Ask HN: Best ways to minimize internet usage? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Best ways to minimize internet usage?

5 pointsMichaelZuo5 comments

As we all know there are limitless temptations on the internet. And more is added every day.

Conversely, the real thought provoking, life enhancing, stuff is buried under layers of noise, cynicism, even misdirection. The signal to noise ratio is definitely decreasing after implementing most of the useful filtering tricks I’ve seen on HN.

I’ve found this applies even for places that ought to be high quality, such as dedicated online libraries of academic research papers, there’s ever more crud being pushed out.

Given that neither the average behaviour of people, nor the organization of the internet, will likely change for the forseeable future, the best alternative will be to spend time on other activities.

So what have you found that works in minimizing total internet usage?

It could be as simple as doing computer work offline wherever possible or as complicated as getting a personal coach… feel free to share!

I’ll start: I got some physical CDs for music instead of purely relying on a streaming service. I find it helps as an alternative, in case I get frustrated by some bug in the player apps or some surprisingly low quality source for a song. The side effect is reducing the time I spend online.

I've turned the net into a pull medium where I read based on when I want to read, not when someone else pokes and prods me to read. Turning off notifications has been a big part of that, aswell as treating email as a TODO list written by other people.

I've also trained all my feeds (Twitter, RSS, Facebook, etc) to be all high signal. That takes work though, but once the initial hard work is done there, you can sit back and enjoy the spoils.

And don't forget plain old fashioned books. I can impart more knowledge from a good book than any of the famous 'longread' blogposts.

I do a couple of things: - One day a week we have a screen free day. I cheat a little as I'll do some checking of my phone, but I'm off my computer and I really am not on the phone that much, just checking weather and maybe one or two small things. But I'm not reading news sites or social media.

- I have an internet cut off rule at 10pm on my router, just for my laptop. Again, I _can_ cheat a bit by using my phone, but I don't really.

The screen free days are actually nice -- I catch up on magazine subscriptions or read actual books, sometimes get a physical newspaper.

plan A: resolve to use less internet. Then actually do it.

plan B: turn off computers and phone when you feel that you do not want to use them.

plan C: locate an "exterior door". They look a bit like interior doors but are often thicker and may be equipped with additional hardware and latches. With some small effort you should be able to figure out how to unlatch and open this portal to what is known as "outside" and go through it. There are infinitely lots of activities to be found there, it's a bit like a MMORPG.

The best way to minimize internet usage is to not use it at all.

That's right! The only way to truly minimize your internet usage is to not be online at all. And if you're like me, that might seem like a pretty daunting task—but it doesn't have to be.

I've found that there are plenty of ways to go about cutting down on how much time I spend on the internet without feeling like I'm missing out on everything fun or important about it. Here are some of my favorite tips:

1. Turn off notifications for apps that don't need them.

2. Don't be tempted by alerts and notifications from apps you use regularly, even if it's just once in a while.

3. If the only reason you're using an app is because it has push notifications turned on and they keep coming through even when you know they don't mean anything important, turn off those notifications altogether! Don't let them fool you into checking something out when you really don't need to.

Thanks! a common theme seems to be getting rid of push notifications.

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