Ask HN: How do you control distractions or addictions? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you control distractions or addictions?

11 pointstpkahlon6 comments

Distractions may include News, Games, Phone etc. that may consume productive time from your schedule and return no profit.

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What are you not doing when you do these things.

Disclaimer: the "I" will be present a lot in this post because I prefer to write about what works for me, and let the reader figure out if it works for them or not, instead of telling them what to do. The below shield me against a lot of distractions/addictions, and give me time to pursue other distractions and addictions : )

I don't have social applications installed on my phone: no Facebook/Instagram/Twitter, etc. I don't have notifications except for things I use for work.

I need something to call, be called, read a book, take a picture of a whiteboard, check a link.

I have a long, long, password in my phone and I need a very good reason to unlock it. I don't unlock with fingerprint/face id/pattern. I don't want unlocking to be convenient.

Media: I don't really consume the news unless I want to be informed on a specific issue. There are many people following the news, and the most important events find their way.

I can count the number of shows I've watched. I only watch shows if screen-writer/director/actor/director of photography/music was done by X, Y, or Z, and I maintain a mental graph for "recommendation" to allow discovery "I like X's work. They worked with W. I'll check that out". It's incredibly effective as it turns out people tend to work with a relatively small number of people and it buffers me against low quality stuff, especially the trending one. It makes for funny experiences: I was watching a recent movie with a friend and said "This sounds and feels and looks like a Woody Allen movie" and it turns out it was directed and written by Woody Allen.

Content: I avoid technical content that says "Don't do this" or "Do this". Examples: "Use microservices" or "Go serverless for maximum scalability" without the presence of mind to mention the context: size of the company, codebase maturity, skillset of the team, specialized roles, etc. I also avoid content written by people who've done too much "architecting", or who are so high in the abstraction layer that the next step is "Think it and it will code itself" pattern to emerge, or otherwise people with a pedantic voice. It has done wonders shielding me/us from hype.

Context shifting has high overhead, so use it to your advantage. Try only checking distractions on your phone but never on your computer. When you need to focus, simply put the phone in another room. Now you have to actively stand up, walk into the other room, and pick up the phone to interact with the distractions. This moves it from an automatic process to a conscious decision that you have to make.

If you can't resist the urge to check distractions on your computer, use any number of website blocking applications to force it.

Make time for procrastination, but schedule it. If you allow yourself to read Twitter for 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes after lunch, and 15 minutes at night then you're still spending 45 minutes on Twitter, but you're doing it in a controlled manner that isn't distracting from your work. This will relieve some of the pressure to check distractions during the day because you know you'll scratch that itch soon enough.

Finally, address the issues that are pushing you away from work in the first place. Learn to enjoy your daily work and appreciate periods of focus. Learn to put aside self-defeating thoughts and behaviors that might discourage you from getting started on things. Learn to identify your own feelings and behaviors and address them head-on rather than escaping into pleasant distractions.

Like another poster said, put your distraction in a physically-distant location. The farther it is, the more energy it's going to take to fall into your bad habits.

Nip the thought of your habit the soonest you possibly can. You are thinking about playing a game? STOP! Thinking about wasting time? STOP! This not only helps you avoid the activity but strengthens your resolve while the need to distract yourself dissipates.

Get involved with others. We fall into addictions/habits because we can tend to be lonely [or otherwise avoid our feelings]. Reach out to friends, plan an online game night, call a friend. The more you involve others, the more help you will see it has on you.

Ultimately what helped fixed myself was a combination of:

- therapy

- praying [to God] (ultimately I needed this to finally rid myself of my distractions, everything else included)

- community

- persistence

There will be many many times where you fail too, and you shouldn't beat yourself up about it, but instead accept it and try again.

I sometimes have to pit one drive against another; putting the distractions first, but not eating that day until I'm completely done with that distraction, such as gaming 'n surfing. I would guess that this is unlikely to work for drugs that are serotonin mimics or alcohol, however; since the latter dis-inhibits, and also affects judgement and memory.

Since this is hacker news, here is a cool Paul Graham essay on the subject http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

Paul Graham is a goat

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