It started innocently enough a few years ago, didn’t it? It wasn’t like you were actually breaking the law, being a criminal, being a Bad Person hurting people. No one was getting hurt – if there’s no victim, there’s no crime, right? Besides, everyone else was doing it! It was no worse than swiping that candy bar off the shelf at the store, right? You didn’t get caught then so you won’t get caught now.
At least that’s what you tell yourself. Or try to tell yourself. Maybe if you tell yourself enough times you’ll convince yourself and you can start looking in a mirror again.
But I know you’re stealing – and so do your friends, your coworkers, the girl you’re trying to impress. We all know.
What you’re stealing is time from yourself.
You grab a few minutes here, a web site there, pop an IM with a friend, check out a cool new and shiny thing online and you don’t even remember doing it 10 minutes later. When you do things that hurt yourself and you can’t remember doing them, you need help.
Email by email, web site by web site, bit by digital bit we’ve become an online nation of thieves – stealing from ourselves productivity and focus and hopes and dreams and our futures. So you want to build a real future for yourself, a real software company that you can be proud to say, “I built this. I did!”? Stealing is not going to get the job done my friend.
We call ourselves “digital nomads” or “web workers” or “microISVs” or “freelancers” or “startups” but any real nomad that was as easily distracted as we are would end up a pile of stinking bones in the desert before the next full moon. And if we had real bosses – sons of bitches who watched your every move at work – we’d be canned by the end of the week.
The real world does not reward stupidity. And trying to build something worthwhile for yourself while frittering away each business day in a haze of email, IMs, web sites that don’t directly relate to what you are doing is stupid and will get you nothing but tears and heartache.
Letting email/IM/twitter/browser run full bore during the periods of the day you are supposed to be creating something is exactly as stupid and criminal as driving a car while on your cell while texting while watching a dvd player. Someone is going to get hurt, and you’ll be to blame.
Don’t get me wrong – I love, really love, each and every part of the online world I’m lucky enough to be a part of. It’s all good! And I do exactly what I’ve described in this post and like a drunk who fights the bottle each time I know I shouldn’t do it. the point is, you have to admit it’s wrong, it’s hurting yourself, it’s something you have to make yourself stop doing.
If you laugh at this post, you’re still kidding yourself. And if you’re pissed, if it got under your skin, well, you know what they say: the things people say that you hate the most are the things you should listen to.
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Update 1: I guess I really hit a nerve with this post – good! That was my intention because the biggest obstacle to building a startup or microISV is confronting all those easy ways to get pulled off course, to lose focus and intention. And for developers, information is the sweetest candy in the shop.
I’ve tried to fix my various typoes rightfully pointed out by various commentators, and will be posting in the next day or two some of the ways I’ve found to beat that urge to steal time from myself.
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Update 2: 5 Strategies to stop stealing time from yourself.
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I just wasted time reading this post and ALL the comments.
I guess I’m guilty as charged, not that I give a shit.
“But I know you’re stealing” is a self-fulfilling prophecy: if one reads blogs, one is indeed wasting/stealing time. And if one doesn’t waste time like this, he’ll never read this post.
Wow I came here from Reddit (imho a good site to waste time in) and what you said pretty much resonates me from the get go. Well thanks man as I’m going to cut my laptops internet connection as soon as I leave this comment.
“It is the standards of civilized men not of beasts that must be kept in mind, for it is good men not beasts who are capable of real courage. Those like the Spartans who concentrate on the one and ignore the other in their education turn men into machines and in devoting themselves to one single aspect of city’s life, end up making them inferior even in that.” –Aristotle
Guilty as charged!!!
Your post made me realize a lot of the things I’m doing online. I realized that I’m spending a lot of my time just wondering the web. I do that to look for interesting stuff that I can post but still, there are ways to optimize my time. Thanks for pointing that out. By the way, I was eyeing your template for sometime now from quommunication. Maybe in the future if I can afford it.
I thought your post was a legitimate one concerning software piracy, a valid debate, for which I would be interested in a quality discussion… then I realized you’re talking about personal productivity and behavioral patterns. What a stupid post – see a psychiatrist if you have these issues. All you did was prove(once again – much like 1+2=3), that lousy headlines and lousy writing, if written with an amount of flair, can attract attention. It’s no different than a car accident with everyone slowing by to look. Cheap parlor tricks proving that you sir should not blog. You are exactly the problem and are not needed by the blogosphere/interweb, do you honestly not see that you and those like you are the source of the problem? Now that I am laughing at.
Bob – you are so right. I am trying to set up a very small internet based business as a writer as well as dipping my toes in forex (the two go together) in order to fund financially and to free up time practically to pursue my real dream of writing screenplays.
I realised a few months ago that I was becomeing a slave to certain internet communication tools – my daughter got me onto FaceBook, for example, then I found friends joining my FB page and soon I got a couple of snidy emails because I had not responded to their message on a wall, or their virtual hug !
I found the same with instant messenger – someone would invite me to converse, I was busy writing and being (!) self-disciplined would ignore the annoying little pop-up – but later found that I had offended them.
But it’s not just other people disrespecting my personal space – I set of on net searches with a purpose only to find that I begin to follow links that are increasingly tangential to the original search and -voila! – before I know it I’ve wasted the best part of an hour collecting information that is of no use to my writing and research.
This was a great post – as the response shows, I shall explore your site further (but not just yet – I’ve set myslef to write three scenes before I’m allowed a coffe break!)
à bientôt
Julie
Letting email/IM/twitter/browser run full bore during the periods of the day you are supposed to be creating something is exactly as stupid and criminal as driving a car while on your cell while texting while watching a dvd player. Someone is going to get hurt, and you’ll be to blame.
Hi Bob – I just tried to edit my last comment – the quote from your original post at the end was intended to illustrate my point – but I forgot to put in in quote marks and reference you ! Sorry.
In addition – I think there may be an age-related factor here – my 23 year-old daughter seems to be able to multi-task – she has messenger permanently open, and it is constantly ‘beeping’ – which I think means that she’s getting messages, she arranges her local social life that way. At the same time she’s on facebook or ringo or some other – possible more than one – to keep in toch with people further afield. She has her mobile phone and seems to be texting regularly. At the same time she is successfully pusuing a business degree in French (her mother tongue is English) and is consistently getting great marks – even though assignments are written whilst all the above social newtworking is going on.
She also has her iPod playing most of the time.
She laughs that I have to stop walking to take a swig of water out of a bottle – there’s no chance that I could successfully multi-task on all those technologies – I’m 50 years old by the way.
Do you think there is an age factor? I heard a BBC show about how kid’s brains are slowly adapting and that there are distinct changes in synapse activity in the younger generation as a result of all the technology.
So I’m supposed to work all day, every day without ever taking a break to relax and waste time? If you have to work all day, every day to live the way you want to, you’re a failure (or an extreme over-achiever who has lost all perspective, which I guess is just a type of failure). I’m going to school so I can get a job that pays enough that I don’t have to work 12 hour days and I can relax as much as I want to.
What’s next, a rant about kids these days not reading enough books? Times change. People used to kill time listening to radio shows, then watching TV shows. Now we have the web. It sounds like you don’t like change, so you’re assuming that the web is a worse way to waste time than any other, but is it? There’s certainly a lot more information and collaborative thinking on the web than on TV, the radio, or in any book. It doesn’t sound like a bad way to waste time if you ask me.
Good post, albeit an unconventional one. It’s true I think, that the majority of people who have attention problems are not aware of them. I suspect those who are very disciplined may be completely unaware of the distraction some people face.
Any kind of thought work requires focus and I suspect that ‘the ability to concentrate’ will become a precious commodity at some point in the future, if it isn’t already.
Ok, good post, agree with the the idea, the theme, the initiative yes yes yes…
but man…..
“The real world does not reward stupidity”
No. Wrong. The real world LOVES to reward stupidity. Loves it. Eats it up and spews it out and it’s the terrible circle jerk of culture and BS that makes up our modern real world.
I mean, the most recent example off the top of my head: http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2008/08/tucker-max-responds.php
The best employers I have ever had the pleasure of working for understand that we all need a release, a break in thought. My employer does not pay me to be their physical and mental slave, who governs what I think, do or say for 40 hours a week…. they pay me a salary to do a job that is required. Both them and myself know the expectations. If I am able to perform said job title at the end of the day, then they are not worried about what other activities occupy my day. I did what was expected (and often more) and what I was paid for.