The Death of Daydreaming

Last year I took a smartphone holiday for 4 months (switched to a dumbphone). It was a fantastic time and I regret "falling off the wagon" and getting a smartphone again.

I noticed a huge number of benefits, but one of the most surprising was that it forced me to confront a number of difficult decisions.

There were a few times in which I was bored (waiting at the passport office, sitting on a plane) in which I started to think about decisions I had to make that were very difficult in ways that caused me anxiety: firing a person I'm good friends with, shutting down a company, stuff like that.

I realized that ordinarily I would simply refuse to engage with the decision: I'd get on my phone or "get busy" somehow and so simply postpone thinking about the issue indefinitely.

But when you're stuck at the passport office for 2 hours with nothing to do, you can't but help think about the thing that is top of mind, anxiety be damned.

For someone that is prone to anxiety around certain topics (conflict avoidance, "disappointing" people, etc) having times in which I was forced to engage with the topic had truly enormous benefits.

Made me think of Jean-Jacques Rousseau "Reveries d'un promeneur solitaire" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reveries_of_the_Solitary_Walke...

When letting our mind wandering (and walking actually helps me to remove some distractions) can bring some peace and eventually some new perspective.

I find that daydreaming is absolutely critical for coming up with good strategies. Otherwise I can default to just do the next obvious thing, which isn't always the most strategic if you can take in the full picture, or at least consider alternatives well.

The two ways I get to strategic reflection are really:

- Doing lego. I find thhat doing lego is actually really good at helping me consolidate thoughts and ideas. It takes up just enough mental energy to not get bored, but it lets me think about things with an unstressed mind.

- Walks. The other way to generate new perspectives is to take a walk at lunch though non-interesting territory. I really do not find walks in a busy downtown to be relaxing, too much activity intruding on me to actually be low stress, but if it is in a forest or even just a long parkway that works for me.

The absolute worst way to come up with new ideas is in front of my computer trying to work. Good for doing the next obvious thing, but really hard to think outside of the box.

You really do need a mix of the two, otherwise you are either doing the obvious or never actually doing anything.

Only recently, like in the last year, have I found my phone just sucking me in. I am mindlessly browsing whatever (TikTok, Xiao Hong Shu, Reddit) and then suddenly my time has slipped away. The thing is, I'm not young by any means. I figured I was aged out of the risk that the phone could devour my time but I was so mistaken in thinking that way. Compared to how I felt my time went and was spent when I was younger (pre-internet days) this feels awful and draining and so damn easy to slip into. Feels like life is on pause yet time is still slipping away as fast as ever.

>>>>When you are daydreaming (or mind-wandering, as it is referred to within scientific circles), memories that you thought were lost forever can come to the surface again.” >>>

I have been thinking about this lately. Not just in the context of smartphone use but being devoted to some mind consuming endeavour like building a startup.

I have been building and operating company for over 15 years now (I am 43 now). During those years I had amazing quality of life due to success of the business. However, at the same time I spent most of my daydreaming hours on thinking how to grow my business. Now when business is about to be sold and I don't think about the growth that much I am starting to realise I don't remember as many things from my childhood as most of people around me. I keep wondering whether this is common to other people who have been obsessed about something for many years and forgot to daydream about their earlier years.

This is the most important and impactful decision that an average person (i.e. all of us here) will make regarding the quality of his mental life.

This week I ordered a SIM card compatible with my Nokia dumb phone. I have a smartphone for work, and I intend for it to be off and in a drawer when I get home in the evenings.

I’ve realized also that having a dedicated space to do computing activities, the kind encouraged by having an immobile desktop computer rather than a phone, tablet or laptop, is immensely important for my mental integrity. I’m bringing that back too.

Lucky for me, I could never get used to the small screens of mobile phones as a serious computing or web browsing device. While I still rely on my mobile phone for basic tasks like making calls, sending messages, and on the rare occasion, reluctantly typing emails when I don't have a laptop handy, my primary computing and web browsing device remains my laptop, with Emacs and Firefox as my main tools.

Surprisingly, the one thing that occasionally manages to distract me is this very forum - Hacker News! :) If I observe myself spending too much time on Hacker News, I block it at the /etc/hosts level. I have a little shell script to point news.ycombinator.com to 127.0.0.1 when I don't want to be browsing HN. HN provides a nifty solution of its own too in the form of the "noprocrast" setting in your HN profile page. If you haven't checked it out yet, it is definitely worth considering.

Apart from that, I think I've been able to escape the traps of modern social media. Also, I still depend quite a bit on physical textbooks, a rollerball pen, and a stack of plain A4 paper for most of my learning, thinking, and exploration activities. This routine has helped me to stay away from modern social media too. So, fortunately, I still have the luxury of boredom in my life which I find to be an essential ingredient for digesting new knowledge as well as finding creative solutions to difficult problems. I've found that letting my mind wander aimlessly sometimes leads to new insights when I least expect them. I think it also helps with creativity and reflection, in general, which is likely a nice bonus too.

Even short day dreams can be incredibly productive which is why I keep my phones in the other room away from me.

This forces me to get up and walk into the other room every time I have to do 2FA at work which has a ton of benefits. I'll bring dishes or cups to the kitchen on the way, very frequently have useful thoughts about whatever I'm working on, get up out of my chair more frequently, and look at things farther away than my screen which relaxes the eyes.

In general, I advocate for avoiding any product with an infinite scroll as I find them detrimental to my own health, extremely addictive, barely rewarding, and frequently enriching to people I barely have any good impressions of.

While I generally appreciate this advice to allow yourself to be bored for all the creative benefits that come with it, I also resent it. When large portions of my life were outside of my control due the 8 hour workday, I felt like I don't want to squander what little time I had to myself while commuting daydreaming. I try not to judge people who are glued to their phones, they could be scrolling TikTok, or they could be reading great literature.

"What is life is full of care, we have no time to stand and stare" - William Henry Davies

ON Saturday was waiting to meet people on a road that had just been reopened after a May Day (traditional British style with May Queen etc.) parade. Other people were doing the same.

I looked around and noticed people (some still in costume etc. so interesting crowd) and looked at buildings (its a pretty street, even though I know it well) and was quite happy.

One thing I noticed was the everyone else who was waiting for people was on their phones, almost all the time they were there.

Obsessive business is the opposite of mindfulness.

It also kills casual social interaction. Talking to someone who is standing next to you.

> These moments used to be given over to silent reflection or conversation with whoever is around. Now, for most of us, nearly all of them are grabbed by our phones.

Maybe this is true for the author, but before smartphones I wasn't just chatting up strangers while I waited for the elevator or reflecting on my life. I was staring at the elevator light getting angry that it was taking too long.

I spent a lot of time being bored and being angry that I was bored. Now I can consume information and learn new things ALL THE TIME. It's amazing!

I was one of the first persons with mobile devices on me (dell axim s51 (or something like that)) before mobile phones were a thing, but since then, which was like over 20 years ago I do daily walks - 60 minutes+ through the local woods - with my dogs where I forbid myself in using my phone.

I do active thinking about projects I have, I recapitulate human interactions and reweight my decisions, I decide stuff that is going to happen. Someimes I do nothing, its not like I plan this stuff. I just plan not using any devices. (I also dont listen to music).

A friend and me worked for like a year back to back on a project and I like forced him to split work-time and come with me with the dogs. He absolutely loved it and said recently that he still forces himself to take a longer break for walks because that just makes him more productive.

The irony of this article: the demographic in question likely won't have the attention span to read it through

But I guess there's always chatgpt

I do not know about this. As in, I do not doubt that necessity of daydreaming, and I do not doubt something is being lost. However, I think daydreaming can also be dangerous in of itself. There is even a term for it called, "maladaptive daydreaming."

Obviously, that is the extreme on the opposite side of the spectrum. But from what I recall reading, daydreaming, evenly moderately, can be somewhat unproductive. I mean that in the sense that daydreaming can provide the brain with a shortcut to a feeling that would be better served if an action provided it.

For example, one can daydream about going to the gym and becoming more healthy. One can follow the daydream all the way through. However, at least in my case, I have caught myself enjoying the pleasurable feelings and the "one day, I will..." too much to the point that I never go to the gym.

I think my brain has learned that I can quell whatever feeling I am having in the moment by daydreaming. It's my brain's shortcut. It's as if my mind say, "Why spend the effort to do something when we can just imagine how it feels and enjoy the reward now?"

Like anything in life, the key is balance. However, creating that balance is not easy in my experience.

Related:

To Do Nothing

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43596476

I have no good story and also no excuse: I'm too online, like most people. I feel like my mind is usually "on rails". That's what it feels like, always staring into a computer or a phone.

I often wonder how much creative productivity is lost on a societal level because of the phone addiction.

I often wonder if we would focus politically on different topics.

I often wonder if I would procrastinate less in the real world and face important decisions much faster.

Had a kid recently and didn't like how often I was on my phone around her. I bought one of those phones that looks like a 90's/early aughts 5GHZ phone, but rather than being attached to a lan line, it's BT paired to my smartphone. So I leave it charging in a drawer and if someone really needs to get a hold of me, they call and the BT phone rings. There might be a way to configure text messages to make it ding too, haven't looked into it.

I've been almost completely off social media (and candy - potentially a larger problem in the past for me) for a month other than to check once or twice a day to see if somebody has messaged me (rarely) and it really has been rather profound to experience life with the lack of regular hits of dopamine. It is such a subtle "drug". I've still been on a computer and surfing the web but not nearly the same amount of time as I was spending on my phone and social. I sat a ten day Vipassana course in 2016 - a profound experience that was at least an order of magnitude more impactful with regard to being off of "screens". There's definitely a cost that accompanies any perceived benefits of social media interaction. As in all things - balance!

American parenting does not value boredom anywhere near enough. It's a valuable part of being a smart human. Society needs to value boredome more highly.

As a parent I highly value boredom. At ages 6 and 8 electronics limited to 30 mins per day.

> moments used to be given over to silent reflection or conversation with whoever is around

Noticeable on pubic transit particularly

Feels like this is also connected to the general move from individualism to collectivism. Most of our days are spent hearing other peoples ideas (podcasts, videos etc). Almost none is spent developing our own ideas and an actual personality based on personal experience etc.

The premise seems to be that screentime = social media brain rot which is not always the case. In fact, over the past year, screentime increased my enjoyment from daydreaming massively. I love daydreaming about my own hard scifi setting and LLMs have been an amazing resource to enhance that.

Before smartphones existed, I used to carry a book with me everywhere. Or a comic. Or a notebook. Or a puzzle. When a situation got boring or unbearable, I'd pull out whatever I had in my bag and occupy myself with it. But it was cumbersome: a book is heavy, a puzzle breaks, pencils fall out, and so on. So sometimes I had no choice but to look at anything in my surroundings that was more interesting than what was currently happening.

Because the world is interesting, yes, but only in spurts, and only for some people.

It's been this way before and after the arrival of smartphones. Some of us have always felt the need to disconnect from what didn't interest us. But it's never been as easy and convenient as it is now. In a second, you can access all of human knowledge, record a memory, see where you are on a map, or simply entertain your brain with a game. Everything we used to carry in a bag now fits in the palm of your hand.

Maybe I'm just rude, but if someone snatched a book from my hands just because I wasn't enjoying a sunset, I'd be mad. If they then called me a slave or a zombie, I'd throw the book at their face. Or the puzzle. Or the iPad. Well, maybe not the iPad, because it's really heavy and expensive, but you get the idea. Why? Because I decide what to dedicate my mental resources to at any given moment.

I decide when to pay attention. There will be times when I want to share a look with the person I'm with, and others when I simply won't have anything to say or do. And still others when I'd prefer to be far, far away, somewhere else entirely. My mind is like that: it wanders and rebels. Perhaps others prefer to cling to the apparent certainties of what's in front of them; I don't dislike that, but I can't and don't want to do it constantly. Nobody can.

I’m listening to “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman” and it’s amazing how much of his stories are random hobbies and experiments. It really makes me reflect on how I spend my time the past 12 years since I got my smart phone. I can’t imagine anyone being like him nowadays with the amount of screens there are.

So one interesting thing I find myself doing if I'm not taking my ADHD meds on a given day, is day dreaming way more. I tend to lose focus and run around in my own mind even if I'm doing something that's __supposed__ to be stimulating! (ex, using my phone) I don't know if that's a good thing to be fair... it hasn't ever felt helpful. I've had to rewind 20minutes in a movie because I realized I had created my own separate-but-parallel story in my own head that is only now just clashing with whatever plot point that is currently happening.

To me at least, it does feel like however optimized a thing is to take your attention, imagination is more attention-stealing.

As a young child with ADHD and Autism, one of my first memories was being called out for daydreaming by the teacher. The problem is that daydreaming has been ridiculed even before there were smart phones, from having kids needing to be on Ritalin to pay attention to smartphones occupying our time, to the chaos of politics "flooding the zone" by taking away all those things about the government that were likeable. (I know this isn't the forum for it, but trying to shutdown the National Weather Service is probably the biggest assault on all those ADHD/Autistic people who liked playing with all the computer stuff the NWS produced. It was like once I found out about that, who needed The Weather Channel anymore?!)

The point is, we've been driven to be more "productive" than creative. After a while, that productivity creates burnout. Being prohibited from collecting your thoughts or wandering about other stuff has created more problems.

Discouraging daydreaming then making it into a commodity to be exploited by capitalism is probably the most terrible thing we have ever done.

We need to create a society that allows for daydreaming again, gratis. The phone is not the problem, only part of it. I can leave my phone on my desk or in the bedroom. We just need to stop being on-call for people who don't need--nay, deserve--our attention.

I know that this can sound counterintuitive, but the best strategy to keep the phone away from me is to be on my desktop computer.

Different from when I'm on my smartphone, I do not feel any anxiety to check social networks using my computer. So I can focus more on learning some stuff, coding, organizing my personal data, checking my appointments, checking the tech news, or even playing some games (to have some fun).

My screen-free parenting style is centered around my thought that boredom is a blessing, a luxury, and a life skill all wrapped in one. I’ve been encouraged that the world at large is somewhat beginning to rethink these things lately. Our peer group of parents has a bit of a no phone pact that I hope they keep up with for as long as possible (they’re only 6 right now so we’ll see)

If you need a way to ease into mind clarity and distraction-free time, try taking an hour to an hour and a half of walking outside. You still need to maintain focus somewhat, but the mind quickly starts to wander.

I really want to get rid of my smartphone but I worry about the functionality I will lose. Maps in particular when I travel, having to carry a laptop always. I guess those are really it… not too bad now that I think about it but am I going to carry a paper map?

Best part of my day is commuting by bike. Fresh air, activity, and the brain can work or wander. Nice start to the day, and a nice way to wind down after work.

Commuting by car doesn't hit the same nerves. Listening to the radio or something, angry at other drivers, stuck in a cage in traffic. But walking works as well.

Does anyone else find that there’s something especially addictive about it being “your phone”? Like I can’t get nearly as engaged on a laptop or even an iPad. It’s like I’m connected to this one specific device.

I have my daydreaming while taking a shower. And I have my best ideas when I take a shower. So yes, disconnecting from digital devices has its value.

You can get all the day dreaming benefits through meditation as well. 30 minutes of a small background noise like rain or something and just sit with your thoughts. Does pretty much the same thing and you can still use a device during the day.

Phone costs about $30-50 a month or so.

There are 4.5 weeks a month, which is 9 MegaMillions tickets. At $5 a pop, that's $45 a month.

I suggest the MegaMillions tickets get you better daydreaming than the phone does ...

As much as I like the message and agree with a lot of what the article says; I feel the article itself is a tad long for how little it says.

Insightful read and great discussion. If I may add, I believe this extends well beyond Gen Z. Many of us—balancing work, family, and the constant buzz of digital life—rarely take time to pause and reflect. In my case, it sadly took the death of my father to finally slow down. That quiet period brought a profound shift in how I see my future, especially around creativity and purpose. Sometimes, it’s only in stillness that true clarity begins to take shape.

> Can you remember the last time you daydreamed? Or coped with boredom without reaching for your phone? Before the era of mobile technology, most of us had no choice but to wait without stimulation, and often, that meant being bored.

This line never hits right to me. I used to religiously carry around the New Yorker and / or NYRB and / or London Review of Books etc, often with a book too, so that I could read while waiting for friends, appointments, public transport etc, so I was never bored or daydreaming when I didn't want to be. I think this needs to be rephrased to account for the difference in quality between printed material and the infinite, deliberately-addictive makeup of the modern internet, which is the real issue.

The article would be better if the author replaced "smartphone" with "smartphone screen". A ton of activities are made better by smartphones - a walk or a run with podcast or music, a drive or a bike ride with navigation, etc. It's specifically the screen that takes 100% of your attention and prevents you from daydreaming.

Easy fix is just go for 2 hour walk. You can really walk properly with eyes in your phone so you'd be forced to daydream.

You can still day dream when you drive. Long drives to work especially are good for this. Just make sure you don’t kill anybody.

Substack is the new Wired. Fn long articles about nothing. Author is seemingly hooked on ted level what the fuck I'm talking about. You are not bored, good, now you don't have enough time building things your brain connected together from ideas learned by reading books and browsing the net. This is much much worse imo.

Btw phones worsen your eyesight if you use it often, like playing games.

Before smartphones and the Internet, I almost always had a paperback book to read. Bus rides were either me talking to friends (rare, since our schedule didn't match often), reading a book, or uncomfortably fighting the urge to doze off.

While, yes, social media gives us a more pronounced dopamine hit-and-crave cycle, we've always had means of escape at our fingertips.

The Shower Principle

Being around people blocks daydreaming as much as phones. It takes away the boredom.

Boredom is highly overrated.