Visual crack

Paul Graham’s got an essay on procrastination and distraction that hit home for me:

So one way to beat procrastination is to starve it of distractions. But that’s not as straightforward as it sounds, because there are people working hard to distract you. Distraction is not a static obstacle that you avoid like you might avoid a rock in the road. Distraction seeks you out.

Chesterfield described dirt as matter out of place. Distracting is, similarly, desirable at the wrong time. And technology is continually being refined to produce more and more desirable things. Which means that as we learn to avoid one class of distractions, new ones constantly appear, like drug-resistant bacteria.

Television, for example, has after 50 years of refinement reached the point where it’s like visual crack. I realized when I was 13 that TV was addictive, so I stopped watching it. But I read recently that the average American watches 4 hours of TV a day. A quarter of their life.

And the rest of the article is about the Internet and how distracting it can be. It’s so true! I check my e-mail way too many times each day. And 99% of those e-mails are most definitely not time-critical, so my old argument of “but what if I need to get back to them immediately?” doesn’t stand up for long. I check my e-mail a bazillion times a day because…well, because I’m addicted to checking my e-mail. That’s all it is, really. I mean, sure, there are worse things I could be addicted to (far worse), and e-mail is a very good thing, but I’m wasting a ton of time and brain cycles checking my mail. I bet that if I tallied up all the extraneous time I’ve spent on my inbox, it would be enough to write a novel. Or at least a couple of short stories. Such a waste!

I don’t think a notifier is the answer. That’d only add to the problem, really. No, all I need is a healthy dose of Luddite self-discipline, some system where I only let myself check my e-mail once every couple hours or something. I wouldn’t mind watching my productivity skyrocket… :)

I completely agree with Graham about TV being visual crack, by the way. I haven’t watched TV for the last ten years or so pretty much for that very reason. It grates on my mind in a way that I don’t like at all. I’m not sure if TV drama falls into the same category as the rest of TV (since it’s sort of like mini films), but at the same time just see how addicted people are to LOST and 24 and such. Interesting.

“But I read recently that the average American watches 4 hours of TV a day. A quarter of their life.”

Since when is 4 hours out of 24 a quarter of your life??? I mean, I’m not that great at math but… I’m sure he was refering to waking hours. I sleep about 10 a day and have CNN humming in the background for a good 4 hours then watch a movie, there’s 2 more… hmmm…

Oh yes, how true. It’s easy to point the finger at the TV-watchers, but I’m like you in that I’m addicted to checking my email. Being connected to a computer all day at work certainly doesn’t help, but I try not to get on my computer at home much in order to counteract the addiction. The summer weather also helps… :)

I love this quote, “Procrastination is Suicide on the Installment Plan!”
~not sure of the source

Procrastination hasn’t killed me yet… but it’s still evil. That quote applies better to smoking, methinks. It reminds me of reading Welcome to the Monkey House a decade or so ago, in which Vonnegut observes that smoking is the only socially acceptable form of suicide (that may be a paraphrase).

I used to be the president of a very small club in high school called the Procrastinator Masters. I’ve since seen the light, but I’m still coming towards it…eh, I’ll go towards it tomorrow.

Just kidding. OK, so I found that an easy fix for TV watching is to move into an apartment that doesn’t HAVE a TV, and the only things I watch now are games that I really really want to watch. Oh, and having a girlfriend who is much more interesting than anything on TV helps a lot, too.

It’s kind of nice to come back to Facebook after a few days (instead of minutes) and find yourself trying to remember some of the functions on there. It’s like watching someone stop smoking when you see someone that was addicted to e-mail, etc. when they go on a week-long camp or something.

Hey Ben, on another note, I see your Alexa rank is in the millions, but your Google page rank is a 4 (good)…any tips that you know of to keep bumping up a page rank? (My company’s website for instance)

Oh, and are you directing any shorts anytime soon? Long Ago and Far Away series, perhaps?

The great thing about the Internet these days is that you don’t even need a TV anymore. You can watch a lot of it online. Like Lost. ;) Join us, Ben. You’d like Lost. Besides, it’s only one show. … >-)

George: Yes, he meant waking hours. :) Still, four hours a day ends up being an awful lot of hours. That’s two months out of your year. Two whole months! And if you’re only talking about time when you’re awake (assuming eight hours of sleep a night), that’s three months a year. That’s insane. Just imagine how much else you could get done with that time…

Robyn: Agreed — and I’d say that email and the Internet are even more subtle in their addiction because they have the appearance of being “work.” Whereas we all know the TV is pretty much pure entertainment.

Janet: I agree with Rikker. :)

Barney: Haha, good points. My one roommate left his TV here for the summer (he’ll pick it up at the end), but I’ve been off TV long enough that it’s no temptation. (I’m not all that into sports.) As for my page rank, I don’t really know how it got there — the only thing I can think of is that I blog a lot. Maybe that’s it? I’ve got one play that’s a finalist for the Long Ago and Far Away set (we’ll find out Thursday if it made it), and I’ve also volunteered to assistant direct one of the pieces, so yes, one way or the other I’ll be involved. :) The set will run at the end of July — Pioneer Day weekend.

Andy: :P I have watched four or five episodes of LOST, 24, and The Office (each), since it’s not entirely fair to dismiss them without a knowledge of what they actually are (though that argument only goes so far :)). And while I’ll agree that LOST is quite compelling, both with storyline and with character development, it’s just not my thing. Ditto for 24 (which is more gratuitously violent than I prefer). And some parts of The Office are indeed rather funny, but overall it’s a bit too crude and earthy for my tastes. So I actually do know of what I speak. :) TV is a huge time commitment, one I’m not interested in forking over — I’ve got a life I want to live, things to do, and pouring hours and hours into a TV show is only going to steal from that. That’s my main beef with TV. And it really doesn’t jive with my aesthetic. (I don’t know how to explain that. :)) Anyway, if I were a TV-watching person, I would watch LOST. But I’m not. Sorry. :)