Over the past year, I have found myself to be addicted. Addicted to the constant boredom squashing power of the internet.
I remember being a kid and walking up to my Mum, telling her that I was bored…that I didn’t have anything I wanted to do. She would usually tell me I was hungry or thirsty, or even tell me just to fuck off (but not in those words). I remember the feeling I got when I finally found something to do. Whether it was making a star wars lightsaber out of paper, or playing my guitar or reading. I always ended up doing something unproductive in the short run, but skill/knowledge building in the long run.
That changed at the age of 7 when my family got a new computer. We got a brand new iMac, and this meant that the old dell tower computer that we had been using for the past 6 years was up for grabs…it went to me.
At the age of 7 I suddenly had access to the wider world through the internet.
Great for getting rid of all that bordem
Not great for building skills and useful knowledge.
I imagine there is only negative long term consequences that come from large information access at such a young age. Especially on the internet.
When you have access to 1,000 books in a library, each page of each book has been vetted, fact checked, and corrected by an editor. Online that is not the case.
Anything you want to know can be found. whether real or not. whether good for you or not. Whether you want to believe something or disbelieve it. You can find the answer here at www. anything .com .org .anything.
My world view is that nobody knows wtf they are doing, we are all just emotional children playing dress up. spreading what we believe is true, with no concrete ways to prove it. Fallable at the scale of 7,500,000,000 people.
People say that communication is the greatest giving of the internet, but I disagree. It is the power to never be bored. Every tool has a job it is best at and one that it is designed for. A hammer is a great tool for threatening people (100% success rate) and great at hitting nails into walls (accuracy deturmins your success). The internet is no different and I belive that it is best at distracting our childish little brains, while fooling us into thinking that we are doing something important/productive.
By the domain name of this site you should be able to see my main focus in life. I enjoy it, the struggling, the learning, the failing, and the occasional win. But so often I find myself trying to learn how to do a simple task, like get a specific wigit onto a webpage, or find a supplier for a product. And you find 200 websites selling something while providing minimal information about the title of their page. squashing the feeling of boredom you search for the answer for 40 minutes “being productive” in your brain, but flailing around like a fish in the real world. The amount of information easily accessible on the internet is amazing, the amount of USEFUL information is lackluster.
This is the addiction. Wasting time. Feeling productive but going nowhere. Feeling successful but without reality. It’s the child playing with lego and being convinced its real.
Its nobody fault.
Its just a biological response to inputs.
Information in -> brain goes “wzzzz bzzz wuuwuuuwuu” -> and it churns out a meaning + an action to take.
Its never logically right. But depending on your nurture and nature as a child it can either be close or distant. The choice isn’t yours. Nobody chooses the reality they belive in their head. But you can consciously take action for the one outside.
I am blocking everything that would waste my time on the internet.
YouTube, Reddit, News, Social Media (I did this long ago but ill mention it), Porn.
Everything.
As the title of the blog states, I am purposefully adding friction. I want my life to be harder. I don’t want it to be easier to waste my time then it is to be productive.
Im designing my life so that productivity is easier than wasting my time. Does that make sense?
When I was learning to play guitar I would never practice because it was hidden away in its case in the corner of the room. It was always easier to do something else. At the age of 5 my dad forced me to take it out of its case every morning and put it on my bed. (he had read to that from some book) It took 3 days of him reminding me to do it before I remembered to take it out each morning, but it took only 3 hours for me to play the guitar more than I had my entire life. Because it was easier to pick up the guitar for some playing then it was for me to go down stairs and tell my mum I was bored.
Today I have added a 20 character password to my phone… that should make logging in pretty hard. I have blocked every website that could distract me, and although I could unblock them easily, hopefully the urge will be less than just doing something else. I have taken every app off my home screen. I have taken similar actions on my computer, but less in total, as my laptop is genuinely the place I do the most work.
I know I will get bored, so I have decided to start this blog so that I can journel and log my journey instead of wasting time.
This works best as my memory isn’t good anyway, so it should help me remember useful information for the future.
I have added friction to my life… lets see how the experiment goes.