Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I might be writing this during a mental episode I’m experiencing right now, but how do you cope with the modern world? I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of systems I work with: Linux at home, macOS on the side, and the Windows suite for work. Each of these systems comes with its own set of apps, to-dos, calendars, and so on. Add a smartphone to the mix, and you’ve got an overload of digital noise. Sometimes, it feels like the world is deliberately designed to distract us.

I know I can Google solutions, but I’d like to hear from frugal experts about how they view the modern world and its distractions.

The modern world *is* deliberately designed to distract us. This is not just, like, my opinion, man. If you want to maintain ownership of your attention and even your own opinions and perspectives, you’ve got to deliberately craft a personal system for maintaining your cognitive sovereignty.

Cal Newports Digital Minimalism is a fine place to start, with many ideas and techniques scattered throughout his podcast.

I try to design a system that uses the minimum number of digital tools necessary to support my creative and logistical work, and that shuts out low-quality sources of distraction. I view the digital world as a contest between my brain and the brains of the world’s smartest persuasion hackers and attention hookers. This model frames my approach to strategy (e.g. my system is biased towards evasion rather than willpower).

Using three OS’s plus a phone sounds excessive unless you’re a dev who needs fluency in all three??

I use a Filofax for life admin, much better than digital diaries.

It's worth reading this blog post on enshittification here.

The tl;dr is that tech companies run on a paradigm of eternal growth and we've run out of actual productivity gains from tech. To keep making money, they make the products *worse* to use so you spend more time on them and they can extract more data from your activity. This is why tech can be so frustrating and distracting and miserable to use. It's supposed to be that way because they make more money from you the more you use the product.

I am a recovering tech addict myself but the key really is to treat technology like cigarettes you have to smoke to stay engaged with society and use it in the most minimal, directed fashion possible and try *not* to use it unless you absolutely have to.

AxelHeyst wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 29, 2024 1:53 pm

Using three OS’s plus a phone sounds excessive unless you’re a dev who needs fluency in all three??

I used to be a developer, but now I work in cybersecurity. I think it’s the same issue for developers and other IT professionals. Don’t get me wrong—IT is fun, but it seems like a lot of people thrive on chaos! Personally, I prefer a calm approach to my daily work.

Thanks for the recommendation!

chenda wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 29, 2024 2:14 pm

I use a Filofax for life admin, much better than digital diaries.

Basically, a notebook?

AnalyticalEngine wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 29, 2024 2:21 pm

It's worth reading this blog post on enshittification here.

Planning to read it tonight. Thanks!

You are not alone in this RC! A few key insights I had were

i) I have never regretted an evening of reading or going out for a walk.
ii) I *have* regretted many an evening of engaging in low quality online activities
iii) Habits are key. Practice good habits, unlearn the bad. See for example Atomic Habits for how to do this.
iv) It is possible to use technology deliberately. Get in, get what you came for, get out.

When working as an IT person, it is of course not feasible to not use computers. But outside of that, there are definitely steps you can take!

How do you currently spend your time when not working?

AxelHeyst wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 29, 2024 1:53 pm

The modern world *is* deliberately designed to distract us. This is not just, like, my opinion, man.

This. As someone who has literally built adtech (I dare you to find a tech worker more than one or two service levels removed from being in adtech), any time you are not paying for a service, your attention is the currency used to serve you more advertisements (read, $$$). So the play is to be as addictive as possible to make more revenue / profits. In the same way that “all roads lead to Rome” back in the Roman Empire, all usage of the internet leads to adtech. It is the natural end of not paying for a service directly (at minimum someone has to pay for the upkeep of the “public” good, but they also need to show huge profits at the cost of anything else if they are VC backed).

RogueCipher wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 29, 2024 2:42 pm

Basically, a notebook?

Well I like a filofax as each year you can replace the diary section but all the other sections remain. So I keep all the other useful information, like list of password reminders, films to watch, yearly goals, plots for world domination etc.

Quadalupe wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 29, 2024 3:23 pm

How do you currently spend your time when not working?

After 4 PM, I handle the usual household chores and spend time being a dad to my child. From 9 PM to 11 PM, I have time to myself.

However, I won’t lie—a few binges of mindless scrolling often happen between 4 PM and 11 PM.

RogueCipher wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 29, 2024 12:41 pm

I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of systems I work with: Linux at home, macOS on the side, and the Windows suite for work. Each of these systems comes with its own set of apps, to-dos, calendars, and so on. Add a smartphone to the mix, and you’ve got an overload of digital noise.

Digital overload is a problem I experience too. My last bad experience was with 1Password. I thought I'd just pay them to make my password life easy. But then they started to extract more value from me and to lock me into their product. Before that I kept my budget in YNAB, and they started raising prices and changing the way their app works to promote spending instead of frugality, so I moved my budget to a spreadsheet. Paid subscriptions are just the plague.

Some tips that work for me:

• Avoid paid subscriptions
• Use OS and apps with default settings
• Have "one truth", one place were the information is leading
• Look for warning signs of lock in, future payments, or deteriorating maintenance
• Open source looks awkward and inconvenient, but when learned, lasts for decades

When I used Windows for work (I developed software that ran on Windows) I used macOS for personal stuff just to delineate the two.

I worked at home and used Bootcamp to have both operating systems on the same PC. I used to switch my keyboard and mouse when I started and finished work.

delay wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 30, 2024 3:49 am

• Use OS and apps with default settings
• Have "one truth", one place were the information is leading

This is good advice although I'm doubtful about open source. If you aren't paying directly for your tools then you are paying in some other way.

ducknald_don wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 30, 2024 5:29 am

When I used Windows for work (I developed software that ran on Windows) I used macOS for personal stuff just to delineate the two.

I worked at home and used Bootcamp to have both operating systems on the same PC. I used to switch my keyboard and mouse when I started and finished work.



This is good advice although I'm doubtful about open source. If you aren't paying directly for your tools then you are paying in some other way.

The advantage of Open Source is that you can audit the code, and there's typically no advertising layer embedded within the app or service.

Slevin wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 29, 2024 3:56 pm

It is the natural end of not paying for a service directly (at minimum someone has to pay for the upkeep of the “public” good, but they also need to show huge profits at the cost of anything else if they are VC backed).

It's even worse, you get ads even if you do pay for the service. For example, I pay for YouTube premium, which disables ads inserted by Google - but many videos nowadays just contain ads inside them, which are not disabled by the premium service (at best, you have to buy separate subscribtion from the content creator to disable them). Similarly with online newspaper subscribtions - you pay to get past the paywall, where you'll be served with plenty of ads.

RogueCipher wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 30, 2024 5:55 am

The advantage of Open Source is that you can audit the code, and there's typically no advertising layer embedded within the app or service.

Yeah, when did you last audit the code of the open source tools you are using?

ducknald_don wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 30, 2024 7:47 am

Yeah, when did you last audit the code of the open source tools you are using?

I let others handle it. Due to the nature of open-source, there are always some eyes on it that will alert others if they find something suspicious.

RogueCipher wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 29, 2024 12:41 pm

I might be writing this during a mental episode I’m experiencing right now, but how do you cope with the modern world? I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of systems I work with: Linux at home, macOS on the side, and the Windows suite for work. Each of these systems comes with its own set of apps, to-dos, calendars, and so on. Add a smartphone to the mix, and you’ve got an overload of digital noise. Sometimes, it feels like the world is deliberately designed to distract us.

I know I can Google solutions, but I’d like to hear from frugal experts about how they view the modern world and its distractions.

Reading through the responses so far, I find it very interesting how the advice can be generalized.

For example, I'm also on all the OS systems each with its own computer or two to run it. Yet, I don't find it overwhelming at all. It's almost the opposite in the sense that I find it relaxing. Perhaps it's due to having been "terminally online" (and terminally computing before that) since I was 12. I can easily tune out noise and irrelevant information. Those ads or animations over there---I don't pay any attention to them; they're wasted marketing budget to me. There's some research showing that gamers are better at this than non-gamers. I played a lot between ages 12 and 20, so maybe it was formative.

On the other hand ... when it comes to the traditional world as well as the postmodern world with its focus on people---the more the merrier---I often feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of people. I get an overload of "human noise", because I tend to pay equal attention to all if it. I don't have subconscious sorting mechanism to filter out the people who are just yapping and saying out loud whatever irrelevant notion comes to their mind. It seems that many humans in a group setting care neither what they're saying nor what is being said to them. Yet, they're absolutely fine with that because they're not trying to understand and consciously process or think about every single input. They simply say something mostly random because the point is not to communicate but to keep each other mutually distracted for the connection between you and them. This is similar to what the ads and push notifications are doing.

What makes or breaks either case depends on having a subconscious system for sorting between the relevant and the irrelevant. Likely this comes with tonnes of practice to the point where the brain is rewired.

Alternatively, people attempt various mechanistic approaches. For example, some favor a screen aesthetics with a lot of white space (I really hate that. I prefer as much info stuffed into the screen as possible. However, I also know how to sort it quickly.) One can also limit exposure in either time or amount. Same with people really. Instead 50 people for 4 hours (like a wedding celebration nightmare) one can pick 50 people for 30 minutes ... or 2 people for 3 hours.

Another strategy is to standardize. On the computer, only run one kind of system or at least reduce the number of systems. Use the same at home as you do at work for example. Ditto with people: Seeing only the same types of people makes it much easier than dealing with a diverse number of people or people whose mental functioning (or lack thereof) are hard to comprehend.

Ultimately, it's crucial to know your tolerance level because exceeding it eventually risks "reactive" behavior to escape it. E.g. being rude to people to make them stop yapping, or suddenly not responding to emails because one has decided to go on a "digital vacation", etc.

I don't remember the last time I saw an ad on my computer or phone. Between Brave broswer and AdBlocker plugin, nothing makes it's way to my eyeballs. Even Youtube videos. The same approach works on phones and mobile devices as well as long as you are using the browser. If you use individual apps, you will see ads.

Brave keeps track of the ads it blocks. According to them, just this year it has blocked 527,317 ads and trackers, saving me ~10 GB and 7.3 hours*.

*I'm not sure if the time is calculated by average time one views an ad or some other measure.

I struggle with this as well. I'll perform a digital detox, then it inevitably creeps in. I'm currently coming off a manual consumption phase and implementing the detox.

The answer comes back to sacrifice - decline good things to have great things. Insist upon a single source of truth. Figure out which activities can be killed, automated, delegated, batched, time boxed, etc.

jacob wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 30, 2024 8:44 am

For example, I'm also on all the OS systems each with its own computer or two to run it. Yet, I don't find it overwhelming at all. It's almost the opposite in the sense that I find it relaxing. Perhaps it's due to having been "terminally online" (and terminally computing before that) since I was 12.

Plato's cave Ever experiment with killing the ads and standardizing to one OS? Maybe there's another level available to you.