River: Managing attention

Fascinating post in O'Reilly Radar yesterday titled: Is it Time to Retire the Never-Ending List?

One afternoon, earlier this year, as I was scanning a long list that I was adding to endlessly, I realized, I'll never get it all done. That's probably just fine. But this endless list and this feeling of being completely scheduled's not working right now.

I met some friends for dinner and put the question out: Do you have a never-ending list? Do you manage your time? Do you manage minutes, tasks, and lists? Do you start each day with a list that has more on it at the end of the day than it did at the beginning of the day, in spite of how many items are completed and crossed off?

Or do you manage your attention? Do you manage emotions, intention, and make choices about what will and will not get done? What are your favorite ways to do this?

There were a couple of good suggestions, too. Worth a read.

I understand this. I, too, have an endless to-do list. I leave IM turned on and waste attention wondering whether I should ping someone, or wondering whether they'll ping me. I have a browser window up all the time with an easy, tempting bookmark for LJ. At home, LJ is always on a tab, along with a couple of posts where I want to follow comments! I have an editor window, sharing a ctwm tab with the browser, that's constantly viewing either email or my to-do list. It's too easy to get distracted.

Lately it's been changing a little. The list is still there, but there's a section with today's date. Whenever something comes up that needs to be done tomorrow or on the weekend, it goes there. Every day I can see both what I did, and what I didn't do. The rest of the endless list, organized by topic, is still mostly there, but it's not on the first page and I rarely look at it. Some things are going to get forgotten. Sorry about that.

I've dialed IM down a couple of notches; I should pull it down even more, I guess, and put the buddy list down where I can't see it. I should limit LJ even more, too, and not even look at it at work except at lunchtime.

Not all my river posts are about relationships. Sometimes it's just my relationship to the space-time continuum. Deal.

River: taking a break from technology

A recent post on PBS's MediaShift blog titled 'Technology Sabbath' Offers One Day to Unplug seems particularly good as a follower to my last post on managing attention:

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with taking one day each week away from work completely. You might think this would be an easy task as there’s a “weekend” each week that allegedly offers up two full days of rest. And yet, as I work at home, the shiny big screen of the iMac beckons at all hours, and I am often in front of its white glow the first thing every morning and the last thing at night.

So, being that I am Jewish — though not very religious — I decided to shut down the computer each Friday night at sunset until Saturday at sunset, the traditional time of the Jewish Sabbath. I make exceptions when I need to get directions or check for a personal email. I still use my cell phone but try to limit it to personal calls only. While this day of technological rest can be a difficult routine, it has allowed me to stretch my time, spend more hours outside and be with people more in face-to-face settings.

And I’m not alone. The concept of a “Technology Sabbath” is becoming more widespread,..

Not that I'm likely to do any such thing, you understand. But it probably wouldn't hurt to stay off the web and IM during daylight hours on weekends. Who knows? I might actually get some projects off the ground... (Almost all of them involve computers, but they're also vulnerable to distractions.)

(From Techdirt.)

Notes from the day

Just got back from a drive with the Cat. Smoke from the fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains made the sky an odd, dirty blue-gray as we were setting out.

Good walk this afternoon, after tasty shrimp wonton soup in our building's little deli. I love their soups. I like to eat at my desk from about 11:30, and then go out for a walk at noon.

My weight was 180.5 this morning! Even as the low end of a +-1 swing, it's an improvement.

I'm writing this in the living room on Matrix, our ancient Thinkpad. For the first time I've killed my IM client in the office and am running it here, sitting next to a sleepy flower_cat. Works. The screen, 800x600, is cramped, but at least it has a decent keyboard. It's so much like coming home that I'm unlikely ever to use any other kind of laptop anymore.