Computers waste my time
I’m starting to realize I spend way to much time online and not enough time doing anything non-digital. Its been so much that I can tell my mood has changed and I find myself often bored and un-inspired.
I’ve realized this for awhile now but lately (not sure why) it’s become pretty obvious to me. I started rethinking what I do online each day (outside of work) and it 90% of it isn’t that important.
First I read my email, then catch up on a posts in my newsreader, see what’s new on any of the various project logs I’m a part of and next thing I know it’s been 4+ hours.
So I’m going to do by best to answer a question before opening the lid to my computer. I’m simply going to ask, What do I plan to do/accomplish on my computer right now?
. If I have a good reason, I’ll focus on that reason and do my best to just do that. I might find myself needing to write down my reason at times when I know it will be easy to stay online for awhile.
A few other things that will help me in my new indevor will be changing one of my email preferences. I’m going to take away the new email alert I have setup on each of my mail applications (Thunderbird and Mail.app).
I’m hoping this will allow me to stay focused on my task at hand - not to be pre-occupied by each new message that comes my way.
The next thing will be to begin removing the amount of sites that I try to keep up with. Merlin Mann from 43Folders.com made this recommendation along with the true statement of What does is really matter if you aren’t the first know of something or the 15th person to post on slashdot?
And you know what - he’s right, it’s not that damn important.
So I’m picking feeds that I know are good and I’ll pick times to focus on those.
These are just a few things I can think of right now but I’m sure others will come. As those ideas filter in, I hope other ideas of what to do when I’m not on my computer also come in - those seem to be a bit hard to come up with right now.
Maybe I’ll take up archery (shrug), what do you do with your time?
Brian Ryckbost Says:
I have the same problem! I generally sit down at my computer, load up my homepage (www.netvibes.com) and check those initial feeds and then check the others that I like to keep up with. Its normaly just technology news so it doesn’t take too much time to scower, but I get pulled in by forums. Reading, posting, researching products.
I’ve decided that the reason I use my computer so much is my music. I have developed this disease where I have to be listening to something at almost any time during the day. So, that is a major reason why my computer gets booted up every morning. I guess if I didn’t listen to music, I wouldn’t use this machine as much.
To go do non-digital things, hows the slack-lining? a few guys here in the dorms at Calvin do it one or two nights out of the week in the dorm basement.