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comment by veen
veen  ·  2361 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

I think the first time I was introduced to the "attention economy" was back when I read this phenomenal article:

I kind of envy you because you're miles ahead of me in this regard. I catch myself wanting to check Facebook multiple times, every day, even though I don't want to spend time on there. I am now logged out most of the time, which is enough of a barrier that I don't spend time on there anymore, but I do catch myself in moments of boredom mindlessly hitting ctrl-t + f + enter like the trained monkey that I apparently am.

One change that did have a lot of impact was to permanently have silent mode enabled. My phone shouldn't be dictating my attention, and while I now miss calls every once in a while I now go hours without looking at my phone instead of minutes and love it.

If you want to read two really great books with two different approaches to what attention means in our modern age, I can't recommend Reclaiming Conversation by Sherry Turkle and Deep Work by Cal Newport enough.





mk  ·  2361 days ago  ·  link  ·  

When we had a baby five years ago, I had to switch my phone to silent. I haven't switched it back. I can't imagine it making noise at me now.

Email is my favorite method of communication.