These days I have six “infinite distractions” — things I do mindlessly that are roughly limitless in content. They are: YouTube, YCombinator News, Google News, Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter.
Some of these are new additions to my repertoire, added I expect in response to my efforts to suppress viewing the others. I’m going to try a strategy of writing down the distraction rather than attending to it whenever I am drawn to it. Additionally, when my brain craves something like this, I’m going to make an effort to do one of the following instead: reaching out to to a friend, or going down the rabbit hole on a particular topic.
The former is just healthy. The latter I think satisfies the same brain cravings as e.g. mindless going on YouTube. But by selecting the topic to dive into deliberately rather than letting the whims of the YouTube/Reddit/etc algorithm select the content for me, I expect a few benefits. I expect the time will feel more valuable to me after the fact, I’ll learn something I care about, and I will remember better what I learned because it will be more connected to itself and my interests, I hope.
I tried this last night and learned about how to get a good sear (in brief: dry the protein, let it cool if it just cooked, and don’t move it around while searing).