Sunday, September 30, 2012

And knowing is half the battle

This is one of my favourite sites in the entire internet: http://www.good.is/

They run something called "Thirty Days of GOOD". I have done parts of 30 days of art and the 30 day digital makeover. During that last 30 days one of the attempts at living a better life was I tried was Track your time online

So I downloaded Rescue Time and for the past three weeks it sends me an email on Sunday afternoon that breaks out what I have been doing online for the past week. What I have learned is thus:

I spent 30 hours and 24 minutes online last week. I spend on average 4 hours 28 minutes a day online on my laptop at home. Of that time 65% is spent on social networking, games and shopping.

I actually feel kind of bad about this. I have no idea why I spend so much time dicking around online when I have so much to do. My house needs time an attention. My cross stitching needs time and attention. I have to find a new job. I don't want to hate my life any more and that is why I've been trying to do things differently for a while now.

But the good news about Rescue Time's emails is that I am now being more mindful about what I am doing with my time and on what page I leave my computer idling on when I leave the screen. I silently applaud myself when I realize that I didn`t turn the computer on until I needed that day, rather than turning it on and idling away my morning with Facbook, Twitter and news sites.

Being confronted with the hours I spend doing nothing but clicking flash games and waiting for my friends to say something funny/witty/insightful/offensive online has been a small revelation. Now all I need to do is decide whether the time I spend on this site is very productive, productive, neutral, distracting or very distracting.


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