alt Hacker NewsIf you haven’t read it, Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism is mostly about this topic. The value of giving your brain time to simply exist without any outside input, with many examples from history of people who carved out time explicitly for this, especially when needing to make big decisions or figure out answers to problems.
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austy69 • today at 2:01 PM
That's probably a great read based on what I've heard from Cal, but I don't think you need an entire book to know how to scale back on your social media use. Just hand your phone to your friend and have them put a lock on the addictive features.
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I haven’t read the book but I like this idea and intend to check out the book. I’m not on social media but I find Hacker News – and even Wikipedia – to be addictive enough. When I was younger, I found it very hard to just sit there without some form of external stimulation, e.g. I couldn’t sit down to eat by or have a coffee by myself without reading a magazine or newspaper at the same time – or listening to the radio. I still find it hard to do this.
Hacker News has been useful in that I’ve come across a few inspirational ideas on consuming less input (and producing more output):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44702212
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39674619
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20781463
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24582837
I’ve made some changes to my life in that listening to music is more intentional – not just a distraction to have in the background. It probably helps that I’ve also started to learn a musical instrument. I can also go for a walk without needing to have music or a podcast to listen to.