Comment by rglover
11 hours ago
Putting in blockers and the like helps, but what I've found worked best was to consider this quote by Anthony DeMello:
"When you fight something, you're tied to it forever. As long as you're fighting it, you’re giving it power."
When I learned to stop feeling bad/guilty/thinking this was a problem to solve and just let my mind drift, I found that my mind naturally learned when it was disciplined work time vs. browse the internet time. Personally, I noticed that when I didn't have any artificial restriction, I was less inclined to waste time on those things.
In practice: "oh, my mind doesn't want to do that other thing right now but it does want to go look at this thing; let it." The more I've loosened my grip, the less distractions have affected my productivity.
as fun as that sounds, my experience has been the polar opposite. if I let my mind drift, it's going to get cheap dopamine kicks from stupid YouTube videos all day.
You have an army of behavioral psychologists at Alphabet and Meta working against you; it's only fair to fight back.
Yeah, the problem with "not fighting it" is that you'll naturally do what feels the best in the moment, and having fun will always feel the best in the moment over doing something boring.
The fall only comes later when all your having fun leads to a lot of not having fun (work piles up, relationships sever, projects fail etc.) I find living in a certain amount of fear of fun is healthy. If I feel like I've been having fun for too long, I've probably been neglecting something important that is going to really ruin my fun later.
I say all this, as I scroll through HackerNews looking for hits of dopamine instead of continuing trying to fix the CI issues that have been paralyzing my work for almost a day now. That's not good to be a fun conversation in my 1-1 if I ignore it for much longer...
It’s like those diet commercials from the 90s:
“I simply eat more and the weight just falls off!” Showing pictures of chocolate cake and burgers.
You’re gonna eat more: Milkshakes, pasta, French fries!
You’re gonna lose more weight.
And you’re gonna feel great.
After only 19 payments for $24.99!
Call now
I find the polar opposite works better for me. Fight, with all your might!
You have to practice taking a step back, assesing the current situation and determining what's best for you. Ideally do this every time you feel like mindlessly doomscrolling. You'll get better at it.