November 16, 2008

Computers Decrease (My) Productivity




The major thing on my To-Do list today is to write a draft for a Visual Literacy course. Of course, this was also on my To-Do list yesterday as well.

I've got the house to myself (thanks to the opening of deer season), my dining room table is cleared off, my resources are spread out all around me, my dogs are laying at my feet, and by all accounts I should be motivated and raring to go. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Why? I turned on my computer!

First, I had to check all my e-mails, then I checked in to the two online courses I'm teaching. Then I justified a 'break' and logged into Twitter to see what my network was up to. Which lead me to click on a few links, which led me to another great resource to add to my list of free photo websites that I just 'had' to add to my wiki for the Visual Literacy workshop I'm presenting at NYSCATE on Saturday, which led me to check out the latest images on the fires in California, well, you get the idea. And if that wasn't enough of a detour, I had to check my Bloglines account to see if there's anything there I might be able to use, which led me to peruse through CogDog's images of his time in Iceland, which led me to play we some online photo editors, and there went another hour of my time. All that led me to sign-up for a couple of applications posted in Teach42's '30 Days To Be a Better Blogger' challenge, then of course I had to go back to my e-mail to 'verify' my registration. And since I signed up for the applications, I had to come into my Blogger account to add them to my blog. Phew...

I'm about ready to power down, and resort to my legal pad and various purple and green pens to get some serious work done on this course draft.

So I'm just curious...how do you get the work that needs to get done accomplished with so many distractions tempting you on the web?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're true, it's always happening to me as well. I guess the trick is to try and keep focused!