Looking at the world around us, it’s easy to see that increased access to technology has made us all more productive, internet shopping frees up our time, internet banking helps to manage our money, and mobile computing and iPhones have taken us even closer towards a connected world.
However, at the same time it seems to have increased our need to procrastinate. Notice my use of need here.
Procrastination is a good thing, in moderation, it’s time off, like play or sleeping it allows our brains time to relax and let the subconscious, our real creative tool take stock of what’s going on.
Viva la Procrastination!
However, when your day involves intense computer work, whether coding, designing or writing, there’s just too many distractions. I’m finding it now, I spend my days in a studio making sound effects for animation, yet I feel the need to regularly take a break and tweet or check facebook. In my book, that’s fine, information workers and creative types need time off. There’s no wonder that people which work with information, play with information, It’s what we know.
I love reading blogs, Twitter, Facebook, pointless forum discussions and constantly updated news sites, it teaches me new things, keeps me thinking and up to date. However the problem I find is mixing work and pleasure.
I have a firm belief that in order to keep things simple and minimal the two shouldn’t be mixed. So maybe the goal should be to work tools focused solely on work, in an attempt to reduce distraction, just as a fisherman is probably too tired of fishing at the end of the week to spend a lazy Sunday angling.
So that’s why for the next few weeks I’m going to block all my pleasure time in my laptop and solely use my iPhone, it can do everything my laptop can, and keep that distinction there too.
