davemcnally.net

The internet is back. Well, my connection is at least. I have moved to a new provider with a lot more benefits and features. I was offline for a week or so and planned to work on a couple of Wordpress themes locally to use up my time but found that it simply wasn’t working for me. This ladies and gents, is what I’m calling ‘The Productivity of Distraction’. Wondering what I mean? Read on then!

Time away from the computer is a good thing; it’s not that I didn’t appreciate the break. It’s just that I couldn’t work properly without the small distractions like Twitter and other online networks/communities. Although these distractions don’t directly benefit my design, for some reason my finished designs come off better when I have the freedom to browse a couple of sites and catch up on feeds.

Basically, working ‘alone’ with no communication with others isn’t for me. I don’t work with a bunch of people or anything but the small online connections I make enable me to function properly whilst working for some strange reason.

Initially, I presumed the benefit of these distractions was that they were providing a break for me, allowing my brain to focus on something else and allowing me to come back to my designs refreshed and inspired. That wasn’t the case either, I tried walking away from the computer for a bit, going out, all sorts of things that would let me clear my head but each time I returned to the canvas so to speak, I was wondering what had been ‘twittered’ and if there were any interesting new feeds or forum articles online. I felt like I was disconnected from everything and in a way, the distractions were still distracting me even though I couldn’t access them.

Once back online, I realised I hadn’t missed much. A couple of good articles to catch up on and that was about it – a bit of an anti-climax. Exactly as things should be – I don’t want to be overwhelmed with new things popping up and truly distracting me from work but having the ability to check every now and then gives me an extra boost of motivation to work.

There were some benefits though to being offline for a couple of weeks. I managed to sort out a list of targets for myself and clearly mapped out what I want to be doing over the coming months and what I want to achieve. Being online, I always just sort of lived in the moment but taking that time out allowed to see things from a different perspective and to really see where I was up to in the long run and what I had accomplished – not a whole lot yet, lot’s of work to be done!

A couple of minor improvements have been made too with this time to think and new connection. I now have a separate telephone line just for business purposes; the number is now on my contact page if you want to get in touch. I also added a small paragraph to the bottom of my about page with some educational information just in case any potential clients, or anyone else interested wanted to know about that.

If you’re wondering what the goals were I set myself, stay tuned! I have started working on a couple of small projects which I shall be writing about soon and anyone who uses Wordpress may be interested in one of those…