
Addicted to Distraction - sonabinu
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/opinion/sunday/addicted-to-distraction.html
======
scep12
I recently wrote a chrome extension that helps me curb my "compulsion loop."

It's pretty simple; each time the browser loads a website that has potentially
distracting content (think: twitter, FB, reddit, hacker news, rotoworld, etc)
that I tend to over-visit in search of new tidbits, the extension keeps track
of my visit _and_ the text content of the page.

The next time I visit, I do a text comparison that checks how similar the
content is to my last visit. If there's too much overlap, the browser
redirects.

There's a profound difference in using this approach versus existing
distraction-detractors. When I see the browser redirect away while trying to
load reddit.com, my rational side takes over and reminds me that I should be
done with tidbit-seeking.

I ought to clean it up and put it on github; I'm sure someone else might find
it useful.

~~~
Disruptive_Dave
I may be misunderstanding, but isn't this like a heavy drinker having the
bartender put more water than beer in his glass when he heads to the local
pub? This doesn't seem to be treating the actual issue at hand (lack of self
control, lack of training of the mind, etc.) is what I'm getting at. Not
meaning to crap on your build, as it certainly seems cool. Maybe this could be
viewed as a training tool, but only if it's part of a larger strategy.

~~~
kbenson
It sounds like that but if the bartender notices he's serving a lot of water
to you, he turns you around and gently pushes you out the door (redirect).

~~~
scep12
Exactly :)

------
ThomPete
I haven't really gotten my thoughts clear on this so excuse me for the
probably unclear formulation.

I recently realized that one of the unfortunate consequences of this is the
way many in my generation (I'm 41) brings up our kids.

Instead of teaching them one thing in depth we are forcing them through a
million different subjects way before they even turn 10.

It's not unusual in my circles that kids are both playing football, taking
piano lessons, learning french on top of their school and homework.

I believe this is fundamentally the wrong approach as it only teaches kids to
skate over a subject rather than master one in full.

The difference is huge because learning to master something takes you through
several ups and downs which you don't learn if you only have to learn
something on an superficial level. So you spend a lot of time becoming good at
only the initial challenges of a subject not the much deeper levels of
mastering something. Ironically learning to master something is going to make
you much better at learning to master more than one thing. Where as learning a
lot of things aren't going to teach you how to master any of them.

So I am now trying let my kids just find their ways instead of forcing them
into all sorts of subjects.

~~~
nommm-nommm
>It's not unusual in my circles that kids are both playing football, taking
piano lessons, learning french on top of their school and homework.

We are filling our kid's time with all these structured activities to "enrich"
their lives. To give them a leg up in the adult world. To make them smarter
and well rounded. We fill our houses with a whole bunch of "enriching" toys.

This is extremely misguided.

The majority of a child's free time should be self directed. They need to
experience boredom for proper development. Only in boredom do kids learn to be
creative and process their thoughts in a meaningful way. They learn to live
with the anxiety boredom creates and channel it into new ideas.

Micromanaging their lives leads to very poorly adjusted and anxious adults. I
am very sad when I see car trip filled with iPads and TVs. Kids need to learn
how to deal with the boredom of car rides and sit quietly with their thoughts.

Structured activities are great in moderation.

*Adults actually require boredom as well but it is especially valuable for the rapidly developing brains that kids have.

~~~
adrianN
There is no boredom in the modern world. The Internet is an endless cesspool
of poor quality entertainment, expertly arranged to give us the impression
that we learn something or interact meaningfully with other people.

Believing that a child will improve themselves and realize their potential
without guidance and an appropriate amount of forcing is, in my opinion,
misguided.

~~~
nommm-nommm
Science disagrees with you.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/education-21895704](http://www.bbc.com/news/education-21895704)

[http://greatist.com/happiness/benefits-of-
boredom](http://greatist.com/happiness/benefits-of-boredom)

Nobody said you shouldn't guide your child sometimes but sometimes your child
needs to guide themselves too. We are taking away the latter in the modern
world.

~~~
cableshaft
I got bored during school pretty much every class, and I filled that time with
doodling on paper, then writing stories and poetry, then trying to come up
with my own language, then teaching myself programming by making games on my
calculator.

I should also note that I wasn't supposed to be doing any of that stuff, and I
would have gotten in trouble with the teacher if they caught me doing it and
"not paying attention".

Based on my anecdotal experience, I do believe that there's something to the
'boredom leads to children developing their creativity' assertion, as stated
in that bbc article.

------
rl3
This type of distraction is just another form of procrastination, which in
turn is a product of any number of underlying psychological issues. Anxiety
and depression come to mind.

~~~
TillE
I'd be willing to bet that a significant majority of "internet addiction" (are
people still talking about that ?) or "game addiction" is actually just a
symptom of depression.

~~~
g_delgado14
Couldn't you say the reverse? One might say that depression is a symptom of
internet addiction.

~~~
jawarner
I'd argue both are true. Trying to escape a personal problem only makes it
worse. This creates a sort of negative feedback loop.

------
maneesh
I used to suffer from massive unproductivity. So I began to run experiments.

Among them, I realized that accountability and a human being next to me aided
in productivity. So I did what any normal person would do. I hired someone to
slap me in the face.

[http://hackthesystem.com/blog/why-i-hired-a-girl-on-
craigsli...](http://hackthesystem.com/blog/why-i-hired-a-girl-on-craigslist-
to-slap-me-in-the-face-and-why-it-quadrupled-my-productivity/)

The results were mindblowing. My productivity quadrupled. I got Important (but
non-urgent) work done fluidly, and easily.

I posted the article online and it went viral. Many people thought it was
crazy, but others understood.

So I decided to take it a step further. What if the world could improve as
well as I did? Unfortunately, slapping doesn't scale, so I tried to build the
next best thing.

Pavlok --- the wearable device that uses vibrations to reward good behavior,
and a mild electric stimulus to reduce bad behaviors.

My first app was a Chrome extension that allows me to choose which sites I
want to blacklist. If I spend 5 minutes on Facebook, it will beep my wrist. If
I spend 30 mins on Facebook, I receive the electric zap --- and the longer I
stay on line, the more powerful the zap becomes.

People use it in hundreds of ways. To beep loudly when they enter facebook. To
vibrate if they bite their nails. To send a zap to wake them up (shocking
alarm clock --- it just works).

It's actually pretty freaking amazing to see what our users are doing with it.

Anyway, I thought you all might be interested --- what do you think? Could you
see yourselves using the chrome extension to train away your bad habits?

[http://buy.pavlok.com](http://buy.pavlok.com) is the site to check it out. or
on Amazon:
[http://amazon.com/Pavlok-1/dp/B011U2QYO2](http://amazon.com/Pavlok-1/dp/B011U2QYO2)

------
DougN7
This rings true for me too. If I sit down with a minute or two of spare time,
out comes my phone so I can check out HN or Reddit. Never any quiet
contemplation any more.

~~~
sonabinu
This realization came to me when I was taking a coursera class and had to keep
surfing while listening to the lectures. That's when I started using the
pomodoro technique and it's been helping me since!

------
fowkswe
In the middle of a 'compulsion loop' I wound up on HN, leading me to read this
article, only to stop halfway through to come back and check the comments -
and post this one.

See ya. Off to Google Analytics.

------
cobweb
I can easily go a bit tab mad. And noticed this in myself ages ago. At work I
vowed not to look at sites that weren't work related. And instead checked
personal email/sites before or after work. I was more organised. I even used
to sit on the train and plan my days work. And it paid off.

These days I'm more and more distracted, have issues concentrating, and I
don't have a smartphone, which I'd probably gravitate towards. It is in part,
why I don't own one.

I also have congnitive difficulty reading from the screen, so if I stumble
across something I think is worth reading, I send it to my e-reader. There I
have a ton of unread articles. But I do tend to do one at a time, and it
sticks better.

The young ones seem to be able to happily multitask, they sit next to each
other on the bus or in cafes talking and surfing simultaneously. I find multi-
tasking increasingly difficult, they don't, what gives?

~~~
stygiansonic
My take on multitasking is that it mostly doesn't work, at least not for
cognitive activities. But, I guess it depends on your definition of
"multitasking" and "working/not working".

There are, perhaps, some activities which most people can multitask at - such
as, driving a routine route while carrying on a light conversation. (But even
that might distract from one or the other) But try something more complex -
such as even trying to carry on a simple conversation while driving in an
unfamiliar area or when you're lost - and quickly you'll find you can only
focus on one thing at a time.

So, my sweeping generalization of people surfing and talking simultaneously is
that if the two activities are very unrelated, (different topics) it's likely
far less attention is being paid to each than the level of attention you're
giving to reading your single article.

~~~
collyw
I am pretty sure in the past that it has been shown that talking on a moble
increases the chance of crashing a car. It was a while ago that I read it so I
can't provide a reference.

------
kzhahou
Hacker News is part of the problem! This comment page is pure meta.

I'm now going to close the six other HN articles + comment pages I just opened
before this one, and just not read them. See you all in a couple of days!

~~~
ThomPete
Don't dissmiss the act of learning through conversation. Keep in mind that the
likelihood of you being surrounded by likeminded people is pretty slim. HN
allow you to discuss and explore some more eccentric thoughts you won't be
able to necessarily find an audience of places like Facebook.

------
MTmind
A simple solution to this, if your using an iOS or OS X device, is to use the
network link conditioner.

Using this tool, you can decrease the bandwidth going into your computer,
increase the number of packets being dropped, and increase the delays while
doing DNS lookups. The effect of this is you may bring your network speed down
enough that your mind can keep up with the torrent of things trying to
distract it. By imposing on yourself the network connectivity of 10 years ago,
you may regain the focus you had back then as well. The difference is very
noticeable, you'll realize right away that your doing something unessential
when you're waiting +10 seconds for it to download.

Food for thought.

------
raldi
Why does the author consider it a perfectly healthy accomplishment to spend a
monthlong vacation reading a dozen books, but dangerous and unhealthy to check
his email more than thrice a day or read redditlike sites?

~~~
fretn
quickly switching from topic to topic is a lot more exhausting

~~~
raldi
Have you ever spent a Sunday afternoon reading a giant newspaper?

~~~
fretn
you were talking about reading books :)

------
intrasight
And here I am being distracted by Hacker News. But I am ok with getting
distracted once an hour by checking what is new on Hacker News.

During working hours, I've blocked all sites that I find distracting - except
for Hacker News. NYTimes is blocked so can't go read the referenced article.
With so many sites self-blocked, I end up getting the TL;DR summary here on
HN, and find that works most of the time. The discussions here are generally
of high quality!

Of course this is no solution for self-distraction. I can still Google some
topic of interest. But that is a more active process as opposed to a "reflex"
distraction.

------
FrankenPC
Reminds me of when the BlackBerry inserted itself into the corporate
consciousness. Meetings went from being a focused affair to this round table
of people staring incessantly down at their laps typing away as if their lives
depended on it. In a way, they did. It was expected that all of us IT
professionals would become addicted to the device, reachable 24/7\. It's no
wonder the entire internet is driven by that same mentality.

------
kordless
Before there was _Addicted to Distraction_ , there was _Hooked on Gadgets_ :
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/technology/07brain.html)

------
pilatesfordogs
Software isn't just eating the world, it's eating our lives. I think that this
is going to become much worse the more intrusive the "IOT" becomes. Being able
to manage our attention will become as significant as managing our health.

------
whyenot
I realize for many people this is not going to be an option, but what has
worked for me is to do more work "offline." Write drafts with pen and paper,
instead of composing on a screen, if I have something I want to read, I print
it out.

------
hashkb
Oh man... how awful. Great article. Now... why did I take out my phone?

------
sureshn
Yoga and Meditation are key to increased concentration levels and intrinsic
calmness, fragmented attention is one problem many face but fail to address !

------
thrwy111
This isn't a real addiction. And it trivializes what addicts actually go
through. This is demonstrated being that it was possible for the author to
replace the "higher power" of the 12 steps with someone to unplug the Internet
router.

If you're actually addicted to something, you feel so trapped and subservient
to your addiction that you concoct the idea of a higher power simply because
you have no power left within yourself to fight.

Addiction is so bleak and hopeless that death seems like a decent alternative
to living without your addiction.

~~~
jfim
> This isn't a real addiction. And it trivializes what addicts actually go
> through. This is demonstrated being that it was possible for the author to
> replace the "higher power" of the 12 steps with someone to unplug the
> Internet router.

Just like it is possible to fix alcoholism by having someone remove alcohol
from the house and gambling by having someone prevent the gambler from walking
into a casino.

If using the internet in a harmful way (eg. spending six hours a day reloading
9gag, FB, slashdot or whatever up to the point where it hinders your normal
activities), how is it different from alcoholism or gambling?

~~~
codemac
> Just like it is possible to fix alcoholism by having someone remove alcohol
> from the house

It's different because alcohol withdrawal can kill you. It can give people
seizures and hospitalize them for weeks. Telling someone to "remove alcohol
from the house" as a cure is so left field for me it feels like you're missing
the very real _medical_ struggle long-term alcoholics go through. I'm livid
but I know this should be a civil conversation.

I haven't seen someone's facebook+9gag habits tear a community, family, or
person apart. Maybe that's my ignorance.

~~~
jfim
None of the "solutions" I mentioned are actually serious solutions and were
intended to show that the parent's reasoning didn't work (ie. you're not going
to cure internet addiction by unplugging the router just as removing alcohol
from the house won't prevent an alcoholic from seeking and obtaining alcohol).

Someone who's really addicted to something will seek the object of their
addiction and think about it constantly. As you mention, there are also
physical components to some addictions, such as alcohol addiction.

~~~
codemac
Wow - ok, I totally missed your point then. Thank you for your reply with
explanation, much more sensible than I was interpreting.

------
crudbug
I use selfcontrol [1] everyday for this.

[1] [https://selfcontrolapp.com](https://selfcontrolapp.com)

------
fretn
this is a book that has a lot of interesting information about this topic,
written in human understandable language (backed with science)

[https://sites.google.com/site/liberateyourbrain/home/buy-
bra...](https://sites.google.com/site/liberateyourbrain/home/buy-brainchains)

