...after a long, long series of annoying platitudes. I stopped at the "welcome to the quiet place" and thought for a while (half an hour). Then when I came back, it wanted to moralize at me! I gave up, didn't see the end.
This! Totally ruined the whole thing for me. Made it feel utterly hypocritical and ruined the high-brow mood. Actually came out feeling sad about that...
I have my phone on all the time, regardless of if I am on vacation or not. When I take a vacation and I have spare time, I work - sometimes billable, sometimes not. Vacation for me doesn't equate to switch off the laptop.
I spend a lot of time glued to my laptop. When I am not at my laptop, I browse and read mails on my phone. I generally reply to the mails as soon as I get them.
I like it this way - this is a worthy investment of my time. What I do with my personal time is totally my prerogative. I don't see why people feel the need to preach around their lifestyles with silly music playing in the background. And seriously, the obsession with FB bashing is sickening. Don't like it, don't use it. How hard is that?
I am not an outgoing type, and without FB, I would have lost touch with a lot of friends and acquaintances. I don't engage in a regular conversation with many people, but I do catch them once in a while. There are other mediums for communication, but FB is all inclusive for my circle - everyone I know is on FB.
If you don't like being connected, switch off your phone - that's not rocket science. If you feel one shouldn't work more than 8 hours a day, that again is up to you. But why do you feel the need to preach it in a condescending, all-knowing tone.
I'm not going to defend the tone, or facebook bashing, or anything like that. I will say, I enjoyed that site a great deal.
I feel like I'm often on a slippery slope toward easy, short, quick and cheap entertainment. Sometimes I'll go to my computer not for any particular reason, just because I want something to do. I should be going to my computer to accomplish something I want, and if I want to relax I shouldn't do it reading blog posts. From time to time, I need to (yet again) jolt myself off the short attention span path and remind myself that I have agency. Then I'm alright for awhile longer.
I think its this tendency in people which makes sites like facebook so popular. I think this is what caused reddit to drift from an interesting discussion forum to a repository of memes and cat pictures.
I suspect a lot of the facebook bashing you see on hackernews isn't because we hate facebook, but because hate using a site like facebook as a crutch to procrastinate doing anything actually useful.
The tone is likely a reaction to the pressure that has been placed for so long on people to work more. Forget the amount of pressure bosses place on their people to work more. Colleagues, friends, and relatives all do the same. When they don't see you working a lot, they project an idea that you're lazy.
At least that has been my observation of the general mindset at least over the last 30 years.
You're right about the tone here being misjudged, but I don't think the effort is completely indefensible. It can be difficult to make qualitative choices about things that have become omnipresent, a perceived necessity. Adolescents who were born into notification culture in particular may find "don't like it, don't use it" harder than those of us who recall life pre-smartphone. Clearly many of us relish our connectedness, but there is some value to taking a moment to mull over the inherent tradeoffs. Definitely a few wrong notes here, but I liked the intention.
I thought that was awesome. Discovering this on info-fueled hacker news made it more special.
I'd make several changes:
#1 Fix the F-11 message. Is this an IE thing? Do a browser detect, and display the right message.
#2 Get rid of the share on Twitter links at the end. just tacky.
#3 Get rid of the countdown. 30s break is cool, but countdown display speeds time up. Make the countdown hidden. If the user presses spacebar before 30s is up, should say "try harder" and reset the countdown.
#4 get rid of the cursing wasn't that funny
Anyways, I really liked this, especially the music and the white space.
And what a hacker-news response that was! Like when my wife tells me her problems, and I try to fix them instead of just listening. Its an Engineer thing I guess.
#1 Fix the F-11 message. Is this an IE thing? Do a browser detect, and display the right message.
No, it's an IE, Firefox, Chrome and Opera-thing. All browsers use F11 for fullscreen and i don't think there's an api for reading which button they use anyway. :P
Not on OS X. I'm sure I've seen a tiny js library on github that does browser sniffing and gives you the relevant keyboard shortcut. Can't find it now.
All the talk about "press space", when clicking the left mouse button (what I first did, instinctively) did the same thing, also made it feel confusing and not very polished.
Nice idea... but I don't like how it implies that I'm wired on social media and notifications. Seems almost patronizing and condescending. Yes, I check my email and facebook often. Yes, I do have a smartphone that gives me push notifications for a lot of things. Yes, I check twitter. Check, check, check.
Does this mean I never take a break from time to time to think? That I don't (or can't) enjoy quiet time? That I'm glued to my digital life every second of the day? That I need some snarky web app to tell me how to "relax"?
And it really doesn't work for someone who doesn't constantly check twitter/facebook, does not have push notifications enabled for email on my smartphone, etc, etc. I suppose the extra "no really, turn off your phone" is supposed to be clever, but it only makes it a bit more condescending.
I guess I'm not the target audience, though the idea of taking 30 seconds to reflect is valuable to anyone. I would have preferred an even quieter 30 seconds (maybe white or pink noise, or some ocean sounds or something?) The music was a bit loud through my headphones and not to my taste for relaxing. I also would have preferred a soothing grey background rather than blinding white. Oh yeah, and the F11 on a Mac thing...
I didn't stay for the countdown, because I didn't want to listen to the music anymore.
That's actually one of the hardest things I've tried to overcome (after realizing it) in the last few years: Music that's connected to some kind of memory/event/show/movie/etc. will constantly make me think about its associations rather than my work at hand.
I found it sometimes to be a positive effect. Many times when I felt bad I listened to my favorite touching/sad songs while working - they tend to suck the emotional entropy out of me and help me focus on task at hand, while my emotions get 'aligned' with the song.
I've noticed the same thing about myself lately. I even stop listening to some of my favorite songs because they arouse negative feelings or images of places I dislike.
ah, but I believe it's entirely appropriate. Not to turn this into a Lost discussion, but one of the main themes of the show was redemption. The island was a place where all of the everyday crap was gone and the characters could step back and say, "what the hell am I doing?" I believe that's the intention here as well.
This would have more effect on me if I had a Twitter account. Or Facebook. Or Google+. Or if my phone "rang" more than a couple times per day, if that. Or if I had notifications for my email.
Seriously, I can't stand those. It's not willpower; it's a physical aversion to being interrupted.
Oh, and to relax I like either to kill the lights and listen to some Jazz, or to watch people on the street. Reading stuff isn't relaxing.
But what prompted you to cancel all those accounts you were born with? And how can you stand not knowing how each of your acquaintances is currently distracting themselves from their reality? Maybe you have some blogs or twitstreams I could subscribe to that would help me lead a simpler life?
I think the original site says more about the author (and those that find it insightful) than anything else. You're getting possibly multiple 'notifications' per minute and it just now occurs to you that it might be suboptimal? Sigh.
I love this, I use it to keep myself in perspective from time to time when I alt-tab to Reddit fifty times in a minute without thinking. Also, use of the Lost soundtrack was awesome. Really underrated music IMO.
This sort of thing is so pedantic, almost insulting to my intelligence. Do i really need a website to remind me how to get off the internet from some random hacker news guy with too much time on his hands? He's almost countering his own message here. This is not a quite place. It's still the internet. I have to click my space bar to get to a new line teaching me about going to a 'quiet place'. Why is this even being clicked up on HN? And then i have to tweet it too? It's a joke right?!
Heh. The full screen white background floodlighting my eyes didn't really help the experience either. When I need a quiet place to relax I'll go somewhere without screens and keyboards.
Then again, the overall idea is good, it's never bad to remind people they need to take a break once in a while.
I found this incredibly condescending, especially when it likened "a friend" to "meaningless shit". Like someone else mentioned, my quiet place doesn't involve clicking or pressing a spacebar, or a computer for that matter.
Neat idea, but it would be easier to stop everything and sit and relax if one didn't have to press the spacebar continually. ;)
I have a playlist of soft jazz music, and sometimes when I need a break, I will load it up and adjust the volume in iTunes so that it sounds low and distant. Then I'll pull up rainymood.com in the browser, flip off the overhead office light, and go sit on the couch (my office has a couch) for a few minutes with my eyes closed.
With the combination of soft jazz + thunder storm + darkness, I find it hard to stay stressed about anything for too long. Of course, real rain is better, but this still works surprisingly well.
The only (slight) downside is that every time I'm finished with this little exercise, I'm left with the urge to write a 1950's detective story....
I find it confusing that a lot of people found this preachy and patronizing. A lot of things on the internet vie for your attention. You go places on the internet, like Facebook and Google, where you have to endure a lot of ads that tell you what you should buy, what you should like, and how you should live your life. What's so terrible about this one thing that reminds you to relax once in a while instead of giving you yet another point of distraction? This isn't trying to force you into some new way of life. It's just making a friendly suggestion. 'Take it or leave it' applies here as well.
Sorry. Forcing myself to take a break is just like forcing myself to work. Something to be avoided. I think we are misinterpreting the Taoist concept of "do nothing" which I think inspires a lot of these sentiments that "we should take breaks". "Do nothing" means to do what comes so naturally to us that it feels like "doing nothing". We simply allow our actions to play itself out, just like we allow our body to breathe.
Meditation breaks are great, as is occasionally disconnecting from the matrix. But I'm not sure clicking through text on a website is the most effective way to accomplish this.
I'd say you're better off stretching for a minute or doing some light callisthenics. Perhaps while blasting doom metal.
Take a break. By staying at your computer screen, reading a bunch of text and pressing space bar. Then stare at your computer screen for 30 seconds more; you clearly don't do enough of that. PS: Quiet place not actually quiet.
OR you could, you know, go stretch your legs? rest your eyes from staring at a screen? Not be lectured about twitter et al by a website?? Maybe even outside?
Sorry if i'm harsh, but this is the definition of 'solution looking for a problem'.
It worked very well on an iPhone. Taps moved it forwards, and I was surprised there was a dedicated mobile site.
One thing to nitpick: on the countdown, it ends with "1 seconds". Trivial to fix, and really makes it look like you spent time thinking through the details.
The tone and nature of this oddly reminds me of a point in the video game Earthbound, where part way through the game you take a coffee break with one of the NPCs. It serves no purpose other than to give you a break and reflect on the game.
I sat there for 20 seconds in silence, before realising my Flash blocker was stopping the music. If it were my site, I'd use Flash as the fallback to HTML5 audio, not as the default.
Whoa...I went to a quiet place and realized there's a potential startup here. Like a LaunchRock for "Do Nothing" sites. Someone take a stab at it before I do.
make it a neural social network where ppl take breaks to meditate together. It'd be an app or a device like Fitbit that measures the frequency or whatever of your energy and takes the aggregate of everyone participating and shows a visualization of it.
I like its style. I wasn't aware that that's the music from Lost...if i'd watched Lost it might've annoyed me. As everyone said, the spacebar clicking doesn't help, the mixed messages don't help (the share links at the end), the cursing is way out of place and jarring. And i guess in a weird way it actually highlights how sad the whole situation is, to think that 30 seconds of downtime should be enough.
Good idea. A quiet place (with lost music) and anti-social media (with sharing buttons at the end). Hopefully, the irony is intentional.
Makes me wonder if the desire to optimize UI/UX and the viral loop will keep shortening our attention spans. It's a prisoner's dilemma where we're better off in the short run but worse off in the long run because we can no longer process longer form thoughts.
GAh! Information overload! Pop "ambient" music, animations, and shit to read; WTF kind of quiet place is this?! If you really want to take a break to reflect, go sit on a park bench outside with a pen and paper.
I did not appreciate having to press spacebar for every sentence, so I exited early. For something that tells you to relax, it sure does make you do a lot of work.
Same here. I found this patronizing and nearly the opposite of relaxing - it reminded me of 10th grade English teachers bringing in mood music for a freewriting exercise.
http://www.workrave.org/ is a much better solution for this kind of "break excessive computer addiction," IMHO.
