I’ve been doing some deep thinking and reflecting about why I never seem to get caught up on anything. My conclusion was that I spend too much time worrying about the how and not enough doing the actual work. Ultimately this is my own fault, but a large part of the problem rests squarely on the shoulders of technology. Having listened to Merlin Mann on the most recent MacBreak weekly and watched an archived TED video with JJ Abrams, I came to the conclusion that I have a problem. The reason that I can’t get anything of substance done is because I’m too focused on the details of how things works. It’s an issue when I’m supposed to be writing a paper, but instead I’m trying to learn how to use LaTeX so that it will look nice and handle the footnotes for me.
I want to be efficient, but the cost in terms of time and effort is absolutely killing me. Even beyond that, the effort that I put into using all these electronic systems to help organize my life means that I’m offloading the important information. I can remember where I put that PDF of the article about tablet computing in the classroom, but I can’t remember the author’s name. This isn’t a huge problem in terms of everyday activity, but in academia, we’re expected to remember all this stuff.
Maybe the iPad will be good for me, and many other people that are affected by computer overload. No multitasking might be a godsend.
I’m at a loss on how to fix this problem. Should I go back to a typewriter? Should I load a basic linux on my netbook and stick to that when I have important work to do? I need to find a way to be okay with being imperfect, and to focus on content and have the details get the hell out of my way.
