The internet has created a lot of opportunities but at the same time it has presented us with many traps to waste our time. Have you ever found yourself binge watching youtube videos for 4 hours straight without moving one inch. I have done that many a time ☺️

I am working remotely because of the internet age but then there are some downsides with the advent of technology. For a knowledge worker, it is getting more difficult to get deep work done in the internet age.

The book “Deep Work” by Cal Newport shed a lot of light on the some of the barriers to focus work. One of the chapters was dedicated specifically to blocking social media apps. I knew that deep work was important for living a good life. However, despite my best intentions, the default behaviour was to check youtube or twitter or any other random website in order to relieve myself from the pain of focusing on a problem for an extended period of time.

Willpower is limited and it is better if we design our environment which allows one to avoid subconscious habits. You would have heard of writers going to forest cabins in order to create an environment so that they can work on their book. For me such an approach is not feasible, but in order to get more deep work done, I decided to go cold turkey ( in some capacity ) and use a website blocker to block distracting websites during my work day.

I use the Freedom app on my mac. It has a windows alternative as well. It’s a paid product but trust me that it will be the best money you would have ever spent on yourself. If you want a free app, Cold Turkey is a good option. The differentiating factor about the above apps is that they do not easily allow you to circumvent the rules that you have imposed. Hence I would advise against going gung ho on this without starting small and setting smaller blocks of focus time.

I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make associations, draw connections, take me by surprise. And often even that idea doesn’t turn out to be very good. I need time to think about it, too, to make mistakes and recognize them, to make false starts and correct them, to outlast my impulses, to defeat my desire to declare the job done and move on to the next thing.

If you want more convincing, go ahead and read why these apps are required. There is an youtube video in the end as well but make sure you watch only that one 🙃

PS: The mobile is another gateway to distraction, but worry not. I will talk about that in another post.