There’s a long list of rules, definitions and exceptions.
Rules
Reddit is forbidden.
News is forbidden.
The Facebook news feed is forbidden but Facebook messenger is allowed.
Books, audiobooks, ebooks, podcasts, comic books, webcomics, etc. are allowed.
Reading my favorite bloggers is allowed. Web surfing is not.
Recorded university lectures and recorded conference talks are forbidden.
Music is allowed.
Being sick, travelling or being bored somewhere without books is not an excuse to go off this media diet. [Update March 2020: Being so sick my health is spiraling dangerously out of control is an excuse to go off this media diet.]
I am allowed to amend the rules if I write down the change and then wait a week without changing my mind.
Movies and television is allowed but only from certain websites.
Definitions
The SCP wiki is allowed because it has more in common withe a science fiction novel than a web forum.
Ambient media is fine. If a television is playing in a restaurant I can watch it.
Exceptions
Anything is allowed as long as I’m doing it socially. That is, I can play videogames and watch anime if it’s with a friend.
Research is allowed. That is, I am allowed to use any media format in order to answer a well-defined question. For example, if I hear a news story referenced by something I’m allowed to look up what happened. I can watch a video on how to disassemble my computer if I have to disassemble my computer.
Anything created by a friend is allowed.
Any link or personal recommendation a friend gives me is allowed.
On Less Wrong, I can only read my own posts, those referenced in the comments, and those written by commenters. [Update January 20, 2020: I am letting myself read Less Wrong in general.]
Magic trick instructional videos are allowed. [Edit: Instructional dance videos in general are allowed too.]
Anything is allowed if it’s in a foreign language without English subtitles.
Anything I create myself is allowed.
Being sick (non-emergency) is not an exception.
Any advice about this for other people interested in doing the same thing? Anything you learned as you worked up to two months?
I’ve got enough advice to write an entire post. Here are a few small tips.
First do no harm. If you rules make your life worse then change the rules. Rules that make your life worse are expensive, unsustainable and counterproductive.
It doesn’t matter how complicated your rules and exceptions are as long as they’re a strict gain and it’s unambiguous to you what is and isn’t allowed.
Start with just a few days and then work your way to longer and longer periods of time.
Great initiative! I’m curious what is the reasoning behind this:
Recorded university lectures and recorded conference talks are forbidden.
Do you find that you get no learning benefit from these things? If so this would explain why also you’re not allowing didactic youtube channels (Kurzgesagt, 3blue1brown, CGP grey...)
To nitpick, I wouldn’t say I get “no” learning benefit from these things. The learning rate from university lectures and recorded conference talks is simply too slow to justify the time investment. As for didactic YouTube channels, I believe they help some (most?) people learn but for me the holistic negative effects of these channels outweigh the educational benefit I get from them. This is too bad because I find 3blue1brown and CGP grey to be both informative and entertaining.
“Movies and television is allowed but only from certain websites.”
Curious, would you share which sites are considered acceptable, or perhaps just what the common characteristic might be?
For completely different reasons than your I now basically consume movies and TV from 3 sites. One is Formula 1 and their allowing the streaming service was one of the reasons I finally dropped cable/FiOS TV.
The difference has to do with archives vs. feeds. Websites built around archives are okay but websites designed around feeds are not. Basically, I want to allow websites that let me watch old shows like Firefly but not websites that push the newest television series. In other words, I want websites that let me look up shows I already want to watch but not websites that advertise new shows to me.
You can sculpt a service like this out of pretty much any service that keeps its old shows around. For example, you can use ublock origin to remove all side-bar video-suggestions from youtube (and also remove comments, if you want). Then you can just forbid yourself from going to the home page (or automatically block it with something like leechblock), and only ever access videos by doing search directly. If you have a way of adding any search engine to your browser (which I recommend getting; I think there are easy ways to do this in most browsers, though I use vimium), you can add youtube.com/results?search_query= or netflix.com/search?q= or whatever you want to it.
I did a cursory search for tools like this but didn’t find anything. Instead I’ve been using crude, less specific methods like editing my /etc/hosts file. I didn’t know about leechblock and ublock origin. These could be useful.
Rules
Reddit is forbidden.
News is forbidden.
The Facebook news feed is forbidden but Facebook messenger is allowed.
Books, audiobooks, ebooks, podcasts, comic books, webcomics, etc. are allowed.
Reading my favorite bloggers is allowed. Web surfing is not.
Recorded university lectures and recorded conference talks are forbidden.
Music is allowed.
Being sick, travelling or being bored somewhere without books is not an excuse to go off this media diet. [Update March 2020: Being so sick my health is spiraling dangerously out of control is an excuse to go off this media diet.]
I am allowed to amend the rules if I write down the change and then wait a week without changing my mind.
Movies and television is allowed but only from certain websites.
Definitions
The SCP wiki is allowed because it has more in common withe a science fiction novel than a web forum.
Ambient media is fine. If a television is playing in a restaurant I can watch it.
Exceptions
Anything is allowed as long as I’m doing it socially. That is, I can play videogames and watch anime if it’s with a friend.
Research is allowed. That is, I am allowed to use any media format in order to answer a well-defined question. For example, if I hear a news story referenced by something I’m allowed to look up what happened. I can watch a video on how to disassemble my computer if I have to disassemble my computer.
Anything created by a friend is allowed.
Any link or personal recommendation a friend gives me is allowed.
On Less Wrong, I can only read my own posts, those referenced in the comments, and those written by commenters. [Update January 20, 2020: I am letting myself read Less Wrong in general.]
Magic trick instructional videos are allowed. [Edit: Instructional dance videos in general are allowed too.]
Anything is allowed if it’s in a foreign language without English subtitles.
Anything I create myself is allowed.
Being sick (non-emergency) is not an exception.
I’ve got enough advice to write an entire post. Here are a few small tips.
First do no harm. If you rules make your life worse then change the rules. Rules that make your life worse are expensive, unsustainable and counterproductive.
It doesn’t matter how complicated your rules and exceptions are as long as they’re a strict gain and it’s unambiguous to you what is and isn’t allowed.
Start with just a few days and then work your way to longer and longer periods of time.
Great initiative! I’m curious what is the reasoning behind this:
Do you find that you get no learning benefit from these things? If so this would explain why also you’re not allowing didactic youtube channels (Kurzgesagt, 3blue1brown, CGP grey...)
To nitpick, I wouldn’t say I get “no” learning benefit from these things. The learning rate from university lectures and recorded conference talks is simply too slow to justify the time investment. As for didactic YouTube channels, I believe they help some (most?) people learn but for me the holistic negative effects of these channels outweigh the educational benefit I get from them. This is too bad because I find 3blue1brown and CGP grey to be both informative and entertaining.
“Movies and television is allowed but only from certain websites.”
Curious, would you share which sites are considered acceptable, or perhaps just what the common characteristic might be?
For completely different reasons than your I now basically consume movies and TV from 3 sites. One is Formula 1 and their allowing the streaming service was one of the reasons I finally dropped cable/FiOS TV.
The difference has to do with archives vs. feeds. Websites built around archives are okay but websites designed around feeds are not. Basically, I want to allow websites that let me watch old shows like Firefly but not websites that push the newest television series. In other words, I want websites that let me look up shows I already want to watch but not websites that advertise new shows to me.
You can sculpt a service like this out of pretty much any service that keeps its old shows around. For example, you can use ublock origin to remove all side-bar video-suggestions from youtube (and also remove comments, if you want). Then you can just forbid yourself from going to the home page (or automatically block it with something like leechblock), and only ever access videos by doing search directly. If you have a way of adding any search engine to your browser (which I recommend getting; I think there are easy ways to do this in most browsers, though I use vimium), you can add youtube.com/results?search_query= or netflix.com/search?q= or whatever you want to it.
I did a cursory search for tools like this but didn’t find anything. Instead I’ve been using crude, less specific methods like editing my
/etc/hostsfile. I didn’t know about leechblock and ublock origin. These could be useful.What about videogames?