Technology fasting

[Vanraw]

I'm thinking on doing a technology Fast (Non work related). I keep using technology as an excuse for not getting shit done. For example, Sit in front of the TV instead of learning that new song on guitar. My woodworking shop has a fine coating of dust, that is not wood dust!!

Thinking on stopping any non-work related technology. Would not include transportation. So, No TV, No Home PC, No Gaming, No Purge trolling, etc etc etc. Mostly just the distracting things.

Its all about getting into lazy habits and seeing if you can break out of them. Anyone ever do this? If so for how long? I was thinking for like a week, and then see how it goes.

[Dustie]

I'm thinking on doing a technology Fast (Non work related). I keep using technology as an excuse for not getting shit done. For example, Sit in front of the TV instead of learning that new song on guitar. My woodworking shop has a fine coating of dust, that is not wood dust!!

Thinking on stopping any non-work related technology. Would not include transportation. So, No TV, No Home PC, No Gaming, No Purge trolling, etc etc etc. Mostly just the distracting things.

Its all about getting into lazy habits and seeing if you can break out of them. Anyone ever do this? If so for how long? I was thinking for like a week, and then see how it goes.

I've cut out game since Warhammer and it's amazing how much of my todo list I've completed.

[Diggles]

why not multitask ....watch tv while you woodwork.

[Jodah]

Three words : "Ouch my finger".

[OrsunVZ]

Three words : "Ouch my finger".

Or the slightly worse, "Where's my finger!?!?!"

Sounds to me like this is a stay-at-home vacation.

[Slamz]

Slamz' personal log, stardate, uh, whatever.


My Philosophy Of The Moment is that a life not spent dreaming is a life wasted.

Essentially I take the exact opposite view of conventional wisdom, which states that life is wasted unless you go out and Accomplish Something -- a bigger house, a faster car, a better job, more education, more money, having a garden, getting the weeds out of your garden, etc. Potentially a never-ending cycle of work which leaves little time for "frivolous" dreaming.

Bah.

Surely, I think, if mankind has any gift at all, it's our ability to dream up better worlds. Maybe it's a simple dream, like a world where an ox pulls this damn heavy plow rather than you. Maybe some of these dreams lead to inventions and advancements, but that's not really the point of them either. That's just pandering to the conventional wisdom mindset which might conceed that "fine, some dreams are good as long as they result in increased productivity".

Bah again, I say.

Good dreams, like most good things, are built upon a foundation laid by someone else. You don't pick up some random herbs, a chicken breast and create a masterpiece dish on your first try, but you can do pretty well if you start with a recipe that someone else created, and then modify it. Dreams are the same way. Creating them from scratch can be tricky but when you're building on a TV show, a game or a book, you have a foundation to work with, which you can improve in your head. Maybe you go on to write your own game, script or book, maybe not and I'm not sure that's important. The important thing is you took this magnificent gift we have, the gift of dreaming, and you got some good use out of it before you died.


In the long view, either you're an atheist and you die and turn to dust and then who gives a fuck about your accomplished chores, or you die and go to some afterlife where a list of accomplished chores probably will look like a waste of a perfectly good life and a perfectly good capacity for dreaming. Are there dreams in the afterlife?


I don't know that I'm advocating laziness, exactly, but rather, that we put way too much weight on "being productive". Is that what we were born for? To be productive? To work our hours away in some office and then go home and remodel the kitchen so that the house will sell for more?

I say to enjoy the things which are fun. If woodworking is fun then enjoy woodworking, but without regard for the practicality or productiveness of it. If watching TV or playing video games is fun then enjoy those things without regard for the practicality or productiveness of those things, either.

Also don't confuse this with "apathy" or "complacency". It's one thing to stop to smell the flowers because, thanks to the work of our ancestors, we now have the free time available to us to choose to do these things. It's something else to stop to smell the flowers while a tyrant takes over the world or while the work of your ancestors is being destroyed.

Maybe next year things will change. Maybe tomorrow the earth gets hit by a meteor and we all die. But today we're here, it's 5pm, I have no further obligations today and I'm going to go home, play some video games, possibly meet up with my girlfriend, perhaps there will even be sex, and then more video games, maybe some time to read this new Terry Pratchett book and that will be a great day. I don't know anything about tomorrow but today we have time for laziness and dreams and I think we should take full advantage.

[OrsunVZ]

I agree mostly Slamz, but everything in moderation - especially laziness. Otherwise when the meteor doesn't wipe out the earth and you find yourself lookign back over your life, inevitably you will ask yourself "what do I have to show for the last several years?" And while that phrase could be twisted to represent some shallow materialistic stance, it isn't what I mean.

Accomplishment is everything in this world. Sometimes that means accomplishing nothing, and that might have meaning for you... just not forever. You have to mix things up.

Go for it Maull. It's like a tech cleanse.

[Slamz]

Well, like I said, that's just my philosophy.

I have no regrets whatsoever over the tremendous number of hours spent on things like Everquest and World of Warcraft and bookshelves full of science fiction, fantasy and completely uneducational TV shows and movies. I can look back over my life, at all the time I've spent on gaming and books and so forth and think, "Damn. That was time well spent. Let's keep doing that!"


It's like my philosophy regarding my job: I want enough money to enjoy my free time and enough free time to enjoy my money. I wouldn't object to a bigger house and a yacht but I'm not going to sacrifice too much of my free time (or personal sanity) to try and get it.





So my advice is don't let "productivity-ism" drag you away from things you enjoy. Everything is a balancing act, of course. It's no fun losing your job and being a bum, I'm sure. It's probably hard to find good dreams on a dollar a day. But it's not all about "what do you have to show for it" either.

Cause when you're dead, you will have nothing to show for it sitting in your urn or whatever, regardless of what you did (perhaps you will have a nicer urn if you work really hard, whatever that's worth). You still want to set up the next generation to be as well off or better than you were, as that is also a good dream, but I think it's too easy to get caught up in a race that you don't need to be in.


Maybe the simple way to put it is to "stop and smell the roses". Sometimes it's roses. Sometimes it's shooting aliens in a video game. The roses aren't the point. The point is to always find the time to enjoy life, whatever that entails.

[Diggles]

Three words : "Ouch my finger".

Or the slightly worse, "Where's my finger!?!?!"

Sounds to me like this is a stay-at-home vacation.

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fuc en tech noobs

[Zouji]

Three words : "Ouch my finger".

Or the slightly worse, "Where's my finger!?!?!"

Sounds to me like this is a stay-at-home vacation.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.videosift.com/video/New-Safety-Table-Saw-Stops-whenever-skin-touches-it">http://www.videosift.com/video/New-Safe ... touches-it</a><!-- m -->

fuc en tech noobs

Yahhh! You can watch TV while just getting your finger just partially severed. Notice the guy didn't demonstrate it by letting his own finger get partially sawed off.

[Jakensama]

Slamz's philosophy seems an awfully lot like the European attitude towards life rather than the American.

Lousy socialist.

[1000xZero]

Slamz's philosophy seems an awfully lot like the European attitude towards life rather than the American.

Lousy socialist.

I was going to call him French but you beat me to it.

[Hoofhurr]

I like fasting of all sorts. The traditional diet fasting really changes how you think about food too. I've eaten a vegetarian diet, low-carb diet, poultry and fish diet, meat and potatoes diet, no desert or ice cream diet. It's amazing how you can really retrain your palate and your stomach to be more sensitive to certain foods by staying away from foods who's flavor is over-saturating. You'll never appreciate those subtler flavors unless you drop the really over-intensive flavors from your diet for a while. 6 months is usually a good length of time before you get bored and want to try something new.

[Vanraw]

I dont disagree with Slamz post. Part of this post is about habits, and how easy it is to stay into a habit. Not that its bad, but that change is good also.

We tend to get our selves into comfort zones. disbanding old habits and creating new ones is sometimes really difficult. Its to easy to take the approach "if its not broke, don't fix it". But sometimes just cause its not broke doesn't mean it cant be better (speaking in terms of enjoying life).

So the concept is, pull all the little electronic distractions for a period of time, and see what fills the void. It could be much more fulfilling then the same o same o.

[Slamz]

Slamz's philosophy seems an awfully lot like the European attitude towards life rather than the American.

Lousy socialist.

No, that would be if I wanted people to do stuff for me. :-p


I don't. I just discovered there's a lot of joy to be had in breaking away from the American concept of "success" and the life-sucking, endless pursuit of it. So I redefined what "success" is.



I still maintain some degree of the traditional definition, but that's because my new definition of success still requires a decent paycheck. Just not necessarily a bigger and bigger one every year.

[bonestomper]

sure i have dreams. i day dream with the best of them.

the ones that involve Western Sahara, single walled tankers, humanure, salt tolerant wheat, amerian cream draft horses, steam power, all depend on me winning the lottery of which i never buy a ticket for. we don't really want to talk about the one involving several acres of caster beans....

when i was a kid, i used to make models. the plastic 100 piece things that ended up as a car or plane.

now i have two metal lathes. one is big and decent, one is real small and worthless. but i have to wonder where i would be in life if instead of buying me plastic models as a kid if my dad had turned me on to minature steel making.

soon. shortly. the season will be right for working outside after work. when it is i will prob quit Warhammer and start on the 2 motorcycles i have in pieces or try and finish another Datsun convertible.

it used to be dreaming advanced 1-2% of the population. when they dreamed about going to the moon, nuclear energy, submarines, whatever; when that 1-2% did it, it changed the world for us all.

dreaming about a video game created by someone else is not really a dream as much as time spent in front of a complex Television.

[Thudz]

Slamz, your view would change overnight if you had children. I once thought as you think. I now live life in fear that I will not be able to provide for my family tomorrow or even after my death. However I wouldn't trade an eternity of dreaming for one second of living in fear if it meant not having my children. It's been about 8 years now since I last lived for myself. I have a higher calling now and wouldn't have it anyother way.

[Vllad]

What the hell is wrong with technology? You are feeling guilty for using technology? That only means your memory is no longer working.

Let me remind you of the simple things that has changed in my lifetime.


I used an outhouse until I was 7 years old. In the winter time I droppped bricks down the outhouse hole to break the ice. In the summer I had to make sure spiders weren't living just underneath it in the summer time.

In stead of turning a thermostat on I had to chop wood constantly every summer until I was a sophmore in highschool.

My first car took me 7 months of weekends to re-build by myself other wise I didn't get one.

You want a chicken breast? You want some fried chicken? You bought a whole chicken, de-boned it, cut it, cleaned it and cooked it.

Watermelon was sold in the stores in June, July and August only. Pears, September, October and November. The only vegetable and fruit you could eat year round was lettece, carrots and greenbeens. Other wise you boiled jars for perserves up to and including tomatoes.

EVERYONE had a garden to suppliment your diet. EVERYONE supplimented your diet with fish and deer. Unless you were rich fishing and hunting wasn't just recreation it was still neccessary. A Prime Rib or Filet was so expensive you cooked it on holidays only. The only beef people could afford regularly was hamburger meat.

You watched three channels of TV in black in white on a TV that sat on the floor disquised as a piece of furniture.

Air conditioning was an open window with a fan in it or a rolled down car window.

Very few multi lane freeways. Most travel went over single lane highways moving each way. If you got behind a truck going 35 you were stuck.

Emergency services absolutely sucked if you got in a car accident or had a heart attack at home. It might take 30 mins to an hour before an ambulance "Might" arrive. You had to rely on yourselves.

Doing work and chores was neccessary and not a method to instill a work ethic.

You used a hoe to kill weeds instead of spray. You pushed a lawn mower instead of sitting on one.

I could keep going on but anyone who ignores what technology brings to our life today is either someone who never lived with out it or has completely forgotten what it was like with out it.

Life is so much better today then it was in the late 50's and early 60's.


Vllad

[Jakensama]

You left out having to walk uphill both way in the snow to school and "get off my lawn."

[bonestomper]

i just applied for my deer permit......online.

[Vllad]

You left out having to walk uphill both way in the snow to school and "get off my lawn."

That is reserved for people who think things were better in the "good ole days". I for one do not believe things used to be better.

My list are facts and not nostalgia. Their is a difference.


Vllad

[Vanraw]

I definitely am not anti technology. I'm talking about distractions and bad habits.

[amins]

Now, if I could only stop my pot smoking habit, which leads to excessive dreaming and no work.

"Bah".

[Vllad]

I definitely am not anti technology. I'm talking about distractions and bad habits.

You have no reason to feel guilty. You don't hang out at bars, your wife knows where you are at all times and you are a great father.

You have earned your distractions. Keep them while you can because you are closer to the end then the begining.


Vllad

[Ulfen]

It is golf season soon and you will be doing less of those things anyway.