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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: March 2nd, 2024

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  • It might just be that I don’t watch TV adverts and I use uBlock origin so I don’t see ads online, so my main marketing comes from native ads (like stories on the radio) or billboards when driving places. I guess I mean the environment determines whether how those associations are built, for example I will forever associate British Petroleum with dinosaurs because my parents taped a dinosaur special on VHS and the big BP oil spill had happened so they were running lots of repetitive ads, so to get through my educational dinosaur show I had to at the very least regularly fast forward through these ads.












  • this probably won’t help you, but just in case:

    I went through a phase in my development where I had to look up a lot of words in the dictionary. There was a constant tension between wanting to stay with what I was reading and wanting to look up a word.

    I got in the habit of keeping a pad of paper and a pencil nearby when reading, and I made it a habit to look up each word I wanted to know - I could either look it up later and keep reading, or I could look it up right then. After a while I got faster at navigating the alphabetic order of the dictionary and I could open the dictionary close to where the word would be. It was just a matter of practice.

    Writing the word down was not just a deferral strategy, but also a way for me to memorize and appreciate the word I looked up - I put in effort to stop reading and look it up in a separate book, and when I first started I would keep forgetting the word and I had to look up words multiple times. Writing it down at first let me quickly refer back to recent words I was trying to learn or remember, but I noticed even just writing it at all made it more likely I wouldn’t forget in the first place (so my pad of paper wasn’t even all that necessary as a reference, though I could and sometimes did use it that way).

    This is all much more effort than the digital approaches you are talking about, but it was a method that really helped me learn. I would say the learning phase was really intensive for a three to four month period, then it leveled out and I was looking up words less frequently and it was less necessary. It was especially helpful to study the etymology and learn Latin and Greek roots, which then helped me piece together the meaning of words without a dictionary (just from context and etymological guesses). For a while I even stopped carrying a dictionary, and instead carried a concise etymology dictionary, which let me learn the roots of the word and generally had much less about the definition (but gave me better access to the meaning and being able to memorize it).




  • Yeah, I like to get distracted and sucked into things, esp. on the computer. When I get that way I don’t get hungry or thirsty, I don’t realize I need to use the restroom, etc. - just completely ignoring the body (which is nice for me). I’m pretty sure it ruins my posture and creates muscular-skeletal problems, too.

    Either way, interesting idea about listening to sounds or music - maybe that would increase enjoyment, but I worry it would reduce the usefulness of the resting (part of what I think helps is that I seclude my senses and I usually lie down in a quiet and dark place). Still, something to explore and see if it wouldn’t make it easier to motivate me to do it instead of rotting on the screen.


  • hey thanks!

    One thing I have noticed is that I sometimes turn to this impulsive behavior when I feel really tired and I just need to rest, and I think of scrolling social media as an enjoyable kind of mental and physical break. So I’ve tried a few times to just set a timer on my phone and lay down and close my eyes for a bit instead, which makes me feel much more rested and works better as a break for my mind and body than scrolling social media.

    However, this requires the awareness in the moment that the motivation for the social media impulsivity is that I’m tired and that I need a break, and I need the additional will-power to choose the better and admittedly less fun sounding alternative of actually resting - so as you can imagine establishing that new behavior has been a losing battle.

    Anyway - I appreciate your positivity, thanks for your question and comments!!



  • That is good advice, but I don’t have any apps and I don’t tend to spend much time on my phone. I find the mobile UI annoying, so it’s really desperation when I turn to a phone to browse a place like Reddit. Usually I do it when I have a burning question that I want to explore and I’m not otherwise able to use my desktop or laptop.

    I’m trying to find a way to nudge myself away from this impulsivity on desktop, which the redirecting helped do. I keep thinking maybe I could write some javascript and use greasemonkey to load it and do what I need.


    1. I prefer to feel in control, and when I notice impulsivity and difficulty stopping or changing the behavior, it’s a red flag for me
    2. the amount of time spent is too much and I find it wasteful, the time could be better utilized, even if on a different down-time or recreational activity which leaves me feeling better or is more enriching
    3. Lemmy / Reddit / whatever social media usually has some content that is useful or good in some way, but I would say most of the content I consume when engaging impulsively ends up not supporting my mental health (e.g. doomscrolling is a more common outcome from this impulsive behavior than, for example, engaging with community or other reasons that I seek these places in the first place).