Scattered thoughts on why I waste my own time

The Hook with sites like Reddit, HN, etc is that they ARE addictive. Actually addictive in the sense of gambling. In gambling addiction the gamblers aren't addicted to winning, they are addicted to losing, or "almost winning". Now if they never ever won the addiction wouldn't form. If they ALWAYS won the addiction also wouldn't form.

The old thing was email that people were addicted to checking because you MIGHT get an interesting email. It's the same way with training a dog. You don't always give them a treat for behavior. If you only randomly give them a treat they are more likely to perform the behavior because they don't want to miss the reward. If they know they will get the reward then they know the exact opportunity cost and can weigh that against performing the behavior.

That's how social media and more specifically sites like reddit and HN are addictive.

I think we all feel that we occasionally get some beneficial information from them. I know I do, and even this very post I feel has some benefit. But we also see it as time wasting because the majority of the time, that's what it is.

But we are compelled to continually check because of the fear of missing out on some piece of beneficial information. If we were always presented with good information then we could more easily delay checking the sites.

If you have such a hard time not reading reddit or hackernews maybe the correct conclusion is not that you're 'wasting' time but that there's something enjoyable about so called low quality or idle activities and that they're normal part of a healthy life.

I think it's deeply ironic that people will judge videogames on that basis but then to proceed to gamify and min-max their entire life because of this rat race mentality. If you think that kind of stuff is meaningless when it turns up as a hobby the correct conclusion is probably to not structure your entire personality that way.

Just be less judgmental with yourself. things don't need to be highbrow or particularly meaningful to be a good use of time. It's mostly just a cultural artifact of our time that puts ripped busybodies and entrepreneurs, and celebs and intellectuals on pedestals.

Facing a very similar issue and trying similar things unsuccessfully, I've found out lately with my coach that a more promising way to break out of the cycle of "wasting time" and beating myself up over it might be very counter-intuitive: Self-acceptance.

I've found that acknowledging my need for relaxation and satisfying my curiosity was a solid first step in helping cure my addiction on a more fundamental level.

Changing my own internal reaction to realizing I spent the last 30 minutes on Reddit from self-punishment to "Oh, interesting. Looks like I needed a bit of a pressure vent from the complex work I'm doing. I'm worth that. Is there anything even better I could do to myself so I can relax more effectively with quality time off?" at least to me was a way better way to deal with it.

I wouldn't say I'm "cured", but I spend way less time with these things, more time I would define qualitatively highly (like playing some piano, walking or just dozing a few minutes).

Stopping the internal conflict from the other end might be worth a try for you too, even if it sounds weird.

I find that time of day and amount of sleep received heavily influences time wasting behavior. If I catch my mind craving to watch a movie I know “100%” I need sleep - the movie my mind is craving are dreams. Same with social wasters. A good night of sleep and the brain feels perfectly engaged, focused and productive in the morning. Not getting sleep leads to anxiety and fear of missing out which leads to more social media - what if that next HN post solves all of your problems. Social and TV content is optimized for ads because they know they are consumed when people are tired from their day - personal willpower is exhausted, and you give in to suggestion very easily. There is a reason late night shows compete for the prime spots. So when tired or overly interested in distractions, I try to actually sleep/nap when possible and get more hours with my best brain than my worst. A nap gives you 2 productive days in 24 hrs, and that may be worth something if you value you brain.

I think from an evolutionary perspective most of us aren't wired for long focused mental work, especially not after studying/working the whole day already (that's why most side projects fail). It had very little evolutionary gain throughout history. I think life was mostly about surviving physically and then socializing and chatting/games in rest time. I'd note that even when we lived in caves we had to do mental work (like building a shelter) but it was never for months or years end and it was always very physical. The physical part makes it much easier to persevere for biological reasons (adrenaline, edrophins etc), and also our survival was at stake (!). Compare that to learning to play the violin which has no significance to survival at all.

So it makes sense to me many of us have an inner resistance when we want to exercise/read a hard book/learn to play the piano even though intellectually we prefer those activities. The people who still manage to do that and persevere somehow have a subconscious that values those activities highly. It's the best explanation I can come up with - it is what it is because of how we are wired and because fast gratification activities made a lot of sense when we lived in caves.

I have felt this in my own life. The idea of wasting my time away mindlessly consuming internet content like social media, memes, news articles, etc, as well as the comments attached to them. It's in a way the boob-tube of the current year, even though the original boob-tube still exists.

I see a few other posters mention that time enjoyed is not time wasted. However, for me at least, there's an emptiness to those activities that makes me feel like after all that time, nothing of value has been gained. Like a time vampire sucking away your day. Maybe unlike the author, I don't think that I need to be doing something "productive" to feel like I'm not wasting time. I enjoy gaming for example, and getting sucked into one does not give the same sense of emptiness. I guess there's a satisfaction from experiencing it, that I can reminisce on. I don't regret it.

While I certainly don't know a silver bullet to making you manage your time better. I've found that sometimes I'll tolerate things up until a point, and then one day I just say "no more" and start making a change that sticks. In this way I've seemingly managed to break away from various social sites, deleting accounts and bookmarks, and generally avoiding the site. However I would point out that now instead I am on HN more often.

Man Wow! I did not get a chance to read the whole thing carefully (read the first bit properly and skimmed the rest) but man that is exactly the " "blog" post I've wanted to write since so long.

It pains me to not be able to send advice with a straight face.

Three of the rare things that have been kinda helpful and consistent (ie. not in a motivational bursts way) has been: seeing a social worker and getting diagnosed with ADHD (not gonna claim that I conquered my productivity yet, but having a deeper understanding of ones self, and having the words to describe my self-observations is really valuable), doing things with people/close friends, and religion.

Not claiming that I am satisfied with myself or anything, but these are things that I have found made a small consistent deltas in my life, unlike the bursts I get when I understand a new programming paradigm or watch a Rich Hickey talk.

I with to write more and edit better, but it's in the AMs here and I have a meeting early morning.

Bey for now, fellow earthling

This blog kinda orbits the idea that intent is more important than the activity itself. Browsing Reddit can be a brain-dead time sink or it can be a thought provoking exchange of ideas. I used to play World of Warcraft and I still have fond memories of “wasting” 300+ hours on it. Rather than viewing specific activities as bad or good just be aware of what your intentions are going into them. Distracting yourself from responsibilities you don’t want to face? Who cares if you do that with chess or Twitter?

For a year I've been constantly thinking about this state and how there must be way way more people with the same experience. I recently managed to ask a few people about their current situation. And indeed, they too share this experience.

Thank you for the short "Absence of more meaningful activities" paragraph. I was about to head down a rabbithole and procrastinate higher priority tasks but the text reminded me of more important things.

One thing I'd like to share with you all, it was by far the most helpful regarding this topic: Dr. Andrew Huberman (hubermanlab.com) recently published a video called "ADHD & HOW ANYONE CAN IMPROVE THEIR FOCUS", I couldn't possible summarize it nearly as good as Dr. Huberman did and I kindly ask you to use your favorite search engine to look it up. It opened my eyes to new options to get out of this time wasting loop that I wasn't aware before.

That's an important problem that most of us struggle with. All these sites like hn/twitter/reddit/youtube are not a waste of time, they provide value if you use them correctly, like this blog post that I just read. I think the reason they become a waste of time is addiction - assuming you're mostly a consumer of these websites, instead of checking your twitter/reddit/etc feed once a day (or once in a few days), you check it every hour. That's a huge problem. There's no added value in checking it frequently, it's just an addiction. A nice benefit of checking it only once a day is that there's a lot of new content so you actually get value instead of seeing the same tweets again.

It’s weird how much guilt we have about how we spend our free time. We are constantly measuring our activities against what society, our parents, our friends, and social media say are worthwhile pastimes. I care far less in my 30s what others think of my demeanour than I did as a teenager, but somehow I find myself difficult to admit to friends without guilt how I spend a few hours a day playing video games, despite how much I enjoy that time. It should be as simple as: “if you enjoy something then do it”. If it’s meaningless then you’ll eventually grow bored of it (or realise it’s an addiction). It should be as simple as that.

Allowing oneself to be bored, or at least idle, without self-judgement, can be extremely valuable. You're likely processing things in the background (often without realizing it), which will make your active decisions and activities easier.

For the last few weeks I have been successfully blocking time wasters via DNS using nextdns.io.

The nice thing about this is that you can't get around it by altering anything that you are doing on your computer other than changing DNS settings. For example if you are using a browser extension you could have switched to a different browser.

Perhaps because I am independent/rebellious by nature it is helpful that there isn't a program actually telling me that it is blocking me.

It also helps with a layered approach: you can use this with any other tool such as a browser extension. Another simple layer that I like to use is to locally remove some sites via an /etc/hosts entry.

Recently I bought a Hisense a5pro eink phone as my secondary phone and commenting from it. I'm experimenting with reading those addictive sites only through this eink screen(block them on colorful screens). So far the desire to continue browsing or comment has dropped by a great deal. I think it might work if those sites are less visually stimulus than your workstation.

One aspect that you might want to consider is not to ask "why am I wasting my time" but "why am I not in control over how I waste my time". Or maybe "why I'm not happy with how I waste my time". Or, even less judgmental: "Why I'm not happy with how I spend my free time". If you look at the comments here, most people who don't have this problem just don't get it. "Just be less judgmental with yourself." But it's not about that, is it?

When you watch something like "The Bachelor" every day together with your girlfriend, some might consider that wasting time. And maybe it is, but I wouldn't consider it problematic. It's limited to one episode per day. And when you're watching it with someone else there's a social aspect to it. Ultimately it might not be valuable. It won't make you smarter, hustle harder, or improve your life. It's not a worthwhile endeavor. But I still wouldn't consider it problematic.

So that's one hypothetical situation. Another is when you open up Reddit because... well, that's what you always do while eating. And then keep scrolling /r/all for three or six hours, and go to bed at 3. What I consider problematic here is that the decision of what I feed my brain is deferred to a website. And that sometimes I have a hard time willing myself to stop.

So I don't think it should be about wasting time, because that derails the discussion into what is considered a waste of time and what isn't. That's a question everybody should find their own answers to. The issue is that you're not happy with how you spend your time. It becomes problematic once you can't control your usage, can't stop once you start using, and feel like you're no longer in control over what you're watching.

Thank you for posting by the way.

I really enjoyed this, op. It was like reading a diary of my own struggle with screen usage. I haven’t found a magic bullet, but it was comforting to read that you’ve gone through a lot of the same iterations. I once considered making a screen time + throw away the key app that would let you lock your pin and have a timer or a buddy unlock it for you.

One thing I have found, like you, is that the dissatisfaction is cyclical. When I was bike touring around Taiwan, I didn’t think twice about how much screen time I spent. When I was stuck inside for months during level 3 epidemic prevention measures, I thought about it constantly. Seek to grow the times that make you feel better and give yourself a break during the “wasteful” times. I don’t think there is a tool or practice that can long term take your ordinary life and tweak this one part where you feel like you aren’t wasting too much of the day on Reddit.

It seems we can all relate, so I'll share my version of this as well. I'm not concerned with social media or Hacker News or whatever mainly because I remember the even worse crap I used to waste time reading before I learned of HN.

My problem is control. I had a side project I started in May and I worked on it roughly 16 hours a day, every day for ~6 weeks with only one or two hour breaks to eat and exercise. When I finished the project, I went back to my 9-5 job like nothing happened. I've had similar "episodes" of grinding before, but not quite as extreme.

Since then I haven't had the motivation to spend more than a few hours on anything outside of my job. The thing I want most is to control this. It would be a superpower.

Instead I spend most of my free time reading random shit on hacker news or Twitter. And next time I binge on work, it will probably be something silly like mining crypto on a thermostat.

Interesting post, it inspired me to think about why I do similar.

Conclusion I came to, is that my brain doesn't want to expend a lot of effort and energy on optional things.

If I've got a deadline coming up on something that's hard it goes into brute force mode in order to get it done, irrespective of the energy cost, because it has to be done.

If I've decided to learn chess, it rebels against brute forcing it because the energy expenditure is not worth it on something that's optional. In that case subconsciously I want to find a better way to learn chess than whatever approach I'm currently taking because the current approach isn't worth the effort.

As for reddit and HN, I think it's the brains default goto way of getting you off the thing you're spending too much energy on (without a good enough plan to accomplish it) to something low energy but interesting enough to distract you.

> I’d end up bikeshedding my vim config instead of doing real work on my side project.

i chuckled realizing nobody but programmers understands this and funny & recognizable at the same time!

To be a bit philosophical about it; I sometimes think that perhaps these sites are so addictive because they offer us an escape hatch from the loss of meaning (or passion) we have in our everyday lives. And so these sites are never the actual problem, but merely a symptom.

Hacker News nurtures an addiction like nothing I've ever seen before. Facebook, Instagram and TikTok don't even come close. I wonder if we give "algorithms" too much credit, considering HN does such a good job of capturing my attention without them.

I love blog posts like this- personal thoughts, not overly edited, and not professing a solution. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, scattered as they may be.

I've been thinking about the "motivation bursts" section in the post- I have certain things (quotes/songs/videos/books/etc) that are motivating, and giving myself easier access to those when needed may be able to help address those times I can't seem to stop wasting time.

Of course, as many other commenters have mentioned, many activities we consider "wasting time" are enjoyable, normal things to do. The goal doesn't need to be eliminating idle time.

Great post. I can relate; I've struggled with it for years. But last year I quit Twitter and Reddit for good. I've quit commenting on news websites. HN is the only place I time-waste anymore. And at least HN is obliquely related to what I do for a living and to my side projects, and it's frequently educational. I'd say I learn something new here that's actually useful to my work or gives me new ideas almost every time I come on.

I got to the point where most other things online - like the diet coke in your analogy - just became unpalatable. One day it just happened. The thought of going on Twitter sounded gross and contrary to how I view myself. I unfollowed everything. On the rare occasions I have the impulse to check it now, I only have to stop for an instant and remind myself: It's a cesspool. And I don't want to be part of it. This is not who I want to be.

In particular, I think, it was the anger and meaninglessness of random people's uninformed opinions, and what it did to me psychologically. Idiots yelling at idiots all day, all night. I was brought up to always argue for what I thought was right, but the rage machine finally just overloaded my circuits. The urge to jump into that and "fix the world" with my oh-so-special opinion just evaporated. The feeling I have toward Twitter now is finally a pleasant numbness, and a vague sadness that it exists.

I also remembered a compliment an ex-girlfriend paid me once, long before the days of time-wasting on the internet, when I was just a kid who never watched TV. She said I never wasted any motion in anything I did. I think about that, and it reminds me that efficiency is more central to my personality than any bad habits that have edged their way in since.

One final thing about side projects. It's hard to sit down at a blank page, and you'll look for almost any way to procrastinate. But once you view it as a problem or something that needs to be fixed, you'll spend all night on it without hesitation. I've found that the best way to motivate myself is to start showing it early to people, and have an audience in mind. Wanting to show friends your progress has a wonderful effect, and lets you know if you're on the right track.

tl;dr, I think you're onto something about associating the good habits with your identity, and the bad ones with something anathema to your being. Don't be too hard on yourself; the human brain was not made for this environment.

I loved Marcus's example about how he was successful with Puzzle Storm:

> I had been studying chess for a long time, and discovered a new mode on Lichess, puzzle storm. It’s a timed mode where you solve as many puzzles as you can in about 3 minutes. It was fun and lined up with a skill I was learning, so it ended up winning in whatever calculus my subconscious does to decide how I’ll spend my free time. This was a nice fluke, but there’s no chance that coding on a side project, for example, will ever win out in in an immediate gratification battle with the time-wasters. So I don’t see how it could be the path to a general solution.

I think in general, the key to "wasting" time effectively is to find high-reward time wasters and make them as convenient as possible.

For me, this has meant selectively blocking websites so that you aren't fully out of options, but so that you read long-form magazine articles instead of Reddit. For others, it could mean having an interesting series of Youtube videos on how to engineer spaceships or on how to apply a new technology you've been curious about.

In times when we have foresight or hindsight, we can bank that and take concrete steps to nudge ourselves towards better choices.

That's me, and probably everyone here and everyone who calls themselves human.

I highly recommend the book 4000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.

The main point is that yes, these sites and activities are terrible and addictive, but let's face it, we partly desire to enter their gates and escape the notion that we are limited beings, in time and energy, with pending important tasks.

Procrastinating is an emotional issue, not a planning issue. On the one hand, it relieves us from the anxiety of the pending task, and on the other hand, wasting hours is a subtle and psychological way to make it seem like we have plenty of time (that's why we "allow" ourselves to waste it), until one day it is too late and the deception has caught up with us.

Facing an important task is the difficult thing to do because it reminds us of our finitude. That's why we do it now, because the clock is ticking and it's now or never. We are doing the right thing, but it's the disturbing thing too. I think that important things always have mixed feelings intertwined.

Sorry for my English, it's not my mother language.

All the best in this fight.

If only you didn't waste your time playing games! You'd be able to afford a Ferrari by now!

So do you play games?

Of course not.

So, where's your Ferrari?

> By what am I judging a given 10 minutes as being spent wisely?

Perhaps we can all make these same judgments easily (acting on them is a different matter of course).

Some of these things (perhaps learning chess, not my thing though) harbor calm in my psyche, allow my thoughts to unwind. Walking, reading, writing are things that have net-positive karma.

Other of these things (for me the news) can instead leave my mind troubled, anxious. These have net-negative karma. Often though these are seemingly addictive.

I allow for the negative because I want to be informed and often creative ideas come from exploring what others are doing, what is happening in the world.

I am trying to learn to time-bucket the addictive (and not-often creatively productive) activities though. At the same time I am beginning to recognize that I cannot be always on for the writing or other creative pursuits.

I lost interest in reddit and other social media when I saw how much attention it steals from my children. Even if I do it at night in bed it steals my energy from them. Same with Doomscolling. It takes time and energy and gives nothing in return.

Then I found a new hobby in HEMA sword fighting and gave the people in the club a real chance to get a little closer. Now with a fixed social life I feel much better. Also the time I spent there in the club and with the people in offline activities returns self esteem and health gains.

Last I have some rules. Never look at your phone while speaking with someone. Only one type of media consumption at once. Do something voluble while compiling (reading docs, write more tests, swing a sword)

To sum up, try to get a physical hobby that involves people and get some rules for yourse

> Breaking out of first person, this is getting really long. If you’ve figured out the secret to using your time well, let me know.

This was discussed recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29149961

Understanding the patterns used to make these additive might help. A Survey of Addictive Software Design: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?refer...

The time is either your own or wasted. Doing whatever makes you feel good is not a waste. The only time wasted is when you do what you hate and receive low pay for that when there are better alternatives available.

This is nuts. Hacker News keeps me thinking about smart people's opinions about everything that's going on today. He wishes he was playing chess instead, a fun game, but one that is more a competition of raw processing power and memorization than anything having to do with the human experience.

What worked for me was SelfControl on my computer and Adblock rules on my phone. This effectively kills my impulse to switch to Reddit or another website as soon as my scripts takes over a second to run. I block reddit and a few websites for days on end, and usually end up seeking better entertainment.

A great HN post beats an average book any day!

(And this is a book lover with a large personal library saying this.)

I wish I had time to read this, but there are too many other new posts on HN that need my clicks.

Chess?! That's my most pointless hobby! I guess it's a matter of perspective.

Sometimes I feel doing my own yard / auto work is a waste of time, that an hour of my work could pay an hour of theirs, but as long as I can draw the line I think it's ok.

Why not keep "wasting time" but through a filter, like a different language? Language learning by immersion is a thing, and by consuming stuff you're drawn to (just in a different anguage) you're likely learning faster doing so.

About Reddit: how can users be comfortable with a repository which does not have a decent navigation of past submissions?! You cannot navigate by page, you cannot search by date (or time range), you may be bound to an "infinite scroll" system without a "bookmark" to return there later... Do not users demanding by trade decent control have the disappointing impression they are driving a car without seat or floor, or with a faulty steering wheel?

(Just one of the issues. Implicit: users have a number of severe faults with the instrument to get detached, if they do not orient themselves to forget them.)

the train of thought i usually get on when i start thinking about using a screen time tracking app or some app that helps you change your habits, is that we supposedly have the most complex brains in the known universe so its kind of embarrassing that i should even need something like an app to help me. usually that and the amount of effort and maintenance involved is enough motivation for me to stop whatever stupid shit I'm doing

Try and read first 40 pages of "Scattered Minds" - Gabor Mate. I think you will find your answer there.

You own time?

Not for long. One way or the other. Just wait until you're dust in the wind.

It's a timeless experience.

One thing that struck me while reading this is the potential connection of doomscrolling to our evolution.

Humans are in large part "information foragers", in the sense that information has been vitally important to our survival as a species, and potentially a part of why we've developed larger brains than similar animals. [0] For example: A poisonous berry has a very different utility from an edible berry. Or: A monsoon season changes the climate enough to make an important difference for your tribe's survival whenever it happens. Querying your surroundings, or other humans for this information might have a large impact.

In that sense, it makes perfect sense that we "can't stop seeking novel and potentially interesting information" on these sites. Of course the way some of them are designed to be addicting doesn't help. But it illustrates why it's hard (or impossible) to quit doing this activity in it's entirety.

Maybe we shouldn't strive to quit searching for information, but make sure we have a satisfactory information scavenging activity as our go-to? I don't know what that would look like in practice, but the first thing that pops up in my mind is something like having a list of topics that seem interesting, and that you actively seek out information on, where you partially investigate some of the forks in the road.

Then there's the problem of being too exhausted to do something actively, which might need another solution entirely of course.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3n5qtj89QE Sadly I don't remember the timestamp of Jordan Peterson's statement saying humans are information foragers, but intuitively it holds up.

everyone else (twitter/reddit/facebook, your boss, MLM-idiots, ...) constantly undervalues your time, so how are you supposed to know your times value at all?