more fasting: No newly installed apps till 2007; limiting internet intake to 1h/

[urlwolf]

Hi,

I'm not getting some goals for this year, so I'm cutting down (again) on two things that take lots of time: finding and testing apps, and aimless browsing.

So I'm declaring some more fasting: No newly installed apps till 2007; limiting internet intake to 1h/day.

Let see how it works. I'll still look at the forum, but won't post much.

BTW, RSS feeds are an important time waster too. I have 67; do we need to read that much What is the proportion signal/noise? Is reading about productivity really paying off?

[nudone]

i think i'll have to join you.

one hour a day messing about online (including email checking), to be done at a set time decided upon at the beginning of the day - so it could be first thing in the morning or spread out through the day for just a few minutes at a time - that's a bit of a cop out isn't it. whatever, i definitely need to limit it.

i don't install many apps these days so i don't have that problem - i just need to start using the computer as a tool again rather than a way of simply passing time.

(i never use rss feeds - i've never been a news junkie.)

anyway, good luck with it, urlfwolf.

[Carol Haynes]

Hmmm - epiphany .... let me join the project too!

We could call it "get a life" and have numerous discussion threads in our own subforum to make sure that none of us spend more than an hour on line ... of course it will all be so interesting that we will need an extra hour a day just for these activities

[Deozaan]

1 hour? Yikes. What would I do with all that extra time?

[app103]

1 hour? Yikes. What would I do with all that extra time?

-Deozaan (December 03, 2006, 10:02 PM)

I propose writing something every day...either in notepad or a real hardcopy notebook....not necessarily something to be shared with the whole world, maybe just for yourself. And not necessarily even to keep. You could just write and close without saving.

What are you going to write about? Anything not related to your computer or anything you have read or done on a computer. Write about your outside offline life. Create poetry, stories, thoughts, feelings, etc. Just express yourself. Kind of like an old fashioned journal.

I know most aren't into keeping a journal, and some may say they can't or don't have the time, but the experience can be very beneficial, even if at some point you give it up.

You will quickly find out if you have a life or not...and the experience might just push you off the pc onto other things a bit more.

This is something I started doing a few weeks ago...and it has been an amazing journey of self discovery.

I have discovered exactly why this whole GOE thing has been a failure for me.

In the last assignment mouser mentioned there being something a bit "uncomfortable" about looking up from the here & now of daily activity and looking ahead to see if he was going in the right direction...defining goals, plans, dreams....and seeing if he is on the right track.

He is right.

I had the same experience...very early on in the whole thing, around weeks 2 & 3 when part of the assignment was to define serious goal tasks and give them a time table of a month, year, longer.

This was when I had to actually stop and think about my life, what I wanted, where I was going, how far I have come. Maybe I took it a bit too seriously. I don't know. But I didn't like it one bit.

It threw me into a fit of depression I haven't been able to get out of since. Something very unsettling about looking at something like this halfway through your life and realizing you have gone nowhere and are going nowhere and that you have no life.

My whole life as I knew it came to a screeching halt at the conscious realization of this and I just couldn't move forward.

When the week 9 assignment was posted and I saw what it was, I dropped out because I didn't want to face that again.

It wasn't till I decided to write something every day that things started moving again...very slowly.

In my writings I am discovering why I am where I am right now and what is holding me back. Before this, I thought I knew...pointed at things and placed blame. Now I am not so sure about what I have been blaming it on wasn't wrong...that it was really me that I should be blaming.

I am responsible for my own happiness, after all, right?

And I think that is the whole point to this entire GOE experiment....To get things done. What things? The things that lead you to happiness.

As soon as I can get myself going at a normal speed again, I plan on giving the entire GOE another go, from the beginning. I think the end results will be very different for me, next time, when I do.

At the very least, I now know where all the traps are and will be better prepared to mentally handle them.



^{Given the nature, content, and length of my reply, I wonder if I should allow this to qualify as my writing for the day?}

[tomos]

that sounds great app,

I have been writing a bit in connection with the GOE, but it turned out to be about anything and everything - I mean if youre trying to change your work ways it about YOU, ME, I mean, in my case 
But thats been more like once a week (writing).

I read in Mark Forsters old website (but cant find it in new site) about this book called The Artists Way (I think or maybe the writers way, about developing your creativity) & one of the things they suggest is to write three pages every morning without thinking -
three pages non-stop, & if nothings happenning to write: bla bla bla ... or whatever.
He says he still does it every day.

might try that.

P.S. thanks urlwolf for the prompt!

[urlwolf]

Hey App,

Good to know that things are working better for you now. The first software fast I did I wanted to 'convert' the extra time into short stories... one a month to be systematic. It didn't happen. I just translated an old one. so I stilll 'owe' myself 2 stories.

Writing is freaking hard most of the time. I have found that mindmaps help me to position ideas together, so if I work on a mindmap first the writing is faster and almost painless. I think the visual part of mindmaps help reducing working memory load.

@Tomos:
Yes Forster likes journaling a lot. I tried a smaller version (10 min a day, first thing in the morning) but it's hard to keep up Actually, right now I don't think I'm using ANY time management system

[nudone]

i hope soon that we do discuss how successful these time management systems are. so far it sounds like mouser is the only person to have stuck at it. i hope there others that stayed committed - hopefully they will reveal themselves.

hunt me down and kill me for saying this but i do doubt the whole 'self-improvement' gurus and what they preach. i like to think that simple 'time management' can be achieved but when it's just another version of 'how to change your life in 7 days' or whatever the latest life-style book is then it's garbage.

i'm not attacking any of the time-management authors that we've discussed. i just want to raise the point that there is a difference between getting a grip on wasting time reading email and wanting to change your life. i think it might be easy to expect a bit too much from these advice systems and a bit easy to be confused about what you want out of it.

if anything, i've learned that self-control is way more taxing and complex than i was hoping it to be. oh, and look there, i see i've gone over my alloted one hour of internet use already. time to shut up.

[tomos]

[well over my internet hour at this stage - I'll start tomorrow ]

i hope there others that stayed committed - hopefully they will reveal themselves.

-nudone

I'm still committed. How successful I am is another story!

hunt me down and kill me for saying this but i do doubt the whole 'self-improvement' gurus and what they preach. i like to think that simple 'time management' can be achieved but when it's just another version of 'how to change your life in 7 days' or whatever the latest life-style book is then it's garbage.

-nudone

good point nudone!
That's one of the things I like about Mark Forster:
that he acknowledges how difficult it is/can be to change your habits etc.

That is something a lot of the " 'self-improvement' gurus" seem to forget - or maybe they just didn't/don't experience things the same way as us mortals   

i just want to raise the point that there is a difference between getting a grip on wasting time reading email and wanting to change your life. i think it might be easy to expect a bit too much from these advice systems and a bit easy to be confused about what you want out of it.

-nudone

funny I find I'm coming at it from the other direction a bit:
I mean I wasn't expecting to change my life, but do find that looking at the way i work/dont work has me ending up looking at the way I think/live/am, my expectations/etc. etc. (which I'm happy about - even if I still dont end up "organised"  )

Anyways, as you say, I guess sometime soon we will (hopefully) talk about our experiences in more depth

[brownstudy]

re nudone's "if anything, i've learned that self-control is way more taxing and complex than i was hoping it to be."

As a member of the loyal opposition, I'd suggest that if a time-management system is based on self-control, it's probably not going to be effective. My take on these systems is that they should be seen as toolsets; I have built my own little task management systems (I prefer that term over "time management") based on Forster, Allen, and others over the years. Ideally, once you've put the thought into a system that works with your brain and not against it, then the issue of self-control disappears.

Forster mentions in his books that we always take the path of least resistance. The trick is to setting up your environment so that you go for the easy choice, and that easy choice supports your long term goals and choices and relationships. Getting your environment to that point is painful, probably, but once it's working, it becomes a habit that you don't think about at all.

I'd say Forster's second book on making dreams come true is a more big-picture look at life, and even there, he doesn't prescribe stuff, but provides another set of tools for thinking about your life. I'd say Covey's book might be another good one if you want to look at big-L Life issues; the task management books are just there to help you clear away the administrivia of life so you can go after the big-L stuff.

Or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it 

My fast will be to not bookmark anything for the rest of the year. I have a ton of bookmarks that just lie there and I access maybe 10 of them. It's like buying a roomful of books but not reading them.