It took me surprisingly long to realize how distracting the Internet had become, because the problem was intermittent. I ignored it the way you let yourself ignore a bug that only appears intermittently. When I was in the middle of a project, distractions weren’t really a problem. It was when I’d finished one project and was deciding what to do next that they always bit me.
Another reason it was hard to notice the danger of this new type of distraction was that social customs hadn’t yet caught up with it. If I’d spent a whole morning sitting on a sofa watching TV, I’d have noticed very quickly. That’s a known danger sign, like drinking alone. But using the Internet still looked and felt a lot like work.
Eventually, though, it became clear that the Internet had become so much more distracting that I had to start treating it differently. Basically, I had to add a new application to my list of known time sinks: Firefox.
Read the rest of this post titled Disconnecting Distraction at Paul Graham’s Web site. Thanks to Mare for the link.
When Karl (on s’ennuie) was living in Montreal, he used to escape to the coffee shop at Chapters on Sainte-Catherine every afternoon because they didn’t offer wifi. He claimed to have gotten a lot more work done this way, and I always admired him for his will power. (Then again, he might have substituted meeting women for using wifi, so I don’t know how much he actually got done by « isolating » himself in the bookstore ;-)
Maybe I should do what Paul Graham suggests in his blog post. Maybe I should use my laptop for going online, and keep the iMac for offline work. I suspect it would drive me insane pretty quickly, but it’s worth a try, if only for a week.
big big smile ;)
but yes being out of connection has been very effective for me. Living in Japan and working for W3C offers another kind of pace, the most active geeks in terms of mails are located in North America and Europe, when I’m working, they are sleeping. I can get work done during this time.
My new « policy » is not opening work emails during evening and night, so I will not keep working because the tsunami of emails happens during the night. The morning, I check my emails and start to reply.
When I need to work on a document which requires writing or strategic thinking, I still go offline. I load the most important resources I will need for writing, then disconnect. If something is missing, I will write down a note for checking later when I have connection again. I keep focus on what I need to do, and work faster that way.
For my emails I use imap, so I have a local archives of all my emails. I can reply offline to all mails then actually send them when I’m connecting again.
Stress free, Getting Work Done.
After being sort of absent from the web during two months, I’m trying real hard to think through those questions… So that’s a precious note (and link) for me…
But… Happy to be back here.