Turn Off the Internet

Overtaken

Humans crave novel stimuli. One of the biggest sources of new stimuli is the internet. This is why I keep watching YouTube videos non-stop even when I have important work to get back to.

But if novel stimuli is what I want, why don’t I look for it in my work? Why not study new data in computer science (or medicine or finance or whatever be your field)? The new data that I get from YouTube and the internet in general seems to be more tempting than the ones from my field. Hence the weekend-long binges on YouTube.

That’s not fully true, though. When I’m in the middle of a tough programming problem, I have absolutely no desire to check popular blogs or watch some YouTube videos. My mind’s desire for something to chew on is satiated by the program I’m working on. So, it’s not like the internet’s draw is irresistible.

However, I do procrastinate for hours and days surfing the web before I start working on a problem. So, the internet stops me from getting my work started. At the beginning of a session, my work feels tedious whereas the internet seems as attractive as ever. There’s always something new going on online - some new videos by my favourite YouTubers, a couple of blog posts here, a few news scandals over there, and three or four Twitter timelines to browse.

What’s worse is that once you’ve begun watching that YouTube video or started reading that blog post, you never really feel like stopping. YouTube lays out five other videos that look just as captivating as the current one and your favourite blogger links to three other posts that you want to check out. So, once you go online, it’s incredibly hard to turn your eyes away. Meanwhile, website and mobile app designers toil away to make the web even more addictive. Ever notice on a news site how your eyes get drawn to the thumbnails on the sidebar for other articles? They put faces in those thumbnails for a reason - our eyes are automatically drawn to faces in a picture. We then read the clickbait headline and get sucked into another story. The stream of novel data never stops. There’s never a moment when you’ve read the entire internet.¹

Derailed

How then do we get off this train of temptation and get down to work?

Swear off the internet completely? The internet is how I file my taxes, book flight tickets, and buy appliances. I’m not giving that up anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean I have to keep the broadband on at all times.

Instead, just turn off the internet before you even sit down to work. This will quieten your mind and let it have a chance to be drawn towards the novel data in your problems.²

Be protectionist. Nurture your fledgling motivation for your internal projects till they become exciting enough to stave off any external internet binges. I always notice that once I’ve been reading books regularly for a week or so, I no longer find YouTube videos or even blog posts to be attractive. In fact, I see them as downright inferior to the unadulterated stream of high-quality, well-written ideas from a book. So, all I have to do to stay in that zone of peak performance is to clear my workspace of the internet’s temptations till my motivation reactor hits critical mass.

For example, I resisted this very essay at the beginning. I procrastinated for days before I typed even a single word, and found all kinds of online content to be interesting all of a sudden. It was only when I turned off the router an hour and a half ago that I could put butt to seat and fingers to the keyboard. And now that I’m 1200+ words into the essay, I can’t bear to put it aside and pick it up tomorrow. No. I have to publish it tonight or I won’t be able to do anything else. I’d be thinking about this essay the whole time.

Corollary: Unfinished problems effortlessly capture your attention. So, remove distractions and do whatever it takes to get started. After that, you’re set.

Alternative Drugs

Fantasies seem to be another tempting source of novel data. Since there are no restrictions, you can dream up all kinds of new things for you to do - date some celebrity, become the ruler of some imaginary kingdom, or just become unbelievably successful in your career. Unless you run out of ideas to make your daydreams more exciting, which I think is rare, you will keep dreaming just like with the internet. Dangerous.

Another source of novel stimuli is other human beings. Social media merges this with the internet to send us new information about other people all the time.

TV shows and movies can be just as addictive even if you watch them offline. There’s a reason why Netflix releases entire seasons of their TV shows at the same time - binge-watching is what people prefer. Try to avoid getting access to them in the first place. I’ve learned to stay away from Netflix. I just can’t handle the temptation.

Occupied

Note that “humans crave novel data” isn’t literally true. We don’t change our houses all the time or even our smartphone wallpaper. However, we can’t bear to pay attention to something that is predictable.

Hypothesis: Maybe we crave novel data where we pay attention.

So, we may not mind the years-old paint on our walls if we have a new video game to play. However, we will lose our minds if we have nothing new going on.

Old things can feel “new” again once enough time has passed. For example, I rewatch my favourite shows once my mind has forgotten the jokes and plot details so that I once again find them juicy. Essentially, you shouldn’t be able to predict what’s going to happen. Once you can do that, it’s boring.

Hypothesis: You get bored when your attention isn’t completely occupied.

When you’re learning something new, there’s enough data to need your full attention to process it. When you’re stuck on a brand-new topic, however, you’re not able to organize the information hierarchically and are thus overwhelmed. That is when the fun factor drops to zero. Conversely, when trying to solve simple problems (like 4 x 7 = ?) or reading articles you’ve already read, there’s too little information because you can already pack the information up into neat little boxes that don’t take up much space. You start squirming in your seat looking for something else to do. So, find the flow of information that is just right.

Unfortunately, while the internet’s flow is “just right” for our brain, it’s also worthless. Avoid it. Turn off the internet when you need to work.