I'm reading Deep Work by Cal Newport at the moment. It touches on this issue directly and offers up a lot of concrete suggestions.
At the moment I'm "stepping down" from my addictions. I created a Tampermonkey script which blocks Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Coingecko (crypto charts) and porn M-F. I still have HackerNews, Twitch, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Discord fully accessible, but this is just my first couple of weeks at it. I'm going to keep tightening them down and defining smaller windows with fewer tools until I actually look forward to the limited time I have to interface with them.
There are a LOT of suggestions throughout the book and they are quite compelling. Planning your day, reflecting on your values, creating pro/con lists of what you want to achieve in life versus the benefits these tools provide, reflecting on what sort of lifestyle you need to live for personal success. Could you thrive with a fully monastic lifestyle like Neal Stephenson or Donald Knuth? Or perhaps your lifestyle would better off being cyclical on a quarterly basis? Or perhaps you can only afford to weave deep work in for hours each day, sporadically, more like a reporter or journalist. Depending on your lifestyle your strategy for committing to deep work will vary.
At the moment I'm "stepping down" from my addictions. I created a Tampermonkey script which blocks Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Coingecko (crypto charts) and porn M-F. I still have HackerNews, Twitch, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Discord fully accessible, but this is just my first couple of weeks at it. I'm going to keep tightening them down and defining smaller windows with fewer tools until I actually look forward to the limited time I have to interface with them.
There are a LOT of suggestions throughout the book and they are quite compelling. Planning your day, reflecting on your values, creating pro/con lists of what you want to achieve in life versus the benefits these tools provide, reflecting on what sort of lifestyle you need to live for personal success. Could you thrive with a fully monastic lifestyle like Neal Stephenson or Donald Knuth? Or perhaps your lifestyle would better off being cyclical on a quarterly basis? Or perhaps you can only afford to weave deep work in for hours each day, sporadically, more like a reporter or journalist. Depending on your lifestyle your strategy for committing to deep work will vary.
I'd give it a read/listen and see what you think!