January 4, 2016

One Month Of No Internet Browsing

Daily Writing Blog, General Thoughts

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One Month Of No Internet Browsing

It’s April 1st. I could do an April Fool’s article, but I’m not really that funny.

Instead, I’m going to point out the fact that we’re one quarter of the way through 2016 already. Occasionally, I like to put myself through various little challenges to build better habits. This month, I’m going to avoid browsing the internet for fun.

I’ll still be uploading articles on a (hopefully) daily basis. I’ll still have to check my emails and do any work that freelance clients send me. Other than that though, I’m going to avoid my regular blogs, forums and other places I hang out online for during the whole of April.

Why are you doing this?

I have a ton of work to do. Books, site launches, reading. The list is endless.

If you’re like me though, there’s a bigger problem: browsing the internet is addictive behaviour. There are a million different links to click, knowledge to gain, and spending time on great blogs is a great way to come up with too many ideas and flit from project to project without spending enough time getting any of them up and running effectively.

Another thing is that (and this is entirely pseudo-scientific babble) reading stuff on the internet substitutes for actual social interaction in your brain. How many times have you caught yourself getting caught up in the business of people (or news items) which have nothing to do with you? Again, if you’re like me, then the answer to that question is “too many.”

Finally, websites are pretty much procrastination devices. You can read a ton of websites with great knowledge, but if you don’t put as much time into practising the things you learn as you do into reading about them, your progress will massively stall, if not stop outright. I’ve noticed this in the past month or two; whilst I’ve been bogged down in technical-issue hell for some parts of the month, I’ve no doubt that “reading to fill the time” has taken away from my productivity.

What do you hope to get from this?

By spending less time browsing the internet, I’m hoping several things will happen. Most importantly I’m going to first see how much time I’m wasting and then secondly start filling that time with more productive things.

I’m also going to try and do as much research as possible without using the internet. I’ll use books and other materials, and try and use the internet as a last resort. This will hopefully make my brain stronger. Also, I expect that I’ll find that whilst there’s a breadth of knowledge on the internet that can’t be matched by any encyclopedia, most internet resources are quite light on information in terms of signal to noise ratio.

Finally, I hope to get loads of projects done because I’m simply not going to have any choice but to do them. I sit at the computer for a set amount of hours every day, and disabling the internet is going to mean I either sit and write or I sit and be bored.

Final Thoughts

In essence, I’m doing a 30 day no-mindless-internet-browsing challenge. That’s not a particularly catchy title, but I’m hoping it’ll have some good results on my life and productivity. There’s not much else to write about this topic, because I haven’t done it yet. I’ll be sure to keep you posted though towards the end of the month.  In the meantime, feel free to let me know if you’ve got any tips, experiences or moral support for me in the comments!

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