The web is an amazing tool to work efficiently in the global research environment. For example, I can’t imagine what writing literature reviews was like before the search engines helped us to scan millions of PDFs. As I’ve already described in an earlier post, I am a keen user of twitter, wordpress, skype, and google drive to work efficiently as a researcher. But when reading the ONL blogs by Rita and Linda (great cartoons!), I was inspired to add a few words about how I cope with my digital inefficiency.
Here’s the confession: I’m an addict. I check news sites, my email, and twitter far too often. I’m not an extrovert social media user trying to get likes, but I read, read, read what other people write about politics, finance (my field of research) and everything else. Whenever I get stuck in writing, coding or thinking, the web is there offering endless procrastination.
Luckily, the web also offers therapy. For all my computers, I use the StayFocusd plugin to limit the use of my favorite time-thieves to 5 minutes per day and device. It’s very efficient, giving me this message whenever my time is up:
For my cell phone, I have uninstalled all news, email, and social media apps. But a true addict will of course still find them through the web browser… To avoid that, I got a lifetime subscription of the Freedom app, which blocks websites at preset times of the day. I currently allow mobile browsing during lunch time (12-13), on the way home from work (17-18), and then after the kids bedtime.
It’s crazy. I pay my cell phone operator to be able to surf the web, and then I pay freedom to limit it. But it works, and I will keep adding new blocks whenever I figure out how to get around the current ones