I have been taking some time off recently. I don\u2019t really want to talk about the circumstances surrounding it because that isn\u2019t the point of this post.<\/p>\n
Since I have had time to work on slides and projects, I figured I would be super productive. I have been kind of productive, but not as much as I would like.<\/p>\n
I have noticed I have no attention span. It\u2019s gotten worse over the last two years or so.<\/p>\n
I was on my flight to CocoaConf San Jose and I nearly had a panic attack that I couldn\u2019t tweet the four hours or so I was on the plane. When I go to take a bath I bring a bunch of books and even video games to consume in the tub but I wind up spending all of my time on my phone chatting with people on Twitter. I get bored playing video games because they don\u2019t move fast enough and that revelation really disturbs me quite a lot. I used to cross stitch and doing anything for more than a few minutes at a time is incredibly difficult.<\/p>\n
There has been some question about the rise in cases of ADHD. I think that some people, like my teacher Eric Knapp, were born with it. But I also think that we can train our brains to mimic symptoms of it and that the massively connected world we live in has not been good for this.<\/p>\n
I will wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to get back to sleep until I check Twitter and my email. This is really unhealthy.<\/p>\n
I have no idea when this started getting really bad, but this is the first time I have noticed it.<\/p>\n
Twitter has been really good at helping me establish and maintain connections with people I might only meet once at a conference. I know that a lot of people have gotten to know me and my pugs through my tweets.<\/p>\n
I am just at a point where I am concerned about my long-term ability to function and be productive and I would like to break this cycle of thinking.<\/p>\n
So I am going to delete the Twitter app from my phone. I am going to close the tab I have open for Twitter on my laptop.<\/p>\n
I will answer email. There should be enough places online for people to find my email without me having to put it in this post. I will be on Slack channels. I will try to write on my blog more. I am not trying to make myself unreachable, I just need to disconnect from The Matrix for a while and relearn how to pay attention and focus so I can do things I think are important.<\/p>\n
At this point I am planning to do this until the beginning of May. I want to give myself a good detox period.<\/p>\n
I think that by doing this I will spend less time on my computer when I am not working. I will be more productive when I am on my computer. I think that I waste hours each day just chatting with people on Twitter and if that outlet isn\u2019t there anymore I will be less likely to zone out in front of my computer for hours each night.<\/p>\n
I hope that my decision is respected and I plan to write about my observations of the changing state of my focus on this blog. I am interested in seeing how my focus changes over the next month or so.<\/p>\n
Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have been taking some time off recently. I don\u2019t really want to talk about the circumstances surrounding it because that isn\u2019t the point of this post. Since I have had time to work on slides and projects, I figured I would be super productive. I have been kind of productive, but not as much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-hacking"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redqueencoder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redqueencoder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redqueencoder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redqueencoder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redqueencoder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redqueencoder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redqueencoder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redqueencoder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redqueencoder.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}