> Interestingly, when I travel, my relationship with browsing changes. The feeling of "magnetic attention" (present even right now) is entirely absent and I lose interest after 5 minutes, max.
Oh wow, interesting that you mention it because I experience the same. Can and do spend hours a day looking at random stuff on various forums / youtube / hn. But once I'm out traveling the need disappears and it just doesn't seem to grip as much anymore.
I believe the almost obsessive browsing is some kind of escape or avoidance mechanism. An escape from being somewhere doing something that you don't want to be doing. It is an easy of taking the mind of whatever is going on in reality. Not that it helps much.
I’ve been thinking it’s a sort of “escape from the void”. When there’s nothing that particularly needs focus, there’s a feeling of wanting to escape from the discomfort of the silence. When I truly have no plans, I find myself seeking out lots of cheap fillers - HN, reddit, snacks.
As Blaise Pascal said, “ All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone”.
The question is why? Why is it so hard to sit quietly in a room alone? What exactly is it that we’re trying to escape?
Same here. My theory is that when travelling you are not bored, thus you have nothing to "escape" from.
The only problem with my theory is that this effect (ie. not wasting time) lasts a couple of days after returning from a trip. This should not happen because you are in the same context as when you were liberally wasting time.
I also move countries a lot. The first 1-2 months at a new country I am wasting time significantly less compared to when I have settled.
>The only problem with my theory is that this effect (ie. not wasting time) lasts a couple of days after returning from a trip. This should not happen because you are in the same context as when you were liberally wasting time.
When you return back home, home is somewhat a different experience from the day to day drudgery. I think it's just that our brains hate boring routines and modern capitalism has made your life extremely Specialized and routine.
Oh wow, interesting that you mention it because I experience the same. Can and do spend hours a day looking at random stuff on various forums / youtube / hn. But once I'm out traveling the need disappears and it just doesn't seem to grip as much anymore.
I believe the almost obsessive browsing is some kind of escape or avoidance mechanism. An escape from being somewhere doing something that you don't want to be doing. It is an easy of taking the mind of whatever is going on in reality. Not that it helps much.