Writing and Productivity

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The always-on internet connection is, for many of us, a boundless source of new information, easy research, connectivity and entertainment. But it's also potentially your biggest distraction and time sink. How do you get the most of out of the Web to teach, entertain and update you, while avoiding the worst of its distractions?

The best solution I've found so far is strict partitioning of the online material I encounter, dividing it into "boxes" which I only enter at specific times. Here are the categories:

1. News (feeds)

If a site has regular updates which are genuinely of use or interest to me, I add its RSS feed to my Google Reader. I further subdivide these into two categories (labels).

Category 1: Essentials. This feed includes Boing Boing, Lifehacker, 43 Folders, a carefully culled handful of webcomics and other sites from which I want to read, or at least be aware of, every post. This is the feed I work through when I start my day, over my first cup of coffee, while the brain is still gearing up. I'll check every headline, but not necessarily read every post - I just want to be sure I haven't missed anything from those sites.

Category 2: Inessentials. Into this feed go any sites which produce a large number of items which may interest me, but which I don't mind missing - a few sub-Reddits, Dailymotion, and similar large-scale meme pools. I read it after the Essentials, usually in between answering emails, and I give it as much time as I can spare - which, some days, is none. When I'm done with it for the day, I Mark All As Read. So it gives me a daily snapshot of memes and news I can dip into as I have time.

2. Bookmarks

I use Delicious for bookmarks, largely so I can access them from any machine and any browser. They go into one of three major categories.

Category 1: Night Off. If it's going to take more than five minutes to read or watch, the item goes into my Night Off tag. This is my bucket for anything that interests me, but is not vitally important. If I can, I put aside two or three hours one night a week to work through these, usually with a drink or two and something to munch on. This is the place for all the funny articles, stupid internet videos, and other entertaining diversions.

Category 2: Major Reads. Anything that's going to take a bit of in-depth reading - (multi-page articles and PDFs, online courses) that I'm going to learn something important from. I give a whole morning to this stuff once a week if I can spare it, and deliberately shut out distractions to get the most from this material.

Category 3: Future Reference. This comprises all the rest of my bookmark tags - anything I want to keep around and come back to later, for entertainment or useful information. Every couple of months I cull my bookmarks of dead pages, stuff I'm clearly not going to come back to, and anything I feel I've fully internalised.

By sticking to this routine, I can get through large amounts of online information without getting sucked into the "just one more page" black hole which has eaten up many a productive day.

How do you tame the Web? Give your opinions in the comments.

Labels: bookmarks, distraction, drinking from a firehose, Google Reader, productivity, research, time sink, WWW

Over time, we learn to associate certain moods, states of mind and emotions with our environments. Just walking into a familiar room can summon up the feelings we've experienced there; if we've been ill and confined to bed for a time, being in the bedroom can make us feel sickly and down for days afterwards. A house we haven't visited for years can trigger powerful nostalgia, because it summons up the feelings and memories associated with it.

These feelings can be very powerful, not just affecting our state of mind but causing physiological changes. Medical studies have shown that recovering heroin addicts can actually start to experience withdrawal symptoms if they return to a place where they frequently shot up, because their mind and therefore their body anticipates a hit based on their environment.

These associations can have a powerful effect on your productivity. If your office or work area is somewhere you consistently get good done, have a clear head and see results, you will experience those feelings and a clear, productive state of mind just by walking in the door.

If you have a prolonged period of writer's block, distraction or unproductive time, those associations will be working against you. If you've spent a couple of weeks doing nothing but improve your high score on Solitaire, your computer will stop feeling like somewhere you do work and it will become harder and harder to bootstrap yourself into a productive state of mind, because of the associations with that environment.

Try to be aware of the state of mind you experience when in your workspace, and keep the associations positive and productive. If, while you're working, you feel the need to take a break and goof off for a bit, don't beat yourself up about it, but take it away from your workspace - go to another room or outside and play games on your mobile phone if that's what you crave.

Try not to take lunch at your desk either - the change of scene will clear your head anyway, and may help you subconsciously work through a challenging problem that's occupying you. Insomnia experts recommend the same principles - keep the bed for sleeping, try not to eat or work there. By letting each environment keep its useful associations, you can manage your own state of mind more effectively, and with great benefit to your productivity.

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Labels: distraction, environment, Health, productivity, situation, state of mind, writer's block

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I talked in my last post about mitigating the negative effects of hyperfocus, whether you're ADHD or just blessed/cursed with unpredictable laser-beam attention.

When you and your focus are working against each other, it can be a miserable and unproductive time. But when hyperfocus works with you, and you with it, amazing things can happen.

Under the influence of hyperfocus I've built whole websites overnight, spent 14 hours a day hammering through a Quality Management system nearing deadline, taken whole projects from a lightning-strike 3am brainwave to a complete set of notes and plans.

Unfortunately, many of us are taught as children (and reinforced as adults) that this kind of obsessive behaviour is unhealthy or abnormal. We may subconsciously feel that we should behave like a "normal" person and spent moderate amounts of time and energy on our various tasks, not go hell-for-leather at an objective (sometimes until we collapse from exhaustion).

Many of us spend much of our lives fighting this drive, in the process making ourselves thoroughly miserable by denying our nature, and losing out on the enormous wealth of potential hyperfocus brings.

We need to realise that normal is a spectrum, and in any normal population there will be outliers with extreme ways of doing things. Often it's those extreme individuals who achieve the most amazing things.

My advice: If you find hyperfocus pulling at you, and the subject is interesting, beneficial or just has potential, run with it. Set yourself some limits to ensure that the essential things are taken care of, then let yourself fall into the task at hand, and see where it takes you.

You can even engage your hyperfocus intentionally. Faced with a big, daunting task, lock out all distractions, move or cancel other commitments to allow a solid block of time, blast some music or put on an audiobook, line up some caffeine or alcohol or healthy juice (you'll know what keeps you going best), and say to yourself "Come on, we're going to do this thing!"

The first half-hour might be slow, distracted, you're thinking of other things, but when that tunnel vision starts to take over and you realise two hours have gone by and you never noticed, your hyperfocus is working for you. I listed about 300 vinyl records on eBay this way at the start of 2007.

Stop worrying about acting normally, or how your friends and family will see you. Let the dog off the leash, ride the wave. You have been given a wonderful, powerful gift, a firehose of creative energy to use. Let your hyperfocus run free, miss meals, miss sleep, miss dates, see what happens. You may create something extraordinary.

Labels: achievement, attention, creativity, distraction, hyperfocus, productivity

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At least once during most days, something takes control of my brain. It might be a technical problem to be solved (today it was getting a virtual NT4 machine to boot on my dad's computer), it might be a new idea for a project, it might be a website with a huge archive of interesting posts to read.

Once that idea gets into my head, it seizes control of my attention and I can't focus properly on anything else. If I try to spend time on other task, I find myself distracted and disinterested, and I get little done. Most often I end up flitting back and forth to the brain-thief, in a state of disorganisation, and achieve nothing on either task, while my stress levels steadily rise.

This is the dark side of hyperfocus. When it's directed, it can allow you to pour enormous energy into a task, excluding all other concerns. When it's bad, it can steal your attention away from the things you want and need to be doing, and leave you frustrated and unproductive.

Hyperfocus is a major symptom of my ADHD, but it's also something that a lot of creative people suffer with - as I've said in previous posts, there's a lot of blending between "normal" creativity and ADHD.

Fortunately, with practice and - most importantly - awareness of the mechanisms of hyperfocus, you can harness its light side for good and protect yourself from the worst of the dark side's damage.

The first (and most important) step is just to be aware when hyperfocus has you in its grip. Monitor yourself for those times when something has a magnetic pull on your attention. From time to time during your day, particularly when you feel yourself getting stressed and frustrated, take a step back and look at what you're actually doing - hyperfocus gives you tunnel vision, so you may not even be aware that you're locked in until you make a conscious effort and survey your situation.

The next thing is to ask yourself whether the thing that's got you locked on is really urgent, merely useful or an active waste of time. If it's urgent, it's all good. If it's useful, is there something more important you should be doing? If it's a waste of time, it's time to get it out of your head.

And getting it out of your head is the only answer to hyperfocus. Not fighting it, because an obsession opposed just grows. Sitting there telling yourself "This is a waste of time, I shouldn't be doing it" will just make you feel resentful and resistant, and you're likely to strengthen the focus out of sheer bullheadedness.

There are two ways to get a brain-thief out of your head: Closure and hand-off.

Closure: Size up the thief, and decide how much time and resources it will take to finish it completely. If you do have fullblown ADHD, think carefully - your judgement of the time required may be a little askew. If it can be done in an hour, and that's an hour you can spare, do it. Don't sit there making yourself feel guilty, acknowledge that in the long run this will make you more productive, and just do it. You'll get a boost of energy and relief from letting the hyperfocus dog off its leash, and when it's done you're free of the distraction.

Hand-off: Give yourself "interim closure". Find a way to unload that thought into a safe place, where you know it will not be forgotten. If it's a website, bookmark it somewhere you can come back to when you have time. If it's a project, take ten minutes to write down all your ideas and plans, and store it somewhere safe. Schedule a time when you know you can come back to the thief and give it the attention it craves. Then take a moment, sit back again and say to yourself "That's dealt with". Really visualise the task as locked off, in safe hands. Make it a complete thought in your head, not a loose end dangling. Then get on with your day.

Labels: ADD and ADHD, creativity, distraction, hyperfocus, productivity