The web is excellent for distraction
Posted by Dave Rosen May 16, 2006
Like to surf the web? Of course you do.
There’s a poison for every passion – technology, web-trends, movies, He-Man.
Blogs, vlogs, aggregates, forums, rss, podcasts, emails, flickr, bit torrents, streaming video, im…. cutting edge headlines slam every second. Imagine Digg as a newspaper – the paperboy would be throwing screamers at your doorstep every hour.
Then there’s the click-loop. It’s hard to visit a page without finding a link to another interesting page. Plus you want to leave your mark right? So spend time writing that comment. Or may be you’ve gone enterprise and started publishing your own headlines for the masses.
It’s information chaos. You need to commit hours each day just to keep up with the buzz.
That’s why ‘less’ is so much more these web 2.0 days. Concise, core, clear, critical is a welcome heaven to the prolific information juggernaut.
Surfing is fun but so is chocolate peanut-butter ice cream. Moderation is essential or else your doing more harm than good to your brain.
Admit it. Hands up if you check Digg more than once a day? Come on. Let Digg be! Digg is a big boy now and can take care of himself. You don’t need to monitor him like a baby. It’s not some tropical mirage. Don’t worry – Digg will still be there tomorrow.
‘Surfing’ is a really misleading metaphor, right? Surfing evokes images of beaches, bikinis, fun times and waves in the sun. Sitting glued to a monitor, clicking-away into the never-never is the furthest thing from this possible (OK, so may be there’s a few bikinis). Or how about the term ‘being connected’. Sounds so positive – like part of some greater harmonious good. Hell – we’d all plug Ethernet cables direct to our brains if we could. Reality is, walking around the streets naked is more social than surfing the web.
It’s not productive. It’s bad for creativity. It doesn’t make you rich. It’s not real. It’s an addiction.
It gets in the way of building your own web application. It gets in the way of taking a walk in the park.
Trying to build a web application? Try spending a good chuck of the day working disconnected. Being online is like an alcoholic living next door to a pub. It is better to build a website than browse one, better to browse a website than misuse it as a means of distraction.
Keep tabs on how much of your life you’re dedicating to surfing. List of your top 3 websites and attempt to not visit them for a month. Yeah it’s a little crazy but how long until you break? (exclude Futuretrack5 in this experiment of course :)
Now I think I hear Digg crying so excuse me while I go check on it…
Working disconnected is amazing, yes. Great advice for people who have to get things done. But at the same time I always feel like I’ve lost an arm or two.. :)
I actually wrote about why you have to read blogs just this morning: http://blog.bjorkoy.com/2006/05/16/the-greatest-argument-for-reading-blogs/
Yep I start the morning reading the news. That’s enough time on it’s own. But then sometimes I’ll head over to my blog feeds and that’s more time. Then I’ll maybe submit my own comment to a blog and there’s more time. Finally I may digest what I’ve read and make a comment on my own blog.
I’m not sure how I get anything done now that I think about it…
The thing is, I guess it’s important to keep up. But the more I read the better I am at ignoring rubbish, and bookmarking/subscribing to the important stuff.
I’m unemployed now and trying to make it with my web application. That’s enough to scare you in to self discipline ;)