
Excessive Consumption Limits Creativity (2016) - skilled
https://medium.com/the-mission/why-excessive-consumption-limits-your-creativity-6e925dd66daa
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mark_l_watson
I am trying to finish writing two books and I have a commercial knowledge
graph project KGcreator. I have not been totally successful as indicted by my
HN history, but here are my goals for digital decluttering:

Digital Declutter

Starting April 9, 2019 ending May 8, 2019. At that point I will decide what to
add back.

Cold turkey, no use of:

1\. Hacker News, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook. 2\. Nothing on HBO or Netflix
besides movies and Bill Maher. No series! 3\. No use of computer except: work
on a book or KGcreator (and patent calls) 4\. no watching news 5\. no playing
Chess 6\. no watching conference talks on YouTube (missing 30 days will not
hurt)

Allowed digital activities:

1\. Reading physical books or Kindle all I want 2\. Email, Calendar 3\.
Writing 4\. Watching movies 5\. Playing Go on iPad and iPhone 6\. listening to
technical podcasts, and watching college lectures on YouTube

Get exercise:

1\. Gym 2\. Walks

~~~
weaklearner
long strolls are bliss

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stallmanite
Interesting stuff but I wonder about the veracity of claiming that “every
email you receive releases a hit of dopamine”. For one thing I thought the
chemical models of the brain we have are far too primitive to know this.
Secondly does this mean I can get high from reading emails? It’s not working.

~~~
majos
Some variant of this sentence seems to be in every article about how tech is
dangerous.

Deliberate and effective manipulation of addictive behavior is a real thing
tech companies do, but IMO this "dopamine hit" language is so popular because
1. the word _dopamine_ is sciencey and sounds good, plus it has "dope" in
there, like the actual drug, and 2. the word _hit_ also reminds people of hard
drugs.

~~~
jerf
It reminds me of the continual stream of articles breathlessly proclaiming
that some activity "rewires your brain!", like this is automatically some bad
thing. But your brain is constantly rewiring itself; it's what it does. Your
brain isn't rewiring itself because you played a ton of chess; it's rewiring
itself constantly, and it's rewiring itself to play better chess if that's
what you do. If you stop playing chess, it'll rewire itself to get worse at
chess as it optimizes for other more local concerns.

Similarly, all sensory inputs release neurotransmitters. It's _how_ you
perceive things, so all perceptions release them, all the way from the bottom
raw inputs up through the fully processed semantic content and emotional
reactions. You can't say something is bad merely because it causes reactions;
you need to do a lot more work and distinguish why some reactions are good and
others are bad, which at the very least requires an operational definition of
"good" and "bad".

~~~
lowestprimate
I believe the brain assimilates, deletes and rewires when you're sleeping
based on research and book by Matthew Walker.

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jhedwards
I recently picked up a book I'm reading by S.J. Gould. I read a sentence with
the normal level of attention I'd use to read a Reddit comment or something
similar and it seemed like the sentence was total nonsense.

Then I slowly re-read the sentence with more focus and it made total sense.
That's when I realized I have been become accustomed to reading "shallow"
content, content that doesn't require any work to understand. Both Reddit and
S.J. Gould are technically "consumption" but I think they're qualitatively
different kinds of consumption.

~~~
mateo411
This is the second shallow article I've read today about deep work. I'm
starting to think it's a worthwhile shallow activity to produce content about
deep work.

I think Deep Work makes sense if you are thinking about a hard CS problem,
coming up with a strategy for a company, or doing something that requires a
lot of attention. It could be something hard for you, just because you don't
know how to do it, but easy for somebody that has done the same thing ten
times before.

I disagree with Newport that Deep Work would be a competitive advantage in the
tech industry. Most of execution on a project is "shallow work" or another
word that people like to use is "grinding".

Deep work or uninterrupted thought is needed for people who are domain experts
to come up with a strategy and vision. However, if that's correct, then it's
time to grind.

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viraj_shah
“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative
pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls
into lazy habits of thinking.” - Albert Einstein

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codr7
I come across people every day who seem stuck in analysis paralysis concerning
some class of software problems.

They're typically reading every paper and book they can get their hands and
engaging in endless discussions about definitions and hierarchies, but nothing
of value seem to come out of the process.

I used to read a lot of books and blogs, but what works a lot better for me is
to make an honest attempt at solving any problem before seeking assistance. At
least then I know what I'm looking for and I always learn something worth
knowing along the way.

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HNLurker2
That's why I use 2 profiles for every social media I use (why?) Because I hate
how YouTube recommendations puts you into an echo chamber (first account is
stuff I find interesting and train YouTube by not recommending me 5 ways to be
stoic etc).

The same goes for Reddit (stopped using it for years instead used hacker news)

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skilled
YouTube's algorithm is plain dumb... It's almost like it is deliberately
trying to encourage people to use a service like Spotify for music. Who can
withstand being recommended the same songs over and over again? I gave up a
long time ago.

~~~
risos
Except that's not what the algorithm does at all. It shows you things SIMILAR
to what you've already watched, but not exactly the same. Of course no one
wants to listen to the same songs over and over, but Spotify recommends you
SIMILAR music so that you have a chance of finding something else that you
like.

Sure, if your goal is to broaden your horizons and find media that's different
to what you normally consume, then those algorithms probably won't allow you
to do that. But for Youtube and Spotify, it means their users are constantly
finding more things on their platform that they enjoy, which means more time
on the platform and ultimately more ad revenue (or revenue from other premium
services they offer).

~~~
jstanley
It was about YouTube, not Spotify. YouTube will happily put you in an autoplay
recommendation loop, cycling back and forth between the same 2 or 3 songs.

~~~
bluefirex
Can't confirm. They always recommend me new stuff, never stuff I've already
seen. And I watch a lot of YouTube (too much...)

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
I wonder what the difference is between viewers - I end up in view loops as
the previous poster, where I'm recommended the same stuff over and over.

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PopeDotNinja
My own personal observation has been that I have so much brain juice to spend
on things. How much brain juice varies based on diet, exercise, sleep, etc.,
but it is finite. Lately I've been learning how to spend it more efficiently.

My most recent insight has been that I seriously tax myself if I try to
understand something too deeply. It's like I run out of physical memory with
no swap file. If I spend Monday thru Wednesday during pegging the brain-o-
meter at 100% trying to figure some flaky bug from 9a to 6p, I am useless
Thursday and Friday. But if I work half as hard, I can pace myself for the
whole week and actually end up getting way more done. And I also feel less
interested in consuming all the things: email, HN, Reddit, yada yada.

It's kind if like tired begets tired. I don't know how else to explain it.

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gnode
This is something I've been thinking about recently, although more in the
context of why imagination appears to be more vivid in youth.

I thought that it may be a cognitive side effect of learning. The more we
learn, or more generally speaking, the more information we receive, the more
we might reject creative thought as incoherent with, or irrelevant to our
environment.

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beepboopbeep
The poor want money without the culture, while the rich want culture without
the poverty.

When you're rich enough to buy what you need, you do. When you're poor enough
to need, you make do. Culture and creativity arise from the frictions we
experience in life. What's the saying, necessity is the mother of all
invention?

~~~
asdffdsa
Brilliant

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mxuribe
I'm trying to limit my inflows, to regain my creative, and increase my
productivity...but the tough part sometimes is deciding which "good"
(inspiring) stuff to let in, and which "bad" (useless/distracting) stuff to
ignore, etc. I can not simply shut all the incoming stuff; that's too
simplistic, because that really leaves me barren of ideas. And, having
multiple accounts creates a tad more overhead than the benefits it might
create...At least, its good to hear others are on a similar journey herein.

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egypturnash
On a more mundane level:

Every minute you spend scrolling social sites in that little addictive loop
waiting for Fresh Content to click on and wonder why you bothered reading it
is _a minute you 're not working on the Big Project_.

Or a minute you're not sitting there staring off into space, watching thoughts
wander through your mind and maybe bouncing off of each others in interesting
ways that give you something that feels worth doing.

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HillaryBriss
I cannot help but wonder if this concept might apply to a nation's workers and
entrepreuners given restrictions on trade from, say, tariffs.

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yeahitslikethat
This is the converse of "constraints yield creativity" so I agree. Stop buying
stuff.

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mruts
This article seems like clickbait. The article doesn't provide any tangible
evidence that consuming information impacts creativity.

Personally, I find that stimulus helps a lot with idea generation. Walking
around, talking to friends, sitting in a bar, reading, etc. The more
information that comes in, the more information that can be processed in
unexpected ways. In contrast, just sitting in an empty room alone usually
generates fewer novel ideas.

~~~
holowire
Yes, and this is probably the more important half of it.

While I agree that too much or habitual over-stimulus can have a profound
negative effect on productivity, without a diverse and varied body of
experience, the other half of the process—convergent thinking—has nothing to
converge from.

So while I don't think the article is inaccurate, it only explores half of the
picture. _Excessive_ consumption does however imply an imbalance, but the
article doesn't go much further than that.

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jamisteven
/end rant much?

