Lately I’ve been finding myself very discontent with sitting in front of the PC all day long and it’s making me very exhausted both mentally and physically.

To counteract this, a few of my geeky friends and I decided we would have our once a week gathering and just hang out, play non-video games, go to the movies, play cards, etc.

I’ve been addicted to being online since I was like 12 and we first got Internet in the house and I’m finding myself more and more willing to “un-plug” on the weekends. I’m even trying to stay analog when taking notes in classes as having the netbook in front of me has the tendency to create distraction from the lecture. All in all, I’d say that everyone who wants to be successful with being a techy/it guy/sys admin/ programmer/ ubuntunut should step back take a few breaths or a half an hour and ride a bike or something. It works wonders for my mental focus and clarity. It also allows me the chance to step back and think about anything that I might need to adjust to further succeed.

In an increasingly digital age, analog is man’s best escape.

Gerv

Gerv

That grew into a profession, eventually, and now, the Interwebs (is that “teh Interwebs,” Aq?) have taken over much of our lives. Society seems to be trying to shove more and more of it into the Tubes…Television, telephone, entertainment in general, is coming to the internet. Gaming on the computer has always been attractive because it was so much sexier than real life. By that I mean that I was into combat flight simulators back in the day, and it was nice, because the sim would encapsulate all of the excitement of flying about, dropping bombs on virtual people who were trying to turn you into air pollution, all without having all of the boring bits along the way. I was, at the time, in a virtual squadron, and our virtual CO was an actual F-15 pilot. So he had us doing some of the boring bits where he could, like actually flying the traffic patterns and what not…But I digress.

I am afraid that we are just seeing the beginning of this trend. As telecommuting becomes more the norm, people will have a more difficult time “shutting it off,” because not only will it be gaming and entertainment that are on the computer, but work will live on the same set of platforms. My wife has complained when I have had positions where I could telecommute that I had a hard time shutting down the office. This is, I think, because there is no physical division between the office and the home projects…Like a commute home. Sitting in the car, driving in DC traffic, whether you like it or not, you are unplugged.

I think just like RSI, it won’t be seriously considered until it becomes a problem.

I’ll admit I’m highly plugged in. Not so much that I don’t (willingly) unplug for holidays and other periods of time, but enough that I spend most of my day online. But, I also have no other real way of having a social life due to my physical impairments. If I didn’t have the internet, I’d go to work and go home and not interact with pretty much anyone outside of work and not have a way of meeting new people because by the time I get home from work every night I pretty much can’t sit up. And I’m actually relatively lucky in that I can force myself through work 5 days a week. Many people I know don’t even get out that much. The internet for us has opened the rest of the world to us in a way that we didn’t have 20 years ago and, to a certain extent, even 5-10 years ago.

I’m not saying it’s not good to have time away from the internet, but I feel it’s important to mention that not everyone has the choice to go out to have an offline life and for those of us who can’t, often the internet actually reduces a lot of the negative impact and things like depression are actually less likely to occur.

(And I’d like to point out that commonality doesn’t always mean causeality so it’s a bit chicken and egg to try to decide if depression shows up more often in people who have heavy tv/internet/video game usage because of their usage or if those people would have been depressed anyway.)

It’s something worth considering, anyway. Like someone else said, see your doctor! It can’t hurt. Recent research suggests that pharmaceuticals are no better than placebo in mild cases of depression; and simple lifestyle changes like exercise do actually help.

I think being on the PC so much has had a negative effect on me in the way im kinda socially retarded… or socially unskilled.

Also it seems to affect my brain thoughts… I used to be able to think about things clearly but now it feels kinda fuzzy/blurry inside my head.

I wonder is this actually due to overuse of computers or something else… how does one know?

Before e-mail existed I used to send letters by writing them out with pen and paper, putting them in an envelope with a stamp, and then putting them in the (real) mail box. That took a lot of effort though, so you often did it out of a sense of obligation rather than whim. You also put some effort in to trying to say something worth while. Getting a letter was often a memorable event and you would save them. Now I get e-mails all the time from people I now, but too few of them say anything worth reading.

The low cost of communications has it’s negative side in more than one way. Before e-mail was common I got precisely one Nigerian 419 letter that was written by hand on paper and sent to me in an envelope by mail. I saved it to show to people because I thought it was so funny that anyone would send something like that. Now I get them via e-mail all the time (even with my ISP blocking most of them) and they’re no longer so funny.

The cost of sending communications has gone down, so the volume has increased. One of the things we need to deal with that is a way of lowering the cost of dealing with communications that we receive.

I think you’re right that we have a need to feel we are in touch with other people, and that some people feel this need more than others. However, too much of a good thing can be bad for you, just like too much food, or too much “rest” (lack of exercise).

For some people this is more of a problem than for others. I don’t have a Twitter (or Identica) account, and I have no desire for one. If I am working on a problem, hours can go by without me realising how much time has passed.

For people who really feel that need to stay in touch though, I think what they need is some way of “metering” how much information they receive. It’s like being on a diet. You need to have some sense about what types of and how much information you “eat” instead of gorging yourself on whatever is available. The desire for more will never stop, but you have to find ways of dealing with that desire. You could come up with technological means to help deal with it, but ultimately the solution has to start with realising there is a problem. I think though that some people will never really learn to deal with it.

The main difference to a lot of people i meet online is probably, that i don’t work with/on computers, i work with people. And exactly this was an important reason when i chose my career, if my hobby is with computers and my job is with computers i’ll probably do nothing much else. So i chose it to be my hobby.

So going online in my free time is my hobby, and before that was possible i read books, watched TV or consumed any other available media. For me it’s just a shift in tools, not in the action/way itself.

”if you’re checking for new email every five minutes, that’s 24,000 times a year”

so thats 24,000 ish minutes wasted – if you add it to igoogle or some other way to get notified when you actualy get mail you get things done as opposed to getting time wasted.

It is not a matter of unplugging – it is being connected without feeling like being a slave to the machine (to use a terribly corny phrase….)

• Firstly, as soon as switched them off I felt really uncomfortable: like I had been disconnected from the world. Not having my email or IRC open was a really strange feeling.
• Secondly, I got a shit-load done. I was more productive and more in “the zone”.

I suspect many people break and load their email clients back up when they feel their first sense of being disconnected, complete with excuses of “I just can’t go off the grid like that”.

What do you think, folks?

My wife and I spent some time investing in getting a good mattress, mattress cover, sheets and blankets and making sure we don’t leave the TV on when we fall asleep. It made a huge difference to how well we feel and how productive we are.