While a Friday Chat, this is NOT going to be about RPGs, but about the loss of productivity from moderate internet addiction. If it’s not your cup of tea, I suggest that you read Dixon’s Excellent cynico-satirical post about RPG players.
For many years, in something akin to nerd snobbery, I’ve told people that I don’t really watch TV. While not entirely true (I usually watch one geek show per season) , I have longed been lurking far under the North American average in terms of hours spent in front of the Boob tube.
I use to spend this time reading, playing video games (Final Fantasy VII, VIII, MCMXCVIII, Civ II, Diablo II, Nethack, rebuilding crashed Windows boxes, etc) and playing tabletop RPGs.
The advent of the internet integrated itself in my life very progressively. I got my first web access in 1996 as an IT technician in a Speech Physiology lab (where I met my divine angel Alex). I was one of the few with access to Netscape before we all realized that we could install it on our college dial-in network account.
As I started working with computers nearly 100% of the time, I discovered more elements of the web that attracted my interest and attention. (No, not just that). From usenet groups, to forums, to news websites, to blogs, my interest and curiosity about such media grew.
In the last few years, as I gravitated to jobs with extremely lenient web access policies (and absent monitoring) and started blogging, I found myself drawn just a bit too much. You know, the kind that makes you spend just a little too long catching up with the Questionable Content archives, or fall for link-baiting to a website that will ruin your life.
As time progressed and my online presence and ‘fame’ grew, I realized that a significant part of my time and productivity was being leeched by doing unproductive things on the web. In fact, I’m at a point that I can’t pass by a computer without feeling a near irresistible urge to sit and “just check a few things” even if I did just that 15 minutes ago.
Add my propensity to use IM a lot (I am chatty after all) and it adds up fast. I am lucky to be such a fast writer, I can still produce material faster than the average person, but it could be better.
Today, that made me realize that I’m now watching the Web! The mouse has replaced the remote, I surf pages without purpose. The comments I leave on Twitter, blogs and other Social Media apps are the equivalent of me discussing a TV topic with my wife. And even when I set up to work on something important, my eye wanders easily, my mouse turns into a remote again and I lose another 10-15 minutes on some mind numbing trip down Walmartland or some other testament to the failure of the human spirit.
Heaven forbids if an email or an interesting tweet pops in.
The thing is, closing all those apps (and not reopening them 5 min later) is HARD! This is true psychological addiction, made worse by net fame as it makes you crave the validation yet grips us with irrational fears that we’ll be easily forgotten if we don’t Twitter or answer comments at least once a day.
It also is making me really frustrated that I lose so much fucking time. Time that I could at least better spend accelerating the development of The Plan.
In fact, I realize that the battle against this is as hard as the one I’m currently fighting to lose weight. My brain is using the dirtiest tricks in the book. It’s making me believe that I don’t have the time (or need) to exercise, that I’m not really wasting that much time on the net since my jobs get done.
Given my brain’s track record in terms of dealing with reality, I’ve grown wary of it’s truths… even though I’m currently a total wuss and prefer to stick to vague promises of “stopping to check the net all the time tomorrow” and “I’ll exercise as soon as my seminars are prepped”.
But writing about it tonight helps. It makes me realize that the time I waste online is time I don’t give myself to make my life better, more exciting or closer to my recently recovered dreams.
That’s why I have an incremental plan I developed a few weeks ago and I will implement it now, it’s dead simple.
- I will limit my # of minutes I can use the web for non-work to a specific amount per hour and will progressively lower it on a weekly basis until I can avoid counter-productive web use during my 3 ‘power hours’ blocks of the day: 9-11, 13-15 and 20-22
- I will jettison Social Media I do not need, in my case it’s Buzz and Facebook.
- I will turn off all instant notifications and turn my IM ‘red’ during power hours focused on critical projects .
- I will check email periodically but ask myself ‘do I have to answer this now?” if not I’ll mark it on my to do list.
- I will sign an agreement with myself saying that I will do this for a month. Consider this post my signing the agreement.
- If I hold this side of my bargain for 21 days (the time it takes to shape a new habit I was told), I’ll reward myself with something significant.
What about you? Do you have similar issues about your web use? If so, do you want to control it more? For those who have successfully dealt with it, what was the most crucial element in solving it (other than “I just did”).
I’ll be back Monday with a new Gears of Ruin game report. Thanks for reading.
Wait a minute, if you turn off that IM, then who the hell can I interrupt during working hours?
You can’t do that man.
I need my fix.
C’mon man, just one more day.
If it’s real important, ping me 🙂
IM is not so much an issue, I could deal with a green IM a status all day… but sometimes I need to fo down periscope. Hmm, how about an edit?
Done!
My problem is too many projects, not enough ability to prioritize. It’s not the IM or the games that get me when I sit down at the computer, it’s the little, unimportant projects. When I should be working on site code, it’s easy to spend an hour playing in Photoshop making other things. When I should be proof-reading game books, it’s easy to get caught up in editing podcasts.
Oh, man. You are freaking me out. How is it that you can read my mind? =}
I have the exact same issue. I should be writing instead of wasting the time I do on the interwebs. I get sucked in by interesting tweets (mostly) or sites I normally visit and read the articles. It’s almost a crutch in order to avoid doing any actual work. People say that smoking, drinking, and porn are hard habits to break (and I’m sure that they are) but I think that the internet (information at your finger tips) is more insidious.
It’s so easy to get sucked in. I feel that it’s almost like books with short chapters. When you get to the end of the current chapter and see that the next chapter is only 5 pages, you rationalize, “I’ll just read the next chapter and then go to sleep.” Of course you can learn a lot on the web, but you can easily waste plenty of time and come away with nothing to show for it.
We need to start an Internetters Anonymous group where we can all be each others support. And we can use the internet to do it…oh, wait. That’s part of the problem, eh?
@Steveo: Motiviation and lack of focus play their roles in our overall productivity for sure. Prioritizing is one of those skills that should be thought in grade school. 🙂
@Cam: I really think that it’s a very very widespread phenomena. I really don’t want to be afflicted by this, it really is nasty stuff. If obesity kills the heart and Kidneys, this kills our brain and drive to actually do stuff with our lives. Or so I like to believe to whip myself into actual action 🙂
.-= ChattyDM´s last blog ..Review: “Underdark” =-.
If you can’t do it with willpower alone, try WorkRave software — but willpower would be better.
@Chatty: It is an affliction. At one point, you have to be the driving force behind your time : you’re not just a polling machine for twitter, emails and IMs.
If I didn’t turn off all these notifications, I wouldn’t be able to put a single effective hour of work in a day being constantly interrupted by MSN, Jabber, email, task reminders, twitters and Skype calls (and text messages, phone calls and cell calls…)
I give myself recess times where I’ll turn this stuff on and I will let my mail get downloaded every 30 minutes instead of every 5 minutes.
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..Hocksprocket Corporation’s Claw of Elevation [R&D Report] =-.
If I’m not online, then I’m Sleeping, Eating Out, or dealing with grad school in some capacity. (And usually the latter I”m online as well, flitting between reading journal articles on PDFs and webpage reading).
I don’t have time for this kind of comment, I haven’t finished working my way through tv tropes. Maybe next century.
.-= faustusnotes´s last blog ..Have beard will argue =-.
I just want to be careful of terminology. It’s not a “true psychological addiction”, actually. It’s considered a compulsion or a psychological dependency – a behavioral disorder at best. Addiction (as of yet; it’s being debated) has certain requirements, and the withdrawal-like symptoms that may go along with computers/internet are reflective of a behavioral disorder and not an addiction. Also, there’s no physical harm being suffered by the patient or done by the patient to others and more often than not, it’s simply a choice that’s become a pattern of habit.
Or something like that. It’s early, eh? I’ve only had one coffee.
That said, I know the feeling you’ve written about above. I technically have more need than others to monitor emails and stay abreast of contacts on the net due to my entrepreneurial adventures being solely online and my main source of income, but there are days when I find it difficult to disconnect even if I have nothing businesslike to do. (Like, at 10pm when I should be in bed, eh?)
And, too, as I’ve walked around town lately and noticed that the people therein – predominantly NOT net users and mostly brick-and-mortar businesses – they seem… different. Like they’re living different lives and that it’s simpler, happier, more active time for them. They go about their days and they don’t walk around with silly iPhones and they don’t worry about how many emails are waiting for them and they don’t feel the need to check Twitter.
I like their lives. I want more of that peace and simplicity in my own. There’s something to be said for shutting down and taking regular time off the computer. (Which I also do often, in case people are wondering!) There’s something to be said for doing only one activity at a time for better focus (I do that too.) There’s something to be said for putting the keyboard away at 5pm to spend some time with my family, read a book and “décrocher”, as they say.
@Noumenon: I agree that willpower should be ingredient #1, but this WorkRave thingie makes for a great helper tool. I like the fact that your propose it for such an off-label use. Thanks!
@Eric: Tweaking the update time of emails is good! Thanks!
@Faustusnaotes: (Rimshot!) 😀
@James: Hey! Nice to see you here! (I know it had NOTHING to do with me emailing you the post). Thanks for the psych insight… I agree that dependency is a more apt term than addiction.
The feeling you shared of seeing brick and mortar people seeing ‘calmer/happier’ (agreeing that there’s some ‘grass is greener’ going on) is likely due to the fact that their workplace is different from their homes. When you work from home, you work ALL THE TIME. So yeah, there’s that… we should open an office in Boisbriand and just do some 9-5.
@Chatty – I agree. People working in “traditional” environments don’t have the same experience with the internet as we do. They can get away. They can close shop. They can have weekends, and nine-to-fives and vacations – all of them guilt free, none of them detrimental to the survival of their businesses or jobs.
And yeah, having an outside office is one of my goals for 2010. 🙂
.-= James Chartrand – Men with Pens´s last blog ..How to Set Your Copywriting Fees and Earn What You’re Worth =-.
The act of answering this post is in itself the answer.
I think I have this ‘problem’ too. I beat myself up over it, for sure.
But, at the end of the day, I’m just as productive (if not moreso) than many contemporaries. So while I bemoan my wasted time, I sometimes wonder if my brain knows best: maybe I’m better off with bursts of extreme productivity coupled with ‘wasted’ minutes of ‘junk’ internet. I don’t know the answer, but I do know, in terms of writing and drafting documents, that you can’t hold yourself to your ‘in the groove’ standard for each hour you’ve dedicated to a writing task (whether it be creative or legal.)
I can sympathize; I’m in much the same boat myself, and recently became aware of it. The bane of my productivity is my RSS aggregator, which provides me with a steady drip-drip-drip, an intravenous flow of distraction. Facebook isn’t much better, and frankly I’m tempted from time to time to drop the damned thing. Which would also deprive me of the benefits, however; I do like to know what’s going on with my friends, and we’re a far-flung bunch.
It comes down to the ability to moderate, I guess, and I don’t have it!
Hmm, when I want to change a habit like this I make myself a sticker chart. In your case, I’d make a chart that has a square for each power block. Then when I’m successful I’d put a literal gold star (or some other sticker) in the correct square. Unsuccessful blocks get no sticker (or another kind of sticker, if you like). The point is that you want rewards and punishment to be closely tied, in time, to the desired/undesired behavior.
As you progress, there might be quite a few empty spaces, but they will get fewer over time. Yes, it will be annoying to glance at the chart and see your failures up there on public display. Thats why this method works. But don’t get too caught up in it, failure is a necessary prerequisite to success.
Another possibility is to put a mark or a sticker in the chart each time you do one of the undesired behaviors. Progressively the chart should get emptier and emptier.
.-= Toldain´s last blog ..New Acheivement Structure =-.
@chatty – I feel the same way as you do. Most of the time, I’m able to control my internet habits without too much trouble, but I can’t tell you the number of evenings I’ve utterly wasted with StumbleUpon. I’ve never been a serious TV watcher, and I’ve pretty much cut video games out over the last year, but the internets are still my big addiction.
.-= pworthen´s last blog ..World’s Largest City =-.
Good post – I think I’m pretty guilty of this too. I can’t surf the internet at work really but it does stop me writing D&D adventures, reading books etc
Cheers
Richard
.-= Richard´s last blog ..The Plane Above =-.
Ditto. All that stuff you wrote, up there. It’s not every minute of the day, but starting from kid’s bed time until 2:00 AM. Sometimes 3, before when I have a morning conference call. So I crawl up to bed thinking, “Dammit, I should have been making something! Another night wasted.”
A lot of mine is reading blog posts in Google Reader. Ya know, I think it’s time to prune my feed list…
I have managed go build some disciplines over the years. For example, I keep an empty email inbox. Mostly. Sort-of. And always I turn off all instant notifiers. I refuse to get any kind of smarty-pants phone with internet. I don’t text on my phone, ever.
Buying a netbook computer actually helped a lot because it allows me to surf in bed. Believe it or not, that usually gets me to sleep earlier. I don’t know why that works, maybe it’s a snoozing wife nearby setting a good example.
Now time to unplug a few blog feeds. Don’t worry, not this one!
It comes down to the number of hours in a day, multiplied the week.
Even my guys on IRC that are collaborating with me get turned off 2 nights a week, as does everything else, or else projects last forever. All my RSS are turned off. The hard part of this particular compulsion is that we are always a click away from the blessed ‘new imput’.
I also don’t have any idea of what you guys are talking about ‘Brick and Mortar’ jobs. The internet’s reach continues to grow. Staff at our retail locations spend their day online. Most 9-5’s do most of their work all day online. Your first comments about being widespread are, I am afraid, on the mark.
You are aware of it, you are working towards solutions, and we appreciate your unique transparency and take on both life and gaming.
.-= LordVreeg´s last blog ..edited Steel Isle Town =-.
I actually have the opposite problem which I noticed when I was working on my assignments last semester… I turned all my notifications and Instant Messengers to give me more time to work… and I spent the entire day not doing anything productive… after two or three days like that I thought “screw that” and turned everything on… the moment five people started talking to me and my inbox showed I have unread messages, I suddenly was able to write the entire assignment in half the week and still make the deadline…
This sounds like an excuse to try one of these interweb time management apps: http://tinyurl.com/yj49bds
I can’t speak for any of them personally but i can definitely understand the appeal. This blog is actually fairly high up on my ‘bored and don’t want to pick up that book or fill out another piece of paperwork’ lists.