
Distraction is a kind of obesity of the mind - bootload
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/apr/12/matthew-crawford-distraction-is-a-kind-of-obesity-of-the-mind-the-world-beyond-your-head
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wpietri
One of the interesting things to me is what we do when a commodity switches
from scarcity to abundance.

In particular, when I was a kid a big problem for me was information scarcity.
I remember reading the cereal box over and over because it was the only thing
to read at breakfast. I read everything in the newspaper because that's what I
had. Library trips were a big deal.

Now, though, I have an elaborate series of tricks for managing information
abundance. Inbox zero. Browser tab zero. Instapaper, Pinboard, Amazon
wishlist, Netflix queue. And Leechblock, beloved Leechblock. I have two
laptops, work and fun, and the main difference is that on the work one I can't
access certain sorts of information.

What will be especially interesting to me is to see how kids who are growing
up now end up handling this stuff. I expect they'll be much better than me at
this.

~~~
cheatsheet
Yes, I agree with you so much.

I used to beg my parents to order me various forms of an encyclopaedia, I used
to devour bookshelves. I remember reading every breakfast food box and piece
of junkmail, just because it was something new.

I remember my mom telling me how shocked she was when I was like 6 or
something - she didn't believe me that I read one of these young adult books
in a day, and so I then rambled the entire story out, and she was proud of
that for a while. I told my mom recently that I was watching an anime, and she
was surprised and happy that "I watch TV again", because I've pretty much
stopped watching TV for the past 10 years or so. The contrast of these worlds
is stark.

I remember this stuff and I feel like I've become dumber, because I feel like
I can't hold as much information. What is really happening, is I can't hold as
much information as a computer can. But then there's some kind of process that
seems to run on top of the memorization, that feels more like it's something
I'd call a sense of self. Sometimes it is tiny iterations of a swift selection
mechanic operating on information that has already been indexed, sorted,
qualified, quantified, translated and weighted countless times, other times,
it is a way of being intelligent that I don't ever think I could ever program.
It is the kind of thing that makes the comparison of AI to actual intelligence
laughable and ridiculous to even begin to pose the question.

To me, it's more about being able to find a real signal in a world that is
constantly producing enough noise to consume us all.

~~~
asanagi
You're an interesting dude and it would be cool to hang out with you.

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fr0styMatt2
Something feels wrong about this article; I can't quite put my finger on what
it is. It's like a lot of pop-psych claims are being thrown out there with
nothing to back them up. I think I'll wait for more Amazon reviews before
picking up this book, if at all.

His previous book sounds interesting though. This just smells too much like a
PR piece I think.

~~~
leroy_masochist
You can read the entire book, minus a couple pages redacted here and there,
with Amazon's "Look Inside" feature. I don't know if this is intentional --
you usually only get the first 10 pages or so -- but I've just done it
successfully on two different computers with different IP addresses, one
logged into an account and one not, so you should be able to.

Having scanned the book for about 15 minutes over my morning coffee I think he
has an insightful thesis: things we had to work really hard for and/or make
major life sacrifices for a half-century ago are now free and abundant;
simultaneously, society has gotten a lot less structured and communities (both
in the literal-geographical sense and the activity-based sense) are generally
weaker. As such, we've become prisoners of the infinite options available to
us, and our lives become diluted as a result; e.g., we'd rather get our sexual
gratification by opening up an anonymous browser window and visiting Redtube
than put in the work to ask someone out on a date and build an actual physical
relationship with another human being.

The author's thesis is that we need to train our self-control by doing things
that require self-discipline and focus. What I find interesting about it is it
really flies in the face of other pop-psych books (e.g., Tierney's _Willpower_
) that suggest that we have a finite reservoir of self-control that we should
expend wisely.

~~~
fr0styMatt2
That actually sounds fascinating and changes my thoughts, such that I'll
probably pick this up.

I've been trying to figure out what bothered me about the way the thesis was
presented in the article. I think I picked up on the bit about 'video games,
pornography and gambling apps on your phone' and assumed the author was making
a moral judgement on those things. That doesn't sound like the case though - i
think I was just quick to judge.

Another one to add to the growing Kindle pile :)

------
afarrell
I know folks who consume food to relieve stress. When I was at MIT, I would do
the same with international news until discovering
[http://selfcontrolapp.com/](http://selfcontrolapp.com/), which was the reason
I switched from Linux to OS X.

~~~
Buetol
I've just switched the LeechBlock Firefox extension because you can delay the
page loading (thus making you think why you went there in the first place).

~~~
wpietri
Yes! A 10-second delay is enough to make me think, "Do I really want to spend
time on this?" But not enough to make me circumvent the filter. I also really
like its lockdown mode, so that I can say, "For the next 2 hours, no
distractions."

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devonharvey
Meditation has been an invaluable tool for me in fighting distraction.
Investing a small amount of time practicing everyday yields huge returns in
the long run. As the forces competing for your attention become stronger in
the coming years, the ability to maintain focus will become more valuable. I
see programs that block websites as only treating the symptoms of lack of
focus, whereas meditation is a way to directly develop the skills to overcome
it.

~~~
rooster8
1\. How long do you meditate? 2\. What's your pre-meditation trigger? 3\. How
many times a day? 4\. How often do you miss a day (like when travelling), and
do you have any technique for getting back into the habit?

~~~
devonharvey
I usually just meditate for ten to fifteen minutes in the morning before I've
had any coffee. I focus on my breathing, and when my mind wanders, I refocus.
I don't notice much difference from longer meditation, and I'm always able to
set aside ten minutes, so it is easier to maintain the habit. My advice for
getting back into meditation is to just force yourself to do it for the first
couple weeks, even if it doesn't feel worthwhile. It is hard at first, but you
will soon notice that you're getting better. Here is a free online book for
anyone interested in getting started:
[http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html](http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html)

------
czardoz
I should probably get back to work instead of reading this.

------
beat
I've been a Matthew Crawford fan since reading _Shop Class as Soulcraft_ back
in 2010. It completely changed the way I viewed my work and my career.

~~~
SovietDissident
I found one of his best insights to be that the factory model has been
shifting out of blue-collar work, where factories are automated and many
people now work essentially as craftsman, into white-collar work, where much
office work has become rote. (I would put programmers into the craftsman
category.)

"Yet there is evidence to suggest that the new frontier of capitalism lies in
doing to office work what was previously done to factory work: draining it of
its cognitive elements. Paradoxically, educators who would steer students
toward cognitively rich work might do this best by rehabilitating the manual
trades, based on a firmer grasp of what such work is really like."

On the office environment: "Either you can bend conduit or you can’t, and this
is plain. So there is less reason to manage appearances. There is a real
freedom of speech on a job site, which reverberates outward and sustains a
wider liberality. You can tell dirty jokes. Where there is real work being
done, the order of things isn’t quite so fragile."

On learning a hands-on trade: "Occupations based on universal, propositional
knowledge are more prestigious, but they are also the kind that face
competition from the whole world as book learning becomes more widely
disseminated in the global economy. Practical know-how, on the other hand, is
always tied to the experience of a particular person. It can’t be downloaded,
it can only be lived."

~~~
beat
There has been a lot of effort to try to shift programming into a clerical
work mindset, a process to be Taylorized rather than a craft to be mastered.
But given the nature of the work, there's a fairly narrow gap between "This
kind of code can be Taylorized" versus "This kind of code can be automated out
of human hands altogether".

------
collyw
"Ads were everywhere: on hotel-room key cards, on X-ray trays at airport
security, on the handrails on escalators."

One of the great things about living in a foreign country and not speaking the
language especially well, many of the subtleties of advertising are lost on
me.

Conversely when I was in the US for a few hours flying back from Mexico, wow,
everything is being blasted at you on all fronts. I have read a fair bit about
NLP and it just feels like pure brainwashing there. The lounge "serving them
who serve us" and the likes. I was glad to get away.

------
gshrikant
Slightly OT: has anyone read the other book mentioned in the article, 'The
Case for Working with Your Hands'? [1]

The premise sounds interesting, I'm not sure about the execution though.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Working-Hands-Office-Fixing-
Things/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Working-Hands-Office-Fixing-
Things/dp/0141047291)

~~~
SntCasado
I haven't read it, but I'm thinking to buy it. I read few months ago other
book (The shadows, what the internet is doing to our brains by Nicholas Carr)
and it's a very interesting topic (more in current times).

~~~
drh
It's called 'The Shallows', and is an interesting read:
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Shallows-Internet-Doing-
Brains/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Shallows-Internet-Doing-
Brains/dp/0393339750)

------
DougN7
I was just thinking of using this metaphore with my son who wastes way too
much time on video games. Entertainment is fine after important things are
done (school) but can't become the main focus.

~~~
mcdougle
When I was growing up, I was always taught to do my chores, then I could play.
But rather than simply enforcing the rule, I remember my dad actually
explaining the logic to me while I was young -- basically, if you start to
play first, the whole time you're having fun, you've got your responsibilities
in the back of your mind (unless you're just a total slacker).

By getting the work done first, you actually _enjoy playing more_.

(Plus, if you play first then try to force yourself to work, it gets harder to
switch context into a "work mode" and you end up not getting around to it a
lot of the time)

I definitely notice that in my life now.

------
khorwitz
A useful tool to fight against the modern distraction epidemic:
[http://focusr.co](http://focusr.co)

------
jlebrech
and hackernews is foie gras

~~~
equoid
A luxury product created by gratuitous cruelty? Seems a bit harsh.

~~~
Sammi
Truffles then? A rare luxury food found by digging in the earth :)

~~~
equoid
But what is luxurious (or even exclusive) about HN? If you are going to
generate some culinary comparison perhaps a niche burger (tofu?) would be more
appropriate.

