Monday, May 07, 2012

Reframing the acceleration of addictiveness

Tantek Çelik knocks it out of the park with his The Acceleration of Addictiveness vs Willpower, Productivity, and Flow, putting a more positive spin on Paul Graham's Acceleration of Addictiveness:
Paul concludes his essay with We'll increasingly be defined by what we say no to. He's right, we will and are.

The problem is, "saying no" is expensive. It costs you willpower to do so. Explicitly saying no doesn't scale. We need automatic or default ways to "say no". The best word we have for that is "filters".
... and:
This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time.

The time you spend giving into your urges and supporting your addictions is time you could have spent being creative and productive.
Tantek is collecting practical, constructive information about how to improve the odds on his personal wiki. Great reading.