But this is exactly what we did before. We got bored, we were wasting time, we were experimenting, and that's how great ideas came around.
Reddit is another one, the infinite scroll I think is addictive. Trying to kill that habit. But there is useful information on there so it's hard to disable it completely.
I used to often see niche, really interesting stuff on there, although I haven't used it much lately. The Frontpage is pure garbage though.
The thing I imagine that gives some people such a negative view is coming in contact through the brand "reddit" and being dumped into large controversial sub-reddits straight away.
A lot of people bump into a particular sub-reddit through a search result and have no idea of the dumpster fires elsewhere on the larger "reddit" site.
Pick a programming language or piece of popular tech, chances are good it has a subReddit of discussions and links to blog posts and announcements, sometimes with some of the creator/maintainer people posting.
Ive had some ok experiences on reddit too, meet ups, bought stuff, got free concert tickets once too. its hard to write the whole thing off. That might be a different era of reddit though. Its been a few years since I had something like that happen now that i think about it
People are extremely scared of the word "addiction" though. I feel the same way about sugar and basically all carbohydrates at all and it's very challenging to talk about.
Cutting carbs though, esp. fruits, is way harder.
If you have a large enough rotation of websites, you never feel properly bored, so you can spend the entire day mindlessly browsing.
I think it's easy to tell whether you're browsing with intent or just killing time. It's just hard to close the lid and go do something else, especially if you've been doing it for so long that you forgot what "something else" is.
In my opinion, the infinite scroll is both addictive and fruitless. I rarely find something fun when it's buried deep in the feed. That's pretty obvious. If it was a fun post, it would've been at the top, right?
If you don't trust any extension with site-reading capability, here's a simple solution: scroll down as much as you are comfortable, and then work upwards!
For reddit et al, I only view it on the browser. Sure, I get bombarded by popovers and alerts telling me to install the app, but I have to work my way to get to the content if I really wanted to view it.
One of the most reliable ways to reset internal time perception? Experiencing nature.
I try and take more walks now.
Effect of Exercise-Related Factors on the Perception of Time (frontiersin.org) 65 points, 9 days ago | 9 comments
Because if not, while walks are nice, my goal isn't exactly to have twice as long of a subjective experience but 60% of it is parks.
Spending time in nature essentially jumped your brain out of the loop, even after you returned from nature.
Think it might have been a summary of this: "Awe Expands People’s Perception of Time, Alters Decision Making, and Enhances Well-Being" (2012)
This is not a new problem, we are just experiencing a hyper version of it. Social media, the world's knowledge at your finger tips, is distraction on steroids.
Often my surfing feeds my ideas. My latest creation is derived from downloading Reddit to my brain on the regular.
Boredom is a great stimulus. It’s not a pre-requisite.
With enough human interaction and love, I come back to being an avid reader, consume little addictive networks, and don’t mind boredom.
Once all of your friends are hooked on their phone, it becomes very lonely to be the only one that doesn't stare at a screen. But what people naturally yearn for is not to get bored alone, but to get bored as a group. So the "quality of bored-ness" goes down as screen usage expands.
Yep! I firmly believe that boredom is not just healthy, but a necessary part of life. Your mind needs downtime and your creativity and imagination need mind-numbing boredom.