Working Offline?
See if this sounds familiar to you: you start work designing a website, writing an article, writing some code, whatever it is you work on. Soon, a notification pops up on the screen from your Twitter client. You instinctively open it up and follow a promising link. Having read said article, you decide to see if there’s anything new in your RSS reader. It’s a vicious circle, with no part of it allowing you to actually work.
This is pretty much what happens to me every time I try to get something done, and it really bothers me. However, it wasn’t until recently that I had an epiphany. I could work offline.
Since then, my productivity has skyrocketed. With nothing to distract me and pull me into my web browser, I can devote 100% of my attention to the task at hand.
What’s the point of my tale, you ask? Well, my point here is that in a world with such connectivity, even the concept of being offline for even a moment scares me. Perhaps it’s because my job requires me to be online so much, it can be a strange, even surreal experience to not be connected.
Recently I took a 10-day trip to Ecuador. I don’t know if any of you have ever been there but it’s a wonderful place, with the exception of the cities and roads. Anyway, on this trip I chose, with great reluctance, to leave my laptop behind.
I have family over there, and they’re fairly well off by Ecuador standards, so they had a computer I could use to check email, etc. I checked it every now and then, but overall I spent drastically less time using the internet.
It was a refreshing experience, and while I was happy to return home to a open browser window, my perspective had changed.
Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that by only checking my email once a day for 10 days changed my entire world view, I will tell you that my perspective on the web had changed.
I still clock in around the same time on the computer every day, but I do one thing differently now.
When I go to start some work, I reach over and unplug my ethernet wire. Why? Because being offline for a few hours isn’t the end of the world, in fact, it’s the start of the real world.
I’m an anti-social nerd, so I don’t use any social networks. No Twitter, no Facebook, no Myspace…just my own site. I consider myself a lucky man.
So am I, but not on the internet apparently
@Max
Well, I read my RSS and attend to emails too, but I just have to use restraint when I’m working. If I turn the internet off, then that shuts off Pandora and YouTube for music, as well as researching problems and bugs I find. I couldn’t really last without internet.
Also, on my 3 week vacation this summer, I spent a decent amount of time working on one of my sites. I had a change of perspective, too – that it sucks working on a netbook with a bad internet connection.
“Because being offline for a few hours isn’t the end of the world, in fact, it’s the start of the real world.” Very well said!
Thanks!
You know, this use to be something I would find terribly hard to get around.
It’s one thing to have a job, it’s another to work from home, on the internet, full-time. It’s hard to make that full-time really count. I have created my own advantage points and ways to keep focus on the internet as a tool for productivity, rather than to check friends status updates – which has never been a real problem, I’m not too interested in Twitter, or Facebook as a means other than staying connected with my in real-life friends (or the few I stay in touch with via IM) so I have never really been troubled by this obstacle.
I guess I’m just one of the lucky ones.
The problem I find is that I don’t particularly want to know every detail of my friends’ lives, but I still end up spending too much time on sites like Facebook, because I think there’s a chance something important might have happened.
You are indeed a lucky one!
My policy is to respond to new clients as fast as possible, this doesn’t fit with that policy… If only I could turn of parts of the internet
Interesting… Well, you could always route your e-mail to your mobile phone so when an incoming e-mail is available, your phone does a little jingle. If it’s urgent you can respond right on the phone. That’s what I would do anyways.
Hmm… I’m still stuck in the 20th century: my cell phone doesn’t have internet, so that wouldn’t work for me!
Very nice article! Luckily, I can focus pretty well so i don’t get many distractions.
Yeah dude! Ya right. When I’m studying I turn off my internet conection and get very concentrated in what i have to learn, thats the best way, indeed.