Stop overstimulating your mind with digital entertainment

This is ridiculously preachy. I do think the overall thesis is correct, in that boredom can be a powerful force for creativity and inspiration, but paragraphs like this make the article completely off-putting:<p>&quot;If you want to let music inspire you and enjoy its real beauty, I have few very simple rules: Classical Music and no “skipping”. Then I will trust my appetite.&quot;<p>I do like sitting down and actually focusing on an album, but suggesting only that only classical music is worthy of appreciation is absurd. There is an amazing variety of wonderful modern music in a multitude of genres.

&gt; I observe many people, interestingly the majority of it are girls, that seem to never stop messaging with their boyfriend, their friends, their mother,…<p>It was just the same old &quot;I wish I was deep&quot; stoic drivel till here and it&#x27;s clear this was probably written by a 17 year old.

I don&#x27;t exactly disagree with the premise but the tone is so authoritative and harsh that it&#x27;s difficult to take seriously.<p>Not to mention pulling out &quot;A Brave New World&quot; after the first paragraph. This reads like a college freshman essay, including the typos. It&#x27;s &quot;time and time again&quot; not &quot;times and times again&quot;.

There is no evidence dopamine fasting does anything. It&#x27;s just the latest techie health fad.

It feels like the author here is accidentally right for all the wrong reasons. The central premise — that being constantly on digital devices prevents the boredom that ultimately inspires us to do something better — is pretty trivial to be honest.<p>But by framing it in moralistic language, it comes off as insultingly trite. For conversations like this I find it helpful to bring the focus to your personal experience. Say “this is what I did and how it affected me” and not “you have to do these things to be happy”. The former allows the reader to make an inference and decide for themselves if your experience sounds compelling, the latter is a command with no authority.

&gt;Spotify and its fellows allow us to constantly switching [sic] track [sic], always trying to hit the next “high”. Have you ever noticed that after while no music satisfies you?<p>No?<p>The author sounds like such a condescending, self-congratulatory and ill-informed asshole. I don&#x27;t understand how this is upvoted here at all.

I think Deep Work is a much better discussion of this problem; without the shame&#x2F;disgust&#x2F;morality play that&#x27;s being enacted here.

&gt; I started to feel a deep feeling of disgust.<p>I skimmed the article very quickly since I didn&#x27;t like the authors writing style. That line at the end struck me though. I&#x27;m not against cynicism in general but it is particularly destructive when combined with bitterness and contempt.<p>That helped me realize why I couldn&#x27;t get through a paragraph of the essay without wanting to skip forward. This rant isn&#x27;t coming from a place of love but instead it feels like it is coming from a place of contempt. It seems the author feels they are above others. They are dictating the correct behaviour like a priest to sinners.

Boredom is useful for creativity, I’ve found. How do you set yourself up to be creative?

&quot;Classical music and no skipping&quot;<p>LOL.<p>That&#x27;s all I need to see from the author to know to ignore his advice. Logic dictates that if you&#x27;re looking to suppress excess stimulation, then no music is better than background music. Likewise, if focusing is your goal, then a pair of simple noise cancelling headphones or maybe a nice nature sounds track would be better. Classical music, after all, was created at the whims of an elite ruling class. Big money and its influence on the art form didn&#x27;t begin with modern music.<p>&quot;I observe many people, interestingly the majority of it are girls, that seem to never stop messaging with their boyfriend, their friends, their mother,…&quot;<p>Life advice from a child. What a brave new world, indeed.

I struggle when I stay in a room alone with my thoughts. I start feeling heat in my head and desperation starts to kick in even though it&#x27;s not physically painful. It&#x27;s such a strange thing, my mind just wants to be distracted, kind of like a substance addiction. I&#x27;ve never taken it seriously to further investigate what&#x27;s going on in there. I wonder if others experience something similar? I can tolerate a few minutes before my mind starts to wander and before I know it I am no longer in a room doing nothing, but engaged with a screen.<p>Makes me feel like I have no free will.

It&#x27;s happening just a few too many times but when I let my phone inside when going out for long I can sense a little &quot;should I go back in case ...&quot; followed by a &quot;to hell with the web&quot; while my brain oozing of joy. A deep &quot;finally..&quot;<p>Super strange honestly

An alternative to reading this awfully preachy, condescending blog post is to instead watch this clip of Andrei Tarkovsky[1].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=_Vvdtaaprzw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=_Vvdtaaprzw</a>

&gt; How to avoid digital autism and let your mind rest and recover<p>This line couldn&#x27;t have been written by someone who&#x27;s opinion I respect or care about. Basically stopped right there.

Can we just remove this? It&#x27;s an abstract for this guys motivational book. We get that taking your hand off your penis allowed you to do something with your life. Good content for other teenagers maybe?

&gt; With the introduction of the TV in the 60s, the PC in the 90s and the smartphone in the last decade, we have changed the main way of consuming information<p>That&#x27;s what people used to say a decade after the printing press was invented too.<p>And the bit about music is ridiculous; elitism based on ignorance. Anyone claiming that only their favorite genre is acceptable to listen to either has a too high opinion of themselves or has been missing out on &gt;99% of available content, perhaps even due to a fear of &quot;overstimulating&quot; their mind.<p>Some idle time now and then, maybe at a regular walk outside, is definitely helpful not only for creativity. But that doesn&#x27;t mean the rest of the daily activities are bad. At least for me I&#x27;d say both are necessary.

Are there any interesting theories on the interplay of creativity and boredom?

The only worthwhile advice here is to turn off notifications.

There are much better articles on the topics of digital addictions, and as a bonus, they come without the paternalistic writing style. &quot;Listen to classical music only!&quot; OK grandpa.<p>He does have a point when he mentions that music in the Spotify era is produced in industrial quantities, and can be quite generic. I also do agree that playlists engender a tendency to rapidly switch from song to song, compared to listening to a full album. But you can&#x27;t fix that with classical music. If people wanted to seek it out themselves, they would.

There&#x27;s just so much of this that is the author insisting that his preferences are right and anyone else is wrong.<p>&quot;Modern music is like junk food.&quot; There&#x27;s amazing modern music, and total crap. Labeling the millions of hours of modern music as all bad is at best lazy, and at worst has undertones of racism (the only good music is that produced by dead white guys).<p>&quot;Let me tell you: regulating your emotions with an external tool is dangerous. You start depending on it. You crave it when you don’t have it. It is called addiction.&quot; - again, just insanely lazy generalization. I regulate my emotions with an external tool most days. It&#x27;s called exercise. It is a very good thing, not an addiction (trust me, I&#x27;d love to stop, I really don&#x27;t enjoy exercise at all).<p>The bit about photos? I visited my mom&#x27;s house recently and looked at the photos of my deceased grandparents. According to this guy, that&#x27;s going to keep me in a slump.<p>This piece is generally pretty lazy (&quot;I bet that 95% of Millenials start their day by looking at the phone.&quot; - first of all, if you&#x27;re going to criticize a whole generation, at least spell it right, and second of all, why don&#x27;t you do some kind of research instead of making unsupported assumptions about the behavior of a group of millions of people?) and extremely arrogant.<p>I award OP no points and may god have mercy on his soul.

No.