Not entirely, but I am writing here a lot less, and it’s probably (at least partially) a good thing?

This isn’t (entirely) a ‘sorry for not blogging more’ post, it’s ‘here’s how I raised my own productivity’ post.

Firstly, I don’t take my computer home at night and don’t have any internet at home anyway. So I don’t write up thoughts and posts in the evening which is one time I normally would. In fact, I try not to do anything too much work-related at home, even on weekends.

Secondly, and I’ve talked about this a little before, I have two measures on my computer to stop procrastination. One is that I have a filter set up on my web browser to stop me using time-wasting sites for more than 25 mins a day between 8am and 5pm. Secondly, I use Freedom to basically shut down the whole internet for myself. Previously this has been frustrating, since I often need some minimal web functionality and I’ve used anti-social to block only some sites, but now I just shut down the lot and defer anything that needs ‘checking’.

Thirdly, and this is the new development for me; I’ve upped the ante in using Freedom, I now block out about 2hours at a time. And throw my phone into a drawer as well. This way it’s just me, itunes, and my work. Overall it means I get around 6 or more productive, focused hours per day. Today I read and annotated almost a whole book, and achieved some other sundry tasks too (patristics and language related mainly).

So that’s what’s working or me. Disconnecting from lots of things to just connect with the one task in front of me.