Unplugged

I feel a bit better after yesterday's meltdown. My Honey pointed me to Focus by Leo Babauta. The take home messages there are to simplify and streamline. Get rid of distractions.

Yesterday, I cleared my Reader -- as in I have no more RSS subscriptions. I'm not particularly good with self control.

Today, I disabled audio notifications of email on my phone and set everyone aside from my immediate family and co-workers to "never show" in GChat.

I also installed LeechBlock by James Anderson into my Firefox. I created a "NoEmail" task in which I will only have 15 minutes of access to GMail every hour between 9am and 5pm. This starts tomorrow and we'll see how I do. (Yes, I will have access on my Android phone as well, which is why it was imperative for me to disable notifications. If I absolutely need to deal with email, I can always fire up Safari.)

I've taken over my Honey's former office. It is an empty office while my department conducts its job hunt. According to Focus, it's the best place for me to go since there are no distractions. Given the past two days, I would agree with that. However, I am not a morning person and now that I am alone, I don't like waiting for the bus or walking to my car late night, which means that I don't like to stay too late.

I have given considerable thought now to rearranging my apartment so that the central focus is my writing space. It would be a bit of a task to rearrange, but I think it would help me focus to have the desk in the center of the space. Perhaps this weekend.