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Paul Graham on the New Distractions
By Grey | May 26, 2008
Paul Graham has written an article on the ways that he tries to disconnect himself from the modern forms of distraction:
TV is in decline now, but only because people have found even more addictive ways of wasting time…
I remember when computers were, for me at least, exclusively for work. I might occasionally dial up a server to get mail or ftp files, but most of the time I was offline. All I could do was write and program. Now I feel as if someone snuck a television onto my desk. Terribly addictive things are just a click away. Run into an obstacle in what you’re working on? Hmm, I wonder what’s new online. Better check.
After years of carefully avoiding classic time sinks like TV, games, and Usenet, I still managed to fall prey to distraction, because I didn’t realize that it evolves. Something that used to be safe, using the Internet, gradually became more and more dangerous. Some days I’d wake up, get a cup of tea and check the news, then check email, then check the news again, then answer a few emails, then suddenly notice it was almost lunchtime and I hadn’t gotten any real work done. And this started to happen more and more often.
[Click here for disconnecting distraction]
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Header photograph by kk+
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Topics: how others work, procrastination! |