Google Thinks I’m Dead

21 days without the internet?

It’s true, I was without the internet for almost three weeks and here’s why, how, and again, why.

Audio version by listle

The idea came to me when I accidentally saw my time spent on YouTube in the app settings. It averaged to around 2.5 hours daily. It would be great if I watched educational or useful videos, but most of the time it was some news/trailers/interesting (though useless) facts and so on. When you have so much to do in life and you are short on time, spending 2.5 hours daily on useless videos should ring a bell. And what about Instagram, chats, or just surfing the web? Well, the time spent on the internet overall averages to 5–6 hours daily. And I always considered myself as a passive internet user. As it turns out, I’m not. Or am I?

As a programmer, I have to use the internet at least to google the questions rising during coding (StackOverflow and co). Which is good. Reading technical articles on the web is good, too. Watching movies, well, let’s say it’s relaxing but time-consuming. Anyways, the most crucial moment in my decision to quit the internet was the disability to think, to order my thoughts, to fight the chaos in my head. It might be considered as some sort of meditation. I couldn’t ever actually cut off myself completely, sit, think, process, understand, act. I suddenly realized that before this little experiment, I was thinking more clearly, planning better, acting wiser only after I was taking a shower. That was the only place and time when I wasn’t distracted by anything and could freely dive into my thoughts. But when using the internet or being around a device connected to the internet, I couldn’t really concentrate on anything longer than 15 minutes. While working or thinking 42 thoughts… ding! A notification, a friend asking something. Answering. Getting back to my work/thoughts, I feel the urge to come up with a solution to a…. ding! A “like” notification from Instagram. Open. Visit the profile, scroll. Be distracted. Close. Get back to work… ding! Lunchtime! Ding! A funny video sent by some other friend, and so on. The saddest thing is that when surfing the web, or watching YoutTube videos, your subconscious mind is crammed with a lot of crappy article/video suggestions. You might never notice them, but your brain is sick of the thumbnails with fingernails, amused faces, 13, 7, 5, or 40 ways of doing some sh*t and alike. Your brain doesn’t actually know the difference between useful stuff and crap coming from the internet, it processes everything, so the powerful machine in your head able to write a poem, create a robot, or devise a theorem is busy with processing cat videos, American/British/Pakistani talent shows, “smart”, “philosophical”, “life explaining / life complaining” posts of your spam friends and anything else in the same manner.

Scrolling a social media wall is like walking through a crowd of 20–30 people and listening to some of them telling about the corrupt government, some of them haha-ing on something, a few philosophical remarks from some very non-philosophical acquaintances. And then a dozen of them forcing you to watch cocktail, sunrise, baby, flower, and other photos. And everything described happens in less than five minutes, and the loop repeats again. You are dealing with a noise produced by the internet (social networks, news, videos, chats, etc.). Your brain soon becomes overwhelmed with so much useless information and turns you into a plant to be able to survive the processing. Sooner, you wouldn’t be able to realize/execute your potential to its fullest, create, design, think, and reason on your own.

To succeed in work, hobby, or anything worth the time, you should concentrate. Concentration is the key. Multitasking is not for programmers or anyone occupied with a job requiring a bit of creativity. The internet is a drug that slowly kills our ability to think and reason. It’s like a parasite that slowly sucks your time and leaves a dead brain with unreached goals and dreams, making you the loser you’ve always feared to become.

When starting the experiment, I put the following rules very strict:

• The wifi is always turned off on my smartphone.
• Nothing that comes to my mind should be googled.
• Whenever I stumble upon some issue in the code I must not google the solution, but think on my own and dig the books (already downloaded).
• No Netflix, no Instagram, no Telegram, no Linkedin, nothing!
• I’ve been using only work and personal emails, office Slack (which is used occasionally in my office, colleagues seem busy people), Spotify (just can’t live without music), and git.

Here’s an excerpt of my journal during the offline days.

First days

• Thinking a little bit clearer, or at least I think so.
• To fill the gap my brain started to look around, discover the surrounding world, a side effect of which is generating some new startup ideas (all of them exist already), like Shazam. When was listening to a song on the radio while driving, couldn’t Shazam it because the wifi is turned off. I had to listen to the song like I’m listening to it the last time.
• Feeling slightly more focused, sometimes not focused at all. My brain wanders from thought to thought. I feel like my brain is in an idle mode when it doesn’t have access to the internet.
• Taking a photo to post as a story. Realizing the meaningless action. Removing the photo, instant gratification is not an option anymore.
• Smartphone battery doesn’t get any lower than 90%. I was recharging it on a daily basis, now I have enough battery power for around 4 days in a row without recharging.
• Stumbled upon a couple of issues in the code that could be solved in two minutes by googling and visiting the StackOverflow.
• Have to dive into the books to find the answer. It took about two hours to find the solution, though learned and used my brain at its fullest (at that point). Useful information is consumed while searching for the answer.
• No distractions while driving.
• An urge of sharing photos with friends, have to show them in person.
• Rising anxiety about potential new unread messages. Maybe someone important, someone special just wrote and I must answer immediately? Nah, they know where to find me if needed (a couple of friends called to find out am I okay while I was experimenting, an interesting way to find out who is really caring).
• Feeling the need to train my patience.
• Have a couple of downloaded movies, haha. Yo experiment, in your face!

The first week

• An urge for procrastination. Can’t access distractions, so bad for procrastination, but have plenty of time to sit and think (aka, meditate). Keeping this journal up to date is the only procrastination available at this point (well, besides watching already downloaded movies).
• Friends calling to find out why am I offline. Some of them find this experiment ridiculous, some wait for the results, a few of them are inspired.
• Cannot yet think focused. Listening to music when needing a distraction. It feels like my brain tries to create new ways to distract me from work.
• Working on the code is harder. Forcing my brain to think instead of instantly looking for the answer on the web. This makes me feel smarter but slow, very slow.
• Checking my smartphone lesser than before.
• Feel better overall, the chaos in the head starts to fade away. Thoughts are getting in order.
• Sometimes I open a new tab in the browser and stare for minutes, imagining possible updates in websites I usually visit. It’s getting easier to focus on the work though.
• An urge to do something worthless, watch videos, read something, list movies, watch trailers, anything. So much free time, and so much work to do. But the work was just a stimulation for procrastination, and now I don’t have any distractions to procrastinate. Lame. Seems I have to actually work.

The second week

• Reading books, many of them. I’ve read more in these two weeks than in the last 4 months.
• It’s kind of weird and great at the same time to dive into work without any distractions. No one writes, no one pings, no notifications, can’t access YouTube to find out how do water stations produce electricity (because it just came to my mind).
• Starting to think for my own any random idea that comes to mind (including water stations). No actual results, but the process of thinking, really thinking is nostalgic (reminds me of my school years).
• An urge to read time-consuming articles on random things. Realizing that the internet is a part of my life, it feels like I’ve lost something. Still can’t concentrate on unfinished tasks. Eat that frog! Easier said than done. There are days that my productivity is zero. At the same time, the chaos in the head is fading day by day.

The third week

• Getting super productive compared to the “internet days”. You should really try this experiment.
• Had to cheat once because was stuck on an issue in the code that uses a third-party library. An issue that was really unsolvable without googling it, unless it wasn’t. After finding the solution it’s now obvious that googling wasn’t actually a necessity.
• I finally feel stable without the internet. It’s now a fact that it sucked my time.
• Reading books, taking notes. Getting smarter (at least I think so).
• Avoiding the internet is a great exercise for the willpower and patience. Strongly suggested.
• Getting things done, finished some of the unfinished tasks. Even spending less time on this journal, gotta go back to work, so many things to do and so short on time.

To sum up, the first week was the hardest one, the second week put things in order, and the last week made me find the balance between real productivity and relax time.