
I Got My Attention Back (2017) - joubert
https://craigmod.com/essays/how_i_got_my_attention_back/
======
omreaderhn
I built this service to help deal with this problem:
[https://omreader.co](https://omreader.co)

It allows you to read blogs (RSS feeds) and email newsletters on your Kindle.
I originally started working on this to help me read financial news without
needing my phone which I find to be a really distracting environment. I would
find myself mindlessly opening up and scrolling through reddit or HN and in my
experience, repeatedly doing that has a tendency to destroy ones ability to
concentrate. It's super nice to be able to wake up without your phone near you
and still be able to read long form content.

I just launched it out of beta but any feedback would be great.

Edit: HN is currently hugging the database to death. The site is still working
fine but I apologize for any slowness. I will upgrade the database tonight.

~~~
herval
I launched something similar in 2014 - a few years too early, I guess:
[https://betalist.com/startups/thedailycrunch](https://betalist.com/startups/thedailycrunch)

Good luck with your service :) officially supporting apps on the Kindle would
open up a very interesting (if niche) market - I'd love to see "the slow web"
become a thing.

~~~
fxtentacle
"The slow web" is already there :) It's also called "write a paper letter to a
friend".

It's amazing how much more satisfying reading an article can be, if you got it
as a slightly crumbled paper printout mailed to you by a trusted friend, who
is awaiting your thoughtful comments on it in the upcoming weeks.

------
muonic
I'd actually appreciate anyone's opinion or advice on this...

I grew up on computers and the internet (absent, technophile parents made that
very easy) and by the age of 13 or 14 my computer really just felt like an
extension of myself. When I was in undergrad, I realized that the only way I'd
ever actually properly study is if I had someone on my dorm floor take my
computer from me and refuse to give it back for some designated period of
time.

After undergrad, I "relapsed" a bit in the sense that I would be on my laptop
for 14+ hours a day every day, constantly context switching and never really
getting any good work done. I'd still accomplish my work but would never
really get to the things I wanted to get done, like practicing piano or
reading a book.

I started a new job in October and was able to start 'fixing' myself a bit by
leaving all my electronics at the office after work, and by December I could
actually feel a tangible difference in how I was thinking and making
decisions. Unfortunately, after COVID hit, the office closed, and now I've had
the least amount of separation between my physical life and digital life,
between work and leisure (as I'm sure is the same for all of you).

Do any of you have any systems that work for you in terms of a path towards
self-control? I have very little self-control and a very addictive personality
and I really don't like the way I spend my time at the moment. At this point
I'm even considering finding Adderall or something similar as I don't feel
capable of accomplishing this on my own.

~~~
omreaderhn
Here are some things that have worked for me:

1\. Keep your phone on silent (or shut off) in a different room than your
office (or wherever you're trying to work)

2\. Install an app like Refine on your phone and block all social media and
sites that you open up frequently (HN would possibly be an example)

3\. Keep your phone in a different room before going to sleep.

4\. If you like listening to audiobooks, consider getting an Amazon Echo. I
like to listen to audiobooks before falling asleep and with the Echo you can
set a sleep timer and then play an audiobook and it will stop playing after
the sleep timer expires.

5\. On your laptop (assuming you use Mac or Linux) add social media and other
frequently visited non-productivity related sites to your /etc/hosts file.

Personally I try to avoid drugs for these kinds of things. In my view it's a
matter of self improvement and self-discipline which are things that can be
developed with effort.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> On your laptop (assuming you use Mac or Linux) add social media and other
> frequently visited non-productivity related sites to your /etc/hosts file.

NT has a hosts file, they just stuck it somewhere in system32.

~~~
rideontime
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Had to stick reddit and hackernews in there on my work PC long ago.

~~~
asdfman123
I tried that but I'm such an addict I changed it back.

A better solution for me is a chrome extension that blocks it for 20 minutes
at a time. Long enough to make decent progress and get started on work, but no
so long that I resent it and give up.

------
foofoo4u
I want to throw my phone away and switch to a "dumb" phone so I can rid my
addiction to it, but I have become dependent on several core apps such as
Google Maps. I wish Android would allow me full control to delete every app on
there but the ones I most need. But unfortunately, its restrictions prevent me
from doing so. For example, I want to delete all web browser apps so I am not
tempted to the addiction of the internet, but Android won't let me. Does
anyone here know how I can bypass this? I am close to purchasing the Light
Phone 2 as a means to address my addiction, but again, it is missing Google
Maps which I am heavily dependent on.

~~~
derefr
A simple solution is to:

1\. set up parental-control restrictions that lock you out of these apps;

2\. hand your phone to someone you trust, and tell them to set the unlock
password for the parental-control restrictions (so that only _they_ will know
it);

3\. ask that said person also does you the service of typing the password to
disable the restrictions when requested—but only with 24 hours' notice. (I.e.
you ask, and then 24 hours later they'll do it.)

That way, you'll never be tempted to unlock the restrictions for trivial
things; but you can still e.g. reset the phone if you want to sell it. (You
just need to wait 24 hours first.)

~~~
488643689
Solo tech fun:

\- Set a long parental control password, you won't remember.

\- Write it into some file.

\- Put that file into an encrypted container, with a short to medium generated
random password you won't be shown .

To access the phone you have to brute-force the container password.

~~~
derefr
Makes me picture a person who wants to learn lock-picking, putting randomized
locks on internal doors between rooms in their house :)

------
thdrdt
Another way to look at it is: stop context switching (all the time).

Personally a lot of context swithing is giving me stress and is draining my
energy. It also makes me less productive. So I believe the article is spot on.

~~~
coffeefirst
This is absolutely true and shocking difficult.

You can disable every notification on your phone, mute all non urgent email,
change the way you read news, block social media for a day or delete it
permanently... all the small things help.

But the worst interrupters are the hardest to tame. If anyone has a Slack
containment strategy, I’m all ears.

~~~
xyzal
How about removing Slack from your phone and using only the web interface
while in the office?

~~~
synlatexc
Yes. This worked well for me.

------
ralphc
Here's the problem I see with unplugging to work; maybe it's an actual
problem, maybe I'm just fooling myself.

I work on software. I want the finished product, to build something useful for
myself or others. I don't necessarily want the "journey". When I work, my
concern, or fear, is that I'm going to work on some library or method,
multiple days, then find that someone else did it better in a library I can
just import. As I work I also look for these libraries, and look at questions
on StackOverflow. I don't consider that time wasted. Between that, and docs
that are all online nowadays, I don't see how I can work while disconnected.

~~~
cgag
Scrape the doc sites with httrack or something. Don't turn the internet on
unless you actually hit that library problem, I think it's generally pretty
clear when a significant problem has already been solved. Or move on and solve
that problem tomorrow, and go do deliberate research on it and download
everything at night, and then work on it again offline the next day.

~~~
j4ah4n
FWIW I've used offline docs via Dash[0] when working away from network access
before. It works great!

MacOS only though.

[0] [https://kapeli.com/dash](https://kapeli.com/dash)

------
codr7
Keep in mind that this is not mainly a technological problem, it's a problem
caused by technology; which means that technological solutions will only go so
far.

I've spent several months in similar or more extreme forms [0] of isolation,
and I'd recommend anyone to consider trying it out just to get a taste of
what's possible.

These days I don't even carry a smartphone anymore, as I've found the sum of
it's effects to be negative.

[0] [https://www.yogameditation.com/retreats/the-3-month-
sadhana-...](https://www.yogameditation.com/retreats/the-3-month-sadhana-
retreat/)

~~~
coldpie
> These days I don't even carry a smartphone anymore, as I've found the sum of
> its effects to be negative.

I'm pretty close to this point myself. The big thing that keeps me from just
ditching the phone entirely is Google Maps. I guess I could just chuck the
thing in a drawer until I need to use it to go someplace.

~~~
mathieuh
You could buy a standalone GPS device, I know Garmin make ones for hiking, I'm
sure there are other probably cheaper options out there.

~~~
freehunter
For all the people up and down this thread saying “just buy a dedicated GPS”,
realize that Google Maps is not a GPS device. It has restaurant reviews and
information about parks and bike paths and parking lots and busy hours and
traffic data and street closures and pictures/menus and so much more.

If the question is “what restaurant do we want to go to after we leave the
theater, within walking distance or public transport, that’s open right now
and accepts credit cards but also has vegetarian options”, a simple GPS isn’t
going to answer that question in a way even remotely similar to Google Maps.

~~~
olyjohn
You could also look this up at home on a dedicated computing terminal before
going out.

~~~
codr7
I actuallly did, even drew nice street maps in my notebook.

But once I was there, simply asking someone in the street turned out to be a
much better idea.

------
bpizzi
The text starts with "there are a thousand beautiful ways to start the day
that don’t begin with looking at a phone. And yet so few of us choose to do
so.".

Is it really so? I'm only a single datapoint, but checking my phone is the
_last_ thing I do in the morning. Getting children up, coffee, shower,
planning some today's work in my head - if the phone isn't ringing then I may
well not fiddle with it until later in the morning or even the day.

~~~
kthartic
Yesterday I spent 9h 31m on my phone (according to the built-in screen time
tracker on my iPhone). It doesn't make me happy, but I can't stop scrolling. I
think I have an issue.

~~~
DEADBEEFC0FFEE
> Yesterday I spent 9h 31m on my phone (according to the built-in screen time
> tracker on my iPhone). It doesn't make me happy, but I can't stop scrolling.
> I think I have an issue.

What are you scrolling, which app has that hold?

~~~
Fiveplus
I'm not the person you replied to. However, when I used to browse reddit - my
phone logged an unhealthy amount of time spent on that app (in roughly the
same ballpark).

~~~
eklin
I don't use an app to browse reddit, so it usually went like this: close
reddit tab. Open new tab. Automatically type in reddit.com.

And I'm sure, 100% sure, that I'm not the only one with that problem...

~~~
awake
You know I've had times in my life where I've had this issue as well. I
personally think our inability to turn off the deluge of pixels is a real
problem. But I want data to back up the thought. In 2017 Youtube users watched
a billion hours of video a day. [1] Some rough numbers show that in 2018
Facebook users spent about a billion hours on facebook every day [2].

Multiply these numbers across reddit, tiktok, the various international social
media giants. Are the >2 billion hours a day people spend glued to their
screen limiting social progress? Is it fear mongering and ignorant to even
ask? One thing I know for certain is there will be a growing group of people
seeking help to limit their watch time on these services. The algorithms are
simply too addictive.

[1]: [https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/you-know-whats-
cool-b...](https://youtube.googleblog.com/2017/02/you-know-whats-cool-billion-
hours.html)

[2]: [https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/02/06/people-still-
spend...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/02/06/people-still-spend-an-
absurd-amount-of-time-on-fac.aspx)

------
scottndecker
I installed a small switch from Home Depot in line with the power to my router
so I can turn it off at any point and it takes a few minutes to power back on
(which is good that it takes a bit). No signal in the house at night. Easy way
to control access for all parties in the house. I like his idea of no internet
till after lunch.

------
dang
If curious see also from 2017:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13392292](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13392292)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13457580](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13457580)

------
hinkley
Meatspace hobbies help a lot with this. If you're knitting or gardening or
painting or planing a piece of hardwood it's a heck of a lot easier to keep
going than to switch back to your Skinner Box devices.

I get properly irritated when I'm doing yardwork and my phone blows up,
because I have to stop what I'm doing, pull off the gloves, check for how much
dirt got through/into the gloves, then pull out the device and deal with the
glare to see that... nobody is dying, they just wanted to show me something
funny. God. Damnit.

------
grativo
The book Walden by Henry David Thoreau would be a nice read for anyone
interested in additional experiences from this article. I wanted to start
gardening at a local club, but due to the situation it has been hard to do so.
I encourage anyone who might not want to travel to participate in community
organizations that involve gardening or related activities. Or alternatively,
taking long walks also helps! Thank you for sharing!

~~~
digitalsushi
At age eight I was persuaded into taking a job as a newspaper carrier, which I
kept until I was 16. I regularly wonder how much those few hours, six days per
week, to let my mind wander during those formative years, gave me, me.

~~~
grativo
Exactly! Before the virus hit I would walk long distances just wandering,
mostly because I liked to move from place to place. I think of a lot of things
while walking, but even more, it's a great and easy way to benefit the body
and mind.

------
ricardo81
I'm constantly amazed how often I step outside to smoke and a problem I've
been grappling with is immediately answered without even much thought, the
answer arrives. Perhaps many of us don't realise how much attention is stolen
from looking at the screen.

~~~
youareostriches
Nicotine also has nootropic properties

------
powersnail
I've found that the most effective way of regaining focus, is to find
something real to do or think about, and write them down as a list. When a
time of idleness comes, check the list and occupy the mind with it.

My phone easily distracted me when I'm idling in the middle of some task, for
example, waiting for a compilation to finish. But when I'm practicing music,
despite my phone being always on as the metronome, I don't get tempted at all.
There's no need to fight an urge of browsing the internet.

I have found that the addiction to internet is not really that strong; it
cannot compete with what I really want to do. So, as long as I don't let the
idleness creep in, I can keep my modern smartphone with me.

~~~
coolspot
This idea is expanded in “Bullet Journal”, which I highly recommend to try.

[https://bulletjournal.com](https://bulletjournal.com)

------
f00zz
What stuck out for me was the bit about farmers in Myanmar playing Clash of
Clans. This is something I noticed when I was in South Korea for work a few
years ago, _everyone_ was constantly playing CoC and similar games. Of course
these are very different countries, but I wonder if there's a cultural factor
at play that makes these games popular in East Asia? I live in a developing
country but I never see people playing games on public transportation, usually
people browse Facebook or Instagram or whatever.

As for the rest of the article, `echo "0.0.0.0 twitter.com" >> /etc/hosts`
works for me.

~~~
bobobob420
Families I know in India 10-ish years ago used to be against the whole
technology wave and were concerned with the effects of electronics. Now that
they have gotten their hands on smartphones and other devices: oh man they
will put the American stereotype of being obsessed with the screen to shame.
24/7 Whatsapp, Instagram, and mobile games. They will come to the same
realization as we are though. Just a matter of time.

~~~
rchaud
It isn't just the phone. We as a species seem to be mesmerized by visual
screen-based media of any kind. For example, here's an article about a Russian
family that retreated deep into uninhabited parts of Siberia during the Stalin
years and lived a Middle Ages lifestyle until they were discovered in 1978:

>> "Karp Lykov fought a long and losing battle with himself to keep all this
modernity at bay. When they first got to know the geologists, the family would
accept only a single gift—salt. Over time, however, they began to take more.
They took knives, forks, handles, grain and eventually even pen and paper and
an electric torch. Most of these innovations were only grudgingly
acknowledged, but the sin of television, which they encountered at the
geologists’ camp,proved irresistible for them…. On their rare appearances,
they would invariably sit down and watch. Karp sat directly in front of the
screen. Agafia watched poking her head from behind a door. She tried to pray
away her transgression immediately—whispering, crossing herself…." <<

[https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-
rus...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-
family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/)

~~~
bobobob420
Great share, thanks

------
nicbou
This is a great-looking website. It made reading this article a delight. It's
a great choice of fonts and spacing that's very pleasing to the eye.

------
asdfman123
I'm the worst about this, but I found a trick: bike to the park with a book.
Leave your cell phone at home.

In order to get my hit of internet I have to bike all the way home again, so
I'm forced to focus.

------
burlesona
> I walked Brooklyn. At best, everyone was funereal. At worst, in tears,
> inconsolable. It’s impossible to overstate just how dour the world felt at
> that moment.

> The entire city — country? world? — had been infected by a terminal disease,
> the prime vector of which was memes.

> Simone Weil writes, “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same
> thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.” Then is the lack of
> attention the opposite? Does it presuppose fear and hate?

\- - -

I think there’s really something to this. I have to admit there have been a
number of times I’ve been caught up in something “tragic” on the internet,
generally some political battle, and felt like the world was falling apart.
But then if I step away from the computer and go for a walk in the nearby
park, I see hundreds of people just relaxing and enjoying life, not caught up
in the daily trivia. I often bring my kids along and watch them just run and
play, carefree.

And I sometimes wonder: if we just turned it all off, shut down the internet,
radio, and TV... would we be happier?

I’ve lived through a few long power outages as well, (1 day or longer), and on
those days, rather than things feeling dire, things felt light and playful.
The neighbors all came out and chatted, the kids all played up and down the
street. It was nice.

I realize that our world would not function very well without the mass
communication systems that link us together. But I also wonder if something
like a scheduled, controlled, power outage every Saturday would be really good
for us all.

~~~
kace91
> I think there’s really something to this. I have to admit there have been a
> number of times I’ve been caught up in something “tragic” on the internet,
> generally some political battle, and felt like the world was falling apart.
> But then if I step away from the computer and go for a walk in the nearby
> park, I see hundreds of people just relaxing and enjoying life, not caught
> up in the daily trivia. I often bring my kids along and watch them just run
> and play, carefree.

That daily trivia is mostly useless, because news cycles aren't capable (of
willing) of sustaining attention for long. I think the current coronavirus
situation in the US is a great example, where the news switched focus to the
BLM protests and relaxed the covid coverage despite the issue not being fixed.
now they are already moving away from blm even though the issues that sparked
the protests are obviously not solved either, and covid isn't any less of a
threat than it was before. The same has happened countless times: the focus is
not a reflection of important issues because each issue gets only it's 15
minutes of fame.

------
eezurr
From the article:

>Returning to those (mythical?) halcyon minimalist information days: You could
read all of the news in a single day. Grab the two or three papers and read.
The information had edges; it could be understood by a single human over one
cup of first-wave coffee. Were you insatiable, the library was available to
dig deep on the topics of the day.

I wrote this comment in 2018, I think it's relevant here:

>I think we've tipped over to the other side of the "convenience/humanity"
pyramid. We climbed to the top some years ago where the lack of excess
convenience gave us the opportunity to make things our selves and interact
with other people face to face (which I think are very important human
qualities) while being comfortable. Now we are sliding down the convenience
side of the pyramid, unable to grasp what is important and fundamental. We are
literally snowballing (e.g. obesity epidemic).

------
siraben
Choosing "dumber" technology has drastically helped my ability to stay focused
when reading longform articles (including this one!) while retaining more
useful information. I wrote an iOS Shortcut that converts a web page to PDF
and sends it to my reMarkable tablet. It works very well.

~~~
whytaka
I'd love instructions on how to set this up for myself. I've ordered the
reMarkable 2 and this is definitely the use-case I have in mind.

~~~
siraben
Sure! The Shortcut goes like this:

Accepts: URLs

\- Set variable input to Shortcut input

\- Get contents of webpage at input

\- Make PDF from Contents of Webpage

\- Set variable file to PDF

\- Open file in reMarkable (toggle Show Open In Menu to off)

~~~
whytaka
Saved this for later. Many thanks!

------
hybridtupel
The ironie of reading this on HN. Just think about it. And think about reading
this comment too.

~~~
FearNotDaniel
Not really; it's exactly where people who _need_ to read it are most likely to
be found. Reminds me of an old British TV series called "Why Don't You...?"
that was made for kids during the school holidays and was all about doing
something other than watching TV. The full title, which was sung over the
opening titles, was "Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Go
Out And Do Something Less Boring Instead?"

------
filchermcurr
I've been living in a beige box for so long that I honestly don't even know
what to do without a computer in front of me. How do you occupy the time?

Take a walk, cook, read a book, talk to a friend, build a birdhouse... all
options, I guess, but it seems really easy to find yourself with large chunks
of time with nothing to do. Just ate, it's too hot outside, eyes are tired,
friends are busy-- now what?

I know this is a failure of imagination on my part. Has anybody made a
database of offline activities? (See, I need my beige box to even figure out
what to do without it...)

It makes me feel sad and pathetic that I don't know how to actually live life
outside of the internet.

~~~
CodeGlitch
Buy/acquire a whole load of books and have a large bookshelf in your
house/apartment. These books should be on a range of subjects that interest
you. When you find yourself with spare time, pick up one of the books that
takes your fancy. I find just reading will improve my world-view, feed my
imagination, and provide inspiration.

Of course without access to a library of book store, you might have to use the
internet to buy the books in the first place!

Good luck!

------
vinceguidry
> Nintendo recently released their first iPhone game, Mario Run.

> The edges are clear. You pay once, and there’s no other way for Nintendo to
> extract money from you. No single player is a mark. There are no whales.

Nintendo didn't make Super Mario Run, nor is it the first game with their name
on phones. Their first two games, Pokemon Go and Fire Emblem Heroes, are both
very much unbounded and, especially Fire Emblem, there are certainly whales
and in-app purchases and all that. I burned well over a thousand dollars on it
before I decided enough was enough.

~~~
fredoliveira
I was pretty sure this was wrong, because there was a lot of hubbub about it
being the first Nintendo-made game on phones, so I checked. From Wikipedia:

> Super Mario Run is a 2016 side-scrolling platform mobile game developed and
> published by Nintendo for iOS and Android devices. The game is one of
> Nintendo's first games developed for mobile devices, and one of the few
> instances that a game in the Mario series was officially released on non-
> Nintendo hardware.

Pokemon Go was developed (and published) by Niantic, and Fire Emblem Heroes
came out over a year later than Super Mario Run did (and is also not a
Nintendo game).

------
grillvogel
I've started instituting a new rule of no internet on Sunday. in practice this
means i dont look at anything that requires a web browser. I still make use of
internet based service such as tv streaming apps etc. I usually start out the
day feeling anxious about not looking at my phone, and then end the day
feeling a lot more relaxed than usual and I usually did something fun because
i wasnt just reading crap on my phone all day to fill the void.

------
perlpimp
Everyone has their hacks, heres mine: I imagine all the interfering as an
itch. Once can practice not minding an itch, that skill can be transferred
over for example for not springing for some food. So the idea is to take stock
of current state of mind and whatever "itches", tag it and apply skill. This
goes for those dopamine related "itches" as well.

Of course everyone is different and everyone's situation is different.

------
chadlavi
I wish there were an actually-good newspaper that was actually just news,
without dozens of pages of opinion and ads, that I could subscribe to/read
IRL.

~~~
jjtheblunt
axios.com is the most similar that I have seen

------
alexpetralia
One trick that worked for me:

* Don't keep my phone in my bedroom. I keep it several rooms away and now wake up to an analog alarm clock. Out of sight, out of mind, for me at least. I've seen my phone screen time drop from several hours a day to generally < 1 hour (of course some of this has been diverted to more computer time, but on net, it's less screen time overall).

------
anthk
\- Ditch social media

\- Forget tabbed browsing, try Surf/Vimb + Unbound under Linux/BSD

\- Try Gopher, visit HN thru gopher://hngopher.com

\- If you do Reddit, don't comment, check it under gopher://gopherddit.com

\- Avoid multitasking

------
Nimitz14
Great read thanks for posting.

------
Shermanium
"Attention must be paid" \- Arthur Miller

------
Press2forEN
> That was the first thought I had the morning after the election. I woke. The
> crushing weight of a new reality reimposed itself on my mind. And then: I
> want my attention back.

Articles that begin like this always sadden me. I find myself unable to to
continue from this point.

------
RickJWagner
"That was the first thought I had the morning after the election."

Which election? Is this set in 2020?

Edit: N/M, I see it's from 2017.

------
Quequau
I have not yet gotten my attention back. Did this piece ever get to the point?

~~~
chadlavi
the author's advice boils down to "timebox your internet access, and
especially avoid mindless internet use in the morning"

