There was the same amount of time, but it was allocated differently.

There were phone calls. If somebody calls you on the phone, you stop doing what you're doing and talk to them.

Apart from that, time was scheduled in larger chunks, with fever context switches. You watch a movie start to finish, not a bunch of 2 minute Youtube videos. You spend an evening printing photos in the dark room rather than two seconds on Instagram. You go to a chess club and play with somebody sitting across the table.

So generally you do one thing at a time for longer stretches, and have to plan those activities in advance.

Shopping was mostly physical shopping other than a few catalogs. I remember going into the city once a month or so to go to bookstores etc.

Bills were all a matter of writing physical checks once a week or so.

I also had a shareware software business during that period. So one of my weekly tasks was stuffing floppies into floppy mailer envelopes. (They could choose 3.5" or 5.25" formats with or without printed docs.)

ADDED: I should say that I spent a fair amount of time on BBS's prior to Usenet/Web.

Etc.

I want to be able to read a non-technical book fully and I can't and I'm very unhappy about this whole situation.

It's surprisingly easy when forced. I moved apartment a few years ago to a small seaside town (mostly retirees and a few locally run shops). We had an old CRT style TV with very few channels. For the first two weeks we had no internet. It was pretty interesting how our differently we would spend the day. My friend and I would take walks around town or the beach, go surfing for a few hours, cook instead of ordering takeout, and then spend the rest of the time hanging out in the living room. The TV was on but we were mostly just chatting. Switch to two weeks later when we got internet. We spent much more time in our rooms on our computers playing video games or watching Netflix. We would still surf a couple of times a week but besides that we would only hangout for an hour or two in the evening if there was a good movie on TV. As frustrating as it was at times not having internet access I would say I was much happier during those first 2 weeks and with so few options for things to do my attention span was automatically much better.

Your message started with "What wouldn't I give to have such attention span!", and it turns out that you don't need to give all that much. Getting started is difficult, though.

If you do start down this path, consider reading Deep Work by Cal Newport to give you some ideas about how you can use the focus and concentration abilities you're building. Again, it's not perfect, but if you take the book as a list of suggestions rather than a strict prescription of what you should do, you'll probably find that you can adapt its lessons to make your life better.

Work on engaging in those activities a little bit longer then you currently can, and slowly increase the duration. Use a timer to set a limit. This would need to be done with regularity and focus.

The important thing is that I need to always remember that it's an addiction and I need to get it under control. I think limiting myself to a half hour or hour a day would be best.

Possible there is some positive there as well, and it keeps drawing you in. Instead of thinking of it as an addiction, think of it as something you do, that is part positive and part empty. Identify those parts that are positive, and praise yourself for them. Then over time, identify those parts that are empty, and realize, "oh, I can eliminate this."

I have to imagine you'd say the same thing about whatever hobby you could use to fill this time with. Perhaps your hobby leads to new friends, business opportunities, skills, or other general improvements in your daily life.

My kids (14 and 13) don't watch any TV. They don't even particularly like movies.

They do a lot of arts and crafts, they play games (board games and video games), and one spends quite a bit of time playing the piano. They both are spending more and more time talking with friends either in person or on Facetime or IM.

The video that they do watch is pretty much exclusively on YouTube.

The sad thing is it can jump into the middle of any activity. Getting lunch, wait one second text message which you need to respond to right now.

So, you get sent a text and people will generally assume you are ignoring them unless you respond.

If you check your phone in a meeting, and you don't have a family member in the hospital, you're wrong. It's discourteous in the extreme to check a smartphone (or noodle around on a laptop!) when meeting with others.

Also, there are more and less formal meetings, but in a technical meeting checking some point online with a laptop or phone occurs on a regular basis. It seems much more productive than having people just say random things that don't match up with reality.

Well, an agenda is part of the courtesy the meeting convener owes the participants, and a well-run meeting is part of the courtesy the chairman owes the participants.

Meetings are incredibly expensive: everyone owes it to their organisation, one another and themselves to make that expense worth it.

You owe attention to your fellow participants.

Then take action! You are not a passive victim of circumstances: you are an active participant in, among other things, meetings; demand that your fellow-participants behave politely.

Take responsibility for your destiny.

Is there any practical reason, that makes texting rude, discourteous, and unprofessional, besides that it unflatters someone's ego?

I, personally, don't think I'd be affected by "unflattering". In many circumstances, though, noodling around on a laptop in a meeting is communicating to the presenter that their presentation is unworthy of your time or attention - that is to say, you are disrespecting the presenter.

I think it's a moving scale, though, dependent on the importance of the subject of the meeting and the relationship of the attendees. In a casual meeting between friends, with low-importance subject matter, I would consider undivided attention unnecessary (and therefore exceptionally respectful if given). In a business environment, where the subject is business related, I would consider it necessary (and therefore the opposite is exceptionally disrespectful).

It's not about shows of allegiance: it's about being present for your fellow-participants.

> Is there any practical reason, that makes texting rude, discourteous, and unprofessional, besides that it unflatters someone's ego?

Human beings can't multitask: every second you're texting is a second of meeting content you're missing. It is rude, because it says to those speaking, 'what you are saying is not as important as what I am reading or typing.' It is discourteous, because it wastes their time. It is unprofessional, because a professional would do others the politeness of turning down the meeting if he doesn't believe his presence is needed, rather than attending and ignoring.

I think one difference other than the never-ending aspect of the internet is that when you're reading a newspaper or book you get sleepy when you're supposed to, whereas if you're looking at a screen the blue light keeps you awake longer and all your chores take longer the next day because you have less energy.

Weekend newspapers would kill you if dropped on your head from a modest height. Magazines had hundreds of ad pages.

Non-ad content used to be much longer. Many features and columns were equivalent to a long-read feature today.

This issue of Byte from 1981 (about Smalltalk) is a 312MB PDF with nearly 500 pages:

https://ia802700.us.archive.org/8/items/byte-magazine-1981-0...

I think the blue light issue may be overstated. I used to read paper into the early hours, even after I was tired and sleepy. I still get a "must sleep now" cut off, even when surrounded by screens. It just happens later.

What isn't overstated is information volume. Hacker News and Reddit literally give you more links/features in 24 hours than Byte used to offer once a month. Each item may be shorter - sometimes - but there are many, many more things to read.

Now, because of smartphones, it seems everyone is caught in this same time distortion field.

As a result I purposefully try to look at my phone as little as possible.

Think of it this way, if through some sort of Matrix like situation our first experience of the outside world was through a small touchscreen, and then suddenly you took the red pill and were put into a world where you could touch, smell and see in full 360 degrees and feel wind and water and move and climb over things and interact with animals etc...it would blow your mind.

So why are we allowing ourselves to limit our experiences in this way?

You just need to understand you are not missing out on anything by not doing so.

This sort of internet addiction isn't just destroying productivity for grown up adults but studying habits of teenagers and school going kids too.

Try to take it 15 minutes at a time. Try staying away from internet 15 minutes at a time, then the next 15 and so on, I think it should work out perfect well.

There's an excerpt at: http://mentalfloss.com/article/18670/gin-sitcoms-and-cogniti...

What have I been doing instead? Riding my bike around town. Hanging out with friends. Not bad, but I've also taken up watching Youtube for hours every night.

The key is to not overwhelm yourself and to do something towards your goal. For example, don't try to set up the entire blog in one night, instead do a micro-portion, "oh, I better start downloading the webserver before I watch youtube." Or even, "oh, I better plug my server in and turn it on."

The key is to do something every night, and cut it into pieces small enough that it's doable. If you find yourself putting it off, that means you need to cut it into an even smaller portion.

I went for a run last week, and got to marveling how I had run from my front door into the mountains & back, how gradually the time had passed, and how those two hours would have zwip vanished in a forgettable blink had I been online.

It's amazing how fast the time can slip by.

I even try to schedule in periods where I do allow myself shallow work, like checking a bunch of things, or sating the information addiction that you and I most certainly share. Right now, I have maybe 50 tabs open between a bunch of aggregated tech/science news sites, and I'll spend maybe 1 minute at most on each one. If I did that just any time of day that I had a period of empty time, it would be just like if I left clutter anywhere that I had empty space. But since I've devoted this time to this task, it's kind of like putting everything you need for a project out on a table, then packing it up neatly when you're done with the project for the day. I know an end to the clutter is in sight, so it doesn't bother me so much.

The hardest part is always trying not to fill empty time meaninglessly. That takes skill, but it can be learned. I find I'm better at it when I've been keeping up with daily meditation in the morning and evening. But even if meditation isn't your thing, you can practice in other ways. For instance, when you are eating dinner, try to only be eating dinner. It seems awkward at first, to sit in silence (especially with a partner present) and just eat, but that fairly quickly goes away. Or, in the mornings, if you have coffee or tea, just drink coffee or tea and sit in silence. I tend to keep a notebook handy, and if something particularly strikes me during the silence, I write it down and let myself come back to it after I've finished my coffee.

I don't think it was any different before the popularity and ease of access of the internet. People assume that others were focusing on longer sessions of focus, but I don't think that's the entire truth. I think as a species, we've always struggled with this anxious itch to move on to the next thing, mere moments after starting the current thing. I think that's why (as you note) a lot of the older generations are turning to using the internet in much the same way as the younger generations.

My problem with that is that the mess in my room matches the mess inside my head. Do I feel bad that there are things all over the floor? Nope, it is really comfortable because it matches who I am.

I don't know how to solve this problem.