Information overload has long been an ongoing problem, but this year it seems even more excessive than usual. Despite being totally burned out from the endless inflow of data, I seem to be compelled to keep looking at it, endlessly searching for the missing link.
At the start of this week I decided to make some positive changes, and I could see straight away where most of my flow of exhausting negative input was coming from, but I have always seemed to avoid facing up to it.
The internet is my main problem. It can be a very useful tool, but it’s starting to feel like a giant sewage pipe pumping crap straight into my mind, and for some reason I have become addicted to that inflow.
Today I woke up with a new plan to put the internet back in it’s place as a tool, and stop it taking over my life. It’s a very basic plan that only took about two seconds to implement.
Before starting up my computer I unplugged the internet connection. My plan is to leave the internet unplugged most of the time, and also to permanently stop using WIFI.
I now have a digital timer on my desk, set to one hour. That is the maximum amount of time I want to spend connected to the internet on any given day. So when I plug my internet connection back in and start my timer, it’s safe to say I won’t have much time to piss about looking at distractions like YouTube or Facebook.
And if anything is going to take up much time, I plan to download it and look at it offline, or in the case of something like a blog post, to write it offline, and then quickly upload it during my connected time.
