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The Death of Daydreaming

(www.afterbabel.com)
707 points isolli | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.217s | source
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susam ◴[] No.43896261[source]
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.

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Etheryte ◴[] No.43896296[source]
`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.
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dalmo3 ◴[] No.43896876[source]
You can just open a private tab though.
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1. Brusco_RF ◴[] No.43908414[source]
I wish you didn't just put this information in my brain.