What is WADD?
Well… it doesn’t really exist (I don’t think!), but I suspect it will, at some point, be a recognised condition.
It means:
Web Attention-Deficit Disorder
And I think I have it! I guess it should probably be Internet Attention-Deficit Disorder but I’m not sure that sounds as good.
I’ve started to realise that tools such as Twitter, GMail, Instant Messenger/Skype, Google Reader, Facebook, MySpace are actually having a negative affect on my productivity and…. this sounds odd, but I think they’re making me miserable.
It feels a bit like my brain is constantly running a background process that, at fairly regular intervals, interupts me to warn me I might have missed out on something really great going on somewhere in the last 10 minutes. This gets in the way of my work and, I’m starting to strongly suspect, my actual life as a whole.
It seems like I’m also not the only one that feels like this. There’s a great post over at Contrast (one of my favourite blogs at the moment) about Killing distractions.
Steps I’m taking to combat it:
Leaving facebook
Ok, so I really failed miserably at this! I deactivated my account and then immediately felt quite silly. I shouldn’t need to stop using the website. The two things I’ve decided I do want from it:
- A lot of people I genuinely care about will contact me on facebook rather than email.
- It’s great to see photos of your close friends and family getting up to their daft antics.
- To be there so people in the future can find me if they want.
What I can live without is all the status updates from random people, posting of stupid videos and the following inane discussions, constant updates on people becoming friends wth other people and… bloody applications.
Tweaking facebook
I’ve made a few changes to make it work better for me. I’ve culled well over half the people I am friends with. Here is my new mandate for friends on Facebook:
1. I must have seen or spoken to the person in the last year.
2. I must actually like the person.
That’s it. With those two rules in place,I lost well over 70 odd people. Sorry to those people, maybe we shared a past life briefly, but you just don’t matter enough to me to have a passive-digital version of you in my life permanently.
I’ve removed my twitter client from my laptop. There’s no need to have it constantly available to me. I’m keeping it just on the iPhone now for when I’m chilling with a beer or possibly just need to ask something of my followers.
GMail
I’m removing any notification apps or widgets I have. I will check my email manually when I have time to do so.
RescueTime
If you haven’t seen this check http://www.rescuetime.com/ – I’ve been using this for a while and ended up turning it off. It feels a bit like solving the problem with another part of the problem. That being said, I’m going to invest a bit more time understanding how to make better use of it with a view to getting a better idea of where I’m wasting my time.
In Summary
I’m going to try to strip everything right back to the bare essentials to avoid as many distractions at work as I can. There is a big difference between what is genuinely useful to me and what I have tricked myself into thinking is useful.
In my personal life I’m simply going to be less ’social’ and more ’sociable’. Coffee anyone? ;)
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I think I get this too – particularly if I do something like a large svn commit or restart a server, it gives me just enough time to reach for my cup of tea, and then I get thoroughly lost in facebook, greader and twitter – in fact that’s how I found my self here:-
http://twitter.com/iamkeir/status/1109233392
ok, switching off twitter client…
Thanks for stopping by Rick. Although sorry it’s eaten in to your day :)
I’ve definately noticed a small improvement in my behaviour with regards to Facebook after my mass culling. I check it a lot less now and when I do I only see stuff about people I’m genuinely interested in.
I guess if your SVN commits are legthy enough to cause your problems you’re probably already being reasonably productive! :)
Progess is good so far, my productivity has increased by 2.6% :)
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