
Ask HN: How do you control distractions or addictions? - tpkahlon
Distractions may include News, Games, Phone etc. that may consume productive time from your schedule and return no profit.
======
Jugurtha
What are you _not_ doing when you do these things.

Disclaimer: the "I" will be present a lot in this post because I prefer to
write about what works for me, and let the reader figure out if it works for
them or not, instead of telling them what to do. The below shield me against a
lot of distractions/addictions, and give me time to pursue other distractions
and addictions : )

I don't have social applications installed on my phone: no
Facebook/Instagram/Twitter, etc. I don't have notifications except for things
I use for work.

I need something to call, be called, read a book, take a picture of a
whiteboard, check a link.

I have a long, long, password in my phone and I need a _very_ good reason to
unlock it. I don't unlock with fingerprint/face id/pattern. I don't want
unlocking to be convenient.

Media: I don't really consume the news unless I want to be informed on a
specific issue. There are many people following the news, and the most
important events find their way.

I can count the number of shows I've watched. I only watch shows if screen-
writer/director/actor/director of photography/music was done by X, Y, or Z,
and I maintain a mental graph for "recommendation" to allow discovery "I like
X's work. They worked with W. I'll check that out". It's incredibly effective
as it turns out people tend to work with a relatively small number of people
and it buffers me against low quality stuff, especially the trending one. It
makes for funny experiences: I was watching a recent movie with a friend and
said "This sounds and feels and looks like a Woody Allen movie" and it turns
out it was directed and written by Woody Allen.

Content: I avoid technical content that says "Don't do this" or "Do this".
Examples: "Use microservices" or "Go serverless for maximum scalability"
without the presence of mind to mention the context: size of the company,
codebase maturity, skillset of the team, specialized roles, etc. I also avoid
content written by people who've done too much "architecting", or who are so
high in the abstraction layer that the next step is "Think it and it will code
itself" pattern to emerge, or otherwise people with a pedantic voice. It has
done wonders shielding me/us from hype.

------
PragmaticPulp
Context shifting has high overhead, so use it to your advantage. Try only
checking distractions on your phone but never on your computer. When you need
to focus, simply put the phone in another room. Now you have to actively stand
up, walk into the other room, and pick up the phone to interact with the
distractions. This moves it from an automatic process to a conscious decision
that you have to make.

If you can't resist the urge to check distractions on your computer, use any
number of website blocking applications to force it.

Make time for procrastination, but schedule it. If you allow yourself to read
Twitter for 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes after lunch, and 15 minutes
at night then you're still spending 45 minutes on Twitter, but you're doing it
in a controlled manner that isn't distracting from your work. This will
relieve some of the pressure to check distractions during the day because you
know you'll scratch that itch soon enough.

Finally, address the issues that are pushing you away from work in the first
place. Learn to enjoy your daily work and appreciate periods of focus. Learn
to put aside self-defeating thoughts and behaviors that might discourage you
from getting started on things. Learn to identify your own feelings and
behaviors and address them head-on rather than escaping into pleasant
distractions.

------
bobblywobbles
Like another poster said, put your distraction in a physically-distant
location. The farther it is, the more energy it's going to take to fall into
your bad habits.

Nip the thought of your habit the soonest you possibly can. You are thinking
about playing a game? STOP! Thinking about wasting time? STOP! This not only
helps you avoid the activity but strengthens your resolve while the need to
distract yourself dissipates.

Get involved with others. We fall into addictions/habits because we can tend
to be lonely [or otherwise avoid our feelings]. Reach out to friends, plan an
online game night, call a friend. The more you involve others, the more help
you will see it has on you.

Ultimately what helped fixed myself was a combination of:

\- therapy

\- praying [to God] (ultimately I needed this to finally rid myself of my
distractions, everything else included)

\- community

\- persistence

There will be many many times where you fail too, and you shouldn't beat
yourself up about it, but instead accept it and try again.

------
Nomentatus
I sometimes have to pit one drive against another; putting the distractions
first, but not eating that day until I'm completely done with that
distraction, such as gaming 'n surfing. I would guess that this is unlikely to
work for drugs that are serotonin mimics or alcohol, however; since the latter
dis-inhibits, and also affects judgement and memory.

------
shubb
Since this is hacker news, here is a cool Paul Graham essay on the subject
[http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html)

~~~
1nikoalvin1
Paul Graham is a goat

