Don't Check Your Email in the Morning

[forsyth]

The title of this is the title of a book I saw somebody reading at work. I'm betting the book's something about organizing your life and not wasting time and so on. In that respect, I think the most valuable part of it is the title. Not just about email, but about getting on the net in general. I shouldn't even turn on the computer until I've done other stuff, I can get on and waste two hours easily without accomplishing anything. LJ, forums, blogs, news sites, mail, newsgroups, there's a zillion distractions. Plenty of things for the butterflies of distraction to settle on and keep you from actually accomplishing anything. It's the old Civilization/X-Com/etc "just one more turn", but in Internet form. Each little distraction takes only a minute, at most, but they lead to others, that lead to others, and they build up until two hours are gone without you even noticing.

That's one of the reasons I should get around to fixing my bike, so I can go out and exercise and enjoy the good weather while it lasts. But I need to replace the tire, and I'll go do that in just a couple minutes, once I finish reading this post about the Smurfs and look at this flash file with a singing cat.