There’s nothing wrong with surfing the web, but too much of it can end up killing your productivity. Aziz Ansari, actor, comedian and co-author of Modern Romance, has a mental trick that can help you close those browser tabs and get back to work.
Photo by Timothy Krause.
If you feel like you’re spending a little too much time scrolling through social feeds and diving into Reddit rabbitholes, here’s what Ansari recommended to Freakonomics podcast host Stephen Dubner:
Like, here’s a test, OK. Take, like, your nightly or morning browse of the Internet, right? Your Facebook feed, Instagram feed, Twitter, whatever. OK if someone every morning was like, I’m gonna print this and give you a bound copy of all this stuff you read so you don’t have to use the Internet. You can just get a bound copy of it. Would you read that book? No! You’d be like, this book sucks. There’s a link to some article about a horse that found its owner somehow. It’s not that interesting.
The internet makes it easy to keep on clicking and reading, but you have to stop and ask yourself if you actually care about anything you’re looking at. You can listen to the entire podcast with Ansari at the link below.
Aziz Ansari Needs Another Toothbrush [Freakonomics via Cal Newport]
Comments
2 responses to “Aziz Ansari’s Tip For Spending Less Time Poking Around On The Internet”
This perfectly describes a very large portion of both the internet and people’s reasons for using it right now. Most of it just a waste of time driven by click-bait.
“Aziz Ansari wasted a whole day browsing the Internet. What happens next will amaze you!”