The Death of Daydreaming

> you can't but help think about the thing that is top of mind, anxiety be damned.

This really captures what I think is the main problem with our state of being constantly distracted: it feels at first like a relief from anxiety, but ultimately results in even small anxieties never properly being dealt with. The end result is a vicious cycle (or I guess virtuous if you sell online ads) of becoming more and more anxious causing us to rely more and more on the screen to distract us, which in turn only increases that backlog of anxiety.

I see this happen in a lot of younger people that are constantly on screens: they frequently mention their need to "chill for a bit" and yet spend most of their time doing nothing but staring at a screen. It's clear that they are living in a lukewarm vat of anxiety that they can't face while staring at a screen, but also one which causes them immediate stress when they do look away.

I came to the very same conclusion - I need "empty time" to reflect, and prepare myself for my own life. For me, it was not smartphones, it started with books when I was a child, and continued with music players and alcohol later. Everything to keep the unwanted thoughts and feelings at bay. I am an excellent daydreamer as well, at times of stillness, I find something to "work on" in my mind.

What I ended up with is literally a time of day where I "sit with myself" and just think about things. I just sit down for some minutes and try to get my bearings on where I am in life right now. Also, I eliminated a lot of background noise and music - I often do menial things without any other distractions for example. Good opportunities to think about something deep.

A couple of times recently when I've not pulled out the phone, I've ended up having an interesting chat with somebody nearby.

Be open to having others talk with you by having an inviting look. And perhaps recognize when others are being inviting and feel out if they seem keen on yakking.

Imagine a subculture developing where some people just recognize other sociables. Maybe we need masonic-like rings or something else to identify us as welcoming random conversion.

Concentrating on your phone is as much of a conversation stopper as headphones.

I think it also encourages socialization. Chatting with someone instead of being engrossed in your phone.

I did a screen time detox a few years back. After hearing a similar idea about needing to get to boredom sometimes and not just escaping to a device. Only used a computer for work and exclusively worked on it, then no screen time whatsoever. Maybe lasted 3 weeks or so and made me more interested in stuff like reading, drawing, etc.

I can sympathize, but you didn’t mention the benefits at all, what would they be? What is benefit of anxiously thinking about past decisions?

I just had a day "off" because of some work on the 5G tower nearby. I can feel my brain chemistry change when the line is off. I don't feel the need to constantly check. There was a limited service bandwidth but it was too unreliable for my brain to want to wait for its dose of webpage refreshing. It sucks the long term / in-depth brain states .. it's so weird.

I've tried this a couple of times, and the only things I miss are:

- Navigation (can be solved with a dedicated device, but it's a lot less convenient) - A good camera at all times (I used to not care about this, but it's become more important now I have kids) - Mobile payments (pretty essential in my country, not all places accept cards or cash)

In every other aspect, it was a net positive in my life to get rid of my phone.

I’d like to inform you that I share your same anxieties. I read a book called “Difficult Conversations” (Patron, stone, heen). It didn’t remove all the anxiety, but it gave me A framework to lean on to get started, which was half of the stress. I think it will always suck having to fire people you like.

Just curious, when you say you do LEGOs, you mean buy a set and follow the instructions (which is fine and what I assume people mean when they talk about LEGOs)? Or do you mean sit with a pile of LEGOs and come up with your own ships/cars/toys? When I was a kid (70's/80's) we would just get boxes of bricks and make our own things, but it seems like pre-built sets are the most popular thing now. And yes we have plenty of pre-build sets in our house, but I feel like kids are missing out on the free-style aspect.

I use bike rides for your walks approach, though sometimes (say commuting) I get to my destination without remembering how I actually got there; the day dreaming is perhaps a little too immersive (some of this might be pretty busy city riding!) but in less attention-critical scenarios (like a ride outside the city, on the pathway or the grind up to a DH track) I have my absolute BEST periods of thought. Doing something you like (or in my case love), not using your phone, and getting exercise - especially in nice weather! - is a super-power. I know that if I get to a conclusion in this setting it is likely one of my better ones.

As I joke, some of my deepest architecture work has been done by reading up on the concrete topics and then flopping into a hammock to look at a cloud and watch a pair of magpies build a nest, with some coffee with ice cream and some calm tunes. Cup not entirely filled to the brim naturally, as that would be a cause for disaster very quickly.

And sure, I booked like 6 hours that day with no concrete immediate result, but 2-3 days like that a year or two ago shaped how applications function in the company today and it does so effectively.

Another thought the article provokes is the idea of mindfullnes and living in the moment. Sometimes it is easy to open up the phone and just escape. But in those situations, it can be quite interesting to just be in the moment, meet people and see where it goes. If you're in a shitty situation -- like a train stopping in the middle of nothing and dropping all passengers at a train station too short for the train -- it can be interesting to interact with and observe people. It can teach how all of us have very similar basic problems, no matter how we look or who we are. And I'm saying that as an introvert -- sometimes the anonymity of never meeting people again is a good thing.

Sitting on public transport looking out of the window not your phone and listening to music is ok but probably not podcasts.

Also showers are very good for the right state of mind.

I love walking too. My other strategy is to go to the sauna. I just go to the gym where I have a membership and head straight into the sauna room. No one in their right mind would bring a phone into the sauna so you get a bunch of people who are all just quietly daydreaming. It's beautiful and relaxing.

For me the trick is those Metal Earth puzzles. Lego is amazing (I have a tattoo of a Lego brick, heh) but it’s almost too freeform. Even with the kits, I find myself wanting to do more, add on, change, etc. The Metal Earth models make that a lot harder, so I can just have my hands busy and focused while my mind wanders.

> It takes up just enough mental energy to not get bored, but it lets me think about things with an unstressed mind.

This is a really good observation.

Lately, knitting has been scratching this itch for me.

My most novel ideas have come when my mind isn't distracted. It's really overlooked and is such a frequent source of inspiration that I tried to capture how I experience it in my own work life.

https://jaisenmathai.com/articles/latent-product-development...

A few years ago I was having dinner with a 70y old pastor and his wife. Obviously both extremely engaged with the community etc. Totally tripped me up to realize the wife had become addicted to YouTube. She almost started playing a video at the table as we were having desert.

Doom-scrolling and short-form videos seem to not discriminate by age. I know lots of middle-aged to elderly people who can sit on their phones and scroll for hours on end every day.

Young people may even have some level of resistance from exposure. It's effective on all ages.

My phone is decent enough to read books... the large iPhone is not so far different in size than the paperbacks I used to enjoy reading when I was younger. And, in a pinch, I can use it for important things. To send a message to someone I care to communicate with or to look up something urgently, or maybe the maps app if I need to go somewhere. But for all other purposes it is worthless to me. 6 months ago I was debugging my furnace and I had a Youtube video to help with that... and it's just unwatchable on the tiny screen. I found myself going back to my desk to watch it on the big screen. Though, even on that, Youube is very unappealing unless I'm looking for something specific.

On the computer monitor(s), I could lose the entire day here on HN or (less often now days) reddit. I still can't understand the appeal of gluing my eyeballs to a phone screen.

`noprocrast` has one upside over /etc/hosts though, which is that when you've hit the limit you can not just go and disable it, you have to wait for the timeout. Definitely one of the features I'm very grateful for on HN.

I felt like I don't want to squander what little time I had to myself while commuting daydreaming

The whole point of this discussion is that daydreaming is not a worthless activity, therefore time spent daydreaming is not "squandered."

"Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That's why I daydream on company time."