
My Life Offline - blasdel
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/offline2
======
martythemaniak
A few months ago I spent 2 weeks in Costa Rica - a lot of hiking, beaching,
surfing, etc. About halfway through I stopped at an internet cafe to transfer
some pictures from my camera to a USB stick. While this was happening, I
opened firefox... then drew a blank. I could not think of anything to type in
the address bar. I could have gone to some regular sites... reddit,
globeandmail, news.yc, facebook but they all seemed so foreign, weird and
terribly disconnected from real life. I had absolutely no desire to see memes
on reddit, news on the globe or what others were up to on facebook.

An important lesson that one can draw from time away (whether it be aaron's
month or my 2 weeks) is that you can't let tech/web overwhelm your life.
People have a wide range of interests (whether you've discovered that or not)
and devoting so much time to 1 thing seems like the easy way out.

This is also why I refuse to believe that online socializing can come even
remotely close to the real thing.

~~~
nostrademons
"An important lesson that one can draw from time away (whether it be aaron's
month or my 2 weeks) is that you can't let tech/web overwhelm your life.
People have a wide range of interests (whether you've discovered that or not)
and devoting so much time to 1 thing seems like the easy way out."

I really disagree with that, if applied to _all_ people.

I've always been completely obsessive about whatever it was I was interested
in. Whether it was planes at age 6-7, ships at 8-9, cars somewhere in there,
WW2 naval history at 9-10, computers at 10, Star Trek at 11, Gemstone 3 at
12-13, Magic: The Gathering at 14, MUDs & computers at 14-16, guitar from
16-18, physics at 18, Java at 19, Harry Potter fanfiction from 20-22,
programming language design from 23-25, my startup from 25-27, and now
Google's internals at 28.

When I was little, my parents would worry about my one-track mind and rather
obsessive interests. They had the same concern you do: people have a wide
range of interests, and they were worried that I'd shut myself into being a
narrow person.

But by the time I graduated college, they realized that even though I had a
totally one-track mind, that track changed every couple years, and so I'd had
a dozen or so different interests. All pursued with a lot more passion than
the person who just picks 2-3 hobbies and sticks with them for life.

I think the real evil is continuous partial attention. Whatever you're doing -
whether it's socializing, relationships, reading, hacking, research, etc. -
give it your full attention. I try to check news.YC/Reddit/various social
networks once a day, before I go into work. Then once I'm there, I concentrate
on what I'm doing. Similarly, I try to read a book or hack a program when I
get home, something that'll draw all my attention. I don't always succeed, but
when I do it feels much more fulfilling than wasting 2-3 hours online
refreshing news.YC.

~~~
llimllib
> I think the real evil is continuous partial attention.

Yeah. Agreed, it's my main enemy ATM. I may have to admit defeat and block
reddit/news.yc/twitter/facebook on all my computers.

~~~
x37llnoise
fail? ;-)

~~~
nostrademons
Fail for me at least. ;-)

------
tdavis
I'm a _very_ strong believer in a balanced life. I simply don't think it's
possible to be happy without it. That being said, when I read all this "The
real world _rocks_ ; the Internet makes me sad!" stuff, all I see is the
context it is written in: from the perspective of a person who spends all of
their time online.

When somebody who lives online suddenly finds the real world, of _course_ it
is going to be awesome! It's like finding a whole new world you didn't know
existed, with pretty girls and ice cream cones and other fun stuff. I love the
real world, too. I've visited many countries, met all sorts of people and done
all sorts of things. There's still so much more that I want to see and do, and
each month I spend piddling around this one piece of the globe makes me a
little more anxious.

But that doesn't mean the Internet doesn't have its place -- an incredibly
important place, at that. The Internet allows instantaneous, worldwide
distribution of knowledge! That's completely unheard of. And _fucking
incredible_. I love the real world as much as the next guy, but I certainly
love the Internet, too. There's a place in life for both of them and one isn't
intrinsically better than the other.

~~~
hyperbovine
Man I was with you right up until the last sentence, where you said

"There's a place in life for both of them and one isn't intrinsically better
than the other."

But one of the thems is life itself, so I would argue that yes, it is
intrinsically better ;)

The internet is a great way to learn, communicate, and share information. It's
also a great way to waste time, make yourself dumber, and develop a chronic
lack of attention span. It should be used as a tool to help you live your
life. But the phrase "life online" should never have existed.

~~~
tdavis
It's all subjective, though. What is intrinsically better about the "real
world"? It's full of its share of dumb people (just walk outside). Working a
9-5 job filing paper is an awesome way to turn somebody into a lifeless moron.
TV will help kill that annoying attention span.

I have no desire to live completely online, but I think people have a tendency
to argue that the "real world" is more important since it has a pretty basic
thing in common with us: we're both corporeal. But, imagine if you could truly
_live_ in The Internet: you'd have instant access to most of the world's
collective knowledge and the ability to interact with millions of people
simultaneously. That'd be pretty impressive!

~~~
caffeine
You couldn't _kiss_ any of those people, though.

~~~
jacquesm
That's by far the best comment in this whole thread.

Interaction online is purely cerebral, even the more kinky versions of it. The
ultimate in platonic contemplation, just you, your computer and your internet
connection.

It makes you wonder what the long term effects of the www are.

------
andreyf
I wonder if the novelty of a "life offline" would wear off if Aaron were to do
it for longer than a month... I'm around the same age as Aaron, with a similar
personality, but try to balance a pretty active social/family life with my
online life (I have a daughter, go to the gym, sometimes even go out dancing),
and have to say that decisively, I've find the news.YC community more
intellectually stimulating than the vast majority of my "offline life"
community.

Maybe I'm too involved in the wrong offline social circles, but I'm just a lot
more fullfilled with the speed and variety of ideas I get online than I do
offline anyday.

~~~
aaronsw
I didn't spend the month with my "offline life" community. I agree, they're
far less intellectually stimulating than the people I find online. I spent the
month reading books, which I found even _more_ intellectually stimulating than
the people I find online.

~~~
nostrademons
I wonder how much of that is novelty, though. I spent all my elementary and
teenage years reading books, and still read anywhere from 50-150/year (more on
the 50 side now that I'm working at Google, but in college I hit 150 one
year). As a result, when I walk into a library I've found I've already read
most of the books that seem interesting to me. A lot of my interests are
narrow enough that the Internet's the only place to go for more information on
the topic.

~~~
bokonist
I hit the same wall the library. If you want a new injection of novel
intellectual thought, I highly recommend the blog Unqualified Reservations (
<http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/> ). Read the entire archive,
plus all the books he recommends. That should keep you intellectually
stimulated for two to three years at least.

------
steveklabnik
Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's my age. Mabye I'm not self-reflexive enough.
Maybe I never give it enough of an actual, honest try. Maybe my life is more
balanced than I think. But I've _never_ been able to identify with articles
like this.

I often don't have enough hours in the day to even get what I want done. I
_love_ software. I'd rather be coding than doing most other things. I code for
my startup 10-12 hours a day, then go home and work on my OS. Or learning
Haskell. Or thinking about writing a compiler. Or the "living imageboard" idea
I've been tossing around. Or whatever. And I've been doing this for years.
Through school, I was coding projects all day, rather than doing it in my
startup. I've been coding over 2/3rds of my life at this point, and I don't
really want to stop.

Now, I do have other interests, and I persue other things. It's entirely
possible that I just feel like I'm on the computer as much as these authors
say they are, and I'm really not. I usually have a female companion. I love
mountain biking. I paint Warhammer armies. I'm involved in the local
hackerspace. I'm just a busy dude. But I still need (close to) unlimited
texting for Twitter. I still was all about Facebook when it first came out. I
still have almost 300 feeds in my reader (which I only tend to skim,
admittedly.) And yet I never feel like this.

I grew up on a farm. When I was younger, my computing resources were quite
limited, so I did that. I played outside. I was in the boy scouts. But I've
never really held the opinion that the "real world" is more important or of
inherently better quality than the virtual one. I feel terrible when I _don't_
have my phone. Or when I can't check my email. Or when I haven't caught up on
my reading for a few days.

I'm not sure. Maybe I'll feel differently in the future. Only time will tell,
I guess.

~~~
andreyf
As someone who is shocked by the group think that's hit news.YC lately, thank
you for such an insightful post.

~~~
steveklabnik
Thanks. I try not to post unless I actually have something to say.

------
jerf
I wonder if the age of "first online" has an impact. I'm 30 now. I got into
local BBSes in high school (mostly with other high schoolers, so there was
still a strong real-life social component), and only got on the internet in a
big way in college.

I don't recognize myself in very much of what Aaron wrote. Oh, a little with
the distraction thing, but at least for me it's just the easy availability of
distractions. TV, video games, even books can still do that to me too.

I also wonder is just how much people are different. I sometimes describe
myself as asocial; _not_ antisocial, _a_ social, in that I need very little
social contact to survive or be happy, and I top out pretty fast.

(BTW, I'm not fishing for pity and you might get the wrong impression from
"asocial"; I'm happily married, have a kid with another coming up, and so on.
I need more than 0 and I know that, it's just I have _lower_ needs than most
people seem to.)

Guess I don't really have a point, except: This sort of thing should be taken
seriously. The internet is a truly new social phenomenon, and while I believe
the positive outweighs the negatives (at least for most people), the negatives
are real, and we should figure out, both personally and collectively, how to
ameliorate the very-real negatives.

(andreyf's post highlights one thing I get from the internet: I am interested
in tech and politics, but I _vastly prefer_ online discussion, with its tools,
over real-life discussion of those topics. It also keeps my wife and friends
happy since they have little interest. On the other hand, I don't smear wife-
and-friends all over the Internet; I eschew Facebook, and still haven't
mentioned my soon-to-be-1-year-old son on my blog yet. I also wonder if
perhaps this sort of strong partition is a good idea.)

~~~
talison
Your comment about being asocial reminds me of a well known essay that was
posted on HN a few months ago, "Caring for Your Introvert."

<http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200303/rauch>

For myself, I definitely fall into the introvert category - I get fatigued
fairly quickly after fairly common social interactions.

The problem is I think for a lot of us, our default mode of "chilling out" is
spending time online browsing sites, checking email, reading the latest news.
All of those activities provide the illusion of taking a break from the "real
world" but I don't think they provide the respite we believe.

It's really easy to get agitated online about some silly flame war, techcrunch
linkbait, or some offhand comment someone made about your project on twitter.

So I can see how a life offline, or the compromise of spending less time
online, can certainly be beneficial.

~~~
jerf
I must have missed that one. Yeah, that's me. I coined "asocial" because
"introverted" picked up a lot of wrong connotations (I'm not socially awkward,
misanthropic, etc.), but that is definitely it.

------
datums
"Online, I feel like my brain wants to run off in a million different
directions, even when I try to point it forward."

I've experienced this while in conversation, I'm thinking of 10 other
solutions or options or something.

------
radioactive21
One month??? I went to South East Asia for the entire summer a year go. This
was not hitting all the major cities, this was going through the jungles and
back roads and woods. Where you slept in nets and used candles and flash
lights.

A month to a few months is nothing. Espeically if you have things planned out
to do. Try living somewhere isolated and completely without technology for a
year or longer, because to be honest, when you start getting into a day to day
routine that's when you miss technology, because there are periods where you
got shit to do but sit and scratch all the mosquito bites.

------
zaidf
I just kept saying "yup! yup!" after each sentence. I've achieved such states
during my vacations to India where I would go 2-3 days without touching the
computer and I'd absolutely hate it when something came up that required me
going online.

I am currently experiencing a super light version of what Aaron did by
blocking all of the sites that I automatically type in my browser every few
minutes without even realizing. In the past week, I've felt my anxiety drop
incredibly. I've followed that up with slowing down my body movements(ie.
drinking a glass of water in slow motion).

I have a couple of friends that achieved breakout success in things they
struggled with all their lives by leaving the computer/tv for a month.

Also have a friend that did something where you just sit naked in a room for
few days. You have enough supply of food/water. He came out visibly
transformed at the end of it.

------
David
A week of karate camp does this for me. Just one week, but it is intensely
focused on my body and my immediate physical surroundings. I think what makes
it so... refreshing? is that it is a new and different obsession. (It's been
new and different every year for 7 years, now.)

I come back from my week at karate camp and don't know what to do with myself.
During the summer I live at my computer, but after a week-long break, I can't
think of anything I want to do.

What I really don't get is how I can be so easily addicted to either state -
constant flow of information, or no flow of information.

I guess it's a matter of self-obsession versus world-obsession. This year
especially, I came back from karate camp thinking I could become a recluse,
doing nothing but physical training and soul searching for the rest of my
life. I wouldn't even mind if my soul searching returned zero relevant
results, because no results would be meaningful (for once).

At this point (in my thought process), it seems like it's a matter of
obsessions. I don't think I could live successfully in a state of balance
between these two polar ideas - I would hate it. Maybe it ties into the human
need to be the best at whatever is occurring at any particular moment, which
expects specialization, and thereby obsession.

That still doesn't explain why it's so refreshing to change obsessions
occasionally. (But I know I'd get bored being at karate camp year round, too.)

Oh well.

------
zenlinux
This article raises the question of how to balance one's life as a
technologist or someone immersed in technology. I thought I'd share one tip of
something I do. I only own a prepaid cell phone, and I keep it off most of the
time unless I'm expecting a phone call. This allows me to have it for
emergencies and to sync up when meeting people at bars and whatnot on
weekends. But I can avoid the downsides of being constantly interrupted or
getting involved in the obsessive culture many people seem to have with their
cell phones (constantly texting or talking when they're on the bus or in
lines).

I use computers and the internet most hours of most days, and I have plenty of
offline activities and social groups I am involved in. If taking a weekend day
off away from your email to go hiking is something you know you'll be
"punished" for when you return (in terms of email load or friends'/employers'
expectations), then it may be time to work out a plan to reduce your online
commitments.

------
crcoffey
I hate being disconnected. it gets under my skin until I'm itching to code,
game or read a blog, Do something to bring me back to a familiar constant.

But take me away for a week? I come back and end up deleting all my bookmarks,
dis enthused about news.yc and cleaning out my inbox of all non personals. And
I'm totally happy to go back to my original and probably greatest love,
Literature, preferably in some shady, but warm green place.

Over the following weeks I always manage to reconnect myself, a youtube or
blog link... There's always something, and I find myself once again forgetting
how nice it can be.

------
urlwolf
My life online made me find people with the same interests as me, no matter
how rare. Chances of finding another person interested in say, synthesizers or
ocaml letting 'fleshspace' serendipity do the work are negligible.

One other thing: Having an active social life can be costly, both online and
offline. It's just that offline more people actually do it.

The equivalent of following hundreds of people on twitter and facebook in
'fleshspace' is to live in a house with guests (and flatmates) changing
constantly. There are other situations in which one is forced to be
hypersocial (maybe working at a bar? but that doesn't lead to intimacy), but
this one I know first-hand. As anyone who has done the house thing can attest,
it can be draining. You spread your attention to others very thin. And even
so, the chances of meeting people you really like are not very high.

------
ShabbyDoo
>A friend asked me if I knew I was privileged to be able to take such a break.

This is probably the issue for most. Without spending a lot of time online
every day, I'm not sure that I'd be valuable enough to earn enough money to do
all the pleasant things commenters here have written about (cottages, exotic
travel, etc.)

------
davidw
I just spent a week offline. I had a good time on vacation, but no net
connection was sheer torture. Reducing usage to the essentials is one thing,
but going cold turkey was not to my liking.

------
zupatol
I'm at a point where I notice how much time waste on the internet but I don't
yet have the discipline to resist distractions. Other than turning the router
off every second day. But I grew up without the internet. It makes me sad to
read about someone who couldn't even imagine his life without internet
distractions.

Suddenly the idea of one laptop per child seems much less attractive.

------
billroberts
I love and depend on the web for learning and for communication, but my most
useful creative times are away from the keyboard, either mulling over ideas
while walking, or scribbling notes on paper. You've got to learn what works
for you and make sure you can step back from the always-on addiction.

------
mvp
A comment I left on Aaron's site as well.

I found the link to Pomodoro technique on some website. I was really glad I
saw it. Google for ‘pomodoro technique’ if you are interested. If you liked
Aaron’s post, you’ll definitely like this technique.

------
quellhorst
"My offline that I have to rush back online to tell you about." Why not try
something totally different like living off the land for more than a month?
That is incredibly difficult and will really change your perspective.

~~~
smithjchris
Been there, done that - for 3 months. It was an eye opener for sure.

I think a lot of people are detached from the reality of the world. Getting
back to basics reinforces that fact.

------
biohacker42
The last paragraph oddly jumped out at me. Why do so many people confuse
arrogance with confidence? Or more precisely, why do so few arrogant people
fail to see the benefits of confidence without arrogance?

~~~
jongraehl
It's usually self-deprecation when someone claims arrogance. They'd directly
claim confidence, you see, but then they'd be written off as arrogant.

