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LM7805 comments on Group Rationality Diary, September 16-30 - Less Wrong Discussion
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My experiment in massively curtailing my use of Twitter and Facebook is going well. Objectively, I'm completing more items on my to-do list on a daily basis; subjectively, it appears that my ability to focus has improved, which I'm willing to chalk up to not feeling compelled to check new-message notifications and therefore just not having that distraction, though I would like to be able to measure this in some way.
I was expecting to feel rather cut off from the world, but fortunately this has not been the case. I've been more responsive to more personal methods of contact (email, IM, in-person interaction) that I had previously felt spread too thin to deal with, and this has been hedonically rewarding (e.g., answering email from person asking for some software design advice -> nice thank-you email -> warm fuzzies).
I also started the Tiny Habits course that I saw mentioned in the Useful Habits Repository.
Are you using any tools to keep yourself cut off, or do you merely choose not to visit those sites?
In the past I've manually edited my hosts file to point time-wasting sites to 127.0.0.1, which is a small obstacle at most -- I can easily edit it back -- but is enough of a speedbump to remind me "oh, right, I'm trying to avoid that right now." This time I haven't needed to; I managed to become so frustrated with the fact that my queue was saturated with short-term rewards that weren't netting me anything in the long run that choosing not to visit the sites doesn't seem to require much willpower.
This leads me to wonder whether I could eliminate other influences I want to avoid by making myself sufficiently frustrated with them, but that seems like it would be an unpleasant skill to pick up.