I have found it very useful to frame things in terms of my future self. This works for both things I want to do, and things I want to stop doing.
For example — get home from work, tired, don’t want to go row. Instead of saying to myself “You really should go row, you said you wanted to do it 4 times a week.” I say “1 hour from now do I want to be a person who has sat on the couch for an hour or do I want to be the person who has worked out, taken a shower, and feels good”. Same thing for stopping mindless doom scrolling or making dinner vs ordering deliver or whatever.
I know it’s just a mental trick — but reframing things in terms of my future self has been incredibly powerful for me.
You're actually triggering two things with this trick.
First, the piece you call out is delayed gratification (ie focusing on the future over the short-term).
But there's a second piece hidden in there, which is identity-orientation. "I'm the type of person who does X". Tying actions to your identity is actually really powerful.
This is one of many solutions to the framing problem. John Vervaeke discusses it and the theoretical background in his awakening from the meaning crisis lecture series.
Meditation, therapy, exercise, certain religious practices, etc. Also break people out when they are stuck in loops of vicious cycles. Different people have different combinations of what practices work for them. And there's no way to know what works before you try it.
In OPs article, he mentions the distinction between knowledge and information. He means self-knowledge, the stuff Socrates talked about
I do something similar. If I'm being lazy or procrastinating I ask myself to rate on a scale of ten how much I don't want to do said thing, then I ask myself why it's not a 10/10, those reasons push me to start.
Example - how badly do you not want to run today (6/10). Why not 10/10? Because I'll feel better after, because it's part of my marathon training and because dinner will feel more rewarding. Ok, go run.
Your wording is poor, but you are right in a sense. If I've never run, I won't finish a triathlon and expect to be completely fine the next day.
If your body is utterly out of shape, i.e. you're morbidly obese, you don't start with running. You start with walking and slowly move to running. In that case, you won't regret walking, not running.
Walking has the same problem really. It's not low-impact. You may be feeling pain in your ankles, knees, feet, etc., for a few days. It's likely to negatively impact your general activity level during that time. You may still not "regret" it, but it's a very strange statement to say nobody ever has. I know I have!
If you're 100lbs overweight, it's roughly the same effort & same strain on joints as a person 100lbs lighter carrying a 100lb backpack.
I sometimes explicitly create a log of the before and after state of mind. Before rowing: “I feel fine, but pretty lazy and stressed about XYZ” after rowing: “Struggled through and got a big endorphin rush toward the end, feeling good and much less stressed.”
Seeing fitness progress graphs helps as well (heart rate vs power output etc). I know for me personally monitoring my resting heart rate made a strong argument against pretty much any alcohol consumption.
It increases immediately and takes a few days to settle back down. After quitting my weekly average slowly continued to decrease. My RHH is a very consistent 46 bpm now and it was consistently in the low to mid 50s during the months/years I was routinely drinking on the weekends.
Obviously there are other factors like fitness, sleep, general health, but I was monitoring the numbers on a daily basis and the trends became really clear.
I've not been measuring my RHR for a while but when I was training daily my RHR would be up significantly for maybe 3 days after a night out even if I felt 100% the morning after.
Future me has helped maintain an exercise habit and healthy eating for nearly 2 decades of my life (and counting).
Future me has been less effective for breaking the internet habit. It works, just not quite as well. I think because future me still wants to know what happened in the world in the last hour. And because sometimes current me needs a break and light entertainment due to the mental energy required to consider future me.
A bit off topic, but I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas about how to remember to do something like this?
In specific, I mean as it relates to information management. E.g., a lot of things are solved problems for me, like using todo apps for todos, and some sort of "Everything bucket"[0] system for searching for information (per the link, I use the file system for this).
But things like this, things you want to try and implement, but unlike a todo, you have to wait for the right moment (i.e., use this technique to address a bad habit at the right moment), I can't figure out a way to use to technology to remember to do them.
(I'm aware some people don't like to use technology to solve these kinds of problems, but for me personally, technology has been tremendously effective in solving these problems when a system can be adapted to the problem. I'm just not sure what the system should be for this type of information.)
I've actually been thinking about this problem literally for over a decade, the first app I ever made was designed to address it[1]. This app is no longer maintained, because it didn't get enough users to be worth maintaining. Maybe an app like this is the right solution, and there's just not enough people who think it's a problem worth solving to support the continued development of a software solution? I'm not sure.
When it comes to automatic introspection (ie noticing when you're thinking/feeling something, processing that, and making a CONSCIOUS decision in response), I am not aware of a better solution than meditation. It literally trains your mind that the constant stream of information passing through your brain (thoughts and cravings included) can actually be "watched" and responded to.
If you don't have a sufficient level of awareness, it'll be really hard to catch yourself thinking "man, I don't want to do X, I'm just gonna lay on the couch." You'll just go lay on the couch and your brain will continue on to something else.
To break these kinds of patterns, you essentially need a "supervisor" process running in your brain that can catch and evaluate thoughts, especially negative or harmful ones. Then if you catch yourself thinking "I don't want to do X right now," you can proceed to thinking about that feeling rather than laying on the couch.
Takes about a month or two of daily meditation before this sort of thing really starts becoming effortless.
Out of curiosity, why did you stop your meditation routine?
Anyway, I agree with you — meditation appears to be able to make that kind of introspection automatic, which is a real boon. That's true in my own experience over the past 3 months as a n00b[1], and seems to be the case for many/most people.
It (automatically) changes the "I don't want to do rowing" feeling into an observation like, "Oh, here's the predictable urge to not do rowing arising". It's a subtle difference, but the main point is that it feels different and separate from "I (me, myself) don't want to do X".
Obviously, "I don't want to row" isn't accurate. PREVIOUS you wanted to row, or you would not have bought the rowing machine. SUBSEQUENT you will presumably be happier and more satisfied (and a bit healthier!) if you do the rowing.
It's just the shard of you in THIS MOMENT that "doesn't want to" — and even that is likely inaccurate if you notice and examine the urge. It is probably just one of several competing thoughts/sensations arising in consciousness.
What meditation practice (pretty quickly) makes automatic is something you can also intentionally do on purpose, if you have a lot of energy and your willpower reserves are holding up: enable making the decision of whether to engage with and identify with this thought, and therefore perpetuate it into the next moment (and the next, and the next), or to just let it pass away on its own.
[1]: I started by reading the book "Ten Percent Happier", thought the science-based benefits of meditation sounded interesting, and tried a few of the apps available. I settled on Waking Up (and, accidentally, Ten Percent Happier since I forgot to cancel the trial subscription, so now I do both). I think each of these apps might suit one's personality differently, depending, but any of them will do the trick. You also don't need an app; you could just read a book, but app is an easier way to get started.
It is like weight-lifting: the gains for n00bs are easy and almost impossible not to get. You just have to do it.
You totally don't have to do it well. I "couldn't" meditate at all at first, even with guidance. I couldn't tell anything different was happening, compared to me just sitting there. It took maybe twenty ten-minute sessions before I was like, "oh, I think I just meditated for a couple seconds". As I progressed, I realized my previous self-assessments weren't accurate, but after two months of daily meditation (just 10-15 minutes a day!) I noticed not only that I could now do it (part of this was learning that finding yourself lost in thought, and letting the thoughts dissipate and just refocusing on the breath or whatever the object of meditation is), but also that I was getting IRL benefits from it later, during daily life when not meditating.
The problem with this kind of trick for me is that too often, the "better" option does not actually make me feel better (in any sense). It ends up just feeling like effort for the sake of effort.
Something that has helped me kick some bad but undeniably comforting habits in the last year is keeping actual data. For a few months I logged simple stuff, like whether or not I’d imbibed alcohol, how much sleep I’d got, whatever. And on the other side I’d track simple subjective measures of my mood and energy. I put all this into some simple linear regressions and the evidence was so overwhelmingly clear that it became very hard to convince myself that staying up until 1am was the only way to have quality ‘me time’, or having a boozy night with my wife was the only way to fully relax.
I don’t really go for quantified self stuff generally, I do quite like living intuitively as much as I can. But sometimes you do need to call yourself on your own bullshit.
I can recommend apps like kubios (my fav), hrv4 and elite hr (I use all three daily). Coupled with even a cheap heart rate monitor, you can see the effects of 'everything' on your body/ soul as well as track sleep etc. Oura rings do similar, but they're subscription based.
I'm glad you noticed the down sides, most people don't get to see that different perspective. Alcohol does a serious number on us without us realizing it. Alcohol really doesn't help us relax (besides in the few hours after consumption) and induces more stress over the long term
Personally my cannabis use patterns can mess with my sleep, I've noticed how much by simply using a sports band sleep tracker. Its surprisingly accurate at predicting my overall energy levels
Yeah, two things highly correlated with overdoing alcohol for me are worse sleep (irrespective of going to bed early, I'll sometimes get reflux for example) and clearest of all are anxiety attacks. I'll sometimes wake up with a sense of unshakeable doom (which in turn could lead to some suboptimal behaviours), but cutting out booze reduces these occurrences basically to _zero_, even on my worst, most stressful days thinking about problems at home or work.
Not going to claim it's all been plain sailing, and I don't really want or intend to maintain a permanent state of sobriety, but the article certainly matches my experience, and having hard evidence really helps.
>I'll sometimes wake up with a sense of unshakeable doom
I'm sorry you experience this. Its very unpleasant, to put it lightly.
What you're experiencing is the down regulation of GABA in the brain. Personally when I use GABAergics like alcohol, I always experience an increase in negative thought patterns after. I now avoid them like the plague, but they do have their uses for things like general anxiety disorders (as a last resort only IMO) and acute issues like panic attacks (this is where they shine)
Regular or high dose use (most drinking patterns that I've observed) will cause down regulation more readily than having a drink or two once a year or so. This is also beneficial as it minimizes the cancer risk associated with drinking
I tracked every minute of my time several years ago, for about a year. The shock of how much time I was spending playing Battlefield is what helped me kick video games.
The perfect app I found for this (on HN) is Daylio. It captures info at the right level of detail. Even has a place for a bit of writing or a photo each day.
I like the book “The Biology of Desire” on addiction. It views addiction as an instance of the same kind of desire-driven habit-forming learning that’s the core of our motivational system. And so quitting an addiction is not exactly just quitting something bad. It’s more like a continuation of one’s general lifelong process of learning. This is a kinder framing and it’s thoroughly neuroscientific. And it reveals that addictions are actually very clever behaviors in some ways—so we can even learn from them as we try to develop healthier habits to replace the ones that harm us. It’s also a narrative perspective that respects the subject’s life story. The addiction was a part in my troubled human journey. And now my narrative needs to find a new charge, a new quest, a new act. Maybe I was drawn into addiction in part because my life story didn’t make sense, I felt disconnected from past and scared of the future, etc. Addictions also form around the need for connection: it’s not just the beer, it’s the pub. So I have to find other social contexts that center around something that doesn’t harm me.
I like to draw a comparison to obsessive compulsive behavior. The compulsion (which is often what drives use and relapse) is a learned behavior and one that is reinforced by the reward.
People with OCD often find the obsessive and repetitive behavior helps with anxiety, although the anxiety ends up reduced in the short-term, it worsens in the long term as the behaviors have negative consequences of their own (disruptive and time consuming, interfering with normal life activities, shame for lack of self-control).
We wouldn’t tell someone with OCD to just “quit doing that” (and for the person it would just increase anxiety to stop doing what helps their anxiety), but provide an alternative that addresses the core cause of the behavior (anxiety) and “unlearns” the harmful behavior, replacing it with self-help tools to address the core problems (anxiety) in ways that are less harmful and likely more effective in the long term. That can be done through a number of approaches, none of which are surefire and often take a few attempts.
Oh yeah, the book also describes the craving itself as an essential part of the addiction. It’s not just that the drug or whatever is so immensely pleasing when you take it, it’s also that the whole cycle of wanting, pursuing, and getting is addictive in itself. It’s a whole “dark liturgy.” Strong craving for a well-known thing might be preferable to vague indeterminate anxiety, or it might be a way to occupy one’s mind to avoid seeing something traumatic. Chasing a target is a thrill in itself.
This is something I realized after trying to quit League of Legends, a game I played for over a decade, years ago.
I could only truly stop playing it when I completely internalized the fact that the game didn't bring me anything except misery after every match, win or lose, and the short term satisfaction of the ding you hear when you kill a creep or make a fancy play were not worth it.
Sometimes when I remember it exists I still feel a pull towards it, but now I know that if I play it, in 45 minutes I'll wish I did something else instead. This is more than enough to stop me, fortunately.
Even then it's hard to stop, mainly because it's a habit. I went through the same experience and for about 2 months I had the habit of trying to open League whenever I had free time (it wasn't installed anymore, but the brain wiring would still "think" of opening it). Every single time, I would need to tell myself that there are activities that make me happier. I would slip a couple of times, re-install and then immediately de-install. Luckily I broke the habit eventually.
After going through that, I no longer play games at all and would probably be fine with some degree of regulation in the industry. Many kids are growing up as addicts and it's a bit worrying.
Yep, my experience was the exact same. I still play video games however, but as I said in another comment, I'm more conscious of what the game I'm currently playing does to my body and mental health. This mostly translates into a healthy obsession with Final Fantasy XIV, a game I get to share with people as it's online, but not in a competitive environment meaning I get to enjoy it at my own pace.
> I could only truly stop playing it when I completely internalized the fact that the game didn't bring me anything except misery
Being cognizant of this was among the first steps to curbing addiction for me, but I found that I would quickly forget when my mind was in pursuit mode. Anticipation creates a large spike in dopamine - I've shaken in anticipation, you've got blinders on at that point. I needed the discipline to avoid entertaining the thought of cravings and take myself out of situations, offer alternatives even. When I was stressed or sleepless is when this was hardest. Eventually your baseline dopamine levels improve, and you find more motivation and focus for everyday life. It can get better with most other things remaining equal, which in my experience was beyond my imagination until I lived it.
I was like that on games. A half and a decade ago I switched over nes/snes/md/genesis/pce classics, roguelikes and text adventures. No bullshit mechanics, no addictions, no DLC. The 8/16 bit games are short enough to be enjoyed fully, roguelikes add random mechanics and calmness, and IF is like a good book but with far more interaction and rewarding puzzless.
Yeah, I find there are some games like CS:GO that feel a bit more like a brain-numbing, slightly soothing activity that chews up time. And then there are roguelikes like FTL that involve interesting decision making and feel far more satisfying.
These days I play more of the latter than the former, but less often, and the decision to play them feels more intentional.
More than CS:GO I'd choose Assault Cube as it's free as in freedom. It's simplish, ok. But those matches are fast and you can be happy by just playing half an hour instead of a highly consuming MMORPG over a night.
AC has more simplistic graphics and mechanics than CS, so it
will "fill" you faster.
You just play several matches (~10) against friends/bots and that's it.
On roguelikes, as the actions are literal instant based, yoou can play and finish a gameplay under a week with just 20 minutes at every afternoon.
FTL is not a roguelike to me, but Slashem is, and the dungeon rooms never exceed 80x24 chars except for some concrete areas I think.
Thus, the gameplay can be paradoxically both fast paced at the beginning and slowish on the deepest rooms.
I cannot imagine being so addicted to a game that I plan on quitting it "in a couple months."
Thank God I never started dota. Just reading the steam reviews are enough to convince anyone that gaming is a serious public health issue and detriment to society.
Curious why you feel that way, I've been playing league of legends for about that long and although i don't spend nearly as much time as I used to on it, it still does mostly bring me joy whenever I get to play. Is the disappointment you feel linked to winning vs losing or are you always unhappy regardless of the outcome of the game?
For me, it was about ranking up. I'm harsh on myself when ranking up, these are the possible scenarios:
1. You play well, but your teammates play poorly. You lose the game, you feel bad.
2. You play poorly, but your teammates play well. Whether you win or lose, you feel bad.
3. You play poorly, your teammates play poorly. You feel bad.
4. You play well, your teammates play well. You win - the only happy scenario -, but even then there's going to be complaining and whining by everyone in the game.
If your win rate is something like 55%, you're going to experience a lot of the bad scenarios, even though you're ranking up in the long term. Once it's an addiction, you start the game already in a bad state of mind, as you hate that you're wasting your time on a pointless game anyway.
I've wished for years that mobas and other competitive-ranked games simply let you completely hide your rank from yourself. I'm sure the psychological addiction aspect has something to do with why this is never an option, but playing unranked games isn't really a replacement because those players have a different mindset. Just let me play competitive modes and be blind to my ranking :(
In my experience, Dota unranked games are basically taken just as seriously as ranked games. But most games either don't have proper unranked matchmaking or it goes as you say - people take it more casually.
My best guess is I played it so much that I don't get any satisfaction from a match ending, regardless of outcome, which turns into disappointment considering it's a PvP game where you're supposed to get satisfaction from winning. That would lead me into immediately queueing again, looking for the next rush, and next thing I notice it's 8 hours later and I feel like I wasted an entire day.
I still play video games of course, but nowadays I'm more conscious of what each of them bring to my life, and avoid the ones that don't leave me feeling good after a long session.
For those struggling with alcohol - I can recommend the Sinclair Method. The idea is to take an opioid antagonist, naltrexone, before drinking -- this helps reset the association between drinking and pleasure, since drinking on naltrexone is devoid of any pleasure, while the downsides of alcohol are still felt by the body. Do it a few times, and the desire to drink wanes. Also, when under the influence of naltrexone, it's hard to drink a lot, since it really is not enjoyable. It allowed me to basically stop drinking alcohol, but I can still go out with friends and have a drink if I want to, as long as I take naltexone before, there is zero risk of this ending up in a binge. Good stuff.
Highly recommend The Sinclair Method. I chose to try it because I wanted to be able to continue to drink socially as the OP mentioned. I actually overshot this and find myself completely abstinent for over a year now. It actually made me "too sober" which can be slightly frustrating but it a REALLY good problem to have considering where I was a few years ago.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/60fs7gmvbyzs1kk/Cure%20for%20Alcoh... (warning: large PDF) - book about The Sinclair Method, definitely the best way to learn more, it is surprisingly simple and the first few chapters cover everything but you may find yourself reading on because there's some interesting case studies and tips on how to succeed
Does the Sinclair method have a track record for people who don't drink primarily for pleasure? I find that I already don't typically get a lot of actual pleasure out of drinking; it's mostly a way to help me relax because my baseline anxiety level tends to be pretty high. I don't have the classic "alcoholic" pattern of behavior, but I've done the math and the number definitely needs to go down.
(Please spare me the "ackchyually alcohol makes anxiety worse" spiel. Whatever my problem is, it was there long before I started drinking and has not improved during periods of abstinence.)
Likely. Your body won't get the euphoric rush from alcohol, so I thinik it will prevent it from functioning as anxiety medication. Its works on low hardware level, so to speak, and should nullify any positive effects from alcohol on the psyche.
from a friend: They have a shot version too. The pill will work if you don't cheat. But taking the shot takes out all the guessing. I would do this your first few months.
I would modify this recommendation to say that the shot version (Vivitrol in the US) is not necessarily compatible with The Sinclair Method which requires you to take Naltrexone only when you are drinking. So unless you drink every day, it might not be the best fit. I myself was a binge drinker, on any given day I drank either 0 drinks or 10+, so the Naltrexone pills were the best fit for me.
I used telemedicine to get my first prescription. I had a few appointments and probably talked to the total for about 30 minutes in total. The Sinclair Method is pretty straightforward once you understand it and there is only one hard rule (always take Naltrexone at least 1 hour before consuming alcohol). But the doctor will want to do a liver enzyme test and ask some basic questions to make sure that it is safe for you to take Naltrexone. If your liver is damaged, you may have to take Nalmefrene instead. Or if you are using opiates, it can be unsafe to take Naltrexone (not sure of the details here).
At some point I was able to get my PCP to refill my Naltrexone subscription. Naltrexone is pretty widely known for treatment for alcoholism but the prevailing wisdom in the medical community is that it must be taken every day to prevent cravings and alcohol should not be consumed when on Naltrexone. I've heard that this way of using Naltrexone isn't any better than placebo. The TSM book[1] does a good job of explaining why this is the case: the mechanism of action is that the Naltrexone blocks the endorphin rewards from consuming alcohol, so it doesn't work if you don't drink and there is no point in taking Naltrexone without drinking.
tldr: you may be able to find a TSM specific doctor via telemedicine. Additionally, most PCP will probably prescribe Naltrexone, although you need to be mindful that they may recommend to take it every day and this is not TSM
There has been research into using it to fight gambling and binge eating addictions (with some moderate success in both cases). I'd guess it will work better for addictions which are associated with the state of euphoria, and less so or not at all with compulsive behavior where one feels miserable the whole time.
I have the problem that my addiction (scrolling 4chan* and HN for hours) has materially added value to my life. I've been introduced to books and resources and technical advice that I've found nowhere else. But I have trouble controlling the amount of time I spend browsing.
*4chan is full of hate, but if you grew up with it and have a sort of auto-filter, there are surprising things there. I would not have read (and deeply enjoyed) Moby Dick if not for 4chan. Weird. This is not a recommendation though, generally speaking, avoid the place at all costs.
I feel the same way about HN. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about technology, software, entrepreneurship from this site. But it would far more valuable to have spent the majority of those hours reading books, learning new skills, networking, or even just being more focused at work. It’s tough to find balance.
An aggregator like Feedly is really good in this regard; you can set up sources of interest, add filters, and then- critically- when you reach the end of your feeds for the day, you're done.
Something like hackernews or reddit is more endless, without a neatly defined "stop". (Of course, I'm still here)
If they're genuinely useful, maybe you don't really need to quit them so much as establish firm boundaries as to their use. Not just as a matter of time, but also space and even circumstance.
Something for instance, like "I can only browse HN on my phone, during lunch." if you can successfully establish it as a ritual, that limits your potential window to time waste. Perhaps this is not a sentence entirely directed toward you, but: There's diminishing returns to HN's utility the longer you spend time on it. Knowledge you collect but can't/won't act upon is meaningless.
>*4chan is full of hate, but if you grew up with it and have a sort of auto-filter, there are surprising things there. I would not have read (and deeply enjoyed) Moby Dick if not for 4chan. Weird. This is not a recommendation though, generally speaking, avoid the place at all costs.
I wonder if your in some kind of local maximum, i bet if you stopped wasting time on 4chan you would find other things that make your life richer. like you just dont know how much value can be added to your life from other things, especially ones that wont require so much filtering on your part
I've quit for up to a month at a time here and there. Where I don't fill that hole with a similar diversion and instead one of my productive hobbies, my life indeed becomes much richer. Although, my participation some of those hobbies were very much improved by some of the time spent on 4chan.
Altogether, I intend to quit visiting. Hopefully sooner than later. I 'quit' rather frequently. The best comparison I can make for my compulsive usage is to someone who started smoking before they were 10. I was heavily browsing forums by 8 and 4chan by 12.
Consider something like Cold Turkey, the paid version (one-time fee) has an included scheduler if you can't trust yourself to turn it on when you'd need to. If you don't want to pay for it, the free version includes CLI operations, you can make your own scheduler script without too much trouble.
HN has an included time limiter in the options.. but nothing stops you from launching it in incognito so it's only useful as far as you have willpower.
Linux user, so no on the cold turkey. I'd just circumvent it anyway, I don't believe it could prevent me from uninstalling.
I've done the hosts file thing and other efforts. It is clear the only thing that will work is looking right at the bottle and realizing I don't want it anymore, much like the article in question suggests.
Leave. Seriously. Don't visit if you can help it. There are other, better places to go now. I only visit because I'm semi-involuntarily hooked.
If you instead mean to ask "It's hard for me to imagine anything positive coming out of 4chan. How did you get value out of that site?":
I prefer to remain anonymous and won't describe my hobbies in detail, but among other things I was pointed to new (to me) bands, books and study resources, sometimes quite obscure. The 'what I read, what I expected, what I got' memes persuaded me to read literature that I ignored when it was suggested elsewhere. I learned a lot about computers on /g/, a lot about cars on /o/, etc. Iirc, those communities were developed earlier than their reddit counterparts. There may have been other car forums, but they weren't as funny. Additionally, the site was always hateful, but much less so than it is now.
I suppose also that it helped with my lonliness. For many years I found 4chan, at it's best, to be a much more sincere place than other more moderated communities. Elsewhere, someone might get banned for a clear and honest opinion on my post if it is unkind. On 4chan, someone might insist that I kill myself.
So if I made a post on 4chan and the worst I got was 'you're stupid', or even positivity, I knew it was genuine because that person had the other options available. Elsewhere, I was not so sure.
I liked this and will be the first to admit I have an information ingestion problem that the internet has made many times worse.
In grade school I nearly failed a semester because I read books all day. It was obsessive. I didn't do my school work but knew all kinds of random facts. And even though my parents caught it and pulled me out I never did as well as I could have because at some level the issue persisted, even now and I'm 50 years old.
It really has been a problem my entire life. I suspect it's kind of like the evolutionary desire for sugar. Useful when sugar was rare, deadly when sugar is cheap, refined and readily available. Same with the desire for information. We can only healthily process so much and we only need so much and it needs to be in the proper form.
It's so bad sometimes I'll have multiple tabs open at a time paging back and forth at light speed, or listening to informational audio and trying to read at the same time. Or surf the net for 14 hours straight. Like a wino greedily slurping a bottle as fast as he can with another ready to go in the other hand.
I never got into video games which always seemed like complete boring waste of time.
The ironic thing is I never would have found the article if I weren't frantically scrolling HN looking for the keys to the universe.
>In grade school I nearly failed a semester because I read books all day. It was obsessive. I didn't do my school work but knew all kinds of random facts.
This is a very familiar story.
Even today it's still an issue. I have missed the gym, or been late to a social obligation hundreds of times due to getting stuck reading something.
While the behavior does have negative impacts, I generally view it as a positive thing.
I know a little about a lot, and I can generally have an engaging conversation with anyone, about the things they want to talk about.
I think knowing a little about a lot also helps me in the periphery of the things I do go deep into.
For example, I've read hundreds of articles on Hacker News about cyber security and have read countless comments by cynical devs explaining that companies don't take security seriously because it doesn't create revenue. Today as a non-technical founder, the security posture of my organization is 10x better than my peers (including technical founders) at similar sized (and even bigger!) orgs.
You spoke specifically about the negative impacts - do you see any positive impacts?
Yep there are a lot of positive impacts. Like you, I feel I know a little about a lot of things.
By the time I was in maybe 6'th grade I suspect I had better knowledge of world history, different cultures, ecology and a whole lot other topics then most of my teachers. At least at a superficial level. Even though a lot of books I was reading were fiction I knew a lot about the world. So (as you say) a lot of times when I need to know something I know where to look or have a baseline to start from. Also I think I understand how things fit together holistically better then average. And my research skills are pretty good, separating the wheat from the chaff and rapidly getting to the meat of a topic takes a lot less time then others I've noticed.
But, it hasn't made me rich lol. Perhaps because I have too many interests and they aren't always the most immediately useful. And there have been other problems.
On books, get adult mistery gamebooks, they are random enough to force yourself on your previous choices (and your character's skills) and having to improvise to win instead of being a static reader.
Well, there’s “bad habits,” and “lack of discipline,” vs. true, hard-core “addiction,” like alcoholism, compulsive gambling, sexual addiction, and drug addiction.
For the former, mindfulness, metrics, and discipline can be extremely effective (and can provide many benefits beyond simply quitting the habit).
For the latter, they can be helpful, but we usually need a great deal more assistance.
I would appreciate a trigger warning before people use the word "Addiction" to encompass everything from methamphetamine use to playing video games to frequently. As you indicate they are not comparable and require very different approaches to escaping. Adding to the challenge is that hardcore, true addictions tend to be layered on top of each other and quitting one is almost impossible while still having the others, yet quitting them all at the same time is also impossible.
Far from me the idea to downplay the horror that must be quitting a long-formed addiction to methamphetamine or heroin, but I think downplaying non-chemical addictions as "bad habits" is an unfair characterization as well.
YMMV, but in my own experience for what it is worth, I've seen little difference and much parallel between quitting cigarettes (after 10 years of ~15 cigs/day), weed (after 11 years of ~1-1.5g/day) and Internet time-wasters (.. a W.I.P., many-to-most hours a day). Haven't gamed in a while now, but the loop of self-hatred and coping where each day you tell yourself "tomorrow is a new dawn" has felt eerily similar to each day telling yourself you're done smoking after this pack - which you make sure to finish so you wake-up without any left - until you're walking right back to the convenience store begrudgingly before noon. Rinse and repeat for months and years until, eventually, it actually sticks for some reason and you get past the first few months without giving in to your triggers (failing which you're basically back to square one). The pull to grab a smoke never really goes away, although it actually stinks after a few months, you just learn to tell yourself "no". The same way going to the dispensary remains tempting, but you remind yourself how it actually makes you feel after you smoke beyond the habitual dopamine hit. The same way reinstalling LoL or whatever gets tempting when you don't want to do what you need to do, but you manage to control yourself knowing you won't get any satisfaction from it.
I know it sounds dumb, I know none of these are comparable to an opioid addiction (despite what some say about nicotine, I refuse to believe it is harder to quit then opioids) and I don't think I'm able to properly word how I'm trying to say w.r.t. addiction, but I really think, for myself, that my addictions acted in a very similar way on my psyche. They're all self-destructive ways (for me and my usage) of coping with my negative emotions and anxieties, the "pull" to each when trying to quit and the hoops my brain'd go through to justify giving in to a trigger felt very similar, chemical or not. If anything, quitting cigarettes was the "easiest" and avoiding wasting hours a day on unfulfilling Internet activities remains the hardest.
> I think downplaying non-chemical addictions as "bad habits" is an unfair characterization as well.
Fair enough. I didn't feel that was appropriate, either, as I am quite aware that these types of addictions can be very destructive.
I can assure you, though, that considering them to be in the same category as a chronic alcoholic or drug addict is just as inaccurate, with the added caveat that calling it by the same name, "cheapens" the more serious type of addiction. That's one of the reasons that some folks get upset over calling people "Nazis," for doing things like being anal about the rules. They feel that it waters down the true horror of what the Nazis were really all about.
Also, "Bad Habits" was a great album by The Monks (2.0 -UK- Version).
Dare I say, it is IMO odd you will agree to include gambling addiction in your original comment, but won't do the same for other types of addiction which don't fit in the same league as chronic meth use. If someone comes to you saying they didn't save a dime over 20 years and live in shame because they're compulsively gambling every evening even when their brain screams them not to, will you tell them they are not addicted because it cheapens the trouble of those that lost their families, houses and lives over worse gambling addictions? Nicotine is clearly chemically addictive, but it is no where near as life-disruptive as chronic alcohol or meth abuse (even health-wise with some methods of administrations), are they not addicted because they have it better than the other group?
I get what you're saying, but I have a hard time agreeing we should be so stringent as to what we'll call addiction and not. If it's derailing your life, calling it a bad habit is reductive. I think addiction is a large enough spectrum that it can encompass both horrific and harsh addictions. It actually reminds me of all the stories I read about narcotics anonymous where people feel so unwelcome in those groups as their struggles get shrugged off by NA that they resort to going in AA groups pretending their coke addiction was booze as they are less judgemental groups.
> I read about narcotics anonymous where people feel so unwelcome in those groups as their struggles get shrugged off by NA that they resort to going in AA groups pretending their coke addiction was booze as they are less judgemental groups.
I'd be extremely interested in learning a bit more about this, but I don't think that discussion of individual treatments is something I'll be pursuing in a public venue.
Feel free to reach out to me. I have my info in my HN profile.
It was something I came across online and not personally, I was curious so I read about it on forums for drug addicts and it seemed somewhat prevalent, at least not unique to the first post I read about it.
I wanted to edit this in but since I'm late I'll do it here : I could very well be in the wrong with my stance on addiction as a term. Perhaps it is akin to me downplaying feminist or trans causes as a male (it's not something I do, just an example) to say we shouldn't reserve the term for worst cases. I say that from a stance where I think it is a prevalent problem in our society and we should be able to address it without tip-toeing around terminology. We should be able to talk about things like weed and obsessive phone-scrolling as potentially disruptive issues that can be proper psychological problems (and/or stemming from others like anxiety) which run deeper than mere bad habits.
> I would appreciate a trigger warning before people use the word
Curious to know what you mean by this. Are you literally asking that people say/write "trigger warning" (or something to that effect) before a certain word is used in an upcoming sentence or do you mean something else?
I'm not sure what a trigger warning would look like but I agree in figuring out a language distinction.
Chemically dependent works in a lot of ways IMHO.
but I guess you could argue that ones porn addiction messes with your neuro-transmitters & dopamine, gaba, whatever too.
Plus you're right that with poly drug dependency a lot of times there are other real mental health issues at play, many requiring medicine to treat both the chemical dependency and underlying problems.
To me too it's kind of a bit of trigger when people over exaggerate and self diagnose their 'serious' starbucks addiction lol as a joking example.
not sure trigger is the word, but like more like a sigh when you have a life experience more similar to what you describe.
like when a reddit thread gets literally 80% of people commenting they have self diagnosed adhd or ocd compulsions whatever. slaps face.
Everyone's addiction is different. A question that may be useful for some:
When you started, why was it enjoyable? Be specific.
Many attempts at addressing addictive behavior focus on stopping the behavior. If there was something specific the behavior initially improved, that has to be addressed or you're unlikely to succeed.
E.g.: if drinking initially improved anxiety issues, those will still be there while the person is trying to quit.
For a curious person, reading interesting information on the internet and watching Youtube videos is not (necessarily) wasted time.
So it helps if you keep in mind activities that are acceptable and ones that are not.
A lot of the 'good habits', moved to screen time: I used to read more news papers, magazines and books, and most of that turned into screen time. Online discussion is also a useful way to spend time I think (with the right audience, such as some of HN).
I wouldn't put screen time due to curiosity for information on the same level as bad addictions, such as smoking (hurting health) or gambling (hurting the wallet).
The YouTube front page/recommendations were a massive amount of wasted time for me. Removing them via uBlock Origin filters has significantly reduced my "wasted" time on YouTube:
A good general rule of thumb is never look at anything recommended by an algorithm. Chronological feeds and media recommendations from other humans. Search results are a tricky middle ground. Seems they are trying to make that a source of low value, addictive content as well.
I’ve been listening to Andrew Huberman’s podcast lately. He’s a neurologist and ophthalmologist at Stanford. Something that comes up a lot is how much artificial light, especially the blue light of screens, affects the eyes, brain, and circadian rhythm. Research has even shown a significant impact on hormone levels.
Because of this, I don’t see reading a book on a phone as equivalent to a paper book, or reading news online as a equivalent to a newspaper. The content your brain is processing may be the same, but it has a very different impact on your body and mental state, especially at night. So I think it’s wise to differentiate screen vs. non-screen activities and be more careful about doing the former in moderation, or perhaps only early in the day.
The best way to change your habits is to really understand and appreciate what they're doing for you. You're not running towards whatever your procrastination mechanism of choice may be; you're running _away_ from something else. This is why procrastinating has that tepid feeling of boredom, as you don't really want to click onto the next video / reddit / HN page, but you feel compelled to do so.
I highly recommend How We Change [0]. It was the first book in my long journey of trying to "read my self out of my depression" that was really insightful. It lays out why people choose to not change (tethered by their procrastination or other habits they deem to be fruitless), and only by seeing and appreciating that _fear of hope_ can you start to approach the (at times) extremely difficult task of authoring your life.
I felt addicted to the internet a year before the pandemic. I read the book “Don’t shoot the dog” and it had so many amazing training tips to kick that addiction. Am I a dog? No. But the training and reinforcement is pretty much universal. Having tools to deal with addiction is important.
Mindfulness sadly isn’t the big aha! moment. I know I was addicted. I know I wanted to change. This is why they say “admitting you have a problem” is the first step.
It’s not a matter of knowing you’re addicted and then suddenly stopping. That can happen, but more likely an incremental approach will happen. B.J. Fogg’s book about tiny habits talks about this epiphany moment being quite rare.
Only a couple times in my life have I had this epiphany moment and went cold turkey overnight. Once when I was larger and struggling to hike with friends like I used to. Another when I was playing video games and felt deja vu that made me feel like I wasted years of my life. Now, I’m in the best shape of my life and work on things I’m passionate about in my free time.
I think you're right when it comes to many addictions. When we add in bad, unhealthy and suboptimal habits this is probably less universal, which unfortunately get labelled as "addicitions" in a lot of cases.
Stupid condescending article. Anybody who thinks quitting smoking is just a question of "realizing you don't want it anymore" has never tried to quit smoking.
It depends, the Allen Carr book everyone recommends tries to make you see that without directly telling you that smoking is disgusting etc.
The thing for me that allowed me to give up was realising and convincing myself that it was possible for the cravings to go away, to feel normal in a pub without smoking etc.
It seemed impossible at some point so I always went back to it before.
Same for me. I quit for good ten years ago by basically convincing myself it would be easy after so many times trying to quit I lost count.
Of course it really wasn't easy but that mindset let me not give in to the cravings. I do think when you internalize quitting as something that is super difficult it just gives ammunition for all those mind games to give in.
I was also watching this Navy SEAL buds training at the time and the one guy Travis Lively was using that strategy. Convincing himself that Navy SEAL hell week was really not that bad. I love that guy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVxhm7jkN0k
Anec data: i smoked for 4 years. For 3.5 of those i was trying to give up - somehow once i entered the consciously trying hard to give up stage, i went from 10 a day to 20-30 per day.
Patches, gums, sprays (throat one, nasal one), cold turkey, herbal cigs, gamification, the little ball pellet things that were briefly on the market as a better gum alternative in the early 2000s, electric cig (not the modern e-cigs, the early 2000’s terrible ones), having a quit buddy, joining an nhs smoking cessation group…
I was not playing at giving up. I was latching on to anything that I’d heard worked for someone. I was distraught mentally. To top it all off, i couldn’t actually afford smoking as a student, i was accruing debt.
The only 2 things i refused to try were a “stupid” book (easyway by allen carr) - how dumb do you have to be to let a book reprogram your mind, I’m too smart for that. Also i avoided hypnotherapy for the same reason.
I finally read that book. I quit smoking (easily) before the half way mark in the book. No will power, nothing. I was just a non smoker now.
I don’t smoke, i don’t think about it ever, it doesn’t bother me to be near smokers, there’s no triggers i have to avoid etc etc im just a plain non smoker.
That book uses the same approach laid out at the start of this article.
Obviously it isn't "just a question", but the article didn't say that.
It simply points out that how we frame, and experience, our own motivations for quitting can be more or less helpful.
I think anything mentally difficult is going to work better if we take into account our subconscious as a first class partner. Our subconscious responds very strongly to how we perceive tasks and challenges. It can carry us through tough situations, but is very hard to work against.
Sometimes subtle, almost nonsensical things from a purely rational point of view, really help.
Don’t mistake a ‘here’s the trick’ with ‘it’s so easy’, the article wasn’t claiming it’s easy. And don’t take advice as a personal affront.
The true and valid point this article is making is that changing a behavior is a mental game you play with your mind, not a physical one, and that “willpower” and “discipline” doesn’t work before fully convincing yourself of your goals. You have to figure out how to truly convince yourself the old behavior isn’t what you want, and the new behavior is your goal. Not in a contradicting yourself kind of way, but in a deep and true believe it with your whole body way. I think you’re actually making the exact same point underneath your disagreement, that focusing on quitting is too hard, and there’s more to it.
Sure, if they are arguing to apply to things that are mostly psychologically addictive. It's smoking is a physical addiction and a really hard one to break.
I think something being physically addictive only increases the mental difficulty of overcoming the addiction, no? It’s not physically hard to go through withdrawal, it just sucks.
I have a friend who left his toxic wife. Immediately after that he quit smoking cold turkey without even trying. He said that with his ex-wife out of his life he just didn't feel like he needed to smoke anymore.
Myself - I don't find caffeine addictive in any way.
Lol yup. The advice here is about as practical as “just have 1 smoke a week so you can enjoy it”. A lot of people just don’t get the difference between an addiction and a bad habit.
You're being too kind, this article is woo bullshit. Addiction at its core is having lost the power of choice and recovery is finding a way to regain it. But to most people that sounds like just another choice to make - they completely don't get it.
But I think there is a big distinction between chemical dependency and other compulsions or addictive behaviors.
And I think the word addiction itself has been kind of coopted by self diagnosing people on the internet for karma and some odd type of self gratitude, if that makes sense; kind of a weird bragging about your supposed addiction to ____ or OCD or ADHD etc.
The author writes "It’s about seeing through the illusion of satisfaction. It’s about realizing you don’t want to be doing it anymore."
Most users don't want to be addicts. Almost no one wants to be dependent on opiates or to have the shakes every morning. Anyone that does hasn't been using long enough yet or probably has other mental health issues that they are trying to patch over themselves with drugs.
We know the satisfaction or other benefits one initially gets from using eventually gets buried deep by all the negatives.
With drugs and alcohol the satisfaction becomes less and less, even when you use more and more.
Drugs are fun & feel good after all. they can 'fix' a huge array of problems in your life.
Until they don't.
Props to anyone who can overcome a chemical dependency on willpower alone and through this type of CBT mental reframing the author talks about.
But for almost all users, especially many of those with untreated underlying issues, it's basically impossible without science based, often medicine supported treatment.
Another book I think is worth reading for a dumbed down summary of addiction is Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction
> Most people try quitting their addiction by banning themselves from doing it.
After some failed attempts I quit smoking 7 months a go and this change in the way of thinking made the difference for me. During the failed attempts I used to repeat to myself "I can't smoke", this last time my thought was more like "I don't want to smoke", I didn't even tell to my wife that I was trying to quit so that I would fell less the pressure of being forbidden to smoke. Somehow it worked better for me and whenever I had cravings my thoughts were usually something like "I could smoke if I wanted to, I'm 5 minutes away from a pack of cigarets, but I don't want."
I'm not saying that this was the only factor that made me stop or this is the "secret to quit smoking" or that's easy, it just worked better for me.
This is the basics of Carr's "easy way", right? It basically convinces you that you don't want to smoke. On top of that it specifically doesn't let you stop smoking until you finish the book. So you feel horrible reading this book and smoking until the end when you're like FINALLY I'm allowed to stop!
This essentially the same argument that Judson Brewer makes using insights from behavioral + buddhist psychology – https://drjud.com/book/
The insight is also to use mindfulness to understand the "true" experience of the addictive behavior and come to internalize that it is no longer valuable.
I think article says its a matter of decission. Once you take hard stance/decission its a matter of time amd retries.
Goos tip is to find replacemet, a healthy one. You can get addicted to gentle (not stupid) weight lifting, running (please, on grass, not on cement or next to road full of cars, not on asfalt, its not good for your knees and lungs) reading a book.
Replace it with hobby that you like or put that time into something you wanted to do, but never had time.
Spot on. In 2013 after a highish triglyceride test result I quit obvious refined sugar. (Have to specify exactly what I mean or I get a lot of questions like “what about bread?!!? You know there’s sugar in bread right!?!?”)
I framed it as, “I just don’t want to eat that garbage anymore.” Two weeks of cravings and then I just stopped missing it. Fruit started to taste amazing.
Alternative to thinking in the future about rewards is focusing on immediate costs. My consumption and enjoyment of junk food has plummeted ever since I went from 'this is bad for me but delicious' to 'this in fact tastes awful and my stomach hurts.' Obviously, this doesn't work as well with my favorite desserts, but if you improve your taste and your favorite desserts become super expensive/rare you rapidly decrease the amount of temptation you face.
The Power of Habit really taught me to be on the lookout for negative and positive habit loops. It's an incredibly powerful concept, and how pretty much all addictions work, from food to cocaine.
You are bored, so you automatically get up and walk like a zombie to the fridge to inspect it, for example.
It’s conflating bad habits and addiction. The advice may work for bad habits such as watching too much YouTube when you’d rather be more productive. An addiction twists the mind around where no amount of reason is going to stick without external systems in place to help. Anyone who’s had any serious struggles either internally or with a loved one is going to recognize this.
I happen to agree. I read it in the same way as many articles on depression. This is an article that discusses a “normal person” problem.
Fortunately, most of the people discussing it here seem to recognize that. A few of them prefaced their comments as a result. And I don’t see anyone disagreeing that bad habits and serious addiction are different problems.
As a result, the discussion has been helpful to me rather than aggravating.
For example — get home from work, tired, don’t want to go row. Instead of saying to myself “You really should go row, you said you wanted to do it 4 times a week.” I say “1 hour from now do I want to be a person who has sat on the couch for an hour or do I want to be the person who has worked out, taken a shower, and feels good”. Same thing for stopping mindless doom scrolling or making dinner vs ordering deliver or whatever.
I know it’s just a mental trick — but reframing things in terms of my future self has been incredibly powerful for me.