Procrastination/internet addiction - any solutions?

[BRUTE]

brute believes that willpower and discipline are useless concepts. if humans had willpower or discipline, they would not have this problem.

what would a human be doing if he were not procrastinating?

brute believes that "procrastination" just means humans don't have anything better to do. maybe whatever humans "should" be doing is not fun or exciting or challenging or what they're looking for.

[enigmaT120]

Before the internet I would just read books and magazines, when work was slow. When I'm home I spend little time on the web, as I do have better things to do there. Though I still read books and magazines.

[Tyler9000]

Moderating an addiction is a red herring. It controls you, not the other way around.

The only real solution I've found is to cut yourself off for a while. Try a full week of zero internet. If you have no self control to accomplish that, then remove your ability to get online. At work, turn your monitor so that everyone can see when you're online and turn the speakers way up so that everyone can hear. Secrecy is your enemy. At home, power down the computer and put it away in a closet. If you have a smartphone, disable the data plan.

You'll feel a little crazed at first, but eventually the haze will lift and you'll be in a better mental state to set proper boundaries.

[daylen]

Perhaps it is not such a bad thing. There are worse addictions.

[Tyler9000]

Well you can also scale it to your personal need. If you're just having a temporary issue focusing, try it for a day and see what happens. If internet addiction is affecting your job, relationships, and other aspects of your life then more drastic measures may be warranted.

[GandK]

@OP:

Some related threads you should read:

I #@#$%@! Hate Video Games!
How do you build up from ground zero?

[Riggerjack]

You like the internet. You still find time to work out. What's the problem?

If there's something you really want/need to do, but don't because you'd rather surf, do it first.

I find hitting the thing I'd rather not do immediately in the morning is the way to go for me. Get up, dress and fire up the chainsaw, or whatever. Then fire up the PC after a shower, after work is done. If I hit the PC first, the day is done. It's much easier to delay using the PC than stop using it. Just too much good stuff.

[BlueNote]

Do you have metrics of how much time you're spending on the net per day/week/month?

Fortunately Internet usage can be measured quite quickly and accurately:http://mashable.com/2008/08/28/time-tra ... rYBKnHnZqb

Much like keeping track of finances, keeping track of Internet usage helps to keep you from getting out of control.

[fiby41]

Do you have metrics of how much time you're spending on the net per day/week/month?

Yes, RescueTime logs that. OP was referring to hours spent in front of screen when he said '100h'

To keep myself in check, I used to take screenshots of these stats and include them in my journal.

[BlueNote]

@fiby41 , I don't know why I missed that point sorry for the oversight.

@Antinatalist , It's good that you realize there is a problem and have done a lot of research to help yourself. Is your 100H metric a weekly metric?

[drachma]

For me, the root of the problem is multi-fold.

1. I get a lot of "social interaction" from online discussion groups. Always have. for whatever reason I "prefer" this over some (But not all) real-person-interaction. Maybe because it lets me be "myself," who is apparently somewhat of a crass, curmudgeonly bully, who doesn't actually have to achieve anything to sit on his high horse. When I have tried to quit in the past, I found myself going crazy because I was not getting enough social interaction each day. I'd inevitably go back. (Here I am!)

2. It is much easier for the internet to "show me something interesting" than it is for me to figure out the next simple step in whatever project I am currently working on. Sometimes that step isn't so simple and that's when I get REALLY sucked in. Instant dopamine vs. actually thinking about something I don't already know the solution to? It is literally a no-brainer.

3. It's far easier to pose questions because it lets you justify it to yourself as being "productive" and helping you solve your problems. In reality, you are often posing questions to a hive-mind / echo-chamber where you already know what the answer is going to be. and it even if it WAS a forum full of diverse and informed opinions and expertise, it would probably still be more productive for you to actually do something about [problem] than asking the internet.

4. Using the internet (in the wrong ways) actually degrades attention span and ability to focus, precisely because of its quick-dopamine structure of time-waster sites like facebook, reddit, buzzfeed and all those types of sites.

this site is not nearly as much of a time suck (discussions aren't active enough), it's other ones that are the problem. right now, i'm blocking my main timesuck (reddit) so i am falling back to here. man, i'm bad at this.

Will power works for a short time but won't have staying power. You need to create systems that make it so you aren't faced with a decision.

1. I not only blocked the problem site, but installed an extension which re-routes me to a different webpage when I try to type that one in. I made it custom for myself and included a list of easy, simple things I could do online that weren't the problem site. Things such as checking my bank accounts and recording expenses, or links to my git repository where I am storing a coding project I'm working on in my spare time.

2. I also include non-link activities that are simple and fulfill my desire for something easy. One suggestion I have for myself is "whatever question you want answered, write it in the form of an outline for an article/blog post instead." this way i get to write, outlines are easy and look cool (dopamine!), and I end up with a list of things to research if it turns out this question actually is important.

3. Building my life to include more social interaction, because apparently I need it. This is the hardest of the bunch because altering one's daily structure is a huge, huge task. The first small step I have taken is having a 5 minute conversation with some other regulars at the gym I go to each night. Usually I just plug in headphones and zone out, because I had already gotten my daily ration of social interaction via the internet.

[Stahlmann]

I will hijack this topic
Any progress fellow procrastinators?

brute believes that willpower and discipline are useless concepts. if humans had willpower or discipline, they would not have this problem.

what would a human be doing if he were not procrastinating?

brute believes that "procrastination" just means humans don't have anything better to do. maybe whatever humans "should" be doing is not fun or exciting or challenging or what they're looking for.

How about addicts?

How does brute find his work duties constantly challenging or exciting?
It's sounds like you're perfect worker (in perspective of employer)? I follow rest of your posts so I get part of the picture, but ... Could you provide more info on your sabbatical? I still can't imagine that you would get bored doing cheap, fun, ERE activities. #justmillenialthings

[BRUTE]

most "addicts" are actually not addicted in the popular sense at all - they just don't have anything to do. this is true even for meth, crack, and heroin addicts. the popular image portrayed in the media is simply wrong. so for them, getting high is just what procrastination is for others. the most convenient way to pass the time.

brute does not find all his work duties constantly challenging or exciting. he has accepted this to a degree, and he still gets mad sometimes when something extraordinarily boring or stupid happens. this seems rather normal - what possible job could always be exactly the right level of challenge and excitement?

brute likes to describe his sabbatical like this: he went out to find himself, only to discover there was nothing there.

turns out brute simply had never had complete lack of external pressures (school, work, society) before. he had imagined it as paradise, but there was just nothing to it. it was boring as hell. was it cheap? very. the cheapest brute has ever lived. all free time all the time. but it turned out free time was not an asset when it was all brute had.

maybe Stahlmann would not get bored. maybe he just hasn't experienced it yet. who knows. it wasn't what brute had hoped it would be.

[sky]

Boredom is caused by lack of initiative to discover things that fascinate brute. Boredom is entirely internal to the self and has nothing to do with the external world.

Regarding discipline: The rational mind decides "I wish to eat nothing but beans, rice and sprouts for a year because it is cheap and healthy." Later that day, the innere Schweinhund has our protagonist munching on a Big Mac. Is this lack of discipline? Does the innere Schweinhund have veto power over the decisions made by the rational mind? Perhaps this is an evolutionary mental instinct related to survival. Perhaps this is a way for the deep mind to protect itself from bad decisions by the rational mind.

[FBeyer]

... so for them, getting high is just what procrastination is for others. the most convenient way to pass the time...

I believe almost all of modern procrastination has been boiled down to a quite severe intenet/technology catalyzed dopamine addiction.
New things are inherently interesting to human apes. Thus recommendation algorithms, reddit, emails, buzzing notifications, imgur, 9gag, 4chan and facebook all feed directly into this addiction.

Dopamine addiction is very real and is severely hampering a lot of people's ability to function more than a few minutes at a time without 'checking something'.

Procrastination also almost boils down to S.M.A.R.T Goals. Fuck'em! They are the worst thing to happen to procrastinators. Don't have a goal that tells you what needs to be done, just decide to work on something that you would like to be part of your life for 50 minutes and don't give a shit how far you actually get. Just sit down and start doing the thing. If you're unable to do that, it is very likely that you are imagining a very specific outcome from that activity, and that expectation is subconsciously stopping you.

Example:
I'm not going to go through every exercise in Div, Grad, Curl and All That, but every day I sit down for 2 pomodoros and go through the vector calculus. That's what I should be doing: sit down and just get anywhere with my math, not somewhere in particular. Over time that's a lot of TED talks I don't watch, but I've put a lot of integral signs on pieces of paper instead.

See if your procrastination could to some far out extent be rooted in you thinking you need to go somewhere specific with your hobby projects.

[Jean]

@FBeyer
you're right about this, I don't start anything, because I don't see how it would lead to something better than nothing.
I set myself free to ski, because I wanted to be a better skier (had a pass buyed, even drove to the resort) I started skiing, and after one downhill, I was happy that the snow was muddy so I got an excuse to go back playing video games. That's probably because I don't see anypoint at skiing better.

[lente]

Interesting discussion.

I've had an experience that could probably be called a gaming addiction. As in every waking minute I'd play a particular game. I got rid of it via the cold turkey method. Uninstall. Throw away the download. Occupy my time differently. Throw up as many barriers as possible. Every time you cross one of those barriers is an opportunity to reevaluate. Cold turkey worked fine. First lapse was probably half a year later, but i found all my ships and bridges thoroughly burned behind me. And there was just no more appeal. I realized that it was a stage in my life i left behind. Whatever romanticized thoughts i had about it, they were debunked. And dobby was free from there on. I still think back on the time i gamed that much as a joyful experience, as is any self indulgence i guess, but I could never return back to that perfect storm.

Dopamine addiction is very real and is severely hampering a lot of people's ability to function more than a few minutes at a time without 'checking something'.

I have troubles with this though. I manage quite well to move away from specific distraction sources, but not from distractions as a whole.

I am definitely going to try out the pomodore suggestion!

[BRUTE]

Regarding discipline: The rational mind decides "I wish to eat nothing but beans, rice and sprouts for a year because it is cheap and healthy." Later that day, the innere Schweinhund has our protagonist munching on a Big Mac. Is this lack of discipline? Does the innere Schweinhund have veto power over the decisions made by the rational mind? Perhaps this is an evolutionary mental instinct related to survival. Perhaps this is a way for the deep mind to protect itself from bad decisions by the rational mind.

or perhaps the entire distinction between rational mind and innere Schweinhund is a typical Descartes' Error. in fact, brute's money is on that.

[jennypenny]

I believe almost all of modern procrastination has been boiled down to a quite severe intenet/technology catalyzed dopamine addiction.

Is it an addiction or deficiency? Dopamine deficiency is a growing and serious problem with many causes including obesity, stress, and sugar consumption. Some people are treated with antidepressants but it's not hard to imagine that many people with technology addictions are actually self-medicating in a way. When I see studies in the news that highlight how 'lonely' and 'isolated' frequent internet users are, I always wonder which came first -- the internet use or the social isolation. Maybe they are people who already felt depressed and use technology as a salve? I'm not sure.

[7Wannabe5]

It can go the other way too. Depressives, unless utterly sunk, may attempt to perk themselves up a bit by these methods, but manic-types also tend towards novelty-stimulus-seeking because it's such an easy high for them. I'm a 2,4, stimulation-seeker, moderate 3, but I'm too much of a physical coward to seek 1 type adventures straight-forwardly. From my perspective, people who have the strong-overwhelming inhibitory response seem "locked." I think most INTJs tend towards being locked Dominants, but I'm not sure. When you are somebody who is rational and manic, it's like you have a conversation with yourself in which you evaluate the riskiness of a behavior, but you don't have the emotional inhibition lock-down response.
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