Productivity Month, Week 2 – On Internet use

When in doubt about life and all that, go to the V&A.

So last week I said I would not use the Internet, from home, for six whole days. I did not make that completely (I read my RSS feeds on Friday night, and was back on Youtube on Saturday), but I've definitely calmed down a lot. It's been an interesting week.

I believe my current Internet behaviour is a remnant of the olden times, when I was growing up. I'm old enough to have experienced a world completely without Internet (in those days we read books!), but I still had my first own email address at the age of ten.
However, it took me and my mum a relatively long time to switch to a fast 24/7 connection. We must've used dial-up for at least five years, so my use of the Internet was always characterised by

1. Paying by the minute,
2. which led to a limited time span of availability (1 hour a day),
3. which led to long afternoons of offline activity,
4. and a painfully slow connection.

For a long time I didn't take part in online discussions since I wasn't around often enough to follow the conversations. Every day that precious hour needed to be planned in advance, and every day, after the obligatory question "Are you finished? Can I turn it off?", I knew I'd only seen a tiny glimpse of what was out there.

Now being connected everywhere, at all times, is what we all know, but I haven't outgrown this sense of urgency I felt during those years. Whenever I am at my computer, and the Wi-Fi is on and I'm connected, I get just the slightest bit nervous. I feel like now is the time, and if I don't use it I won't have the time later. So this compulsion to browse the Internet whenever I have access never really goes away.

And it seems to trump everything else. For example: I like buying magazines. (They're like tumblr, but on paper! Hah.) I always buy them, flick through them and never read them. This past Monday, when I woke up and found myself with my morning cappuccino and no Internet, what was the first thing I did? I picked up a magazine and read it cover to cover. And I registered a thought, running somewhere very quietly in the background: I've got nothing better to do.

Our brain loves new stuff, and the Internet constantly provides us with new stuff, and at any time, some of it could be interesting. While this is obviously a fantastic thing (I just spent five minutes googling for an article to link to, looked at about ten and found about three suitable ones – so much information!), this is what glues us to the Internet. This is why we constantly and habitually check our social media channels. This is why I can't get off tumblr or Youtube.

I also can't get off tumblr or other blogs because especially these outlets enable me to live vicariously through others. My own life isn't always great, but LOOK AT THAT BEDSPREAD and LOOK AT THOSE MOUNTAINS aaaahhh that makes me feel better. It's escapism. It encourages imagining and dreaming, and no matter how many productivity and self development articles you read, looking at someone's lifestyle blog is instant gratification and working on your own life is not. And unfortunatly, as usually, the more vulnerable people are, the worse the effect:

Regular media habits don't become really bad media habits or addictions without some help – often, depression or anxiety is involved. For those experiencing these states, being online starts as a pleasant distraction from everyday worries but can soon become a problem of its own. What can happen is that going online becomes a habitual reaction to feeling depressed, or experiencing some other aversive state. Once the linkage between emotional state and habitual response is established, it can be remarkably difficult to break down. It's a vicious cycle because depression leads to bad media habits, which leads to negative life events, which then leads back to more bad media habits.

Jeremy Dean, Making Habits, Breaking Habits

My own Internet behaviour worries me because this is what could happen. I don't like my living environment at the moment, and I find that, when I come home, I just want to put on headphones and shut out the world around me. When I didn't have the Internet this week, I just put on a DVD and did the same. I didn't automatically get to work, so I don't think that connection to the Internet per se has an effect on my productivity – it's more how I use it.

Before I went off the web for a few days, my level of distraction was so high I sometimes paused one video to start watching another. I've calmed down now, and my habits have been broken – I don't need my RSS feeds first thing in the morning. I don't need a connection as much in general. I'm perfectly happy to just be out of the house in the evenings, and I don't miss the online world.

For the upcoming week I will keep my computer off in the mornings, simply because that makes my mornings a bit quieter. I will also try what I'll call the Joe Hill approach – recreational use of the web only after I've completed a number of tasks I've set for myself. Wish me luck.


For those interested in reading about the Interwebs and our brains, best start with the classics:

• Nicholas Carr, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" (2008)
• Nicholas Carr, "The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember" (2010)
• [Video] "What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains [Epipheo.TV]"