Comment on Group rationality diary, 7/9/12

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 16:15:45 GMT

Basically, no fiction media of any sort (the original Black March campaign focused on copyrighted media, I mostly just went with all fiction), no web sites mainly used for killing time with random links and forum fun, such as Reddit, MetaFilter or TVTropes. I did keep reading LessWrong (questionable, since I pretty much treat this as entertainment, but it's low-traffic enough here that you can't use this as an inexhaustible procrastination source), and I did keep reading my RSS feeds (also questionable, but again those are quickly exhausted). I didn't try to change my IRC use in any way. Nonfiction books (acquired earlier and in the reading queue, to go with the Black March non-consumption idea) were allowed, but I only ended up finishing one popular history book during the month, and don't remember trying to read anything ambitious.

I ended up breaking the media fast twice for social movie-watching. Didn't otherwise miss games, TV or novels so that I'd notice, I don't think I was using those much before either. I do think the silly fun website avoidance did matter.

I've been back in a day job since and haven't really thought about repeating the experiment yet. Might try it again at some point.

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