I completely agree. I cut Facebook out of my life and got 2-3 hours a day of focus back, easily. It's actually made a huge difference, because now I have time to waste time, while still being high-energy and invested in all of the projects that are important to me.

But I also think that a lot of what has made me happier and calmer day-to-day is more to do with a change in attitude that came with dropping Facebook. Now I assume that I'll waste an hour a day dealing with random horseshit or unnecessary waiting; suddenly, missing the bus or forgetting my keys or standing behind someone who takes 10 minutes to order their lunch doesn't raise my blood pressure. It's just part of the hour.

There's no greater luxury than having time to waste.

"No greater luxury than having time to waste" that's awesome.

Wonderfully said , the benefits of getting Off the Facebook !!!

suddenly,

>missing the bus or

> forgetting my keys or

> standing behind someone who takes 10 minutes to order their lunch doesn't raise my blood pressure.

>There's no greater luxury than having time to waste.

I've noticed Facebook seems to be really good at spamming me with useless notifications, it even somehow manages to do it after I've unfriended 90% of the people that I am not close friends with and blocked most notification types. Yeah I could prune my friends list even further and only check it passively, but then all I'm stuck with is basically an incredibly bloated email/chat service that is loaded with ads. Then again this is the 21st century, a lot of other tech products seem to fit that exact description too. In any case, I'm a lot happier after deleting it.

Some time last year Facebook began giving me notifications within the application that... "Your friend uploaded a photo" or "your friend updated their status."

Maybe this is because I stopped using Facebook for so long, there weren't any real notifications to give me. They wanted it to seem like I'd missed something.

Biggest mistake I did with my Instagram account was to link it to my Facebook. I believe it is impossible to unlink them, even having disconnected all external application access as far as I could go in both.

Why? "Your friend Xxx is now on Instagram". Etc etc. I don't want to know, and I don't want my account visible to everyone there. Please just respect my wishes to make the integration go away!

I recently spent a week out of any mobile signal range and when I got back, I had email from FB (normally I don't get notifications by email, just in the app) for the most banal things like "Friend X has just uploaded a photo!". FB definitely enters panic mode if a regular user doesn't use it for a short while.

Yes, it does this when you stop using it, also it will spam you with "do you know person Foo?" messages. I guess is because they assume you stoped using it because your timeline was boring.

Source: I have the same experience.

I don't use Facebook that much, but I definitely used to associate a notification with something important, like being tagged in a status / photo or invited to an event. Since a year or two ago for me as well, it's usually useless or sometimes a straight-up advertisement. If you admin a group, you'll even get the "boost this post" messages as notifications.

I turned off all Facebook email notifications and I'm much happier with it now.

Can't you just disable notifications from the Facebook app? Android allows it, and I reckon iOS does too. I found this to be a nice solution to deal with obnoxious apps because you remove the annoyance but can still use them should the need arise.

Or uninstall the app, the mobile website works well and doesn't slurp your battery in the background.

Unfortunately you can't on most phones ... Facebook is a system app.

Can't those be "disabled" via the app manager? I'd flash a custom ROM if I had to deal with FB being a "system app"(!).

Not every phone can be rooted though :(

But yeah: The app can be disabled at least.

You can disable notifications, but on Samsung android you can't get rid of the red badges without disabling them for all apps.

I had the impression that it was a probing thing. Trying to figure out who in my friend list I'm interested in keeping up with. Annoying enough that I decided to uninstall the app.

This might be something to do with effect of not winning every time: it's studied method to get and keep us addicted. You will get a bigger dopamine hit when only some of notifications are "wins" like tagged photo etc. Slot machines are a great example of this along with other gambling.

This. It used to be closer to the former, but today it seems like all my "friends" are just raging about the latest ragefest. I am not envious of being overtaken by these emotions. :-)

That's actually why I deleted my account. The constant anger about everything was just unnecessary in my life.

This comment thread hits the nail on the head for why I deactivated my social media.

But I haven't found a good alternative "productive" time waster for when my mind needs a short break.

> But I haven't found a good alternative "productive" time waster for when my mind needs a short break.

Hacker News? I mean, you posted this right here!

I spend more time on HN than on FB by a fair margin now. I probably need to start reigning it in... :P

Luckily, HN has a handy no-proscrastination feature! :)

Tell me more about this!

Copied & pasted from an old HN post:

There are three new fields in your profile, noprocrast, maxvisit, and minaway. (You can edit your profile by clicking on your username.) Noprocrast is turned off by default. If you turn it on by setting it to "yes," you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. You can override noprocrast if you want, in which case your visit clock starts over at zero.

I force myself to bounce between reading a book and working, the computer is mostly a tool to get work done / research things quickly now for me. It's super boring in the immediate but rewarding once you put the work in which is a stark contrast to constantly coding -> compiling and filling up that instant gratification meter.

I like to waste time on YouTube and Wikipedia. They're good idle browsing for autodidacts.

TIL I'm an autodidact and that I have a very similar tastes to nihonde :P

What's your process for finding good autodidactical content on YouTube? (I am building something very related to this space; I'm super curious about people's "workflows" for this.)

How to (whatever)

Works for me :-)

"When my mind needs a short break" sounds like you should give meditation a shot.

Yea, but for a lot of people who are just starting to get better at practicing mindfulness, it's not a 100% solution yet and you end up doing things like FB anyway, just more rarely. (I know that was the case for me at least)

I actually hadn't heard the term mindfulness. I think meditation is something I'll need to give a serious try with that in mind. I can see the possible benefits.

You're right on the latter part. But as of late I've gone to the extreme and deactivated all but Snapchat for social media. As well as using Cold Turkey and editing my hosts file's to keep me away from certain sites.

It's hacker news for me.

A nice book!

Agreed, I try to only use Facebook to chat with friends. The news feed is designed to be addictive, so I decided to create a simple Chrome extension that lets you blank out posts: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/private-party/obji...

I feel the same way so I built a Chrome extension that replaces the News Feed with a todo list [1].

If I complete all my todos I get to use News Feed for 5 minutes.

I had tried blocking fb entirely a few times but I always churned and unblocked it... So I thought instead maybe if I could redirect myself to a productive task any time I tried to use News Feed, the most addicting/distracting part of the site for me, that might help. (it has and I love it!)

[1] Todobook: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/todobook/ihbejplhk...

But does it work in incognito ??

I too found Facebook addictive for a while, but once I came to the same conclusion as yourself (that it's a waste of time), my mind seems to have conditioned itself to abhor the entire Facebook experience. The fact that the app is rather buggy helped rid me of my addiction even quicker. Now I occasionally use Facebook as a research tool before or after I meet someone - it's great for the occasional snoop, but I no longer class it as fun, entertaining or even addictive tbh.

But how much of this is really Facebook's fault? How wouldn't you before be, say, watching TV or listening to radio soaps in the pre-internet era instead of doing the "higher mind" things you list you'd rather be doing?

Before Facebook I recall that chat apps like AIM and MSN messenger were fairly popular. I actually found those useful, and could have fairly meaningful conversations on them. Even if I hadn't seen a person in years, I might have an ongoing and strong online friendship with them. On Facebook, though, this never seemed to happen and many old acquaintances started to feel like complete strangers.

I also recall that things like e-mail from friends was a lot more common. You know the type - you hadn't heard from someone in a few months and they send you a long e-mail just checking in and telling you about their life. And people would respond to you if you sent the same. A few years ago I stopped sending those types of e-mail out because people stopped responding to them. These days, it would be a genuine shock to get a "just checking in" e-mail from friends.

I feel like Facebook has encouraged connections to be vapid and shallow. As a result, I feel like I have far less meaningful connections with friends now than I had a decade ago.

Not sure anybody need care whose "fault" it is; the most empowering viewpoint is to assume it's always your own. (Which optimistically implies that you can change it, since you're the one doing it.) But as for Facebook being a similar timesuck to TV or radio back in the day, it definitely is. The parallels are many, not least of which are similar ubiquity, similar motivations (to show you advertising), and similar gimmicks to keep your attention even when you might otherwise - god forbid - get the idea to go do something else.

It doesn't matter whose fault it is. It isnt the chocolate chip cookies' or ice cream's fault people are fat but that doesn't mean we should treat them like best friends and keep them in the fridge

Next time you use Facebook, pay attention to how much time you spend scrolling past videos or images (including images for link previews). That time is partially Facebook's fault because (instead of just showing every post to every friend) they preferentially show images and videos. They also render short text posts with a larger font, optionally with a big gradient background. The actual information density of a Facebook feed is surprisingly low.

It makes me miserable because I see people spouting ignorant nonsense as if from authority. It shows me the effect media has on my aging family members. It shows me bigotry in friends I had thought better of. And it appears to be accelerating.

Facebook is a severely flawed product, as flawed as windows 2000, with a similar level of popularity with the unwashed masses. I wonder what its inevitable replacements form will take shape as.

I thought Windows 2000 was the peak of windows (anyways, it was my favorite version).

No, NT 3.51 was the pinnacle of Windows. After that they decided to move the graphics drivers into kernel space and it was all downhill from there.

Facebooks your current fixation for your procrastination, but if it wasn't facebook, I'd venture to guess it would most likely be something else that is an addicting timewaster with minimal utility because that's the exactly the kind of thing we seek out when we want to get away from things we think are more important.

For you, facebook. For me -- videogames, particularly online competitive style. For someone else? Bingewatching brainless television on Netflix.

TBH though, I can't think of many things less fulfilling than wasting time on Facebook. The adrenaline from winning an online game, a show or film that makes you think or gives you a new perspective... then there's the Facebook feed.

I mean this in no offense, but you might be disillusioned or biased towards your particular vice. It's like an alcoholic telling me "well at least I am not doing heroin. Beer at least cleans out your kidneys!"

I struggled from video game addiction, and continue to struggle (it takes a lot of mental energy for me to simply not play). I used to tell myself, "well at least I am playing online and interacting with real people" or "at least I am sharpening my reflexes!"

This is also the case with other social networking sites and apps. If there wasn't a business need to use it, it's the exact reason I'd have for dropping Twitter.

The irony, of course, is that it was branded a social-utility.

Anything but.

Would you say like... Hacker News?