In my experience it takes will power initially, but after I reached escape velocity I no longer needed much will power.

I'm talking about the day that I decided to "mute' my life. This was back in 2014 (I can't believe it's already been that long). Set my phone so that texts no longer caused alert sounds or vibration, only calls from those in my contacts would ring through, and I deleted crap like Facebook (and didn't log in again for over a year).

It took conscious effort initially, but then you adjust quicker than you think after you realize that exactly 0% of texts you will ever receive actually need your immediate attention. Maybe you the reader get important texts all the time, and I sort of feel sorry if you do, but I never ever do. If someone ever actually needs to reach me they will call, and they are never some rando number not in my contacts.

These devices and the services surrounding them don't necessarily deserve all the negative credit we attribute to them. People get addicted to things not just because those things have addicting qualities but because those people's needs aren't getting met in other areas. Technology makes it really easy to tickle those addiction centers in our brains, if you will, so that's the most common way to cope for people whom are missing something. It's not a personal failing (most of the time anyway) because even knowing that you are addicted, or that there's more to addiction than the surface level, is actually a really hard thing.

The other side of the equation is that not being addicted can be isolating in modern society. In my own life I sometimes have a hard time socializing with others, not out of shyness or anything like that, but because most people don't know how to relate to me when they find out that I don't surf social media, binge watch entertainment, or play video games for hours on end. They say "so what do you do with all that free time?" When I tell them that I am spending nearly all that time building things and learning, unless I'm among serious nerds, they don't get how my lifestyle is fulfilling to me. Truth be told, not living vicariously through the imaginary lives of others doesn't have to be boring.

I think there's a few kinds of people; the kind who don't get fulfillment or enjoyment outside of entertainment, and the kind who can be self-fulfilled but also deep down realize that it would separate them from much of society, which can be a scary thing. It might not be a conscious thought, but I think it's probably there.

> In my experience it takes will power initially, but after I reached escape velocity I no longer needed much will power.

That one hits the nail on the head. It comes down to what you consider normal. Once you get rid of a bad habit to the point it seems obnoxious both on conscious AND subconscious level it becomes very easy not to indulge.

It works more or less the same way for good habits too, I think.

Beware of becoming The Steppenwolf.

This is spot on. The feeling can be described as having been made dumber. The good news is that this skill is highly sensitive to training. Getting back to deep focus after social media have ravaged your brain is the new going from coach potato to running a 10K.

I think reading books is a good way of practicing concentration. The moment you stop paying attention to the text, the reading falls apart completely. It gives a very direct feedback when your mind has wandered.

You can get away with skimming texts on the Internet, indeed you kind of have to with all the ads, inline links, and other visual cruft clamoring for your attention, but that usually does not work particularly well with books, especially if it's a more demanding read.

Reading can be shockingly hard if you haven't done it in a while, but it rapidly gets a lot easier.

I don't know, reading books to me is very easy, but I find hard to focus on work. I conditioned myself to instinctively alt-tab from my IDE every time a problem gets frustrating to the point I often do this without realizing, meanwhile my "reading workflow" haven't been poisoned yet. So my thesis is that this is less related to losing attention/willpower overall and it's more related to creating distracting habits.

When people quit drugs, they need something to feel the void it leaves. It's one thing to stop consuming, but it's another to replace it with a meaningful activity.

I feel the same about tackling internet addiction. The computer is off, now what?

Absolutely, I feel it truly gives insight into how an addiction works.

If every morning you wake up and smoke a cigarette right by the window while you brew coffee, then the day you decide to stop there are two forces at hand: first, the addiction to nicotine, but there is also the void left by the activity of smoking.

When you quit social media or whatever smartphone boredom annihilator, what do you do on the bus back home? On the waiting room or queue of whatever place you find yourself at? In any of those small idle moments?

For me I've found the answer to be obvious but not very exciting: I get bored. I get bored and let my mind wander, ideally this means I'm not merely unfocused, but rather at rest mentally, otherwise I dedicate some time to this or that thought that would surely have assaulted me right at the time in which I should be falling asleep. I think society has gotten into an habit of never being bored, I don't think that's healthy.

My concentration and attention abilities are destroyed by computers and media. It doesn't seem to be retrainable, even after meditating 30 minutes to an hour a day for a year, using concentration on breath method, I still do not seem able to recover any kind of flow state or concentration. I think it is permanently damaged in my brain.

Armchair psychologist here: Have you tried games? Either physical (e.g. sports) or digital (ideally single player, desktop computer games)? If you have fun, it is much easier to get into a flow state.

Yes, I play about an hour a night, but I don't really get into the flow of them, I'm usually checking my phone during loading screens or cutscenes. I'm sure physical sports would be somewhat easier. Making music can sometimes do it in the right situation. The problem is though that I can't make it happen at will, but I really would like to be able to concentrate on my work as a physicist, e.g. reading a paper even if I'm not that interested in it personally is quite important to be able to do but it takes me days.

It might help if you introduce more things to focus in and out on. I find that when I'm playing a game I'm not as interested in/has down time, by having something like music playing softly in the background, I'm able to focus in better during slow periods.

Some amount of LoFi beats, classical, or music in another language might help a bit even if you feel you need to 'focus in' by just providing a bit more stimulation? I find that without music it's much harder for me to enter my flow state when programming even if I 'stop hearing' the music once I get into what I'm working on.

But everyone's different, that's just something that works for me, but I hope that you keep up the hard work. Focus is hard, and you're taking some important steps to try and restore yours.

I already listen to techno when I'm working. The problem is that when I'm not intrinsically/emotionally interested in a task I struggle to force myself to focus on it. It seems like focus is not something I can control, I always would rather distract myself with low effort dopamine fodder (youtube, twitter, reddit, hacker news, tiktok, looking for new music to put on, etc.)

I've been trying for years. I was introduced to technology very young, and have been using the internet since I was about 8 to 10 years old. I'm 27 now, I've been seriously trying to improve my focus since I was about 22, but nothing stuck. If intensive meditation cannot help me, I'm not sure if anything can, except maybe some kind of drugs.

Have you talked to a doctor about ADHD and possible treatment methods? The pharmacology behind prescribed stimulants work to flood our dopamine receptors greatly weakening that urge to check our phone for those sweet, sweet, notifications.

I'm British, and in the UK it's extremely hard to get adult ADHD diagnosis. Basically you have to go to a private doctor and even then they are quite strict. Due to my high academic achievement (doctor in quantum physics) they will probably say I don't have it. The situation there for adult ADHD is so bad that basically I just gave up on the whole thing and decided that I didn't have it.

I live in Germany now, but unfortunately I don't speak German anywhere near well enough to get a consultation.

Are there no English speaking doctors in Germany?

A specialist in the UK might be worth talking to. You’ve tried many natural alternatives and nothing helps you with your work. Meditating every day for a year is a big accomplishment and it says a lot for it to not help.

I am struggling literally right now with this. Two days in a binge of commenting stuff on social networks, my tasks are dangerously late.

Honestly my suggestion is to get rid of all social media. How many hours to master a new skill are wasted away with pointless debates and conversations?

I have been off of social media for years now and I couldn’t go back.

Really, ask yourself if your conversations on social media are yielding something productive to society or if it’s just wasting time.

If you want social, get a group together and meet in person. Go do something.

Alongside this, maybe set yourself up on calendly.com with some open time slots and tell people:

  "I'm taking a break from social media. If you'd like to get in touch with me, email [email protected] or click on [my calendar link](https://calendly.com/) and pick a time for a phone call"

Will some people think you're odd for doing this? Yes. But it is better to miss out on 10 shallow connections and gain 1 deep one. Face the FOMO.

> productive to society

A better question: Are you really deeply connecting with the people you talk to or are you just wandering?

Please don’t forget that these platforms are designed to be addicting.

What you’re suggesting is akin to: “why not smoke occasionally to take the edge off.”

It’s about losing mental focus if you ask me. If you’re an occasional user, your mind is still going to be roped in.

They have an army of scientist who’ve proven these facts already and social media companies exploit us all.

I agree with the idea of establishing deeper connections: but take them offline and have a cup of tea or video chat. There’s simply better options.

Calendly no more addicting or engaging than a dentist’s website. It just lets you schedule a phone call or video chat.

Quitting social media is not really about FOMO, it's about the fear of being bored due to not having anything else to fill that time.

I also struggle with this. My attention span is terrible. What is the process you used to gradually take it back? Can you recommend and resources regarding this topic?

Meditation, exercise, good diet. You train your brain just like you train anything else.

I have no expertise on the subject so my diagnosis basically means nothing but I suspect that the explosion in ADHD diagnoses has something to do with this. If you constantly exist in an environment that is built to fracture and segment and compete for your time it doesn't seem surprising to me at all that you're going to have a very difficult time allocating attention.

In my experience the worst contributor is mobile games. Daily login reward, daily quests / tasks, etc. They divert your attention because you feared to miss those rewards. It's less effective for adult but very harmful to teens.

However I found that missing one day of it and not spending any cash to those games helps with getting out of it.

What's ironic too is that these "daily" rewards offer so much leeway to the end user to get away with not actually hitting daily. In example, Timehop, has recorded days without me actually visiting the app - rather keeping the streak on the app seems to be more for my dopamine gain even if its number is invalid. Egg, Inc, a game I play on my phone has daily rewards. On its system, I have 24 hours until after my daily reward is given (or so I presume, I haven't missed one in months :/) that it gives me in difference to make sure I come into the app. It's annoying but the patterns are so apparent that it surprises me how many people don't notice them.

It's possible this experiment will affect each of its participants.

Even though I try to control my attention when I'm unaware my finger always slips to the new tab opening a page for quick dopamine shots.

Just a heads up, your account appears to be shadow banned.

Isn’t the net effect still time? The apps have your attention, so the real task at hand takes twice as long. That weekend you wanted to work on a project? Gone to Reddit and YouTube. Not enough time to do the things you want when the things you impulsively scroll are hijacking time and attention.