WIRED:After just 10 minutes without access to the internet . . . the cold sweats have started
ClICK. RIGHT: you now have 120 minutes of my undivided attention. I’ve just downloaded a programme called Freedom, which is available (I think, I’ll need to double-check later) for the Mac and PC (Linux too? Maybe). It cost 10 bucks, and what it does is disable the internet on my computer for a set amount of time.
That’s right, I paid someone to break my computer’s networking. In this case, it’ll stay broken for two hours, and the only thing I can do to fix it is to reboot, or wait. Or write. And that’s the idea behind Freedom, written by – well, written by somebody whose name I’ll check in 115 minutes or so. If you don’t have the internet to tempt you, the theory goes, you’ll spend more time doing the matters that you really need to attend to. You can finish that annual report, catch up answering your correspondence (although you won’t be able to send them), tidy up the house or write your weekly technology column.
You can find out your kids’ married surname, or check out who of your social network has died since you last hung out with them (although how will I find that out without Facebook access? It’s unclear.)
Frankly, 10 minutes in, and I’m already out in the cold sweats. Is this worth the pain? I understand, oh golly do I, the distractions of the ever-present internet. But I also treasure the benefits non-stop access gives me.
I’m not one of these people who frets that their memory isn’t as snappy as it was before I handed over all my phone numbers, calendar dates and social interactions to gadgets and the internet. My memory has always been like some futuristic Nasa aerogel, as light as a feather, with more holes than actual content.
I have previously found myself typing “What’s my father’s birthday?” into Google. No results then. I fear what result I might get back if I typed it in now.
Wait, have I told you that story before? I'd Google my own column archive on The Irish Timessite to make sure I'm not regaling you with exactly the same article from five years ago. Right now, though, The Irish Times is not responding. Nothing is responding. I'm all alone.
Freedom’s not the first programme to offer cold turkey to internet addicts. I’ve written a couple myself (tragically, having written them, I also knew how to disable them). A colleague, now working on his second unfinished book, would physically pull the phone cables from his internet router. Or for you giants of self-control, you could just put the computer down and step slowly away from the keyboard.
It messes with my work pattern though. Usually my research takes place around my writing. As I’m building a story, I’m also fact checking, e-mailing, IMing and reading new papers. Perhaps that’s poor discipline. Perhaps I should be carefully compartmentalising the different parts of my life, and taking some of them offline. Every addict claims their addiction provides them with some utility. But few would say those who use the phone as an essential part of their job are telephone addicts because they don’t turn it off.
Ah! My mobile! That still has Net access. Okay, the name of the author is Fred Stuzman. One of the interesting themes to his own comments on the use and media coverage of his product is that he’s tired of talk about how technology directly causes procrastination or “how different everything is these days”. (Or at least I think that’s what he says, the font is a little tiny on this phone.) It’s a good point.
Writing, whether it’s your next performance review or your novel, has always been vulnerable to dilatory tactics. I may have the Freedom to not connect to the internet, but that’s given me the freedom to go and eat a burger, play a game, and plot a new website, all of which I have done in the past hour instead of writing this article.
That said, I believe there is a causal connection between distraction and the web. Online, the material I want to research is in incredibly close mental proximity to other equally interesting, but less anxiety-producing, topics and opportunities. But that structural problem is less of a product of the technology, and more of a product of a munificence of knowledge and data. We have the same problem in the best libraries of the world for generations (many years ago, I dragged out writing a play for months because I was attempting to write it in the British Library, home of every copyrighted work on Earth).
And the people who are most vulnerable to delay are the same as they’ve always been. There’ll never be an app that fixes procrastination. But in that wealth of new information, research, and software, there will be many, many more crutches like Freedom that could help.
If you’d like to give it a try, Freedom is available for Mac and PC from . . . well, somewhere on the internet. Google for “Freedom” and “procrastination”.
If you can stop yourself from being distracted, you’ll find it sure enough.
