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Last year I took a smartphone holiday for 4 months (switched to a dumbphone). It was a fantastic time and I regret "falling off the wagon" and getting a smartphone again.

I noticed a huge number of benefits, but one of the most surprising was that it forced me to confront a number of difficult decisions.

There were a few times in which I was bored (waiting at the passport office, sitting on a plane) in which I started to think about decisions I had to make that were very difficult in ways that caused me anxiety: firing a person I'm good friends with, shutting down a company, stuff like that.

I realized that ordinarily I would simply refuse to engage with the decision: I'd get on my phone or "get busy" somehow and so simply postpone thinking about the issue indefinitely.

But when you're stuck at the passport office for 2 hours with nothing to do, you can't but help think about the thing that is top of mind, anxiety be damned.

For someone that is prone to anxiety around certain topics (conflict avoidance, "disappointing" people, etc) having times in which I was forced to engage with the topic had truly enormous benefits.

> you can't but help think about the thing that is top of mind, anxiety be damned.

This really captures what I think is the main problem with our state of being constantly distracted: it feels at first like a relief from anxiety, but ultimately results in even small anxieties never properly being dealt with. The end result is a vicious cycle (or I guess virtuous if you sell online ads) of becoming more and more anxious causing us to rely more and more on the screen to distract us, which in turn only increases that backlog of anxiety.

I see this happen in a lot of younger people that are constantly on screens: they frequently mention their need to "chill for a bit" and yet spend most of their time doing nothing but staring at a screen. It's clear that they are living in a lukewarm vat of anxiety that they can't face while staring at a screen, but also one which causes them immediate stress when they do look away.

The anxiety does hit you back when in bed trying to sleep. I notice a vast difference in my ability to fall asleep if I've gone on a walk with a podcast in my ear vs just silently walking with my thoughts.

Wow, thank you for saying exactly this, this "deferred anxiety" probably does partly explain sleep issues I've had the last 3-4 years. I agreed with GP's comment and have more issues with screens, but didn't even notice this difference in how I take my walks now.

Sometimes my inner thoughts can crowd aside the podcast and I'll get home and realize I didn't hear anything from the podcast, but more often it keeps me distracted the whole time. I think unplugging from podcasts on walks and in the car is definitely worth a try.

>"It's clear that they are living in a lukewarm vat of anxiety that they can't face while staring at a screen, but also one which causes them immediate stress when they do look away."

which sounds a whole lot like a word that starts with "a" and ends with "ddiction"

> it feels at first like a relief from anxiety, […] which in turn only increases that backlog of anxiety.

That’s exactly what’s describe in a book [0] I finished last week about addiction to nicotine. That book made the quit process easy by making you believe there’s nothing good about smoking, even the social aspect. They circle through every supposed advantages and disassemble one by one. There’s a few official rewrites for quitting "bad" sugars and taking good habits, not sure how they perform.

0 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Easy_Way_to_Stop_Smoking

This exact same book has been modified to also help effortlessly quit porn. I say quit because its what will be understood the most easily by majority of people but it is in fact not quitting since quitting implies there's something valuable in porn. there isn't. its escaping the addiction. Honestly its hands down one of the best methods to escape the addiction and besides you don't have anything to lose! either you successfully break free from the addiction or you stay the same (which doesn't happen from experience but its written to convince you to read it.) https://read.easypeasymethod.org

This comes off as projective judgement. I don't think everyone agrees with you, holds the same moral values, or has the same negative relationship with sex, porn or other "vices". Some people are able to integrate things like alcohol, porn or whatever other moral sin of the week without negative effects on their life or relationships. These things aren't addictions for many people and there is also no value in making sweeping generalizations.

To expend on sibling comment, sweeping generation has never been the goal neither most Muslims, sports enthusiasts or vegans want to force everyone live like they do. However when someone finds something incredibly valuable ( > projective judgement) they’ll try to share that with everyone else. It’s a generosity act!

The reasons themselves can be anything. Ethic is a powerful one, we often see life changes for psychic and/or physic health, time gain (time/benefit of an activity), money, whatever. Those methods are tools to self-help achieve your own goal. When it worked, we’re proud and keen to share it with friends and the world.

I didn't get that vibe. Just someone sharing something that worked for them..

That is basically what psychiatrists have been saying about the topic.

Humans need downtime to process emotions - in the olden days there was a lot of menial work which served this purpose, but we automated most of it since, freeing time for more productive, but stressful activities.

Meanwhile looking at screens allows one to leave all that for later. Unfortunately unprocessed emotions don't go away - they pile up.

I've been using this to gauge how well I'm doing mentally and address whatever issues there might be. My ideal state is that of a chimpanzee who was finally let outside after years in captivity which, upon leaving the building where it was kept, just stares at the sky.

it mimics drug addiction, that same cycle can often happen with cannabis.

I absolutely hate running, my cardio sucks and I like to lift heavy multiple times per week.

But when I run I don’t bring anything, no music no phone just a watch to track speed and time.

I get all my best thinking done during those runs. I run slow and it hurts and it never improves but I go for 1-2 hours just so I can get more disconnected thinking done

Same. Running or walking. Sometimes I make a point of thinking/feeling through recent times and processing those thoughts and emotions. Other times, I treat it as a moving meditation, and try to clear my mind when thoughts enter.

Either way, I find I feel much better when I take a break from screens, news, and podcasts, and give my mind time to do its thing.

I came to the very same conclusion - I need "empty time" to reflect, and prepare myself for my own life. For me, it was not smartphones, it started with books when I was a child, and continued with music players and alcohol later. Everything to keep the unwanted thoughts and feelings at bay. I am an excellent daydreamer as well, at times of stillness, I find something to "work on" in my mind.

What I ended up with is literally a time of day where I "sit with myself" and just think about things. I just sit down for some minutes and try to get my bearings on where I am in life right now. Also, I eliminated a lot of background noise and music - I often do menial things without any other distractions for example. Good opportunities to think about something deep.

I believe one of the side effects of the loss of “empty” time to reflect is that people tend to rush decisions even when there’s time enough to think it through, as it were more important to take a quick decision rather than a good one.

For me that's when I take a shower. I think I take showers way too long, but it's just a thing I enjoy and I think through many topics then. Sometimes I am sad that I cannot take notes during the shower, but if I could, maybe I would be back to square one.

But you can (take notes in the shower). I do and it helps me offload the burden of forgetting those shower thoughts. It has also made me realize that these fleeting thoughts are not as smart as I thought they were.

https://www.myaquanotes.com/

I find myself doing some of my most creative thinking in the middle of the night when I wake up and can’t get back to sleep.

A couple of times recently when I've not pulled out the phone, I've ended up having an interesting chat with somebody nearby.

Be open to having others talk with you by having an inviting look. And perhaps recognize when others are being inviting and feel out if they seem keen on yakking.

Imagine a subculture developing where some people just recognize other sociables. Maybe we need masonic-like rings or something else to identify us as welcoming random conversion.

Concentrating on your phone is as much of a conversation stopper as headphones.

I think it also encourages socialization. Chatting with someone instead of being engrossed in your phone.

I did a screen time detox a few years back. After hearing a similar idea about needing to get to boredom sometimes and not just escaping to a device. Only used a computer for work and exclusively worked on it, then no screen time whatsoever. Maybe lasted 3 weeks or so and made me more interested in stuff like reading, drawing, etc.

Very similar to my experience.

From time to time I follow a policy of 'no idle screen time'. Essentially this means if I am using a screen I must have a definite purpose in mind. It really cuts down on how much time I spend on my phone or computer in general, but ironically increases the amount of work I get done (I work almost exclusively on a computer).

Some benefits I noticed after a short while include feeling much calmer (low level feeling of anxiety largely absent), actually actively listening to music again (instead of just using it for background noise), reading books again (even renewed my library card after 10+ years), keeping a more organised home, eating better, getting more exercise, and organising more time to spend with friends and family.

> Chatting with someone instead of being engrossed in your phone.

Everyone else is already glued to their screens so it makes it really awkward to start a conversation

Do you ever have trouble falling into past decisions, and over analyzing them, and doubling down on your anxiety?

I would love to get rid of my smart phone, but the problems I dwell on are very rarely present or future decisions, and realistically what is top of my mind anxiety be damned is useless energy, it's like running a wind turbine off the grid, and forcing it to spin as if it were a big fan instead of running the grid off wind turbines. The thoughts are more like did I disappoint that friend last weekend, or did I dissapoint that coworker at the Christmas party 6 months ago, or did I do <x> that definitely didn't create <y>, but did I do <x> that made <y> happen?

I use chess apps on my phone to at least put my brain off those thoughts entirely because I have a different problem to solve, and that is magnificent, and if If I didn't have that I don't know what I would do. I know there's something probably not quite right, but I'm wondering how much time you end up spending on problems that "can't be solved," and how much is time spent actually solving problems in your life. If that makes any sense.

Don’t worry about the past, what’s done is done. Learn from it to do better next time and move on. Most people won’t remember the thing you’re freaking out about because it was something minor in their lives.

I've tried this a couple of times, and the only things I miss are:

- Navigation (can be solved with a dedicated device, but it's a lot less convenient) - A good camera at all times (I used to not care about this, but it's become more important now I have kids) - Mobile payments (pretty essential in my country, not all places accept cards or cash)

In every other aspect, it was a net positive in my life to get rid of my phone.

This is what's held me back as well, but I recently discovered the Minimal phone which is an android phone with all the things you mentioned, but with a less distracting e-ink display.

https://minimalcompany.com/

(I'm not affiliated with minimal company in any way, nor have I actually tried the phone)

I "pre-ordered" one, and it has not yet arrived. I have given up on ever receiving my phone, and just consider it a lesson learned. If I receive it, that will be a happy occurrence. It should have arrived 4 months ago (at least that's what they said when I ordered it). They tell me it will arrive in the next month (depending on customs clearance times). They have said it will arrive in the next month multiple times. Those statements have all been inaccurate so far. Maybe it will show up one day.

Good to know. I hope it shows up.

Shoutout to Samsung Ultra Power Saving Mode (and other modes)

You can get ~4 day battery life if you limit your apps to phone, text, music, email, wallet (with no lasting background activities*)

[dead]

I found the truly irreplaceable apps to be:

- Uber

- Banking

- Google Maps

For a camera, I suggest buying a real, standalone camera (I have a fuji x100). The photos it takes are VASTLY better than an iphone. For something smaller that fits in a pocket, people say great things about the Ricoh GR III.

Unfortunately, I found that being out without a smartphone did cause certain anxieties for me: What if I forgot about an appointment? What if I get an urgent email or whatsapp?

The answer would be having an actual assistant (ie, a secretary). Someone I could call to order me an uber or look up a restaurant, and someone who could call me to say "hey, X just sent you a whatsapp message that seems pretty urgent."

I that an AI powered assistant that communicates via phone or text could be a great use for AI and something I hope to code up whenever I have some spare time.

I don't know... I'm of the opinion that there's no such thing as an "urgent email" or similar. Urgent things should be handled via synchronous technology--like a phone call.

That reminds me of Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture, discussing how he handled his boss demanding a way to contact him in his honeymoon in case of a work emergency.

Pausch gave his boss the number of his new mother in law. In case of an emergency, the boss could explain to the mother in law why it was worth interrupting her daughter’s honeymoon, in which case the mother in law would relay the message.

There mother in law was never called.

This is cool. AI assistant which operates the real smartphone hidden somewhere in a drawer, and the only interface would be voice chat or text via dumbphone! I am in.

The big LLM companies should have employees using only a dumb phone connected only to their LLM as a way to accomplish tasks or get information. Would rapidly improve the UX of their chat programs I’m sure.

I'm trying this strategy at the moment. https://www.shesabeast.co/the-diy-dumbphone-method/

The main things I needed to remove are the web browser and email client to make it ~ a dumbphone. I don't find myself wasting time staring at maps, or a weather app, or a calorie tracker, or camera/photos so I don't feel there's any reason to forgo those. (YMMV of course!)

I have a smartphone that runs signal, the phone app, the camera app, and a mapping app. Why not do the same?

I have never logged into anything except signal on a phone. I haven't removed the browser but I don't have any interest in using it and have only used it to look up wikipedia stuff while traveling and what not. If I did feel some temptation to web browse on it I could remove the browser.

I find it surprising that anyone wants to browse on their phone, I find the tiny screen infuriating.

I just had a day "off" because of some work on the 5G tower nearby. I can feel my brain chemistry change when the line is off. I don't feel the need to constantly check. There was a limited service bandwidth but it was too unreliable for my brain to want to wait for its dose of webpage refreshing. It sucks the long term / in-depth brain states .. it's so weird.

Reminds me of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40802066 (I Add 3-25 Seconds of Latency to Every Page I Visit, 2020)

Some interesting ideas in there. Trying some.

I can sympathize, but you didn’t mention the benefits at all, what would they be? What is benefit of anxiously thinking about past decisions?

Ah. Well I didn't mention all the benefits, but what I was referring to here were future decisions, not past ones. Decisions I had put off taking because they caused me great anxiety but that nonetheless had to be done, and the sooner the better.

Other benefits:

- Vastly improved mood

- Renewed interest in creative endeavors, specifically writing

- A sense of well-being

- A "the scales have fallen from my eyes" realization/epiphany/gnosis around the nature of reality and the effect "weaponized language delivery mechanisms" (ie, social media) have on our perception of it.

Pretty fucking worth it, if you asked me. And yet I fell off the wagon and have a smartphone again.

What made you pick up again? Why not drop now?

Imagine how addicted I am that I use my smartphone even after writing the past comment!

You are clearly better for your temporary retreat. It is still with you. Reducing contact with the world is not the only way to deal with its less helpful siren calls.

Distraction free can also mean, “free despite distraction”.

You created some very positive grooves in your thought patterns, that you can keep using, to recall and reset awareness of what matters at any moment.

10 seconds meditating on what you experienced and learned can reset a day.

Knowing and remembering the contrast is a great way to wade through the complications of life, but avoid drowning again.

A another superpower is to have clearly defined personal missions. Then continually asking “is this helping?” quickly exposes and resolves both mundane and profound derailments. Vast time can be wasted by things that are healthy, but just not the optimal path, too!

For me, the only extreme measures I take are to avoid any exposure or giving attention to advertising. And zero exposure to opinion media (whether views “lean” in a way I sympathize with or not). That stuff just constantly models a norm of sleepwalking into a flattened reality.

After that, I just pay attention unintended wasted time and course correct whenever healthy exposure to novelty flips to low quality or extended hit seeking. We do benefit from some of the former.

I was lucky to grow up without television. Nobody had to teach me the difference between influence and inspiration and I won’t ever let that get watered down.

It scares me how most people’s world views get smashed into low artificially discrete dimensions, down selected empathy and synthetically narrowed concerns, when the if, buts, mostly, sometimes, in general but often not in particular, …, nature of reality and people seems to become invisible to so many even though it isn’t hidden at all.

And I am talking about the smart high intentioned people!

It is important to remind each other to think, each for ourselves. Don’t ever categorize one’s world view as an allegiance to any school of thought, or take any of the other common steps that subtly channel our awareness away from unfiltered reality, hand us menus of default views, or numb our ability to spy the omnipresent gems of value in the most alternate views.

So thanks for posting your experience!

We can live a high contact life and benefit from the roughness and stickiness of untamed social reality, instead of being sanded down by it.

I understood it not as past decisions, but facing current decisions they need to make but often procrastinate on by looking at their phone.

I’d like to inform you that I share your same anxieties. I read a book called “Difficult Conversations” (Patron, stone, heen). It didn’t remove all the anxiety, but it gave me A framework to lean on to get started, which was half of the stress. I think it will always suck having to fire people you like.

Is it good to have anxiety over things you have to do where there really aren’t options. Unless you’re saying you figured out better decisions due to the additional thinking. But if the end result was simply more anxiety — mine being distracted on the phone.

There is an SMBC more or less on this subject: https://smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2225

Why didn't you list the downsides, what you missed from not having a smart phone? Was it because there weren't any or because you thought they were obvious?

Having a mobile, networked computer with us at all times has been a huge benefit in many ways and I find it hard to believe people would chuck it all due forming habits they don't like. Habits can be molded pretty easily if approached in a conscious way.

I find that daydreaming is absolutely critical for coming up with good strategies. Otherwise I can default to just do the next obvious thing, which isn't always the most strategic if you can take in the full picture, or at least consider alternatives well.

The two ways I get to strategic reflection are really:

- Doing lego. I find thhat doing lego is actually really good at helping me consolidate thoughts and ideas. It takes up just enough mental energy to not get bored, but it lets me think about things with an unstressed mind.

- Walks. The other way to generate new perspectives is to take a walk at lunch though non-interesting territory. I really do not find walks in a busy downtown to be relaxing, too much activity intruding on me to actually be low stress, but if it is in a forest or even just a long parkway that works for me.

The absolute worst way to come up with new ideas is in front of my computer trying to work. Good for doing the next obvious thing, but really hard to think outside of the box.

You really do need a mix of the two, otherwise you are either doing the obvious or never actually doing anything.

Just curious, when you say you do LEGOs, you mean buy a set and follow the instructions (which is fine and what I assume people mean when they talk about LEGOs)? Or do you mean sit with a pile of LEGOs and come up with your own ships/cars/toys? When I was a kid (70's/80's) we would just get boxes of bricks and make our own things, but it seems like pre-built sets are the most popular thing now. And yes we have plenty of pre-build sets in our house, but I feel like kids are missing out on the free-style aspect.

If I want to daydream/meditate/relax I have to be following instructions. Building my own creations (e.g. last year I participated in a Lego robotics competition for adults) requires my whole brain unfortunately.

I do highly recommend getting the kids involved in the various Lego competitions, it forces problem solving and creativity.

Totally agree! I started with the GIANT Legos in the mid 70's then we got the smaller ones. I used to spend hours with about eight different shapes trying to make something interesting. Sort of like the modern Froebel blocks.

I guess you need to follow the instructions. I do LEGO treating it like a 3d puzzle and not looking at instruction but only the photos on the box. And I don't get any daydreaming from that. I'm to immersed in the puzzle. Going by the instructions is kind of painfully boring though. But I guess that's what you need to make you start daydreaming.

I can second that long walks work great for daydreaming but they too feel painfully boring before the daydreaming kicks in.

> but I feel like kids are missing out on the free-style aspect.

Lego still sells products which are just big boxes of parts, as well as things between (the 3-in-1 sets that have several different models). I’m not sure why kids are missing out on this—some kids do enjoy it, and some kids don’t. But Lego caters actively to both.

Sitting on public transport looking out of the window not your phone and listening to music is ok but probably not podcasts.

Also showers are very good for the right state of mind.

The shower, every time. No idea what the difference is if I stand in the shower or sit on the couch in my living room. Sometimes I end up looking like a prune.

In the shower, you can't be doing anything else, so it quiets the inner critic in your mind that says "You should do something productive right now instead of daydreaming."

Water is a vitalizing factor as well. Gets the blood flowing, more oxygen to the brain ..

Swimming. And showers (water touching/passing skin) is essensially lymphatic drainage.

ha, rue the day your brain realizes your phone is waterproof

You can listen to podcasts in the shower easily enough by putting your device outside of the shower, or having a waterproof Bluetooth speaker. It's not true that you can't do anything in the shower besides showering.

Listening to podcasts isn't really doing something.

The part of your brain that's like "you should be fixing the leaky faucet right now" will be quelled when you're in the shower because, I guess aside from consuming audio media, there really isn't much else you can do.

I think it was more that you CAN do nothing else, guilt free. If you are down are yourself because you're not efficiently multi-tasking during your shower, that might be a deeper issue.

Not very many of our ancestors were eaten in hot springs, I guess? It’s hard to hunt when the ground is so slippery. Then our body feels safe and allows attentional resources to be diverted away from safety and towards ideation?

Same thing happens for me, and that’s my working theory.

These kind of evolutionary theories often make for captivating and plausible stories, they are also pretty much universally false. Similar trains of thought were used in the middle ages for example to rationalize male and female roles in society, all of which have been debunked many times over at this point.

The problem with the Middle Ages explanations though is that the framework they used to explain things was false.

A false framework producing false explanations does not falsify frameworks in general.

But it is an example where applying a framework doesn't make something more accurate. We can't just rationalize whatever we want because it seems to make sense from an evolutionary standpoint. I also don't know that we should believe that our framework is true. I'm not arguing the truth of evolution, but rather how we apply the fact that it occurred to possibly irrelevant aspects of our life.

> Similar trains of thought were used in the middle ages [...]

The theory of evolution was conceived way after the middle ages, so that seems beside the point.

Similar does not mean the same. A good example is the story of prudism and genitals, where women were expected to be prudent with the rationale that god hid their genitals away.

It is unlikely hot springs were omnipresent enough across the environment to have an impact on overall human evolution.

The safety instinct complex likely has components shaped in pre-human and even pre-ape and perhaps even pre-mammal ancestors.

Pressure comes from duration as well as frequency of encounter. A feature encountered infrequently but consistently across many millions of years can exert a pressure equivalent to a feature encountered more consistently for a shorter period.

Also note that the effect size to be explained here is not that large - just a nudge towards relaxation in what seems to be a subpopulation of humans.

What do you think about that?

Sure, but this reasoning you are using could justifying saying just about anything we have encountered in human history, no matter how infrequent or minor, could have influence our evolution. It is incredibly hard to falsify such claims and easy to make them. I don't really know how to respond.

Yeah I personally don’t think such speculation should be treated as “science”, per se.

But, if the science minded shy away from such areas completely, they will be (and are) filled with explanations from people with completely unscientific worldviews and values.

The Dawkinsian selfish gene framing is unfalsifiable. Even Darwin is practically unfasifiable. It kind of comes with the territory.

I think the degree to which such an explanation is a just so story depends on how many aligning aspects we can observe in reality. An example in this case - the more a shower shifts from utilitarian to luxurious, the more it happens to resemble a hot spring. What would be the most luxurious shower? To me, natural stone walls in a natural looking pattern (impractical to clean), no obvious drain, instead the water drains into crevasses in rock (which is mimicked even in run of the mill shower designs), some natural light but not too much, etc.

That's very funny. My first guess would have been the womb. Probably the safest environment most of us have ever been in.

I think being naked is a factor as well. Have not been able to A/B test that part of it in an office environment yet though.

I was going to say shower too. Also walking the dog.

I suspect the shower is more relaxing than the couch. When I sit on the couch I'm just anxious... I know there are things I should be doing other than being lazy sitting on the couch. When I'm in the shower, I know that I am doing what I'm supposed to be doing. And it just happens to be something pleasant.

don't discount sitting vs. standing, even if it is under a stream of deliciously hot water for longer than you probably should.

This has been my experience for optimal creativity tasks:

- Best: walks, running, walking in circles, walking in circles talking over the phone (1:1 planning), walking in circles talking out loud to myself

- Good: showers, daydreaming in place, daydreaming on trips where I'm not driving, "pair program" white boarding with one other (exceptional) person

- Okay: white boarding by myself, trying to put ideas to pen and paper by myself, meetings with the right people in a physical space

- Bad: at the computer, on the phone, walking or running to podcasts, walking or running to the wrong type of music, video conference meetings, and generally all other meetings

- What are you even doing: YouTube, Netflix, or podcasts on in the background at any level

I agree but what is the root cause? Which things are generally bad for the brain? Because if it was social, meetings would be good. And if it’s reality escape, going to the movies would be bad.

Perhaps it's in putting the brain in a place where the body is on autopilot and the verbal / spatial centers of the brain can be free to wander in and out of focus.

Podcasts kill this mode for me, so you can't have the brain thinking about other people's thoughts or words.

Playing a video game doesn't work, so I think your spatial thinking has to be free too.

It's as if distracting the brain's non-verbal/spatial modes or burning some amount of calories from those centers gives the "thinking" parts of the brain some "alone time". That's an incredibly non-scientific and unserious hypothesis though.

All my good writing ideas come to me in the shower. I don't know why, but at least I don't smell.

I used to get this from smoking cigarettes. I'm convinced that half of the relaxation was being forced to take a break and concentrate on your breathing.

Combined with the social aspects (though these days it's single smokers getting their fix asap) I think there probably IS a benefit here, just not outweighed by the smoking part.

IP67+ on your phone is bad for mental health

Yeah my lifehack in that department is assuming that the seals might not be perfect anymore. Plus a brief brush with seawater splashes made my iPhone speaker sound like crap for a few days a few years ago so I've decided it's not worth the risk!

Seawater destroys everything you ever loved and cared for, no IP rating will defend against that for long.

If my phone gets dirty watered, i ensure I rinse it with fresh water; really confuses the onlooker.

That's how I pass my (2x a week) trips from work in the office. I just put away my phone and look out of the train at one of most beautiful sights I've ever seen in my life - huge (by my standards) clear Geneva lake with boats and Swiss & French alps in the background, and if weather is clear also Mont Blanc and surrounding peaks towering above it all. I've proposed to my wife on top of it some time ago during a grueling and dangerous ski tour - one way to forever change a look at some sight.

Walking in some easy nature is great too, somehow relaxes subconsciousness so I end up with few todos marked in my phone after each such walk. When I occasionally smoke weed at such walks somehow this feed becomes a firehose and sometimes struggle to note it all. Nature is amazing in any form, recharging, healing and somehow at lowest level that connection just feels right.

As I joke, some of my deepest architecture work has been done by reading up on the concrete topics and then flopping into a hammock to look at a cloud and watch a pair of magpies build a nest, with some coffee with ice cream and some calm tunes. Cup not entirely filled to the brim naturally, as that would be a cause for disaster very quickly.

And sure, I booked like 6 hours that day with no concrete immediate result, but 2-3 days like that a year or two ago shaped how applications function in the company today and it does so effectively.

Another thought the article provokes is the idea of mindfullnes and living in the moment. Sometimes it is easy to open up the phone and just escape. But in those situations, it can be quite interesting to just be in the moment, meet people and see where it goes. If you're in a shitty situation -- like a train stopping in the middle of nothing and dropping all passengers at a train station too short for the train -- it can be interesting to interact with and observe people. It can teach how all of us have very similar basic problems, no matter how we look or who we are. And I'm saying that as an introvert -- sometimes the anonymity of never meeting people again is a good thing.

I use bike rides for your walks approach, though sometimes (say commuting) I get to my destination without remembering how I actually got there; the day dreaming is perhaps a little too immersive (some of this might be pretty busy city riding!) but in less attention-critical scenarios (like a ride outside the city, on the pathway or the grind up to a DH track) I have my absolute BEST periods of thought. Doing something you like (or in my case love), not using your phone, and getting exercise - especially in nice weather! - is a super-power. I know that if I get to a conclusion in this setting it is likely one of my better ones.

I love walking too. My other strategy is to go to the sauna. I just go to the gym where I have a membership and head straight into the sauna room. No one in their right mind would bring a phone into the sauna so you get a bunch of people who are all just quietly daydreaming. It's beautiful and relaxing.

> It takes up just enough mental energy to not get bored, but it lets me think about things with an unstressed mind.

This is a really good observation.

Lately, knitting has been scratching this itch for me.

Weaving for me. I've even picked up a small "pocket" loom, that's about A5 paper size that allows me to practice tapestry techniques on the move. This summer I plan on taking it to parks, brewery patios, etc.

Weaving looks like fun!

One of the things I appreciate about knitting is how accommodating it is as a hobby. If I want to really focus on knitting, I can choose a project that uses a lot of complex stitches, cables, etc. If I just want to zone out and feel like I'm making progress, I can choose a simpler pattern that just does the same stitches over and over.

If I want to make something large and intricate, I can pick a pattern that uses multiple colors. But if I want something portable, I can pick a pattern that just needs a single ball of yarn and a single circular needle.

My most novel ideas have come when my mind isn't distracted. It's really overlooked and is such a frequent source of inspiration that I tried to capture how I experience it in my own work life.

https://jaisenmathai.com/articles/latent-product-development...

Nice blog and article, thanks for sharing. I agree - some of my best ideas come naturally when not doing much else.

Swinging in a swing works well also

This used to work for me, but inner-ear aging has made swings no phone for me. Though I'd probably take the chance on a trapeze or big enough rope swing at the beach!

Long runs do it for me

For me the trick is those Metal Earth puzzles. Lego is amazing (I have a tattoo of a Lego brick, heh) but it’s almost too freeform. Even with the kits, I find myself wanting to do more, add on, change, etc. The Metal Earth models make that a lot harder, so I can just have my hands busy and focused while my mind wanders.

+1 for legos

those bricks helped me out of burnout towards the end of my studies (14 exams in 3 months…yes, you can do that in Italy)

now I keep new unopened boxes (+ my childhood stash) ready for future dark days

Perfect! I found shooting baskets alone really gets the creativity going. Perhaps active movement tells the brain to "wake up?"

This is the most important and impactful decision that an average person (i.e. all of us here) will make regarding the quality of his mental life.

This week I ordered a SIM card compatible with my Nokia dumb phone. I have a smartphone for work, and I intend for it to be off and in a drawer when I get home in the evenings.

I’ve realized also that having a dedicated space to do computing activities, the kind encouraged by having an immobile desktop computer rather than a phone, tablet or laptop, is immensely important for my mental integrity. I’m bringing that back too.

Only recently, like in the last year, have I found my phone just sucking me in. I am mindlessly browsing whatever (TikTok, Xiao Hong Shu, Reddit) and then suddenly my time has slipped away. The thing is, I'm not young by any means. I figured I was aged out of the risk that the phone could devour my time but I was so mistaken in thinking that way. Compared to how I felt my time went and was spent when I was younger (pre-internet days) this feels awful and draining and so damn easy to slip into. Feels like life is on pause yet time is still slipping away as fast as ever.

A few years ago I was having dinner with a 70y old pastor and his wife. Obviously both extremely engaged with the community etc. Totally tripped me up to realize the wife had become addicted to YouTube. She almost started playing a video at the table as we were having desert.

Doom-scrolling and short-form videos seem to not discriminate by age. I know lots of middle-aged to elderly people who can sit on their phones and scroll for hours on end every day.

My boomer relatives seem especially susceptible to this. As our local community ties atrophy, I find many old folks with less social contact tend to turn to social media to compensate.

I also wonder if the aging brain is particularly vulnerable to some of the darker patterns these platforms employ? It certainly seems like it from the small number of data points I've seen.

Distractions aren't new; but they are more 24/7

24 hour "news" is a great example; we leave it on in the background, as Radio or TV, but we're not listening to gain information, we're listening to be entertained - amygdala activated.

With AM radio and broadcast TV, low efforts were mostly limited to 2 hour segments from the 80s-90s; then in the late 90s, cable tv became standard, then in the 2000s the internet (chats, reddit, hacker news), and then the smartphone...

yep. in my parents case, it might be that they've always thought I was the young, addicted zoomer, and it could never happen to them. it happened to them and now there's no self awareness.

Young people may even have some level of resistance from exposure. It's effective on all ages.

My phone is decent enough to read books... the large iPhone is not so far different in size than the paperbacks I used to enjoy reading when I was younger. And, in a pinch, I can use it for important things. To send a message to someone I care to communicate with or to look up something urgently, or maybe the maps app if I need to go somewhere. But for all other purposes it is worthless to me. 6 months ago I was debugging my furnace and I had a Youtube video to help with that... and it's just unwatchable on the tiny screen. I found myself going back to my desk to watch it on the big screen. Though, even on that, Youube is very unappealing unless I'm looking for something specific.

On the computer monitor(s), I could lose the entire day here on HN or (less often now days) reddit. I still can't understand the appeal of gluing my eyeballs to a phone screen.

Lucky for me, I could never get used to the small screens of mobile phones as a serious computing or web browsing device. While I still rely on my mobile phone for basic tasks like making calls, sending messages, and on the rare occasion, reluctantly typing emails when I don't have a laptop handy, my primary computing and web browsing device remains my laptop, with Emacs and Firefox as my main tools.

Surprisingly, the one thing that occasionally manages to distract me is this very forum - Hacker News! :) If I observe myself spending too much time on Hacker News, I block it at the /etc/hosts level. I have a little shell script to point news.ycombinator.com to 127.0.0.1 when I don't want to be browsing HN. HN provides a nifty solution of its own too in the form of the "noprocrast" setting in your HN profile page. If you haven't checked it out yet, it is definitely worth considering.

Apart from that, I think I've been able to escape the traps of modern social media. Also, I still depend quite a bit on physical textbooks, a rollerball pen, and a stack of plain A4 paper for most of my learning, thinking, and exploration activities. This routine has helped me to stay away from modern social media too. So, fortunately, I still have the luxury of boredom in my life which I find to be an essential ingredient for digesting new knowledge as well as finding creative solutions to difficult problems. I've found that letting my mind wander aimlessly sometimes leads to new insights when I least expect them. I think it also helps with creativity and reflection, in general, which is likely a nice bonus too.

`noprocrast` has one upside over /etc/hosts though, which is that when you've hit the limit you can not just go and disable it, you have to wait for the timeout. Definitely one of the features I'm very grateful for on HN.

You can just open a private tab though.

Yes, but I prefer being an active participant, so that doesn't cut it for me. I want to comment, reply, vote and flag, passive consuming alone does not scratch my itch.

>>>>When you are daydreaming (or mind-wandering, as it is referred to within scientific circles), memories that you thought were lost forever can come to the surface again.” >>>

I have been thinking about this lately. Not just in the context of smartphone use but being devoted to some mind consuming endeavour like building a startup.

I have been building and operating company for over 15 years now (I am 43 now). During those years I had amazing quality of life due to success of the business. However, at the same time I spent most of my daydreaming hours on thinking how to grow my business. Now when business is about to be sold and I don't think about the growth that much I am starting to realise I don't remember as many things from my childhood as most of people around me. I keep wondering whether this is common to other people who have been obsessed about something for many years and forgot to daydream about their earlier years.

Even short day dreams can be incredibly productive which is why I keep my phones in the other room away from me.

This forces me to get up and walk into the other room every time I have to do 2FA at work which has a ton of benefits. I'll bring dishes or cups to the kitchen on the way, very frequently have useful thoughts about whatever I'm working on, get up out of my chair more frequently, and look at things farther away than my screen which relaxes the eyes.

In general, I advocate for avoiding any product with an infinite scroll as I find them detrimental to my own health, extremely addictive, barely rewarding, and frequently enriching to people I barely have any good impressions of.

I think having time and opportunity to be bored is actually a luxury that many have nowadays. Growing up in a village where my grandma was basically doing subsistence farming, I recall that she didn't have that moment to daydream. This was not uncommon some time ago, as this great post from last week about labour movement was mentioning [1].

Given this, I find that daydreaming is in a way an expression of a freedom and luxury that we have. I find myself starting to think deeply about some topics in those moments. Spending that time on a smartphone/social media is wasting a freedom that we have. I used to check news or watch something more frequently before I had this realization and not doing that has greatly improved my state of mind.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43856798

"What is life is full of care, we have no time to stand and stare" - William Henry Davies

ON Saturday was waiting to meet people on a road that had just been reopened after a May Day (traditional British style with May Queen etc.) parade. Other people were doing the same.

I looked around and noticed people (some still in costume etc. so interesting crowd) and looked at buildings (its a pretty street, even though I know it well) and was quite happy.

One thing I noticed was the everyone else who was waiting for people was on their phones, almost all the time they were there.

Obsessive business is the opposite of mindfulness.

It also kills casual social interaction. Talking to someone who is standing next to you.

Before smartphones existed, I used to carry a book with me everywhere. Or a comic. Or a notebook. Or a puzzle. When a situation got boring or unbearable, I'd pull out whatever I had in my bag and occupy myself with it. But it was cumbersome: a book is heavy, a puzzle breaks, pencils fall out, and so on. So sometimes I had no choice but to look at anything in my surroundings that was more interesting than what was currently happening.

Because the world is interesting, yes, but only in spurts, and only for some people.

It's been this way before and after the arrival of smartphones. Some of us have always felt the need to disconnect from what didn't interest us. But it's never been as easy and convenient as it is now. In a second, you can access all of human knowledge, record a memory, see where you are on a map, or simply entertain your brain with a game. Everything we used to carry in a bag now fits in the palm of your hand.

Maybe I'm just rude, but if someone snatched a book from my hands just because I wasn't enjoying a sunset, I'd be mad. If they then called me a slave or a zombie, I'd throw the book at their face. Or the puzzle. Or the iPad. Well, maybe not the iPad, because it's really heavy and expensive, but you get the idea. Why? Because I decide what to dedicate my mental resources to at any given moment.

I decide when to pay attention. There will be times when I want to share a look with the person I'm with, and others when I simply won't have anything to say or do. And still others when I'd prefer to be far, far away, somewhere else entirely. My mind is like that: it wanders and rebels. Perhaps others prefer to cling to the apparent certainties of what's in front of them; I don't dislike that, but I can't and don't want to do it constantly. Nobody can.

I was one of the first persons with mobile devices on me (dell axim s51 (or something like that)) before mobile phones were a thing, but since then, which was like over 20 years ago I do daily walks - 60 minutes+ through the local woods - with my dogs where I forbid myself in using my phone.

I do active thinking about projects I have, I recapitulate human interactions and reweight my decisions, I decide stuff that is going to happen. Someimes I do nothing, its not like I plan this stuff. I just plan not using any devices. (I also dont listen to music).

A friend and me worked for like a year back to back on a project and I like forced him to split work-time and come with me with the dogs. He absolutely loved it and said recently that he still forces himself to take a longer break for walks because that just makes him more productive.

Re: dog walks

The rule I apply is that I can only use my phone if I'm walking on hard surfaces.

Once I'm on a beach, a country path or rolling fields then it gets turned to flight mode and put away.

>before mobile phones were a thing, but since then, which was like over 20 years ago

20 years ago was the mid 2000s, and I had a cell phone for 7 or 8 years at that point. Also, the Palm Pilot (1997) had been around for about 5 years before the Axim (2002).

I've been almost completely off social media (and candy - potentially a larger problem in the past for me) for a month other than to check once or twice a day to see if somebody has messaged me (rarely) and it really has been rather profound to experience life with the lack of regular hits of dopamine. It is such a subtle "drug". I've still been on a computer and surfing the web but not nearly the same amount of time as I was spending on my phone and social. I sat a ten day Vipassana course in 2016 - a profound experience that was at least an order of magnitude more impactful with regard to being off of "screens". There's definitely a cost that accompanies any perceived benefits of social media interaction. As in all things - balance!

Did anyone ever research the dopamine-level fluctuations in HN-reading subjects?

If it were somehow formalized, I’d be 0% surprised to see that HN is particularly bad from a distraction point of view. Other sites, I know with perfect certainty that I am going there to waste time. Here, there is a chance that I’ll actually come across something legitimately useful.

It is like Pavlov’s bell—the important part being the randomness, of course.

I always find it funny to see, on any social media site, “I’ve quit almost all social media sites, except this one.” Well, we have successfully identified which one was most addictive I guess.

While I generally appreciate this advice to allow yourself to be bored for all the creative benefits that come with it, I also resent it. When large portions of my life were outside of my control due the 8 hour workday, I felt like I don't want to squander what little time I had to myself while commuting daydreaming. I try not to judge people who are glued to their phones, they could be scrolling TikTok, or they could be reading great literature.

I felt like I don't want to squander what little time I had to myself while commuting daydreaming

The whole point of this discussion is that daydreaming is not a worthless activity, therefore time spent daydreaming is not "squandered."

I used to think this way. I used to think that, despite my busy schedule, I could squeeze good literature in. I *only* need to steal 30 minutes every day; it could be on the bus, right before bed, or during lunch. In aggregate, thats 2.5 hours a week!

In reality, one does not simply sit down on a whim and go into Book Reading mode. Maybe others are built for it, but I have to set aside time in advance, drive to a cafe, and really hunker down. And I don't always have the bandwidth or gas to do that.

If you frame daydreaming as a mentally expensive activity with variable return (5% eureka moments, 95% tedium), and I'm starved for time already, you'll be much more tempted to reach for the mental junk-food. Low-mental expense, immediate, guaranteed reward.

I'm learning I can't have my cake and eat it to. I can't fill my schedule yet also try to pursue these activities that ask me for sustained, long term attention. Something has to give.

>Low-mental expense, immediate, guaranteed reward.

For me, it isn’t rewarding. When I look back at my time doomscrolling, it doesn’t feel restorative, rewarding, fulfilling. Resending I have been kind of forcing myself to do more things, instead of telling myself that I “need” that mindless downtime.

And I have found that it actually gives me more energy to force myself to read a book instead of mindlessly scrolling around, to commit to one episode of quality programing instead of rewatching something easy while also playing around on the phone.

Much like committing to physical exercise gives you more energy, stamina, etc. over time than just “resting around”, training to lengthen my attention span gives me more bandwidth for things that take an attention span. Practicing reading 30 mins a day on the bus makes me better at reading on the bus and other places that aren’t hunkered down in a very specific setting. It’s not easy at first and some days are better than others, much like working out or eating healthy, my long term satisfaction is much higher than junk food, digital or otherwise.

I read parent's point as having a hierarchy of stuff they want to do, and daydreaming is not worthless, just not as important or rewarding as any other thing they were doing during their commute.

For instance for people reading around a hundred books a year, would they want to spend more time daydreaming instead of reading ? Probably no.

Fiber is also not a worthless foodstuff, but it's a hard sell to be told to eat a dry, gritty bran muffin when I'm starving at brunch.

Fiber will help you feel full! Hey you started with the analogy :)

I don't think anyone is forcing this on you, I think it's your choice on how you spend your time. Allowing for periods of boredom is just more choice available to you. If you're already saturated, I understand that you wouldn't want to embrace that.

Nobody's picking on you dude. You didn't have to read TFA.

"Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why I daydream on company time."

I do not know about this. As in, I do not doubt that necessity of daydreaming, and I do not doubt something is being lost. However, I think daydreaming can also be dangerous in of itself. There is even a term for it called, "maladaptive daydreaming."

Obviously, that is the extreme on the opposite side of the spectrum. But from what I recall reading, daydreaming, evenly moderately, can be somewhat unproductive. I mean that in the sense that daydreaming can provide the brain with a shortcut to a feeling that would be better served if an action provided it.

For example, one can daydream about going to the gym and becoming more healthy. One can follow the daydream all the way through. However, at least in my case, I have caught myself enjoying the pleasurable feelings and the "one day, I will..." too much to the point that I never go to the gym.

I think my brain has learned that I can quell whatever feeling I am having in the moment by daydreaming. It's my brain's shortcut. It's as if my mind say, "Why spend the effort to do something when we can just imagine how it feels and enjoy the reward now?"

Like anything in life, the key is balance. However, creating that balance is not easy in my experience.

>It's my brain's shortcut. It's as if my mind say, "Why spend the effort to do something when we can just imagine how it feels and enjoy the reward now?"

But I'd wager that, deep down, you know that the feeling you get thinking about it is far different from the actual feelings (both physical and mental) you'd get if you'd actually done it, no? I know that's been the case in the past for myself with regards to some thoughts - I know what I'm doing and I know that nothing will improve until I do it, and then I'm thrilled in ways beyond just what the thought provided when I actually execute.

This also kinda misses the forest for the trees. Not acting on a desire you think of is separate from the idea that people don't give their brains a break.

> But I'd wager that, deep down, you know that the feeling you get thinking about it is far different from the actual feelings (both physical and mental) you'd get if you'd actually done it, no?

I suppose there is probably some ratio for any given task that is amount of effort:reward. So, for some tasks, I would gladly take a quarter of the reward to avoid spending ten times the effort to acquire it.

> Not acting on a desire you think of is separate from the idea that people don't give their brains a break.

I agree and disagree. While there are obvious differences, I do believe not giving one's brain a break is partly causative in depleting one's desire/ability to act.

We all have different experiences, but I do not think daydreaming is really giving my mind a break. I find my mind to be quite active while daydreaming. But everyone is different, I suppose.

>... I do believe not giving one's brain a break is partly causative in depleting one's desire/ability to act.

The response I am flippantly tempted to argue is that it's good for people to not be acting/doing all the time and that downtime is essential, but, as we've both acknowledged, there's nuance there, and it all boils down to what the desire is and what the consequence(s) is/are should we not act.

>I find my mind to be quite active while daydreaming. But everyone is different, I suppose.

Totally! I mentioned elsewhere in this thread that I love backpacking in silence and without using my phone. These are 3-4 day trips deep in the wilderness, completely disconnected from the rest of the world and entirely in my own headspace. I love those moments, but I know plenty of people in meatspace who've expressed to me that they don't know how I can do that because of the way their own trains of thought run/work.

There was a study mentioned in one of Dr. K(YouTube)’s videos which cited that daydreaming or unstructured time is used for subconscious processing of thoughts and emotions and not giving your mind time for that causes negative consequences like like of sleep.

Of course, when I looked up citations on this I found some links on maladaptive daydreaming as well ._.”

I experience something similar. How do you avoid the pitfalls of daydreaming? Regular productivity aids like todos and pomodoro help to a degree but I wonder if there’s something else out there.

I have no good story and also no excuse: I'm too online, like most people. I feel like my mind is usually "on rails". That's what it feels like, always staring into a computer or a phone.

Had a kid recently and didn't like how often I was on my phone around her. I bought one of those phones that looks like a 90's/early aughts 5GHZ phone, but rather than being attached to a lan line, it's BT paired to my smartphone. So I leave it charging in a drawer and if someone really needs to get a hold of me, they call and the BT phone rings. There might be a way to configure text messages to make it ding too, haven't looked into it.

American parenting does not value boredom anywhere near enough. It's a valuable part of being a smart human. Society needs to value boredome more highly.

As a parent I highly value boredom. At ages 6 and 8 electronics limited to 30 mins per day.

Parent of 5 and 3 year-olds here - absolutely. We don't own a tablet and the most my kids really know how to do is turn the TV to a show or two they like (relax, everyone, I'll be teaching them how to use tech when their lives actually warrant the need). They're wonders at restaurants, can sit there for an hour plus without any screens and they're great - hell, I went to a pretty nice spot for my birthday recently that took 2.5 hours and they crushed it, we all had an absolute blast.

Our phones stay in my wife's home office during the day, since we want to model not staring at them.

They come to my work sometimes, and I've had a few people express how they're impressed when they watch them entertain themselves, and my response is always, "They have to learn how to be bored".

Parent of a 5 year old here, and it sounds like we run a similar household. I am very proud of my daughter for being able to go an hour or 2 anywhere with little external stimulation. She engages in the adult conversation, and often makes interesting observations which we enjoy chatting about. She never asks for a screen when we are out anywhere.

I am often surprised when we are out at restuarants and cafes, and other kids that age are staring into tablets with their headphones on. How are these kids going to develop adult social skills when they are oblivious to them going on around them?

Also car journeys. We enjoy things like playing I-spy, and singing along to songs together. I would hate it so much if my kid was glued to a tablet watching stuff.

Boredom is very very important for a childs development. I feel that the reduction in kids boredom time is a big reason we are experiencing epidemics of mental health revolving around concepts such as FOMO and personal image.

Wonderful! At the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own horn, that 2.5-hour meal I referenced was bookended by a 2-hour drive each way. Just a bit of music in the car, but plenty of great conversation with our family and my parents - observing the world around them, asking questions, singing along, being silly together. It was a tremendously cup-filling afternoon/evening with nary a screen in sight.

I love your point about social interactions, too - we'll tiptoe around certain subjects occasionally, but for the most part I love when they (especially my oldest, but only because my youngest is still coming out of the toddler phase) listen in and ask questions and try to understand what we're chatting about. It always reminds me of being a kid and thinking it was super cool to be able to hang with the grown-ups and learn about whatever they're chatting about.

I recently rewatched an episode of a popular show from my childhood, from he '80s,for nostalgia. In it, an interviewer asks a group of teenagers a series of questions regarding some sensational issue. The level of steady attentiveness and calmness they exhibited was astonishing, like literally focusing with eyes and body language on the interviewer for the entire discussion without flinching or turning awa, contrary to what today seem to be the "passive-hysterical" undercurrent of young people.

> Boredom was part of life, and we accepted and adjusted to this reality.

I remember myself and my siblings often complaining, “Mom! I’m bored!” With the “bored” long and drawn out.

This post caused me to stop and reflect that I haven’t heard my kids complain about boredom in more years that I can recall. They have audiobooks on demand, movies on demand, YouTube on demand, game consoles on demand, etc. It’s almost impossible to become bored. What to do? I remember how much I hated being bored, is it cruel to enforce boredom on my kids (that are still at home) or cruel not to?

> These moments used to be given over to silent reflection or conversation with whoever is around. Now, for most of us, nearly all of them are grabbed by our phones.

Maybe this is true for the author, but before smartphones I wasn't just chatting up strangers while I waited for the elevator or reflecting on my life. I was staring at the elevator light getting angry that it was taking too long.

I spent a lot of time being bored and being angry that I was bored. Now I can consume information and learn new things ALL THE TIME. It's amazing!

> moments used to be given over to silent reflection or conversation with whoever is around

Noticeable on pubic transit particularly

I used to ride busses before cell phones and smartphones and no one was exactly striking up conversations back then either

I'm sure it happens, but it seemed rare to me. People read books or magazines, or were just too cramped and crowded to bother trying to interact

The population of bus riders skews younger—even excluding the school bus, I think, lots of folks public transit are young professionals and college student. The nostalgia for a time that didn’t actually happen hits this crew early.

Yes

For college students they likely almost always find themselves surrounded by familiar faces, even classmates, because they are all going to class at the same time on the same transit

So yeah, it would be easier to strike up a random conversation with people you recognize from campus or just people who are all part of your similar demographic

I used to ride the train to and from work, I'd usually read the paper (cheap if you bought it in the afternoon) or sleep (most mornings).

I am riding public transit to my uni for 5 years by now and the number of times I was approached for a casual conversation is 0 for today :D

I never saw anything like that happen.

It's been over 40 years since I last stepped onto a school bus, but it was always a raucous place, requiring bus drivers to be fairly strong authority figures to keep the kids in their seats. I wonder if it's like a tomb now, with all heads bowed over their phones.

I can't even begin to imagine the hell that telepathic like electronic message services provide children in these environments. It was bad enough when there was at least the possibility of moderation by adults.

As someone who was once a child who liked to read on the bus the new world sounds nice.

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Neither here nor there, but the photographer was Stanley Kubrick

The thing is if you saw someone back then who did not put the paper or book down while say, crossing the street, going up the stairs, using an escalator, using a urinal, ordering from a cashier, picking up takeout, every waking moment there was, you'd assume they had some sort of pathology going on.

I’m listening to “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman” and it’s amazing how much of his stories are random hobbies and experiments. It really makes me reflect on how I spend my time the past 12 years since I got my smart phone. I can’t imagine anyone being like him nowadays with the amount of screens there are.

So one interesting thing I find myself doing if I'm not taking my ADHD meds on a given day, is day dreaming way more. I tend to lose focus and run around in my own mind even if I'm doing something that's __supposed__ to be stimulating! (ex, using my phone) I don't know if that's a good thing to be fair... it hasn't ever felt helpful. I've had to rewind 20minutes in a movie because I realized I had created my own separate-but-parallel story in my own head that is only now just clashing with whatever plot point that is currently happening.

To me at least, it does feel like however optimized a thing is to take your attention, imagination is more attention-stealing.

Feels like this is also connected to the general move from individualism to collectivism. Most of our days are spent hearing other peoples ideas (podcasts, videos etc). Almost none is spent developing our own ideas and an actual personality based on personal experience etc.

To me, it feels more like a move to even more individualism. Previously, a lot of information was learned through your community, but now you can bypass all of that and get information directly by searching for it on your own online or hearing about it in a podcast or a video that you sought out. You don't need a local community to learn about the world.

The fact that we can each curate our own choice of media or news means we can also create our own echo chambers, so our chosen "realities" aren't as similar to our neighbors as they were when people all watched the same few channels on TV.

I agree though that it can also mean we're experiencing more of the world through other people, strangers, instead of experiencing it for ourselves. I think our exposure to so many different experiences (but not direct experiences) also has an effect on our perception of what's normal or ideal, i.e. sitting being idle feels even worse when you see other people online doing amazing things.

I have my daydreaming while taking a shower. And I have my best ideas when I take a shower. So yes, disconnecting from digital devices has its value.

If you need a way to ease into mind clarity and distraction-free time, try taking an hour to an hour and a half of walking outside. You still need to maintain focus somewhat, but the mind quickly starts to wander.

I know that this can sound counterintuitive, but the best strategy to keep the phone away from me is to be on my desktop computer.

Different from when I'm on my smartphone, I do not feel any anxiety to check social networks using my computer. So I can focus more on learning some stuff, coding, organizing my personal data, checking my appointments, checking the tech news, or even playing some games (to have some fun).

This is what I've been doing lately too. I've taken all apps off my phone that I spent significant amounts of time on. My phone is now something I use for a few minutes, and then stop using, with the exception of navigational apps and music. My goal was to return to pre-smartphone days where having a laptop or a desktop computer puts just enough friction in so that I don't habitually whip out my device and start scrolling or surfing when I feel bored.

Another part of this for me is not going to sites that have infinite scroll. This means that even on my laptop, I will not go to sites where I cannot finish consuming whatever content was there.

For sites like HN where there is a rotating front page, I have an RSS feed of the front page that refreshes infrequently so I can sample what was there without always needing to return to the front page to look for new content. Currently I have this set to 1 hour. This has been a decent mix between missing interesting content and having a feed that shows me way more articles than I can consume. My RSS reader is self-hosted at home, which means when I leave the house I am not tempted to use my phone to read that RSS content.

The premise seems to be that screentime = social media brain rot which is not always the case. In fact, over the past year, screentime increased my enjoyment from daydreaming massively. I love daydreaming about my own hard scifi setting and LLMs have been an amazing resource to enhance that.

I often wonder how much creative productivity is lost on a societal level because of the phone addiction.

I often wonder if we would focus politically on different topics.

I often wonder if I would procrastinate less in the real world and face important decisions much faster.

> Can you remember the last time you daydreamed? Or coped with boredom without reaching for your phone? Before the era of mobile technology, most of us had no choice but to wait without stimulation, and often, that meant being bored.

This line never hits right to me. I used to religiously carry around the New Yorker and / or NYRB and / or London Review of Books etc, often with a book too, so that I could read while waiting for friends, appointments, public transport etc, so I was never bored or daydreaming when I didn't want to be. I think this needs to be rephrased to account for the difference in quality between printed material and the infinite, deliberately-addictive makeup of the modern internet, which is the real issue.

i often carry a book. yes. it's much easier to let my eyes and mind drift from the page than from my phone, even if the book is good

edit: even a steam deck is somehow less distracting than a phone, despite distraction being one of its main purposes

I believe phones and social media are why so many movies, media, fiction just seems generally worse now. Humans make lots of connections when their minds wander. Stanley Kubrick came up with the match cut in 2001 (the bone cutting to the satellite) playing around with a broom in between shots. When absent external stimuli, human brains explore the latent space around us, with constant external stimuli, we devote cognitive resources to managing and understanding the influx of information.

There once was a monk, imprisoned over earthly matters, it was wonderful, finally he had time to meditate all day without distraction.

I really want to get rid of my smartphone but I worry about the functionality I will lose. Maps in particular when I travel, having to carry a laptop always. I guess those are really it… not too bad now that I think about it but am I going to carry a paper map?

As a young child with ADHD and Autism, one of my first memories was being called out for daydreaming by the teacher. The problem is that daydreaming has been ridiculed even before there were smart phones, from having kids needing to be on Ritalin to pay attention to smartphones occupying our time, to the chaos of politics "flooding the zone" by taking away all those things about the government that were likeable. (I know this isn't the forum for it, but trying to shutdown the National Weather Service is probably the biggest assault on all those ADHD/Autistic people who liked playing with all the computer stuff the NWS produced. It was like once I found out about that, who needed The Weather Channel anymore?!)

The point is, we've been driven to be more "productive" than creative. After a while, that productivity creates burnout. Being prohibited from collecting your thoughts or wandering about other stuff has created more problems.

Discouraging daydreaming then making it into a commodity to be exploited by capitalism is probably the most terrible thing we have ever done.

We need to create a society that allows for daydreaming again, gratis. The phone is not the problem, only part of it. I can leave my phone on my desk or in the bedroom. We just need to stop being on-call for people who don't need--nay, deserve--our attention.

Does anyone else find that there’s something especially addictive about it being “your phone”? Like I can’t get nearly as engaged on a laptop or even an iPad. It’s like I’m connected to this one specific device.

I suspect it's a mixture of instant gratification combined with portability. We can carry a little dopamine dispenser around with us wherever we go, which (assumedly) causes us to build dependency on it.

Made me think of Jean-Jacques Rousseau "Reveries d'un promeneur solitaire" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reveries_of_the_Solitary_Walke...

When letting our mind wandering (and walking actually helps me to remove some distractions) can bring some peace and eventually some new perspective.

Is my brain broken somehow? I'm either at my desk or on my phone/tablet a good 75-80% of my waking hours, and have all this information and entertainment at my fingertips, and I'm _still_ bored half of the time or find my mind wandering or thinking about all sorts of things happening around me when I least expect it.

Phone costs about $30-50 a month or so.

There are 4.5 weeks a month, which is 9 MegaMillions tickets. At $5 a pop, that's $45 a month.

I suggest the MegaMillions tickets get you better daydreaming than the phone does ...

The irony of this article: the demographic in question likely won't have the attention span to read it through

But I guess there's always chatgpt

Insightful read and great discussion. If I may add, I believe this extends well beyond Gen Z. Many of us—balancing work, family, and the constant buzz of digital life—rarely take time to pause and reflect. In my case, it sadly took the death of my father to finally slow down. That quiet period brought a profound shift in how I see my future, especially around creativity and purpose. Sometimes, it’s only in stillness that true clarity begins to take shape.

My screen-free parenting style is centered around my thought that boredom is a blessing, a luxury, and a life skill all wrapped in one. I’ve been encouraged that the world at large is somewhat beginning to rethink these things lately. Our peer group of parents has a bit of a no phone pact that I hope they keep up with for as long as possible (they’re only 6 right now so we’ll see)

Best part of my day is commuting by bike. Fresh air, activity, and the brain can work or wander. Nice start to the day, and a nice way to wind down after work.

Commuting by car doesn't hit the same nerves. Listening to the radio or something, angry at other drivers, stuck in a cage in traffic. But walking works as well.

Calls to mind Edgar Allan Poe's Sonnet to Science. Written almost two centuries ago, it bemoans dreams lost to the unyielding reality of science. Poe doesn't resolve this concern in the sonnet, but his subsequent works indicate he did overcome it. How will we I wonder.

Reference: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25525/old/25525-h/files/2151...

You can get all the day dreaming benefits through meditation as well. 30 minutes of a small background noise like rain or something and just sit with your thoughts. Does pretty much the same thing and you can still use a device during the day.

This reminds me of a recent power outage with children never who had experienced one before, and they have no idea what to do; we can read / game by lantern, go to sleep early.

As much as I like the message and agree with a lot of what the article says; I feel the article itself is a tad long for how little it says.

I would absolutely go landline if I had the option of doing so due to work.

The article would be better if the author replaced "smartphone" with "smartphone screen". A ton of activities are made better by smartphones - a walk or a run with podcast or music, a drive or a bike ride with navigation, etc. It's specifically the screen that takes 100% of your attention and prevents you from daydreaming.

To each their own, IMO. As the other commenter says, some folk might find that distracting.

When I go hiking/backpacking, I don't listen to music at all, as I enjoy the peacefulness of the forest and the break that my mind gets from the noise of life. I also typically default to paper maps after having done a lot of research via guidebooks, old and new, about where I'm heading. I'll reach for my phone if I really need it, but usually I don't, and I don't roll with a GPS track I downloaded from someone's past trip. I'm there to enjoy the environment around me, and that means hearing it, too.

Same for driving. Maybe I'll use Waze if it's somewhere I've never really been before, but typically I'll just look it up beforehand and find my way there on my own.

When it comes to those navigation choices, wrt both driving and hiking, it gives me a better understanding of the area, and a stronger sense of route options, and therefore a stronger sense of myself being able to find my own way, than if I were to rely on a screen (or Google Maps/Waze audio telling me where/when to turn and me following blindly).

I think cycling is a particularly good example of this. Using the phone on a mount for navigation can help you go more interesting places you're less familiar with, but you have to look at your surroundings to be vaguely safe. I don't cycle with music or anything, I don't think I'd feel safe doing that but I really enjoy a long cycle with the phone on a mount for directions.

A garmin or something would likely be better for this, but I don't particularly want to buy one and the phone does a fine job.

Some audio is poor for daydreaming though. Audiobooks and podcasts often require attention (some music too).

pushback:

if you are listening to a podcast or music, your mind is following those rhythms and thoughts. Not clear this is better when running that listening to the rhythms of your own body; breath, heart, footfall, and the sounds of the world around you.

If you are driving using a GPS for navigating, how much of your mind are you using to track where you are, spotting landmarks, etc. This is a FUNDAMENTAL aspect of almost all motive forms of live, the circuitry is deep in the brain, and if you are not activating it, you don't even know what you are missing.

Easy fix is just go for 2 hour walk. You can really walk properly with eyes in your phone so you'd be forced to daydream.

I guess you guys are all out of work EDtech scammers? If there is one thing worse than phones it's "educational software"

I just don't pay my prepaid plan unless I need it. And I don't pick up phone calls unless from family. And there is no internet. (the plan provides one-way calls and texts, and in emegergency I can get half a day of connectivity by a #1-whatever.

this is bliss.

Being around people blocks daydreaming as much as phones. It takes away the boredom.

You can still day dream when you drive. Long drives to work especially are good for this. Just make sure you don’t kill anybody.

I usually can't. Too much traffic. The rare times I have to drive between metro areas to visit family do offer such circumstances though.

The question these think pieces never seem to answer is, "What did phones do that books didn't already do?"

Books are static and expensive? The front page of <insert social media> reliably changes every day for free without you having to make any choices except to consume. With a book, you have to actively go out, choose, and obtain a book, and then put in a reasonable amount of effort to consume the long form content. Many readers will follow that up with active engagement in the form of thinking about it, daydreaming about it, obtaining other media related to it, writing fanfictions, or conversations with friends.

Anyone who was a bookworm before the late 90s will also be familiar with the problem of your consumption rate vastly outpacing your ability to obtain books, leading to more of those alternatives.

It's not like books are a universal positive either though. It's possible to read so much that your ability to be creative suffers, which is what "phone critics" are alleging here. Putting down the research material is a common bit of writing advice.

Before smartphones and the Internet, I almost always had a paperback book to read. Bus rides were either me talking to friends (rare, since our schedule didn't match often), reading a book, or uncomfortably fighting the urge to doze off.

While, yes, social media gives us a more pronounced dopamine hit-and-crave cycle, we've always had means of escape at our fingertips.

A smartphone and a book are, by and large, different modes of escape with different impacts on the escapee. Scrolling through social media is a far cry from focusing on a single subject for an extended period of time, which is what reading a book does.

You could always read a book on your phone.

Totally! But then you've got to make sure all notifications are turned off from every app that might hit you up - not just silenced, but so that they don't even appear over top of the book. And then, of course, there's the temptation to swipe over to a different app that's right there.

A book, however, is just a book.

Both are forms of escape. That can be escaping common boredom to pass the time, or it can be escaping bad feelings or a bad life situation. Also, I'm not convinced that a compelling fiction book that's struck a chord is actually a meaningfully different dopamine drip than scrolling Instagram.

It's worth comparing and contrasting. What changed and what stayed the same?

Changed: the ease of switching when restlessness kicks in. I have the Kindle app on my phone with several partially-read books in it. I can also pull up a browser tab at any moment. It takes some degree of effort to stay on-task in a single book, and it's probably analogous to meditation.

Same: escapism.

With digital pursuits it's easy to fall into FOMO anxiety cycles. The classic "stuck on the Netflix menu" conundrum. When you pay attention to it, you realize you're just kind of trying to minmax the ratio of enjoyment to boredom in one's escapism, which can't be a healthy way to treat leisure.

The Shower Principle

One reason I like commuting by subway in new york is that there is a similar forcing function where you lose internet connection. Not quite as severe as the shower, but a good set "location" and not completely engaged.

Related:

To Do Nothing

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596476

Substack is the new Wired. Fn long articles about nothing. Author is seemingly hooked on ted level what the fuck I'm talking about. You are not bored, good, now you don't have enough time building things your brain connected together from ideas learned by reading books and browsing the net. This is much much worse imo.

Btw phones worsen your eyesight if you use it often, like playing games.

Phones are a net positive for students. I'd much rather their preferred tech giant have complete control over their minds than teachers (failed people) and the government (failed state).

Boredom is highly overrated.

The point is not that boredom is good but that the fidget spinner in your pocket conditions you to experience boredom in an absence of stimuli. To sit and contentedly daydream or watch the world go by is very different from the anxious ennui a screen addiction engenders.

In small doses, in the correct circumstances, Boredom can be the Necessity that drives new ideas.

Put another way, think of it as an opportunity for more conscious reflection and exploration. Like sleep, but not just 'run the garbage collector and predictive simulation pre-cache' routines, instead time to consciously consider and critically cultivate new perspectives on issues that might have been vexing the individual.

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