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>I am considering radically changing my internet usage. Read
>the news once a day, and limit twitter and okp type pages
>usage.
My online media consumption operates in this self-fulfilling dynamic where I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about things that do and, in fact, *should* resist nuance. Politics in 2017 ought to be Manichean in scope because there is so much going on that actually is outright evil. Most of the people who want subtlety or nuance in their political thought are trying to smuggle something genuinely bad as something ordinary. And online media is congruent with that. We live in big, fat takes and it doesn't just seem right given the subjects, it actually is right. For instance, I just read on my phone a long, detailed piece about a kid who's been in prison in Texas since he was fifteen and on death row since he was twenty, for killing a guard. He's 38 now and seems bright and thoughtful. The takeaway from this article: prison is bad; capital punishment is even worse.
That's absolutely the correct conclusion to take away from that piece. But it's also not the same thing as complex thought, which should take chapters to develop instead of sentences. But that article was emotionally and mentally exhausting, so the last thing I want to read afterwards is a book.
Anyhow, last summer I went on a roadtrip to visit my wife's family at the very northern tip of Minnesota - 22 hours driving total. We talked, listened to podcasts, stopped in Chicago and Minneapolis to see friends, etc. Nothing big, but I never really had the option to just fuck around on my phone or a laptop while minutes became hours. It was like detox.
But I still needed to replace all of that media with something. While we were staying there, I started reading the stupidest series of books that I've ever read: The Dresden Files. It's about a wizard who lives in Chicago and solves crimes. It is intensely stupid, but there are a ton of them. Fifteen novels. Twenty two independent short stories. And a couple short story collections. I read one of the novels per day while I was at my wife's parents house. Then upped it to one and a half a day when I returned home (I teach, so my summers are fairly free except for class prep). Instead of cruising from hot take to hot take for hours every morning, I read about this crime fighting wizard like it was a religion.
And when I finished (there are apparently more novels forthcoming, but I caught up to where the series is now) it felt like my brain had been totally rewired. Over the next month, I finished off the fifth chapter of my dissertation (which I'd been blocked on for months); a ton of substantial edits on the previous four; and started a couple new writing projects.
Once I submitted my dissertation, I fell right back into old habits. Though, honestly, it felt deserved. I graduated in March, and I'm just now trying to shake myself out of it. I try to take a couple hours every morning and at least one more every night to read actual books and remember how to learn things patiently again. It kind of sucks, particularly because I haven't really found something as dumb and trashy that I actually enjoy like the Dresden Files, so I've been trying to skip to actual smart stuff.
But in any case, my experience is that the steps you're talking about totally work.
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"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"
--Walleye's Dad
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