For 12 years, I thought I was the laziest person in the world. I couldn’t get anything done, always procrastinating almost litterally everything. It cost me my studies, and good chances of integrating myself in society. And at the same time I thought that my time was gonna come, that I was gonna focus and make back theses months years at least some of the time lost. But then I woke up, I was already in my late twenties, and I began to get worried things would never change. So I tried to contact back some old friend that I originally didn’t want to let see me in that state. But it was too late, and they moved on already, if I was even able to trade a few words. Worried about how much I was forgetting, I was trying to scrape togethe whatever traces theses years have left by. And then stumbling on an old firefox install, I discovered something : I didn’t gave that much of a fuck about all the things I searched. I thought about all the stuff, even simple, I could have done instead of reading the wiki for « factorio » a game I only played a free alpha. It was frustrating. But it gave me more direction than I thought to move forwards. However, it seems that with the explosion of techiques to make the internet more and more addictive, I am not the one with problems to use my time well. So I thought that a few notes about what I observed could be usefull to other people.
Identifying the problem.
Having a web compulsion kinda suck. You are just living everything by procuration. I could wake up, eat my breakfast, go on my computer, eat my lunch, go back on my computer, eat a snack, go back on my computer, eat a bit of dinner, go back on my computer and thinking I would just maybe do one more click until I went to sleep way too late and if I maybe played a bit of videogame it was the most productive I had been. If you slightly recognize yourself into that, you can make things at least a little better for yourself.
(disclaimer : I am not a medical specialist, addictologue, or anything else. This is just personal experience)
This is the triangle. I believe, that identifying with details each of the points is key to manage a compulsion problem.
Compulsion :
This is the point you probably don’t know as well as you think you do. Our brain suck at remembering stuff ; I remember during my first attempt at keeping a diary that idenfiying exactly what goes on each days get tricky after only 3 or 4 days of procrastinating. So you don’t remember your web sessions as well as you think you do. While you think of them as waste of time in hindsight, you also only remember the bests bit of thems. The one where you actually learn something (even if it wasn’t very usefull), where you laughed, where you made someone else laughed. A compulsion, is in a way, an action that sound more useful on the moment that it actually is. I think the first step is to look at what you were actually doing on the computer, say, a few years ago, and see how much stuff you already forgotten and didn’t care much about is there. This is easier said that done, and you may have to settle for only a few months ago, but this can already help a lot.
There is other reasons why I think you should check your web history. Most advice in terms of how to treat addictions reccommand looking at what trigger the compulsion, their frequency and stuff, and web compulsion have the advantage of potentially being one of the compulsion that document itself the most, so we may as well take advantage of that. Also, even if you don’t have pathological problems, keeping traces of navigation history can be useful to not always have to default to « I remember reading somewhere by someone » more that you would like to.
How to read it is the tricky part. We want for the sake of the exercice to read something a few months/years old, not just yesterday session you’re currently guilting about, but most navigator only keep this data for three months. Microsoft Edge, being a chronium navigator, only keep the data for three months but allow manual exports. Safari keep by default the data for six months unless changed in settings, and delete all visits that aren’t the most recents, with a manual export option setting. Chrome may store data beyond three months in my activity, which can also be used to retrieve your searchs if you use Google and all kind of other data. Firefox work with a variable limit entry instead, depending of your hard drive. Safari have six months by default unless you change it manually, and don’t keep repeated visits. Vivaldi only keep for three months unless set otherwise, but at least come with a cool interface.
If you use a chronium navigator, you can bypass some of theses limit with an extension, like history plus or history trends unlimited, which I honestly recommand to anyone regardless of your internet usage. If anything, it can at least help make whatever little of data has been saved to be more readable.
So, try looking at your google activity or whatever old browsing data you could salvage. What do you think of it in hindsight ? Were they all subjects that interested you ? Were it the best way to learn about it ? What kind of patterns lead to you wasting your time ? Do you really give a fuck in hindsight ?
This is a painful, but necessary I think experience. Don’t try to delete the data you’re ashamed of; I tried and I regret it. It doesn’t give you your time back.
One of theses days :
The second point of the graph. Now that you’re watching some old history, you can probably at least think of some stuff you would have liked to do instead, whether it’s productive or personal. This probably isn’t the first time you are thinking of stuff you need to do, but you should for now keep it broad. A « one of theses days » is anything you are post-ponning without real reasons. It can be « working » sure, but it can also be spending time with your loved one, sorting some papers, cleaning your room, or playing a video game. It can even be something in rapport with internet. As long as YOU want to do it but you are procrastinating it for the sake of compulsion, it work. Don’t think too hard in terms of important/not important yet ; We are trying to build the level 0 of « getting stuff I actually want to get done instead of whatever go through my head at some precise moment ». For exemple, one of the first thing I did was progressively cleaning up an old address mail with over a thousand of unread mail to make it actually usable. So, when you can recognize you are doing something by compulsion, try to grab something you wanted to do one of theses days instead. There is a line between « one of theses days » and « compulsion » because the two aren’t so distinct ; stuff started by compulsion can slide into « one of theses days » as you keep procrastinating going further into it, or sometime you do manage by compulsion to accidentally do something that you wanted to do one of theses days. But compulsion is a poor guide, and you shouldn’t expect it by itself to point you towards things that are actually fulffilling to do. For some people, facebook is a compulsion ; for me, adding my family to stay in touch with them was something I wanted to do « one of theses days ». Some google search can be compulsive while other can be something you wanted to do one of theses days.
- Bu-But I want to lock in
Stop. Forget « locking in ». It ain’t gonna happen. It’s part of the problem ; locking in is scary, so you keep thinking you’ll do it tomorrow. You aren’t gonna make back the day you lost to compulsing navigation by working twice as hard, they are just lost. Kinda suck but that’s it.
Even if you do want to lock in, you can’t make me believe that the only thing you want to do. The mail aren’t gonna read themselves. The documents aren’t gonna sort themselves. The food isn’t cooking itself, and your mom would like some help. Do some of the thing you want to do one of theses days first, and then we’ll talk about locking in.
Sufferring
The third point, also important to understand. To some level, even if you don’t realize it, you may suffer at the idea of doing what you want to do one of theses days. You can be afraid that is gonna be less than perfect, that it’s not gonna pay off, or that working on it make you think about all the time you already wasted. That when a compulsion may kick in, to hide the pain. Identifying the suffering is easier when the two other points has been identified, and you can actually begin to answer some question about it : Can I do anything to make it less painfull ? Is it gonna lessen with time ? If the answer is no, tough luck. Look like you are gonna have to deal with that suffering, as unpleasant as it is, to actually get some stuff done.
Now that the triangle has been identified, we can actually make some step forwards
1) Recognizing you are doing something by compulsion. Question whether you are actually going to give a fuck about that thing a few months from now on
2) Trying to think of something you wanted to do one of theses day instead. Remembering why you actually want to advance on it, why it’s actually important to you
3) Questioning the pain and whether it can be lessened. If the answer is no, then you’ll have to deal with it.
You will not manage to always escape compulsion, so I’d reccommand making sure they are finite, to make it easier to manage your time. Avoid stuff like discover pages and use feature like subscriptions to focus on what you actually care about. I reccommand getting the old reddit redirect extension or an userscript because the new version feels a lot more addictive : Old reddit will more or less show you the same links in a day you can realize you don’t actually care much about, while new reddit only show you one new link by screen that you may never find later.
That’s more or less the guide. Does it work ? I’m not really sure, but that I managed to write a small blog post, even if it’s less than perfect, is a good sign and improvement. I hope that this stuff may prove useful to some people
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