15.09.2008 | 16:58 | Korrekturen und Ergänzungen | Tipps und Tools | Berichte und Beispiele

Only Disconnect

Es gibt diverse Tools da draußen, die einen vorübergehend vom Internet und anderen Ablenkungen trennen und so arbeitsfähig machen sollen: Freedom oder WriteRoom zum Beispiel. Das Problem dieser zunächst einleuchtenden Idee beschreibt "nostrademons" bei Hacker News:

"I've found that it never works long-term. Your habits just adjust to the new situation. Every year ('cept the last couple, when I've been working) I go on vacation for 2-3 weeks to my parents' summer cottage, where there is no Internet access, no cell reception, not even a touch-tone phone. I find that I'm super productive for about the first 3 days, and then I end up playing a lot of Hearts.

Without the different environment, the effect is even shorter-lived. I had a paper due once in college. Knowing that I wasn't about to do it, I handed my Ethernet cord to a friend and said 'Don't let me have this back until tomorrow.' And – as ridiculous as the article suggests it is – I sat at my desk doing absolutely nothing all night. Really. I was basically staring off into space the whole time.

The only thing that seems to work for me is to make whatever I'm working on significantly more fun than what I should be doing. So for example, I got a ton done on my startup between 3/15 and 4/10 because I said "Okay, I'll just put off my taxes until after my startup's in better shape." And then my taxes got done with no fuss because I was really burned out from all that coding, and filling out a few tax forms actually seemed more enjoyable than writing another line of code. This is another plus of living with parents: they give you chores, so you can say 'Yeah, I'll run to the post office for you, just let me finish this feature.'

BTW, I didn't quit watching TV by any conscious act of willpower; I quit because I got addicted to MMORPGs. And then I quit MMORPGs because I got addicted to Starcraft, and then I quit StarCraft because I got addicted to HP fanfiction, then I quit fandom because I got addicted to computer websites. A distraction never seems to go away until you find something to replace it with."


Falls jemand eine Übersetzung braucht, bitte Bescheid sagen.

Kommentar #1 von Fireball/Joël:

Ich fand/finde WriteRoom aber nett für manchmal, um ungestört zu schreiben (Ich habe allerdings auch nur zum Privatvergnügen geschrieben, also nichts timelinegebundenes) – vor allem halt, weil es einen dunklen Bildschirm zaubert und einem das Gefühl gibt, man würde viel schreiben. Letztendlich mochte ich dann aber eine Funktion haben, mit der ich meinen (wenn auch schmaleren) Fortschritt in Zeichen messen konnte.
Und das mit "Hearts" stimmt. Absolut.

16.09.2008 / 00:33

Kommentar #2 von irgendwem:

"A distraction never seems to go away until you find something to replace it with."
100% Zustimmung ;) /addicted to English fanfic & fanart since 2002 with interludes of Wordpress installments.

16.09.2008 / 09:45