FI, happiness, mid-life crisis & depression

Minimalism
123

Talking about addiction, I stumbled upon this podcast about neuroscience and behavior. Can’t vouch totally for the usefulness but the guy is a neuroscience professor from Stanford and seems to generally carefully word his advice.
I haven’t listened to all of the episodes but he seems pretty bullish on nootropics. This is something I’m a bit wary about because my latest, possibly wrong understanding is that most nootropics are overrated and much of it is a placebo.

Nevertheless, I thought the following episode was excellent and illuminating:

1 Like
124

I completely agree on that for majority of social media in general, but to finger pick - Posting a pic from a hike you did doesn’t reflect reality? :grin:

Indeed, it is a decision between dopamine and ego boost, and that.
Hard for any human but the most disciplined (or tactical, via apps like yours) ones.

1 Like
125

It’s a curated selection of reality at best. If you only see top 1% of quality time of your 100 friends, you might think they all the time do hikes, beach holidays, parties with friends etc.

1 Like
127

Actually, the newest video of Whatifalthist discusses how envy shaped history. It’s such a strong feeling, he argues the doctrine of communism and, more recently, social justice, stems out of envy. Societies which kept envy in check and allowed individuals to act freely, flourished.

I surely struggle not to get upset when I see “friends” achieve success or just have a good time. It’s shameful to admit, and I wouldn’t act on that feeling, but it’s a fact. For this reason, it would surely be better to just delete the app. I have a nice life and I still feel this, how annoying does it have to be to the ones who are worse off? No wonder that the younger generation feels the need to “tax the rich” and “abolish capitalism”.

2 Likes
129

Recently I started tracking screen usage with RescueTime, and I realized that, even though I blocked social media, I still spend several hours a day on the phone (including 1-2 hours on instant messaging), and I also check the phone +100 times once a day. Not speaking of 9-13 hours a day on the computer during work and after work. It wasn’t healthy and something needs to be done about it. My strong will is not strong at all and I can’t “force” myself to use these things less often, so I decided to detox (like an alcoholic) - so I cut out everything, and what I couldn’t cut, I blocked using Freedom. So now I have no messengers, no social media, no app on my phone (except SMS, calls, and Google Maps), most of the day (from 8:00 to 21:00) I have all distracting websites blocked - from news portals to entertainment like Netflix or Spotify), and I blocked totally all social media and youtube for the whole day. I can only use Netflix on the projector in the evenings, and I can only check my e-mail in the evening (between 21:00 and 23:00). At midnight I turn on the night blockade - I block the Internet and everything on the phone except calls. I decided to start taking care of my attention, reduce the addictive digital tech and return to more healthy analog entertainment (book, radio, walk, etc.).

We will see what will come out of it, but I hope that it will help me focus on certain things (e.g. learning German, learning programming, etc.), and it will relieve my brain from unnecessary information and allow me to rest mentally more easily, and in the long run hopefully it will improve my productivity, well-being and will allow me to focus on what is most important.

I definitely freed some time - especially that I cut off almost everything (social media, messengers, almost all apps, and most of the Internet is blocked during most of the day).

It seems that this extra time and focus naturally flew into work. The most distracting thing during the day that I’m doing is playing guitar. I’m definitely more productive and more focused at work. The negative side effect is that I can’t stop working after 6 pm because I’m getting sucked. So that’s something that I have to improve on. Unfortunately, I can’t block my work stuff using Freedom because sometimes I need to respond to emergencies.

Paradoxically, I didn’t intend to focus more on work. I wanted to focus on German learning and start preparing for the Google interview. With the first, I already improved (I started watching German TV shows during lunch break, listening to German podcasts, reading German books in the evening, and I scheduled for November two Skype classes per week, etc) and I plan to take the B1 exam beginning of next year. With the interview there’s not much progress - I don’t know where to start. I guess that the biggest obstacle is that I don’t know if I want to start - I’m still undecided what I want to do with my career. And of course, in the background there’s a bigger existential question - once I’m financially independent (sooner if I move back to Poland or later if I stay in Switzerland), then what should I do with my time - how to employ my time to bring joy, meaning and purpose to me and my family. I have no clue, but I hope quitting addictive distractions will help me to find peace of mind to figure this out.

8 Likes
130

Thanks for sharing.

What position are you targeting for?
Might be able to share some resources if it’s the SW Engineer one.

1 Like
131

Did you get in touch with Mr RIP or Mr Cheese already ?

1 Like
132

Have seen this?

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pIEqc3BhcaI

It’s a short (1 minute, so really worth watching) intro into his longer video. He says that it’s not the people with high willpower who succeed. It’s the ones who plan their life so that they don’t have to use their willpower as much, that do. So, don’t want to spend countless hours playing games? Don’t buy a gaming PC / console. To make things less one-dimensional, I told this to a friend and he said, games are on of the top valuable things in his life, that make life worth living, so he would never cut them out.

I guess cutting off distractors at certain times of day could also work, but to me it seems like too much of a hassle. Either something is beneficial and then I allow myself to do it, or it’s a waste of time and then I just get rid of it. Like that Netflix account. I still have it, for the lack of more meaningful entertainment in the evening.

I’ve been also wondering if our dopamine addiction is a problem in itself, or rather a symptom of a larger problem, caused by the modern world. We lack meaningful personal relationships, goals, purpose in life (religion is dead), so we fill it with worthless substitutes (movies, games, social media). Or maybe it just sounds right but is totally wrong.

2 Likes
133

Though it is fascinating to see, for example, that Henry David Thoreau was saying the same things in Walden in the mid 1850s!

What we observe now has been in development for a long time. Maybe it all started with the industrialization? When, as Harari wrote in Sapiens, first horses were made redundant and then people.

Our civilization has solved the problem of physical needs but not of intellectual needs.

But that’s not a problem solved with the iron willpower of a Vulcan. I don’t have a ready solution either, but I believe that we should be at peace with ourselves and not try to force us too much into doing things. Hence little habits and less temptations would be my approach.

It will result in a certain disconnect from the “common world”, or rather of its less healthy and attractive things. But isn’t’ that what FIRE is also about?

1 Like
134

Our brains are wired the way they are in order to maximize the chances of survival and reproduction. But the primal activities that brought us satisfaction (like physical activity, socializing, etc) are not required anymore, because thanks to technology we don’t have to hunt/gather food or get along with other people (just do your job and get paid). Moreover, we have found easy substitutes to these “real” activities. They scratch the itch, but I think we can sense that something is missing in the long run.

I recently saw a Facebook post from WSJ about dopamine addiction, and the most liked comment was that it’s not our fault, but the fault of “late stage capitalism”. The commenter said sth like we can’t afford a place to live and our smartphones are the drug to take us out of our misery. I think they are somewhat misinterpreting what’s going on. I certainly am not in a poor financial position, but I am also a victim of social media addiction.

135

After working through some of the content, I want to withdraw my recommendation.

Allow me to share my opinion, even though you did not ask me :nerd_face:.

I like MOOCs that have a good mix between new information and exercises that help you putting concepts into action and trying out things for yourself. Often, there is less content in the course than when you read a book about the topic but it helps me to engage more actively with the main ideas.

Examples, that go well with the theme of this thread and are good examples of interactive MOOCs which I can highly recommend are:

1 Like
136

Using or consuming social media and learning a language are by no means mutually exclusive.

Facebook, and Instagram, with their focus on tiny bits of - primarily - visual information will not be of much use in life. Though, maybe the people you stay in touch with over these platforms, if you see them as a means of communication.

But YouTube?

Now, sure, you can waste your time by watching mindless drivel in your own maternal language on YouTube. Yet it would still be the last platform to get rid of or lock myself out. Especially when trying to learn a new language. Just compare what materials for language learning you can access today - for free - compared to ten, fifteen or twenty years ago. The amount and variety of content you can find there is just astounding. Not only can you watch content about pretty much any subject you can think of or that interests you. A big advantage compared to more traditional foreign-language or language learning media is the amount of natural and colloquial speech you can tune in to on YouTube. It’s not as if the news or even a movie on TV reflected everyday speech very well, let alone different social or regional varieties of speech.

I think YouTube is arguably one of the greatest tool ever invented, for learning spoken languages.

2 Likes
137

I might have found a way to get 90% of the value from youtube (measured for me) while spending only 5-15% of the time I used to.

The problem always was:

  1. I got really fed up with my youtube consumption.
  2. I blocked it altogether.
  3. Life was good.
  4. A reasonable purpose for “unblocking youtube this once” arose.
  5. Relapse.

What I did to make that cycle go away:

  • On my laptop:
    Addon “Unhook” on firefox for youtube and try to limit all the functionality that can be limited.
  • On my smartphone:
    Block youtube altogether.
    Install the “Newpipe” app.
    Reroute youtube videos to Newpipe.
    Block everything you can block on Newpipe. (Comments, feed, recommendation, etc.)

With this, I can watch every youtube video that is being shared with me. I can search for specific videos (“How to do linear regression in R”) in google and open the relevant videos.
But there are no comments, no getting sucked into the next video, and no recommendation feed.

Pretty satisfied with it for 3 weeks. I will report if something makes me stumble again :slight_smile:

3 Likes
138

PS. My productivity on the week before starting “Digital decluttering”:

image
image2132×862 92 KB

And the result after first week:

image
image2076×844 81.3 KB

1 Like
139

Thoreau was also the first Mustachian. In Walden, his point was to show that it is possible to live a minimalist lifestyle and focus on things that are most important. He lists even how much he’s spending and he compares it to the spending of other farmers. Interestingly, back then he already realized that people would overspend on some “luxuries” and then overwork themselves to finance them and in effect “live lives of quiet desperation”.

Exactly, and to maintain our brain healthy, I think we have to “simulate” what it was intended (evolved) to do. Overdoing screens is not healthy for our brains - instead, I’m trying to focus on what makes my brain “happy”: socialization, meaningful work/hobby, maintaining relationships (friends & family), and pursuing intellectual/spiritual development (as an ersatz of religion).

I think the main reason why most of us are so clueless about our lives is that religion has died. In the past religion gave structure and meaning to individual life - now we’re swimming in unstructured meaningless chaos. I’m not able to become religious again, but I’m trying to find reasonable substitutes.

You’re probably right. Nevertheless, the problem is youtube packs “the greatest tool ever invented, for learning spoken languages” and “the greatest distraction machine from whatever you’re pursuing” together into one thing. Before I’ll jump back into these platforms, I want to first unwind the habits of mindless checking and browsing. Once I’ll master selective checking/watching/browsing, then I’ll think about unblocking these platforms and use figure out how to use the content they are offering without falling back into distraction addiction.

PS. I decided to go as far as I can get in November. I blocked on my phone e-mail, web browser, podcasts, spotify, and everything else except calls, SMS, and Google Maps. Basically, I turned my smartphone into dumbphone+GPS. Similarly on my computer - except I have an open window in the evening for entertainment (including this forum).

Great idea!

2 Likes
140

I am not sure I get these pictures.

It seemed to me you worked 10 extra hours and got rid of entertainment. That does not seem that much healthier, no?

I don’t really understand the push towards productivity and hustling that seems to me the norm these days. I don’t want to pass all my time on productive things, I want to pass as much of it on things I enjoy.

3 Likes
141

I think the point is to be satisfied with the way you lead your life. Wasting hours on memes and social media can make you feel depressed in retrospect (just as an alcoholic probably hates being hungover during his moments of clarity). I agree that life shouldn’t be about maximizing total productivity, at least not for everybody. But it should be filled with meaningful events that actually slow down the pace of time and not speed it up. Otherwise we will go through life on fast forward, jumping from one “drug” to another.

Well, here’s me preaching, I sure can talk the talk, not sure if I can walk the walk, though…

7 Likes
142

Looks like I had signed up 2 years ago and never even started the course, might try again now, thanks :slight_smile:

1 Like
143

Yes and no. I agree that should work less but I’m really happy that I stopped mindless/dumb/unstructured/meaningless entertainment. Now, when I want to entertain myself, I do what I planned to do - instead of doing what the facebook/youtube algorithm tells me to do. That’s a huge difference to my well-being. I’m much more mindful of how I spend my time.

6 Likes
144

I can recommend 75hard as a simple way to increase your will power

1 Like