(Part 3) Top products from r/nosurf

Hey Renee,

Just realized we met on the forum already! That's a wonderful dream. I'm a software engineer so I totally understand how important NoSurf philosophy is for both learning how to become a software engineer and for actually excelling as one once you're out of school. Wishing you the best of luck and will keep following along with your progress journal! It's a great read so far (:

P.S: Read two books that you might really like! The first is called Programmers At Work. The second is The Healthy Programmer. Both are great!

Adam Alter is a marketing and psychology professor at NYU's Stern School of Business.

On Amazon you can read through the first couple of pages (hover over the book cover and click 'look inside').

Even the creators of these apps and devices recognize the potential for addiction. Steve Jobs for example, didn't let his kids use an iPad. The Instagram founder said "there's always another hashtag".

Even the presence of a smartphone without it being used, just it by itself sitting there is enough to disrupt sociability.

I really recommend reading the introduction to this book, it's free!

I'll start part one when I buy it!

For help with getting art done, I can't recommend The War of Art enough - https://smile.amazon.com/War-Art-Through-Creative-Battles/dp/1936891026/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Buy the paperback, not the digital version.

It completely changed how I viewed my work and I credit it for how much I've gotten done since discovering it.

There is a book called "the end of absence" that talks a bit about how people that were born before the 90's were the last that had a childhood without internet. It is quite interesting.

But I don't believe you should blame internet for your failures at all (if they are really failures in your opinion). Unless you really useinternet for most of your day and don't look for job or study opportunities. In fact internet is full of opportunities and free courses that can improve your career for example. So, maybe your problem is not internet but where are you spending time on it. Probably the wrong places online to develop your life.

So, I don't believe internet is the only answer to our problem, blaming it without having a clear view of your whole life, interests and so... You need a wide view before get to this conclusion.

Unless for sure, you are 90% of your time online on wrong places, in this case maybe I agree with your statement.

I find it both interesting and concerning what all these studies of screen use and the developing brain find out. I'm sure to a certain extent it's also applicable to the adult brain.

I'm currently reading Reset Your Child's Brain, which is a book for parents of difficult kids. I have no kids, but I'm difficult myself, so I thought maybe it's an interesting read. And so far it's great. It's written by a psychologist, who worked with kids that had diagnoses like ADHD, bipolar disorder etc. as well as kids that had no diagnoses, but displayed symptoms of psychiatric disorders - like difficulty to focus, impaired impulse control, mood swings etc. Since she saw a significant improvement in basically all cases (no matter if there was an underlying illness or a healthy child) when she cut out screen time, she created a plan for a "screen fast".

It really makes me wonder how many children and adults are misdiagnosed with stuff like depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder and such, and depend on meds with all their side effects, when in reality they have a highly problematic tech use. I'm not saying that all these cases are misdiagnosed, far from it, but it could be a contributing factor in some or give them symptoms that look like an illness, they actually don't have.

Personally my mental health problems started around 16/17, which is over a decade ago. I was diagnosed with depression in my early 20s and I'm a suspected ADHD case (didn't get tested yet). However I also started spending many hours on the internet every day in my teenage years and in the past 10 years (from 20 to 30) I'd say that on a lot of days I was 10-12 hours online. Some days were basically me waking up, not bothering to get out of my pyjamas, sitting in front of my computer and/or TV, eating whatever I had at home and going to sleep again. It's basically impossible to NOT get depressed when you live such a life. It's also no wonder I'm forgetful, scatterbrained, can't focus and have next to no self regulation/impulse control.
Of course I guess I always had a tendency for these things, which might have been a reason why I ended up spending so much time on the internet in the first place. But it might be a bit like weed and schizophrenia - just because you have a tendency, it doesn't mean it has to manifest. However drug use or in my case internet abuse might give you the last shove down the rabbit hole.