobby and deliberately set aside time for it, there's nothing stopping you from doing it. Nobody is forced to use the Internet.


No one is forcing you to practice hobbies either. The point is the things that were necessary in previous generations, like building a house, growing crops, going to the bank, etc. are now abstracted away for you.

This leaves a lot of time for you to figure out what to do with your time. The internet has a large presence in life because everyone is online. You then, in a way, are forced online because everyone else is there.

The communities I have found for my various hobbies (woodworking, music) are all online. To find other people to talk to about the hobby, I need to go online, because that's where everyone is.

This isn't going to hard and fast apply to every possible scenario in life, but I have found internet networks to be a heavy force in my online usage. And because of network effects, it creates a feedback loop where you spend more time online because everyone else is online.

I'm sure there's a way to break free from the loop, but it's not as easy as you mention. Ok, I built a chair in my garage. What am I gonna do? Sit in it and call it a day? Build another chair? A major part of having hobbies is sharing your creation, which ends up being online because that's where everyone is. Otherwise building chairs all day long for no one isn't very fulfilling.


That's scarily intuitive - the sum of smaller efficiencies create more significant deficiencies in unintended places


My mantra

  - Don't use anything that has recommendation engine. Especially the opaque ones. I don't need to watch "what Crypto crash means" when I recently searched and watched Cricket videos!
  - The only exception is Hacker News. 
  - If I want to watch something on YouTube, be goal oriented. What exactly am I here to watch.
  - I've also cut down on streaming content. Started buying the content I wanna watch. I feel paralyzed and drowning with the array of content from each provider. And somehow they never have the content that I exactly want.
Started enjoying boredom a lot more with my kid.


I have noticed that I am getting more and more addicted to consuming information so I am listening to podcasts while working and I watch Youtube videos in my free time. This is all fun and interesting but I feel this makes me want to do things less and less. Instead of working on my own problems I distract myself by listening to ever more information. I get a lot of benefit from this information but somehow it feels shallow.

I would find a difficult project to work on. It should be hard enough that you have to put an effort to finish it without being too distracted. I think being distracted occurs when something is too easy so you procrastinate.


Read books (bonus: if you live in a city these are increasingly available for free or less than the price of coffee). Use paper and pencil to make some notes or work some problems. Have designated times/activities that exclude devices.


I have only one advice which I am successfully following for years since Android 2 stopped being a thing. Just have no smartphone!

If you need an app then you might need a web-browser.

OK, sometimes you really need an app, then you might to not need their service at all.

OK, OK, sometimes you not only need an app but have no choice to replace the need. Then just borrow a smartphone from friends or ask them to help you.

I am going to do anything and everything to NOT have a smartphone at all because having a smartphone and not using is very similar to having a little bit of cocaine and not consuming it - well, if you know at least anything about drugs this is too unrealistic.


I wrote about the tools I use to help with this a while back:

https://auspicacious.org/posts/2020/10/03/rehumanize-yoursel...

For HN specifically, I don't browse the site but rather subscribe to the once-weekly Hacker Newsletter; there's already more than enough commenters and voters here. This is the first comment I have made here in many years; usually I'm many days late.


Using a timer to restrict online time is a possible approach.

The science fiction novel "The Ringworld Engineers" by Larry Niven (1980) features one Louis Wu, who at the beginning of the story has become a 'wirehead' (wireheading being "the act of directly triggering the brain's reward center by electrical stimulation of an inserted wire, for the purpose of 'short-circuiting' the brain's normal reward process and artificially inducing pleasure.") He manages it by use of a specially designed timer which requires several hours of painstaking work to reset.


I suppose other than learning their physical activity, so you could go to a gym. There is social activity, if you have people that you could talk to you could do that. There’s creative pursuits, so you could make art or music, or code or cook. All of those things have some learning aspect to them, so you have to be careful not to slip back into learning mode. There are things that delight the senses, like listening to music or eating good food, watching movies. Personally, I tend to enjoy learning, but if I had people in my life, I’d prefer socializing. Balance is important.


I write a newsletter[0] (in finnish) every weekday that summarises what has happened in tech. I've been doing this now for two years and its helped me keep my news addiction in check (ironically). Forcing yourself to write makes it easier to process stuff and during the weekends, when I'm not writing, I really don't have the urge to keep checking Twitter or Techmeme.

I've recently been playing around with Midjourney for the cover images and that's been a excercise as well.

[0]: https://www.transistori.com/


Spend weekend time in nature, walking/hiking takes away your mind from electronics, so don't introduce them by purpose, maybe just to snap a picture but keep it offline. If you can, sleep there too, camping is fantastic and it connects us with the ways our ancestors lived.

That may be a good kickstart, another step is reducing phone and social media exposure during week. Just uninstall those apps, me removing FB few years ago was great step in this direction (plus saving tons of battery life since it was draining it even when unused)


I'm terrible at this but I have some coping strategies, for the lack of a better word. I've also build tools to help me with this as I have personal interest in mental health. Listing them here in case you'd find them useful, as some other people have:

1. no news or HN in the morning. I could stop just here. Instead I meditate for 10-20 minutes and write using an app I built for myself (https://enso.sonnet.io). The point is to just process the previous day without editing yourself, hence the very limited UX it has.

2. I also made Sit. (https://sit.sonnet.io), with the goal of: "please share with a friend who needs to sit the fuck down or enjoy the experience yourself." It's just a timer with a more gentle snooze function, nothing special, but also an excuse to tell people to spend more time doing nothing, instead of consuming.

That's 20-30m of my morning. It's not that much I think. I am by no means an organised person and a skip those habits on my worse days. It's just so much better than letting someone put random shit in your head every morning.

3. I try to avoid chatting on HN or Twitter and meet people using my "office ours" (https://sonnet.io/posts/hi) where anyone can just call me to chat, pair program or rant. Feel free to come and say hi!

4. I doodle in bed before falling asleep. The worse my doodles are the better. I put some of them on https://potato.horse

I guess my point is that when I'm not sucked into YT it gets much easier to get stuff done. What helps me is just trying to do some of these things in a slightly shoddy way, so I don't obsess about getting them perfect.

This feels my head with something better than noise which often is just there to dull a sense of anxiety. Hope some of that will be useful.

PS I'm writing an article about a related subject at the moment, so if you wanna check it out, let me know–I'll share it later this week.


Feels funny to offer a YT video in response, but I just saw this and it spoke to the topic. [1]

It's a search for stimulation, and underdeveloped skill of dealing with a lack of stimulation.

For me I've started to focus on just acting. Got the idea to do something? Try your best to do it without googling, youtubing, listening to pod casts. Just take the next action that seems like it might work, and pivot if it doesn't. It adds some adventure back into life too.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuHEY7CjjTI


Addiction is a bitch. There is no denying it.

However, there is a paradox: If everyone just stops using unmaterial goods (information, software...), who is going to use the "stuff" you are supposed to "focus on”?

Watching/listening to tons of Youtube and podcast in the right spirit could be better that producing stuff just for the sake of doing stuff. It is all about the spirit.

It is like you finally do that “Show HN” and then nobody upvotes cause “Who needs Yet another X”. If information overload is a problem, overproduction is one too (it is even its cause in the first place).


To me, it was a protective mechanism to avoid burnout (then bore-out at the next company).

Think of this addiction as a mood regulator. You can replace it by other type of mood regulation (sport, games, family or friends...).


In periods when I don't have much excitement at work or in my personal life, I also tend to consume internet information compulsively, but then I notice that when I do have interesting things to do or work on, consumption takes a back seat and I accumulate months worth of books, blogs, podcasts, and YouTube "watch later" items I never get to.

Focusing on what yes is a lot better than focusing on what not. And when we figure out what we want, the rest is just something that stands in the way and easier to avoid.


I know I am very bad at self-control, so I tend to go cold turkey whenever I lose control. Recently I decided to leave my phone at home whenever I can. I know that seems like a radical step, but it has been easier than I expected. I frequently go to coffee shops to knock some urgent work out, and since I carry a laptop and there is wifi everywhere, I can still check the buss schedule etc. when I need to. But the temptation of interrupting what I do to spend 20 minutes on the phone is gone.


Install a plugin that blocks all your problem sites. I'm using "Impulse Blocker" on Firefox and it's helpful to break the habit. You can easily turn it off and waste time on HN if you want to... you just need to do it intentionally. Just having that one extra barrier is enough for me to avoid almost all consumptive media during my work day (still read too much before and after work but that's my choice)


Plugins are too easy for me to disable. Somehow editing /etc/localhost and redirecting time wasters to locahost requires higher activation energy for me and works so that's what I do.


Just try one thing and see how that makes you feel. The feeling might then spread.

Example: bored of COVID, on 1 Jan 2021 I stopped reading the ‘mainstream’ (sorry) news. The Guardian, ABC, BBC, whatever it was that I’d been looking at: stop.

It helps that I’ve never watched the TV news. So it wasn’t hard to just cut this out.

But I did not stop using Twitter or browsing HN or Reddit or whatever. Just one thing that I identified as having a definite detrimental impact.

I also did not become religious about not absorbing any news. Sometimes I overhear news. I see my partner’s iPad. The radio news might come on. That’s okay. But for two years now, I just haven’t gone to a news site and read the news.

I don’t really know what’s going on, and my life is better for it. My mind is less busy.

Since then, Sam Harris by way of his ‘Waking Up’ meditation app has convinced me of the power of thought. And perhaps because I broke one cycle, I now find it reasonably easy to break, or at least crack, others.

I listen to way less podcasts than I used to. Every spare moment there used to be an AirPod in my ear. Now, I walk to work and listen to the city. I hang the laundry out without worrying that I’m not spending those three minutes absorbing information.

I no longer use Twitter and barely use Mastodon. But I do use it.

And here I am responding to a HN comment, so I’m obviously still here. Like I say, this isn’t some religion. It’s just a nudge in the right direction. You don’t solve this overnight.

Pick one thing to start. Notice the results. ‘Waking Up’ is excellent. One month free here, no benefit to me. https://dynamic.wakingup.com/shareOpenAccess/af0843

Edit: I should’ve said by recognising this as a problem, you have already taken the first massive step. Well done.


Apart from watching YouTube videos like you, I also read blogs about things I'm interested in.

For instance, I'm getting to know more about Blockchain, so this is a blog I usually read if I want to catch up on new things: https://www.ratherlabs.com/blog

So, blog reading is also another option to keep up-to-date.


Don't overlook the benefits. Use them to your favor.

Go for a walk. Did you see an interesting bird, insect, or plant? Take a picture or commit to memory and try to identify it when you get home.

Got any broken stuff? Look up information on how to fix it. Then fix it.

Has it been over a year since your last physical? Make an appointment with your doctor. Look up any new terminology from your visit or test results.

Seek experiences, then supplement them with related information. Emphasize quality over quantity.


This sounds simplistic/naive, but have you ever tried just starting a project?

With every project I have an initial reluctance to start. But once I start I usually feel compelled to finish it (these are usually woodworking projects).

Just start. Choose something realistic. Make it consistent. Even just 20 minutes in the morning or evening.

And if you abandon whatever it is - maybe "it" wasn't for you, but you probably learned something. Now do something else.


> This sounds simplistic/naive, but have you ever tried just starting a project?

looks at my troves and troves of unfinished projects

Starting projects is a bad habit >:(


Ha. Fair enough. For some people that's the case but OP seems not to have started any hence the (admittedly naive) suggestion.

I bet you have fun though!!


> I bet you have fun though!!

I did! And I do. Just not doing the things I love anymore, due to ADHD. Maybe once I'm medicated I'll be able to code again.

For now just perpetually existing on Discord and a few other places (such as HN) is good enough.


I bought a farm and moved away from the city. Nothing like a bunch of animals, buildings, equipment that needs worked on to keep you away from the computer.


The following trick has worked for me: After listening to a podcast, reading an article or watching a video, I ask myself: What did I get out of this? Have I gained any insight or learned something applicable?

95% of the time, the answer is no. I didn't get anything out of the consumed information. As this keeps happening, I'm starting to feel much more comfortable ignoring informational content.


I use NextDNS with liberal blocking policies enabled. Things like Reddit and HN get blocked. The work to get around that is just tedious enough that much of the time I won't bother. I find also that for many of these things, the longer I go without, the easier it is to stay away. Definitely true for anything like HN that is interactive.

My work computer has DNS out of my control. So here I am. Whoops!


Make a rule of doing something interesting with everything you learn. If there is nothing to do, talk to someone about it. If there is nobody, write a blog. If you can't write a blog, just detail it in a notebook. The point is to make a habit of interacting with things. That way you keep yourself engaged, slow down your intake, feel a bit more lively and it is overall a good habit to have.


I'm going to sound irritating and glib, but to stop doing something you've got to have the will to stop doing it, and then...stop doing it.

Sure there are tools out there to help and techniques and blockers - but ultimately there will always be pressures to consume and a multitude of opportunities to do so. So ultimately it comes down to you: if you want to sort this out, you've just got to stop.


Anecdotal: I found myself in the same situation where i was using internet as a means to avoid uncomfortable thoughts. See if you can be alone with yourself for some time and how you feel.

  For me it took some time to accept that the only way is giving the thoughts and emotions space.

  You have made a really big step by seeing what bothers you IMO.


  It's the fear of silence
  That gives us away.
  Cause when we're alone
  We have to hear
  What our aching hearts try to say.
  -- Randy Stonehill


Immerse yourself in it, until you get sick of it.


Let me know if my little project helps for the situation

- Website: https://webdigest.pages.dev/ - HN Post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34409691


The answer is simple: you don't. Just enjoy uselessly wasting your time on podcasts and browsing internet while your life passes by.

If you are perfectly fine with that - no need to change anything. If you are not - you will find strength to change it.

It's harsh but is simple as that.

Not trying to be condescending at all - speaking from personal experience.


When in high school, early nineties, I got into the habit of going to the library and spending hours working through stacks of periodicals. Before I could read I systematically worked my way through my grandmother's 30 year Nat Geo collection. I was a hopeless information junky well before the internet.


In order to change the behavior, first you need to grow the context and understanding of why you want to do this, what are downsides, what tropes do you want to avoid.

I recommend reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport and Essentialism by Greg McKeown.

First understand the problem and all the aspects of it. Then action will foolow


While this post has many great responses I want to also suggest that difficulty with addictions and failure to do what you actually want to do are also hallmarks of ADHD. Not everyone with these problems has it, but if you do then treating the disorder will make dealing with the addiction easier.


* get a dumb phone or a really shitty smartphone

* turn off all notifications

* use greasemonkey and OS level features to limit your access

* use offline devices for consuming long-form content (e.g. books and readers)

* find other equally indulgent supplements, like movies or video games

* start a side project you can get excited about. Maybe start a blog or write some OSS


> * use greasemonkey and OS level features to limit your access

I've been waaaay down this road and all I can say is that if you can limit access you can unlimit access.


Finding meditation away from a screen i've found helpful. A combination of risk and speed scratch this itch best for me but YMMV. Dirtbikes, mountain bikes, running, skateboarding i've found help me process the information i've consumed in the course of the day.


How do you deal with information and internet addiction?

I give into it and feed it more. I can never get enough information. More information has helped me throughout my life to make better informed decisions and sometimes the information is just interesting.


I also constantly watch/listen to something. But I think it's just because I spend most of my time alone. I can't handle silence.

I do still work on my projects though. I listen to the same music/stuff I've heard before while working.


i'd suggest reading Dopamine Nation, essentially the premise of the book is modern society has hijacked our natural reward system and we havent figured out how to moderate ourselves. author suggests 30 day dopamine detox so whatever you think you're addicted to (social media, sugar, sex, news, drugs, alcohol, etc.) force yourself to not use it for a couple of weeks and see how you feel. you should go thru intense withdrawal but in the latter weeks you're body and mind should be reaching a new equilibrium. she also mentions usinng challenging things (cold showers, exercise, etc) to reset your hormonal reward systems


Practicing self-restrictions is a good advice in general, but I wouldn't equate the addiction problem with dopamine levels. There is a meaning in everything you do, including your addictions. Sometimes this meaning is very deep. And you won't solve the problem without understanding roots of it.


Yep totally agree, you will need need to solve the root issue at some point. The detox is just to meant to give you a chance to look at the situation clearly and hopefully put you in the path to addressing the root issue. which hopefully means you won’t need to medicate thru ur addiction


I can relate. I deleted YouTube off my phone. When I'm at my best, I plan out my ideal week in 1 hour blocks. Then I try and stick to it--staying busy with things my best-self already decided would be worthwhile endeavors.


NewPipe on Android and ImprovedTube[1], both can be configured to turn off the homepage, trending and recommended videos, so you watch 1 video and afterwards your eyes don't wander and think "Oh, what's that video?".

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/improvedtube/bnomi...


You plan before the week starts?

How long does it take to plan like this?


Put away your phone in a drawer. Use a specific work device and hobby device. Turn off notifications. Unfollow every single person on Facebook. Unsubscribe from 2/3rds of your mailing lists. Play with a puppy


We had a discussion here a few days ago about the Turkish earthquake and people not knowing about it yet.

I'm the same, I hardly follow news or social media. Never podcasts, rarely any YouTube. Just doing it frees up a lot of headspace.


How I dealt with it is by writing an entire book on my feelings about it. I found philosophy to be very helpful to understand where my attention was going and how I could focus on being a better person each day.


Yes, one of my mantras for 2023 was "consume less, create more."


Typically during the (many) times in my life when this was a problem for me, I was avoiding something (or a lot of somethings). Try accepting the mundane. After all: "no mud, no lotus"


Attending a software conference recently and speaking to developers who I admire has inspired me to get off my ass, learn and build instead of consuming content.


Try building something tangible. I find digital mostly unsatisfying to my sense of creativity, it’s more of a means to an end (usually a commercial one).


Stop asking this kind of personal questions on public forums. Internet is not a good place for advice to life. Including this one.


In one word: badly.

But getting out in the sun and exercising truly helps to remind that news, games and computer tinkering are just distractions.


I try to work in the terminal as much as possible, most of my colleagues don't work in the terminal at all.


Yep it sucks. I think it is more insidious than other time wasters because we can pretend it is productive.


It is shallow, it's infotainment or more like just a background noise. Try listening to music instead.


I don't. I let it consume me.


I deleted my Facebook and Instagram.

At least now, when I binge, I tend to learn something :-)


Every addiction, at it's root has an unhealthy relationship with your own self.


It's true. Not sure. Why you were downvoted.


I 1000000% feel this way. I'm curious to hear peoples thoughts on this.


I block Reddit access on my phone and laptop. HN is ok for me and as addictive.


Start applying the information, don't just take it in and/or save it.


That's the problem. Applying information is hard, taking in information is way easier.


It’s fine. The other stuff I would be doing is way worse.


here is a website which addresses this: https://defetter.com


read math textbooks. far higher quality information and scrolling is just boring in comparison


Allen Carr - Smart Phone Dumb Phone.

Ps. Therapy


Tape my eyes open


I felt the same way for years.

In general I’m persuaded that the Graph Mind is not evil (https://joeldueck.com/graph-mind.html), and that FOMO and being plugged in are good, functional instincts. So I don’t really make an effort to tamp down on my consumption.

However I’ve also found that using my creativity, making things, and being able to share things I’ve made ARE crucial to how rewarding it feels to “be online” in general. (https://joeldueck.com/being-in-the-graph-mind.html)

Your consumption probably feels shallow because you don’t have anything creative to work on that feels more interesting and rewarding than whatever else you’re doing.

The only way for that to change is to force yourself to start working on something. It isn’t until you start that ideas start to come. But of course, when you’re tired, this is EXTREMELY difficult.

Here’s how I’ve been able to climb out of that hole:

1. My kids got old enough to sleep through the night.

2. Eventually my wife and I had a hard conversation about how important creativity is to me and how to make space for it in our lives. This unblocked me mentally and creatively quite a lot even though nothing materially changed for some time after. Up till then I had been silently martyring my personal time for anything that came up and never having anything left over. Having the issue out in the open and understood by those close to you is a huge relief by comparison.

3. Months before this conversation, we had another hard conversation about my work schedule. I’d gotten burned out on a huge project, which had finished, but gotten me into the habit of leaving work at 6 or 7 every day. Another case of poor boundary-setting and not being honest with myself. I stopped doing that; I now leave work at 5pm every day. Fortunately I’m in a position to be able to do that.

3. I focused (and still focus) on small, achievable projects (example https://dicewordbook.com), where I’d be able to make good progress in the one or two hours of time I have in a week where I’m both free and have energy.

3a. Nothing is too small. Anything counts. A well-written tweet counts. A handwritten page. Buying an item for a project counts.

Regarding the last one, Robin Sloan just had a newsletter (https://www.robinsloan.com/newsletters/sunshine-skyway/) where he articulates it very well:

> When you start a creative project but don’t finish, the experience drags you down. Worst of all is when you never decisively abandon the project, instead allowing it to fade into forgetfulness. The fades add up; they become a gloomy haze that whispers, you’re not the kind of person who DOES things.

> When you start and finish, by contrast — and it can be a project of any scope: a 24-hour comic, a one-page short story, truly anything — it is powerful fuel that goes straight back into the tank. When a project is finished, it exits the realm of “this is gonna be great” and becomes something you (and perhaps others) can actually evaluate. Even if that evaluation is disastrous, it is also, I will insist, thrilling and productive. It’s the pump of a piston, preparing the engine for the next one.

> Unfinished work drags and depresses; finished work redoubles and accelerates.




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