tooth soup

photo credit: Wonderlane

Warning: Rambling self exploration ahead.

Also, falling boulders.

Living in today’s

world is, I think you’ll admit, pretty great. Technologies enable us to communicate with our ‘friends‘ and family, even complete strangers with the ease of a mouse-click. Of course, there’s a lot of arguments being made about the increased availability that this produces; when was the last time you got through a day without accessing your phone, email, twitter, or social networking site at least once? I don’t know about the habits of people that read this blog, but I do a tour of my usual suspects (gmail, blog, google reader) about every half an hour, and have a continuous twitter update going on in the background thanks to TwitterFox. And this is during work hours! It’s small wonder then that I find myself hard pressed to concentrate on things at the moment. I’ve tried various solutions to remedy this, from Internet timers to hardcore blockers to physically unplugging the ethernet cord when I needed to knuckle down. But I always returned to my distracted ways after a while. It’s an unquestionable fact that in my profession (research) the Internet is a necessary evil. We need access to journal articles, very specific knowledge and definitions, access to supercomputers, the whole box and dice. And that stuff just isn’t available anywhere else, and if it is, it’s tedious to get to it when the same lookup could be done with a few keywords and a Google search. So I’m willing to face up to the fact that I need to be connected. But my general attitude has always been one of participation, while knowing that I should really be trying not to rely so much on the Internet and its myriad wiles. Unfortunately I’ve done very little to back up this attitude, and in not doing so, I’ve become a shell of a student. I’m not saying I don’t do my work, I do! But I’d do it a heck of a lot faster if it weren’t for my complete lack of willpower.

And therein lies the rub. All of my problems can be overcome with a bit of willpower. If every time I went to hit Ctrl+T to open a bunch of new tabs that get filled with content I stopped to think about whether I really needed to see that content, the obvious answer would probably stop me from doing so. For a frightening example, consider this: I’ve opened and re-opened the same three tabs four times since starting this article, just to check if they’ve updated. It’s insane! Of course they haven’t changed! But I suffer from the fear of missing out on something big. I want to know things the minute they happen so that I can offer my opinion to whoever asks. I like knowing things, and I like talking to people about them, not necessarily because I like the sound of my own voice (although I have been told that it’s fantastic) but because I like that shared experience of discovery. I like surprising people with ideas they may not have encountered before. This is also a slice of the Why-I-Write pie, but that’s for another day.

But enough about how great talking is, and back to what I think was the topic of this post when I started. Which is willpower. And here’s the cold truth of the post: I have none. None whatsoever when it comes to staying connected. In the loop. And while examining myself for the reason behind this, I discovered I have very little willpower when it comes to anything else:

• I eat food I know for certain isn’t good for me too often;
• I will put off things I need to do at university because I can’t be bothered getting off my chair;
• I ignore revising poems and short stories, or even finishing them in the first place, because I know it’s going to involve hours of work;
• I don’t do enough for my girlfriend;
• I rarely visit old friends, even though I know they’re always up for anything.

In short, and according to my own high personal standards, I’m a terribly lazy person. But the even weirder thing is that when I do anything that contravenes the above list of laziness, I feel fantastic! When I get things done I feel great, ready to take on the world. But soon that feeling is forgotten and the guilty malaise returns. How the heck? I keep feeling like I need some sort of routine to help me, but would that really work? Or do I just need to train myself to think more than the half a second that it takes to dismiss something. To remember how great that feeling of accomplishment is versus the empty dragging feeling that always sinks in after an hour of no productivity.Hmm.

Well anyway, I think the best course of action here is to go away and think on it. Maybe even find some books that address the psychology of getting things done (perhaps ‘Getting things Done’ by David Allen? Anyone got suggestions?). I guess the silver lining to come out of this is that at least I’m not becoming complacent about it. That nagging, guilty feeling is still there, so I still feel like I need to change things. As soon as I miss that feeling, I know I can start to get really worried.

Right. Time to head into uni to make sure I’m all set for the Sydney trip. Wish me luck and nice neutrons. (:

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