I am still thinking about focus and attention spans and boredom. I read Joel’s post: The constant need for a source of entertainment and that got me thinking even more. I loved that he starts talking about this time in his childhood with no technology around, and he wandered around the fields, playing with bottle caps and imagining they were spaceships (I also loved The Jetsons! 🙌).

He asks himself these questions:

Why would I wash the dishes without watching a video at the same time? Why would I fold my clothes without listening to a podcast too? Why would I have lunch without scrolling away on social media? Why would I go outside without carrying my phone at all times?

And then he asks:

Why would I not try, though?

To me, there are different layers to these questions:

• True multitasking (doing two cognitively demanding tasks at once) isn’t something we can actually do. We can’t read a text and listen to a podcast at the same time, these are conflicting cognitive efforts. Even when we think we are multitasking, we are not effectively processing information.
• Multitasking without cognitive conflicts: we can, however, combine two tasks that use different cognitive resources and don’t compete for the same type of attention. For example: listening to a podcast (passive audio input) while folding laundry or doing dishes.

This reminds me of the book “Deep Work” by Cal Newport, where he argues that the ability to focus intensely is a skill that must be trained. His advocates on training ourselves to be able to focus so we can better perform cognitively demanding tasks. But even if we start having distraction-free “focus” sessions every day to train ourselves, we will struggle if we can’t free our minds from a dependence on distractions.

Cal recommends training our brains to tolerate boredom. Habits like constantly checking our phones or jumping between tabs, condition us to avoid boredom and seek novelty. This damages our capacity for deep, focused work.

My concern when I see younger people constantly seeking distractions is that they completely lost their ability to have one moment, any moment in a quiet state without looking at a screen or having something in their ears. And I guess I wouldn’t be too surprised if all this multitasking were done exclusively in their leisure times. But seeing them doing that while they work, for 8 hours a day, that’s concerning.

Personally, I do listen to podcasts while doing dishes or cleaning the house. I even save favorite episodes to listen to at the gym, as an incentive to go. But I don’t listen to 8 hours of podcasts or watch videos on the background while I’m at work, doing cognitive efforts.

So, it’s NOT about ALWAYS doing ONE thing at a time. If we avoid pairing tasks that interfere with each other, like reading emails (language processing) with listening to a podcast (also language-heavy), we should be okay.

That said, I think Cal Newport is right: if we are constantly in this distracted fully excited state all the time, we can’t slow down anymore, even if we want to.

I think that with the amount of instant stimulation we carry in our pockets today, it’s way harder to even realize that we are in that state. Some people might not even remember (or know) what it feels like to be calm, quiet, and simply present—just observing the world or listening to their own thoughts.

And it’s a challenge for all of us; we are all being bombarded with an excess of information and entertainment. I noticed a shift in my ability to sit down and focus on reading a book a couple of years ago when I was still using the main social media apps (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram). I believe that deleting all those accounts four years ago helped me get back to enjoy reading again and embracing boredom sometimes.

I have been curating my online consumption patterns for quite a while now, and this post summarizes a bit my feelings about feeling hacked by the online world.

Anyway, thanks Joel for sharing your thoughts!

—-

Post 86/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I currently work with four colleagues who are between 15 to 20 years younger than me. They're great people, and I get along well with all of them. But recently, I’ve started to notice a clear generation gap. When they talk about things they see online—like YouTube trends, Instagram memes, or TikTok videos—I often find myself completely lost. I don’t recognize the references, and while they laugh, I realize I’m missing the context.

It’s funny, because when I was their age, I was the tech-savvy one. I was way more into computers and the internet than most of my peers.

The other day, we were chatting at lunch, and they mentioned that they CAN’T sit through a full-length movie without also using their phones, tablets, or even playing a game at the same time. They told me they just can’t focus on a single activity. There always has to be something else happening in the background, or they get bored. That completely blew my mind.

I asked them if it’s the same when they’re working, and they said yes. They often need extra stimulation while they work—whether it’s a podcast, a video, a TV show, or a documentary playing in the background. 😱 It reminded me of something I heard on Cal Newport’s Deep Questions podcast, where he described this behavior as “stimuli stacking.” That seems to describe exactly what they’re doing.

I told them I’m the opposite. I need quiet and focus to be productive. The only thing I can handle while working is music, and even then, it has to be a playlist I know well. Familiar songs become a kind of soothing background noise. Instrumental music works too, but anything with new lyrics or surprises will throw me off, especially if I’m doing mentally demanding work. Only during repetitive or mechanical tasks can I manage listening to a podcast, and even then, it has to be one I’m used to.

So, I noticed that this need for multiple sources of stimulation seems most common among people in their 20’s. I have other team members who are in their mid 30’s, and they’re more like me. They say they struggle to concentrate if something like a YouTube video is playing in the background. And they can watch a full-length movie without distractions.

Another thing I notice is that my younger colleagues will complete a task super-fast, they just want to get it done. And then I revise their work and point out things that they’ve missed or mistakes they’ve made. To me all these little errors are because they don’t take the time to reflect on what they’re doing, they don’t slow down, they don’t plan ahead. It could be just because they are young in the field, and they are still learning. But when I think about myself early in my career, I always took the time to read everything and plan how I would approach that task. I always take my time and focus on the details to understand the best way to complete an interior partitions take-off, for example.

It seems like this shift is generational. People who grew up in the 2000s were deeply shaped by the infinite amount of content and stimulation. Our patterns of attention and focus have really changed in the past few years, and now I’m really starting to see how those changes are showing up in my everyday work life.

I wonder if that’s happening everywhere, and if people in their 40’s like me are noticing the change.

—-

Post 84/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

The Internet. What a wonderful thing. Access to all kinds of information at our fingertips. Connecting people all over the world. Social media is here to allow sharing of ideas and information. Great ! The Internet evolved to be so ubiquitous that we are connected 24/7, even though we don't need to.

I lived almost two decades of my life in a world without Internet. And then I saw it coming. It was amazing! The forums, chats, the “surfing”, discovering pages at random, exploring the web without being followed by cookies and ads.

I totally understand Todd Presta in his post: “Lamentations of a Web 1.0 Dinosaur”:

“Doom Scrolling meant panning side-to-side in the 3D view of a first-person shooter video game called “Doom,” not filling your head with an infinite scrolling feed of bad news and wrath.” – Todd Presta

Nowadays, searching anything online is frustrating. Pages and pages of sponsored results. Ads everywhere! Click-bait galore!

And social media... what happened there? I felt super cool when I connected to BBS's back in the day. I became an early adopter of “social media” later. I told my friends about it. I remember I was super excited to have gotten an invite to create a Facebook account. I encouraged people to join! I was so innocent!

Today, in my mid-40's, I feel hacked. After 10+ years using the major social media services (Twitter/Facebook/Instagram), I was unknowingly conditioned to scroll through a news feed. I've unconsciously internalized this behavior; it has become a habit. I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts around 3 years ago.

This post from Brandon: I'm a Little Fed Up inspired me to write today. And I sympathize with his frustration:

I'm starting to miss my super quiet blog where I just chatted with folks over email. I just don't think I'm cut out for the modern internet. — Brandon's Journal

I have a Mastodon account and sometimes I wonder if I really want to keep it. Just because of the behavior it triggers in me: spending time scrolling through a feed. I curate my feed very carefully, but still, I see myself wanting to check out what’s new all the time, even though I don’t really need to. It's weird. Something reprogrammed by neuro-circuitry, and I crave for novelty all the time.

If I'm done checking my Mastodon feed, then I search for other sources of quick dopamine boosts. In my case now it's my RSS feed, my email, Discord, online forums. It's the same learned behavior in different environments. That bothers me.

Anyway, I am rethinking whatever I have left in terms of online inputs. The frequency, the volume of information, the usefulness.

—-

Post 12/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

📺 Every 6 months I review and update my digital subscriptions tracker and I ask myself: do I still use these services? are they adding value to my life?

And I realized that we had 3 active video streaming subscriptions: Netflix, Amazon Prime and Curiosity Stream+Nebula. After some reflections with my partner, we decided to let go of Netflix and Amazon Prime. Why?

We watched a total of 19 shows and movies on those 2 platforms last year. We already saw all the shows we were interested in catching up, such as: Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, The Expanse, The Witcher, One Piece, Good Omens, Wheel of Time. Honestly, we weren’t that interested in continuing watching future seasons for most of them. And looking at the catalogue for other things to watch we weren’t that thrilled.

Add that to the fact that Amazon Prime will start showing adds and they will charge more to have an ads-free experience. For Netflix, we were already paying the option with no ads. That’s roughly a total $340 CAD a year (not including the increase for Amazon Prime with no ads). We’ve decided we could use that money (and the time!) to get and do more of what we truly love: books for me and video games for him.

We are still keeping the Curiosity Stream subscription with Nebula. Both of them are totally ad-free with interesting enough content to entertain us. I’ve been wanting to watch more documentaries on Curiosity Stream so minimizing our video streaming options will help with that.

We always have the Public Library to borrow movies and shows. We don’t mind waiting to get a hold of a movie. We watched only 7 movies in 2023, so we are not big movie consumers anyway.

So, yeah, a little bit of digital minimalism to start the year! It’s always nice to use technology more intentionally and mindfully. And at this moment of our lives, we just want less distractions and more focus on what brings us most joy. 😊

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Post 66/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I was listening to Cal Newport’s podcast episode 262 and in the final segment he commented on a video by Better Ideas about overstimulation. The video discusses social media addiction, internet addiction and its relation with dopamine. Inspired by the video, Cal Newport then suggests some solutions to the problem.

In summary, his advice to combat online overstimulation is simply:

“Don’t use things that cause overstimulation!”

The reasoning behind it is to avoid giving opportunities for our brains to fire up the dopamine response. Dopamine is released when we anticipate doing something pleasurable. So if we get used to reaching out for something entertaining all the time, we will be constantly seeking that stimulation. And nowadays, there are infinite ways to get that dopamine hit at our fingertips instantly.

Cal Newport makes an analogy with smoking: to get rid of this addiction, the end goal is to quit smoking. The solution is never getting used to a regime of smoking less or controlling when and where you smoke: the solution is to actually quit.

So he suggests we remove sources of overstimulation from our lives:

• Delete all social media! Simple as that.
• Don’t scroll online news. Subscribe to one or two interesting newsletters instead, or listen to one podcast with daily events if you need to keep up to date with news.
• Videos and YouTube: YouTube can be a good source of information if used well. Install AdBlockers and Distraction Free extensions for YouTube to eliminate the automated recommendation feature. Another tip is to watch YouTube on a TV in your living room, like you would sit down to enjoy a movie.
• And the most important tip is to replace all the distractions with high quality entertainment: movies, music, books, high quality videos, documentaries. The more we consume high quality content, the less we will enjoy junk information. We will eventually lose our taste for shallow content.

From my experience, this approach works. I’ve deleted major social media accounts years ago (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter) and nowadays, I don’t miss those services. I’ve recently tried to use Mastodon as a lightweight alternative to social media. Even if Mastodon is open, decentralized and have no algorithmically generated timelines, the model still mimics Twitter, and I was feeling similar FOMO effects using it.

So, I’m keeping away from Mastodon for 30 Days. I’m not sure if I will ever be able to use it without feeling distracted. I might eventually delete my account. We’ll see.

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Post 20/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

Yesterday I was super distracted at work. Looking back, I think it’s been going on for the past couple of weeks. I’m having this twitch of reaching out for my phone every moment of a small pause. Let’s say I’m calling someone, and those seconds when I’m waiting for the other person to pick up, I look at my phone, trying to check something. It’s an unconscious behaviour. It’s kinda scary to notice it and then realize it was automatic: I had no conscious choice over it.

I’m getting better with my phone: deleting the Discord app made it way less interesting. But I still have that urge to look up things online. I feel like I’ve been conditioned to do that, even when I don’t need it.

Throughout the day I find myself opening the browser. I might be in the middle of a task and something gets unclear or fuzzy, I get frustrated and open a tab. I look at my bookmarks. I keep on switching tabs, checking my bookmarks. I keep waiting for something interesting to happen. Waiting to be entertained.

So I need some time off. One website I’ve been visiting more and more during the day is Mastodon. Similar to the Discord app on my phone, Mastodon is one of the main drivers for my behaviour. Even though Mastodon doesn’t have algorithms and I’ve curated my timeline for it to be less overwhelming, I still have this illogical urge to check it.

I think it has to do with the “Twitter-like” format. Information is too scattered, it's too noisy, too random. This format of short asynchronous messages creates the illusion of cool things happening all the time. It inherently generates FOMO. This “Always Keep Up” method of being online is extremely draining to me. So I guess these micro-blogging formats are not for me anymore.

I’m not deleting my account yet, but I will not use Mastodon for 30 days and re-evaluate. I’m logging out from all my devices and adding the address to the blocked list on all my browsers.

I’ll keep on blogging here. I will still read my RSS feed, which is highly curated and I don’t get FOMO from it.

I’ll check how I’m doing in a week and observe if other sources of distraction will replace Mastodon.

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Post 19/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

It happened again. I've been picking up my phone every moment of downtime. According to my iPhone's Screen Time, my daily usage went up by 23% in the past week. I've been spending more time than usual on Discord and using the browser.

And I know why it happened, for the most part: I reinstalled the Discord app on my phone. I have book clubs groups on Discord and also the Standard Notes group. I don't really need to check these groups all the time, but at some point in the past weeks I thought it would be nice to have the app at my fingertips. You know, why not have it ready to go when I'm on my lunch break to check what was going on? It turns out I can't be moderate about it. I started checking all the groups early in the morning, during breakfast and then in the mornings and afternoons while I'm at work... and at night before bed. And since I was on the phone, why not open up my browser and check Mastodon? And check my RSS feed? And why not go into a rabbit hole searching for a recipe online? This week I finally took notice of my behaviour: what is going on?

It was a behaviour change, and I'm almost sure it was triggered by having the Discord app readily available for me to use. My willpower is limited so having a shiny tool like Discord diminishes my ability to maintain focus. And it spiralled out of control.

So I'm making my phone less interesting:

1. I've deleted the Discord app

2. I've deleted from my browser all the links/favorites to websites that would pull my attention.

3. And I'm replacing my mindless browsing on my phone with reading a book on my Kobo, or just being alone with my thoughts.

The goal here is to reject the model of my phone as my constant companion, and use it more intentionally.

“Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.” ― Cal Newport “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World”

-- Post 16/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

In August 2018 I deleted my Instagram account! It’s been 5 years!

But the first photo sharing social network I ever used was MOLOME. It was around 2007-2008, if I'm not mistaken. => Edit: It was around 2011, most probably. I would upload photos from my digital camera, a Fujifilm FinePix S5000, and apply the filters to publish my photos. It was like Instagram, before Instagram. There were no ads, only likes, comments section and stickers. I remember I had a Nokia N8 phone running Symbian for a while then I upgraded to a Nokia Lumia 820.

I don't think MOLOME is still around but I have a backup of the photos I published there, a total of 103 photos. Some photos from that time:

I think I joined Instagram in 2012 or 2013. It was okay at the beginning. Then advertisements started to get more and more ubiquitous. Then a more powerful algorithm was introduced and made horrible decisions of what to show me on my timeline. And they introduced Instagram stories. It quickly became very annoying to use the platform and I was getting stressed out by it. As part of my bigger social media declutter project, I deleted my account in 2018.

I don't miss it at all. It was the first big social media service I got rid of. I knew I was addicted to it and that it was negatively affecting my mood. Life went on, I felt less distracted and I was spending less time on my phone. I stopped seeking artificial digital approval from others online. It started my process of slowly distancing myself from all the attention economy based social media.

Post 03/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I’m reading the book “Homo distractus: Fight for your choices and identity in the digital age” by Anastasia Dedyukhina, and I enjoyed the section that discussed our society’s increasing sense of lack of time.

The perception that there’s not enough time to do things comes from the increasing amount of information we have to deal with today. Emails, text messages, news updates, endless social media feeds…etc.

And the apps designed to distribute all this “content” make us believe that it’s important to “share” all this information, as fast as possible, even without truly understanding the message. The author explains:

“Sharing information, encouraged by social media, is another example of how tech design creates the sense of urgency and the lack of time in our minds. The faster we share, the more rewarded we are by getting our likes or shares.” — Homo Distractus, Chapter 4: The Time Crisis

So, it seems social media spaces are now this crazy noisy place, where everybody is shouting something, trying to get attention (rewards), without even knowing what they are shouting about:

“By sharing whatever captures our attention, and not what we know is credible, we just contribute to the overall noise making ourselves and others even more overwhelmed.” — Homo Distractus, Chapter 4: The Time Crisis

And that just creates more noise… it’s overwhelming. It's too scattered, it's too noisy, too random. This “Always Keep Up” method of being online is draining (thanks ~loghead for the term) and I can’t stand it anymore (I’m looking at you, Mastodon!).

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

About a year ago I deleted my social media accounts. I thought I had done it long ago. But, no, it’s been a year!

So, what have I learned?

• The only thing that worked for me to stay away from social media was: total disconnection. Delete them. For real. After I deleted my accounts I thought many times about re-creating them but I also remembered how annoying it was. And how distracted I used to get. So, it was important in the first week to remember WHY I deleted them in the first place.
• I didn’t need to do this all by myself, relying on my willpower alone (I tried, never worked). I used technology to fight technology. For the first few months, I used the app Freedom on all my devices to create a barrier. And it worked. The secret for me was being able to stay away from social media long enough to get my brain back to a “baseline” with no constant dopamine-induced activities. I started to feel my brain working differently 1-2 months in.
• I started going out for long walks. Looking back now, it was not an easy time: the COVID-19 pandemic, dead of winter in my region, short days, and freezing temperatures. But it was the only thing I could do to fill in the void. I had to be outside. I learned that snow pants are awesome and that it’s okay to walk around with a headlamp (there are no lights on the pathway by the river, where I used to walk).
• After deleting social media I still had the urge to scroll something. Anything. I would scroll through my email inbox. But it was finite so sometimes I would open a news portal and just scroll. I was not interested in anything that was there, but I needed to SCROLL. This behavior lasted for some weeks. Then I realized how pointless it was.
• Sometimes I feel like I want to scroll something, even today. I still use RSS feeds so that became my “scrolling” thing. I paired down my feeds with only a small number of blogs I regularly read. So it’s a manageable list now, I scroll but it’s not an endless pit of junk anymore
• I now feel repulsed by any website that is too “social-media-like”. Or that has too many ads. I avoid them all.
• If I have a question about something I’ll go to Wikipedia first to find the answer. I feel like I’m 13 years old again going to the library and opening up an Encyclopedia to search for an answer.
• I read better. I can read a book non-stop for an hour now. But that happened only recently. It took me months to be able to just sit down and read for more than half an hour without fidgeting or grabbing my phone.
• I learned that it is important to embrace boredom. The best way to train it for me is to go out for walks, with nothing in my ears. No music. No podcasts. Just my breathing and surrounding sounds.
• I decreased my podcast consumption. A lot!
• I learned that I don’t enjoy audiobooks that much. I hear that one of the advantages of audiobooks is that you can read while doing something else. I tend to prefer to do one thing at a time. I can occasionally listen to podcasts while doing the dishes or cleaning the house, for example, but not books, especially if I’m enjoying it. When I’m reading something I need to pay attention and focus and reflect. Audiobooks don’t go at my mind’s speed, I guess.

Some people do a regular “digital detox” for a short or long period of time and then get back to whatever they were avoiding without letting it turn into a compulsive behavior again. Trying to use social media in moderation never worked for me. This technology evolves every day with new ways to hook us up and maybe I don’t have the energy to fight it all the time.

I’m happier now 😎. I love the Internet, but only some (quieter) corners of it.

#socialmedia #attentionresistance #internet #noisymusings

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.