How to keep from getting anything done.
Being online is a wonderful waste of time. You can be in the middle of writing a successful sentence, feeling that the muse has finally visited you, when you notice that e-mail has arrived (I work with the speakers closed), and, unable to withstand the temptation, you click over to see that new junk mail has arrived. Or perhaps a sixteen-year-old from Hong Kong has found you via ICQ (though I haven't turned it on in ages) and wants to know who you are (and once he does, where Israel is).
Taking an active part in numerous forums is, for me, a work-related task. But that doesn't mean that it's not also an excellent distraction. Let's say I've just finished writing a paragraph with which I'm quite pleased, but the next doesn't seem to be materializing as I might like. There's nothing like clicking over to a forum to see what's happening there in order to keep me from confronting that new, but still unwritten, paragraph.
Of course being online also means that someone who's doing you a favor and is
reading a version of something you're working on can send you corrections almost
in real time, or you can discuss a joint project. And that, far from being a waste
of time, can definitely aid productivity. But I suppose that for every time that
I'm productive in this way, there are at least five other times in which I indulge
myself in reading an article that someone has suggested in an e-letter, or I simply
let myself continue clicking from one digression to another until I forget what
it was I originally intended to do.
There was another, rather obvious, title for this page. But it was so obvious that it got put to use too often. This time I had to think of a different title.
Go to: A help or a hindrance?, or
Go to: 72 hours offline.