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Comment by simonbarker87 | Hacker News Reader

I managed to make my phone boring in the past few months and it’s delightful.

I removed all apps that need my engagement to make money.

It took time for me to realise why I was picking my phone up and then wondering why.

My brain was reflexively reaching for my phone as it was bored (or anticipating becoming bored?) but then when I concisely looked at my phone I thought “well there’s nothing to do here why did I pick it up?”

It’s taken a couple of months but now I rarely find my phone in my hand without a conscious reason to have it there.

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It’s not just the apps. I know I have a problem with checking Hacker News and another very low tech discussion site (local to my area, basically a 2003 website).

The discussions are very pertinent to my daily life, unvarnished, and the clientele of note (kind of like Hacker News I guess).

For me it’s because I think I have very little time for real friends as a working parent; I text old friends from college and such, but my daily life is lonely outside my family, and logistics and chores consume a lot of that time. More free wheeling discussion like with a circle of friends is what these discussion groups fill for me, and that’s hard to quit.

I dont see a problem with HN in of it self. The problem is only when you spend disproportionate amount of time on HN (or twitter), vs other activities.

> More free wheeling discussion like with a circle of friends is what these discussion groups fill for me, and that’s hard to quit.

I’ve enjoyed discussion boards long before smartphones, but have been spending more time scrolling them on my phone than I’d like since 2020. This point, along with the author’s discussion of “the desire underneath the desire” is making me think that I’m actually just missing the types of conversations I’d have with coworkers at lunch or over happy hour beers before I started to work from home full time. Most of my close friends are not programmers or involved in startups, so this sort of makes sense to me as a missing social outlet.

> For me it’s because I think I have very little time for real friends as a working parent; I text old friends from college and such, but my daily life is lonely outside my family, and logistics and chores consume a lot of that time. More free wheeling discussion like with a circle of friends is what these discussion groups fill for me, and that’s hard to quit.

It's the same for me, too. The people around me have few common interests, and conversations with them are awkward and sparse, and I've changed enough in my life that the communities I once was a part of are no longer feeling as welcome to me anymore. I've found the online communities to be both the best and worst outlet in my life, because they are directly tailored to my interests but are also not actually in my proximity.

>but are also not actually in my proximity.

I think this a benefit, not a negative.

Could you please explain more? Finding people online and discovering they live hundreds of miles away generally feels isolating to me, even potentially increasing the sense of isolation I feel from just the failed local friendships.

Sure. I think this is simply an idiosyncratic aspect of our personalities. While you find those online people who might be friends but live far away feels isolating, I find that getting to know the people who read and comment on my blog over months and years (sometimes we email back and forth) creates a real bond, much like like the epistolary friendships of the nineteenth century conducted only by mail between people who never actually met IRL. Some of my daily readers have been commenting for 15-20 years!

So very hard.

I'll find myself closing my browser because of boredom, then within 5 seconds feeling bored and reflexively reopening it to the same site. This can happen a few times before I become aware.

I really enjoyed participating in Solene%'s Old Computer Challenge 2022: <https://dataswamp.org/~solene/2022-07-01-oldcomputerchalleng...>

I adjusted my rules a bit to make them fit into my setup (WFH, Homekit lights, etc), the main challenge being that rather than accounting for time spent online and trying to limit it to 1h, I just wouldn't go online at all (unless for work). It was a wonderful week, and even one week can start to make a long-term impact!

Another thing worth trying is to leave your phone at home, and attend to your "digital needs" from a smartwatch. The screen is too small and the input too quirky to be efficient at wasting attention, but you can still get directions, pay for stuff, reply to a message, etc. (I actually don't have mobile data on my watch so I need the phone to keep the watch online, but I'm mindful of when I'm in "no phone mode". You can also seize the opportunity and just go offline, without giving up on things such as checking the time or playing music.)

>then when I concisely looked at my phone I was thought “well there’s nothing to do here why did I pick it up?”

I think of this as a possibly universal psychological trick that can allow you to slowly adjust your behaviour.

I.e:

- To do less of something, think of how useless the impulse is when it happens. I.e. dull the impulse.

- (To do more of something, be on the lookout for and amplify any impulse that drives towards that behaviour.)

It seems kind of obvious but sometimes we amplify bad behaviour by punishing ourselves and end up amplifying the impulse.

I think an electric shock would go a long way.

Years back I tried to make a phone case that would shock me at random while using it. The idea was to replace the dopamine hit you get from checking your phone with a twinge of anxiety and dread.

I never finished the project. Turns out generating high voltages requires tall inductors, which generally make a phone case unacceptably thick.

> I removed all apps that need my engagement to make money

This is the heart of the issue right here. Nicely out in one sentence.

Now if we could just get members of society to apply the same principle to their newsfeeds. I walked into a room discussion yesterday where a few were extolling how they “read both sides.” I congratulated them on subsidizing not one, but two circuses.

The addiction is real and strange.

A couple years ago, I removed most social media out of my life; anything on my phone with a public "friends" or "follows" list.

I can't put my finger on it, but overall I found myself more at peace.

I did eventually end up back on Twitter and adjusting the social app "rule" to "strangers-only" apps. And I found that worked out well as I could still get up-to-the-moment industry things (I've since switched to threads).

Recently I needed to sell an old couch and craigslist wasn't getting the job done, so I installed Facebook, fired up the old profile, and made my listings.

And now I'll just randomly catch myself browsing Facebook. It's without purpose, and I don't care much about what I'm seeing. I just randomly end up there scrolling. It's the weirdest thing.

The couch is still unsold and I've had two scam attempts on Facebook (none on CL). So I'm very much looking forward to getting rid of both on garbage day

Maybe just donate the couch and the payment is getting to remove FB from your phone again?

The bigger issue is that I don't have a means to transport it. If I can find someone to pay me to come get it, it's a win-win. But every day the price drops. And if it's not gone by this afternoon, it's going to the alley with a "buy-nothing" post. Pretty sure it'll be gone within an hour after that.

You could put the couch outside on the curb and instantly solve both problems. Plus making someone very happy with their new couch.

this is the equivalent of fly-tipping. please don't do it.

Putting your own furniture on your own property is usually quite legal.

You do need to have a plan to dispose of it if nobody snags it, however.

It will be gone in less than 15 minutes if you're in NYC

Very true. This process went much faster in Brooklyn. But also there were more people willing to pay for decent-quality things. It hasn't been bad in Chicago, but definitely slower and the prices have to be lower for used things.

Yeah stooping culture blew up during covid. My apartment is furnished with two couches that I picked up for free (both within my building actually). I'm going to estimate having stooped up to 10K worth of stuff since 2020 (almost all of it in astonishingly good shape), including plants, kitchen appliances, kitchen table and chairs, dressers, coat racks, a door sized painting (it might actually be a door as a canvas), etc. I have also given away things like my TV and living room console, one of those couches, medium fridge, plants, etc.

It's a pleasure to give and receive. It prevents perfectly good, clean, functioning things from meeting an early end at the landfill simply because selling it ends up being more of a challenge than expected.

Never imagined such a communal barter system to spring up in the modern day.

at least in the uk, the kerbside isn't your property

Same in Chicago. We can generally put things in the alley if it's not blocking anyone.

Furniture is basically worthless once used, so the curb is the easiest usually.

Just make sure you plop it out there when it's not going to rain.

That's basically what's happening this evening, although I will be putting out a post about the free couch in the alley - and if nobody gets it on time, Chicago's garbage trucks pretty much take _anything_.

I remember remarking here years ago how I annoying I found it to have to use my phone to read QR codes while watching TV, only to learn that almost every HN reader/user ALWAYS has their phone on their person/within reach. Mine is rarely on my person/within reach.

Why do you read QR codes while watching TV?

They often appear out of nowhere during commercials.

Haven’t seen commercials in many years so I didn’t know commercials had QR codes in them. What is the reason to engage with them? Discount codes?

Yes, among other things; also more information about the product being advertised.

This reminds me of a pamphlet I got that had just a giant QR code on it related to a specific disease. The rest of the pamphlet had keywords and cloud bubbles or pictures of people.

The QR code leads to a page that has more information, but they put ZERO information on the pamphlet even though it could have conveyed all the information behind the QR code quite well and look good still.

I don't use QR codes because it is usually information that is useless. Or it would be on the actual thing.

I tried the same and ended up becoming an expert in the Met Office weather app. Breaking the habit of picking up my phone and doing something, anything, was really hard.

Assuming you are British I feel you get a pass, just opening that app and hoping for sun is character building

It transcends checking the weather or spending time and becomes a religious activity.

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