 Longtime subscribers will know that I have a particular quirk. Well, many quirks, but one in particular, and that is I do not have internet at my home, and that is a conscious choice. It happens sort of accidentally, but for the past two years I have had no access to the internet at my home whatsoever. And it's been a great experience and I recommended on occasions and people have asked me to talk about why. So that's what this is for. It's pretty simple. So first off, when I moved off to Arizona I moved into a place where there were really no good internet companies. I mean there was like Cox and it was way overpriced and something else and it was all DSL. And you know I sort of had the idea you know what? The place I was living I was so close to my office and so close to you know getting internet there. So I just figured you know what? If I really won't need internet I can just walk ten minutes to campus and do what I need to do and come back. So for a month or so I tried that out and it actually works out fine. I mean there's a little inconvenience but it's pretty effective. It's pretty good at getting what I need done. But then I started having like real benefits of this and that might be a little confusing. And let me preface it by saying this. A lot of people have the idea that you know when you're living in the current year, when you're living in the modern world you know we're also busy. You know I had classes to teach, I have classes to take, I had work to do, you know I had assistantships, I had to you know talk with students and other things. I had a personal life, I had all the stuff to do, all the stuff on my schedule. But when you subtract well let's put it this way we're all busy. But what happens is we all have, we develop these reflexes where when we actually do have free time we just reflexively fill it up with junk. And usually the internet helps us to do that. That is you get home, we all have that reflexes where you get home, you plop down, maybe you turn on the TV, maybe you go pull up your browser and scroll through your Facebook feed. Or even if you're out and you have nothing to do for like half a minute you just reflexively just get up your, get out your phone and start playing around with it. And we all live in this time where like no one has time to just think or like stop and like contemplate what they're actually doing or spend any kind of quality quality time doing what they need to do. So when I had no internet what started happening is that I had a lot of nothing time and no matter how busy you are I guarantee you there are gonna be hours and hours that you can spend at your house that aren't sleeping. And so what I started doing is started just tinkering, just tinkering with my computer, tinkering with my academic work, tinkering with other things just I actually started reading a lot of the books that I had or you know when you don't have the internet you start investing your time in better things. And of course when I first stopped having the internet I had no YouTube channel the in fact this YouTube channel would not exist if I didn't not have or didn't not have whatever if I had no internet or if I did have the internet I would have never started this YouTube channel. That was sort of painful to get out but you know you know what I'm saying. So why is that the reason why is the reason I started really getting into getting into Linux configuration the reason I really started getting into Vim I used it superficially before I use LaTeX superficially before I I was interested in computer stuff superficially before but when I actually have a computer that's highly configurable that has Linux on it and that has this nice little command called man where you can look up you know how to use any of these programs you really start spending quality time with your computer really getting to know it or really getting to know not just your computer but anything else you're actually interested in because if I didn't have you know if I did have the internet we'll put it that way if I did have the internet what would happen is I'd be minorly bored for 20 seconds and then I'd be like oh I'm gonna play a game online I'm going to you know just sort of drone through YouTube videos I'm gonna go on the you know 4chan or Reddit or something like I don't Twitter whatever people are using Facebook go through my feed for like the 30th time in the past five minutes and yeah that's once you get rid of that reflex you realize you have so much more that you can do so I spent hours at my house just figuring out how do I how do I do this more effectively on my computer or let me think about you know what I'm actually doing in my job let me read more let me like actually I don't want to say improve myself because that sounds a little wanky but that is that is really what it was it was like I'm actually doing I'm actually maturing in a more real way than if I were just messing around and you know I there's no way that if I wanted to I could not watch a bunch of vine comps till 2am I just you know I also even if I wanted to I couldn't watch porn even if I wanted to I couldn't you know do all of these things and once you take that away it's just it's fantastic so this is again this is where my YouTube channel came from I started messing around with my system messing around you know people you know every once in a while I get like but hurt comments you know you get but hurt comments for all kind of things but one of them is or you do this stuff so well so you must be obsessed with it and you know blah blah blah I mean even the stuff I do my YouTube channel on like I don't really give that much of a crap about it like you know I could probably live without a computer or anything else but since I've had all this free time I've really been able to excel or at least dabble in things that you know look really look maybe difficult but they're actually really easy and accessible and if you could get yourself away from having that reflex that reflex to just crowd your brain up with like you know the superficial pleasure of going through your Facebook feed or all these other internet things if you could get rid of that you would be in a better better position as well and I feel like it's something once you really have this sort of freedom I don't feel like it it leaves you I mean so now in the past month or so I have I've actually moved into a new place with you know a roommate and all and we do actually have internet by default we have we don't have Wi-Fi so that is another limitation but we do have internet and I still feel like I have cultivated so many good habits that it actually doesn't matter like I don't really feel as distracted by the computer anymore I can get on it I can you know play around with it every once in a while maybe check my email but like it just it's not something that distracts me like it used to be it used to you know I can do other things I can read books and when even when I do have the internet here I'll be doing something else on my computer I'll be writing something some kind of little program to do something or it's just you know better it's it's it's once the cat is out of the bag it's an improvement and let me tell you the best times were those where I not only didn't have internet but for whatever reason my phone was broken or lost or something like that so even if I you know even if I wanted to see the internet on this little phone I couldn't do it or even if I wanted to call or text someone I couldn't do it like I'm stuck like you're anchored to a place where you you have to get things done I don't necessarily want to put in those words but you're anchored you know in a place where you can really spend your time in a depthy way so what I ended up doing I mean you know what I what I my sort of workflow I guess is that I would really have to think about the things I wanted to invest time in let's say you know I wanted to learn so you know even if I wanted to watch YouTube let's say oh there's a really good YouTube channel that puts out good content and I'm going to learn about this well what I do is when I'm at work I would have YouTube DL just download the whole channel or you know if I wanted to see some you know a movie or TV or you know if I wanted to read something I'd like just download the web pages and then when I got home that's when I you know basically consume all this content and what that causes is it it makes it so like you don't have ADHD on the internet instead you're thinking about the things you are you're consuming and you're spending your time in and investing you know investing your effort in so it makes it so you don't really waste your consumption of the internet you're actually you know because the problem with the internet is not that there's not good stuff there or it's that like there's so much noise there's so much junk not in the sense of just bad content but there's so much distraction there's so much getting in your way that's you know driving you away from actually spending good time so anyway I do recommend to all of my subscribers not just to like limit your exposure to the internet but really everything else in modern life because a lot of it is just it's just like the equivalent of junk food like your brain your brain is looking to be occupied and when you're doing something like going through your feeds and just sort of browsing you know Reddit or something or 4chan just without any mind to it you you're just sort of giving it junk food and you could be you could be doing a whole lot more so yeah that's that's really I just wanted to do a video on this just because people ask me I highly recommend it and I really highly recommend cultivating a mindset where you're not drowned by drowned by the little nagging things of modernity that's something that I recommend but yeah I guess that's about it so you know so we think do whatever you want but that's my recommendations so I'll see you guys next time have a good one