Wasting time on the internet---Discipline

[Lamaman]

I have a extremely bad habit of wasting too much on internet and forums and it's affecting everything else to the point where it is damaging in a negative way and not in a time where I can afford it. Do you guys have any methods to curb useless internet use and reading message boards all day?

[crazyhorse]

You can use leechblock. If you use that tool, you can set a timer on your internet use.

F.E. monday (or other days of the week) block internet acces from 8 a.m. till 6 p.m.

[Zac]

I found actually tracking it helped me a lot for a while. I used a google chrome app like Time Tracker to keep track of my stats. Some of them were staggering.

This helped me for a while fight a pretty bad internet addiction. Once I had it in perspective and compared how much time I was spending on certain sites I began to get sick with myself. I changed my behavior accordingly.

I've reverted back to my old ways but now that you made this thread and I found a tracker I'm going to try and see if I can get better about it myself.

Reddit and Facebook are going to dwarf things like sleep and work. It's going to be sad. Thank you for the inspiration lol.

Hope this helps.

[Tim]

I use Google Chrome as a browser and it has a great extension called Blocker. Try that out. The thing is that you're still trying to break a bad habit, so do it step by step. What I did was block all sports sites for sports out of season. Then after a couple of weeks I blocked a couple of news sites. Now the only place I 'waste' time is... here... lol.

[Alvar]

(03-09-2012 02:37 AM)Zac Wrote:  I found actually tracking it helped me a lot for a while. I used a google chrome app like Time Tracker to keep track of my stats. Some of them were staggering.

Thanks for the tip, I use firefox and went looking for a similar one. Mind the time seems to do the same.

[seele]

Leechblock/Blocker was not enough for me. Instead I edited my /etc/hosts (on Windows you should also have hosts file somewhere, you just need to google it) and blocked websites, where I spent most time. For the first few hours I had a small delirium, when I entered one of those as a reflex and it wasn't there. Then I started reading and everything was fine.

[Peanut]

Yeah, I have the same problem. Working on it, and what helps a lot is http://getcoldturkey.com/

It works like the hosts file but you can't edit it back for a set amount of time

[Zac]

6 days since I installed the timer. This timer only times if you are moving your mouse on the page. The numbers listed are minutes.

http://postmasculine.com 572.74
https://www.facebook.com 373.42
http://www.reddit.com 338.21
http://bostonmenssymposium.com 243.21
https://docs.google.com 136.70
https://mail.google.com 97.25
http://www.google.com 79.07

[Mark]

Dude, we beat out Facebook? You obviously need to re-examine your priorities.

[Zac]

Almost more than Facebook and Reddit combined. That's fucking crazy. To be fair, I did just start using this forum. I'm sure the numbers will even out.

The overall number is 40 hours in 6 days. I'd blame it on vacation but I don't think I can just blame it on vacation....

[Reesays]

As a guy who sort of suffered from this, I don't really think the timer will do that much, I managed to beat the addiction though.

One thing I want to tell you is that it will not be an overnight process, in fact it may even take more than a week but work on minute by minute, cut it down slowly.

I used to go to sleep 2 years back at 2 AM in the morning going on Forum Bodybuilding, City Data, Facebook, and other sites, sometimes I would just browse for some pointless irrelevant BS on the internet. It hurt my mood, my health, and in mornings I would be really cranky too. Now if you are going to sleep at 2 AM in the morning then chances of you cutting that down to 11 PM in a week are unrealistic.

Here is what I did, I set a goal, at 1:30 AM I would be going to bed, even if I did not meet that 1:30 AM mark, I was in bed BEFORE 2 AM which was a victory. The next week I set a goal for 1 AM, I did not always go to bed at 1 AM but I did go to bed earlier than 1:30 AM. I constantly kept on working at it and in most cases I go to bed before 11:30 these days. Fortunately I only suffered from going to sleep late at night when it was Summer Vacation so academics were not hurt that bad.

I do find myself being addicted to the internet more and more some days and it does distract me. The thing is I find that the best way to defeat the internet is to not even turn it on. Try to get all work which is hand written done before you even turn the computer on. If you think you are going to get it done efficiently while browsing facebook, you are kidding yourself.

At my age, kids are inclined to waste time on the internet browsing pointless crap. I have managed to cut that down to a minimal but I sitll do it sometimes.

For the Messageboards part, make sure that you are cutting down there too. If you are a member of more than two forums, time for you to give some of them up.

As I said, it WILL take more than a week but as they say in football: "Bend, don't break!".

Btw, offtopic here a bit but with some of your posts I can see you probably browse messageboards which concern race and such. I have done so in the past too and do know that in a lot of those threads there is hardly any legible source. Usually it is one to five cranks bashing all ethnic groups in sight. Ignore those places and do not get sucked in.

[Lamaman]

I am not concerned with racial topics or waste my time on that, what is my concern is that this habit has completely destroyed valuable time and money on my part and has put me in a complete hole.

[FuckMeImFamous]

Search on hbr.org for get your goals back on track and six keys to changing almost everythimg.

I found those articles extremely useful.

[The Notorious PhD]

(03-23-2012 10:52 AM)FuckMeImFamous Wrote:  Search on hbr.org for get your goals back on track and six keys to changing almost everythimg.

Edmond Dantes covered the essentials of goal-setting and motivation (see the official 2012 goals thread for post link). However, the above articles mentioned above are linked below:

1. Get your goals back on track

2. Six keys to changing almost everything

[Zac]

In 14 days.

https://www.facebook.com 934.28 20.97
http://www.reddit.com 933.29 20.95
http://postmasculine.com 924.18 20.75
http://bostonmenssymposium.com 328.68 7.38


Overall with all sites 74.5 hours of clicking through the internet over 14 days. It's starting to look a little more like what I expected.

I want to see if I can cut that down in the next 14 to maybe 65 and make some of it more quality.

Reset.

[Mark]

That's 5.3 hours a day on four websites... yeah, cutting that in half may be useful.

I'm afraid to find out what my stats would be.

[Zac]