Anecdotally, I did end up having massive productivity during my Media Free March experiment, and completed a C++11 roguelike tech demo game. But I was also interviewing for jobs that month, and that always makes me go manic (the productivity run literally started when I got a phone call that the interview for that day I had been psyching up to had to be moved to next week). Also, I didn’t have anything I was procrastinating on, no day job and the game thing was a hobby where a couple of technical problems that had been bothering me previously happened to click early in the month.
The hosts file trick has never worked for me in an actual procrastination situation. I sorta think the entire desktop PC location is the problem, it doesn’t really provide an affordance to lean back and think slowly about a complex design issue. The desktop gets associated to quick feedback cycle activities, and when I end up with a problem that involves research, leaning back and thinking slowly about the design for a solution, things don’t work out that well. Can’t force myself to do a thing before I have figured out just what the thing that needs to be done is.
I could go sit on a sofa with a notebook to get rid of the expectation for a rapid activity cycle, except for the fact that the complex problems also tend to involve dozens of large files of legacy source code. Maybe I should start abusing the office printers?
I use my TV as a monitor for my media server—great for watching TV and video. I’ve found that sitting on the couch with my large-screen laptop and using the TV as a secondary monitor when I need to hold some extra material works very well. Juggling between two controllers helps push me towards a much slower activity cycle. On the other hand, it’s very frustrating when I actually want a rapid activity cycle (such as when troubleshooting the Ubuntu install on the media server >.<)
Basically, no fiction media of any sort (the original Black March campaign focused on copyrighted media, I mostly just went with all fiction), no web sites mainly used for killing time with random links and forum fun, such as Reddit, MetaFilter or TVTropes. I did keep reading LessWrong (questionable, since I pretty much treat this as entertainment, but it’s low-traffic enough here that you can’t use this as an inexhaustible procrastination source), and I did keep reading my RSS feeds (also questionable, but again those are quickly exhausted). I didn’t try to change my IRC use in any way. Nonfiction books (acquired earlier and in the reading queue, to go with the Black March non-consumption idea) were allowed, but I only ended up finishing one popular history book during the month, and don’t remember trying to read anything ambitious.
I ended up breaking the media fast twice for social movie-watching. Didn’t otherwise miss games, TV or novels so that I’d notice, I don’t think I was using those much before either. I do think the silly fun website avoidance did matter.
I’ve been back in a day job since and haven’t really thought about repeating the experiment yet. Might try it again at some point.
Anecdotally, I did end up having massive productivity during my Media Free March experiment, and completed a C++11 roguelike tech demo game. But I was also interviewing for jobs that month, and that always makes me go manic (the productivity run literally started when I got a phone call that the interview for that day I had been psyching up to had to be moved to next week). Also, I didn’t have anything I was procrastinating on, no day job and the game thing was a hobby where a couple of technical problems that had been bothering me previously happened to click early in the month.
The hosts file trick has never worked for me in an actual procrastination situation. I sorta think the entire desktop PC location is the problem, it doesn’t really provide an affordance to lean back and think slowly about a complex design issue. The desktop gets associated to quick feedback cycle activities, and when I end up with a problem that involves research, leaning back and thinking slowly about the design for a solution, things don’t work out that well. Can’t force myself to do a thing before I have figured out just what the thing that needs to be done is.
I could go sit on a sofa with a notebook to get rid of the expectation for a rapid activity cycle, except for the fact that the complex problems also tend to involve dozens of large files of legacy source code. Maybe I should start abusing the office printers?
I use my TV as a monitor for my media server—great for watching TV and video. I’ve found that sitting on the couch with my large-screen laptop and using the TV as a secondary monitor when I need to hold some extra material works very well. Juggling between two controllers helps push me towards a much slower activity cycle. On the other hand, it’s very frustrating when I actually want a rapid activity cycle (such as when troubleshooting the Ubuntu install on the media server >.<)
I would be interested to hear more about the media free experiment.
Basically, no fiction media of any sort (the original Black March campaign focused on copyrighted media, I mostly just went with all fiction), no web sites mainly used for killing time with random links and forum fun, such as Reddit, MetaFilter or TVTropes. I did keep reading LessWrong (questionable, since I pretty much treat this as entertainment, but it’s low-traffic enough here that you can’t use this as an inexhaustible procrastination source), and I did keep reading my RSS feeds (also questionable, but again those are quickly exhausted). I didn’t try to change my IRC use in any way. Nonfiction books (acquired earlier and in the reading queue, to go with the Black March non-consumption idea) were allowed, but I only ended up finishing one popular history book during the month, and don’t remember trying to read anything ambitious.
I ended up breaking the media fast twice for social movie-watching. Didn’t otherwise miss games, TV or novels so that I’d notice, I don’t think I was using those much before either. I do think the silly fun website avoidance did matter.
I’ve been back in a day job since and haven’t really thought about repeating the experiment yet. Might try it again at some point.