Game Design, Programming and running a one-man games business…

No Internet Day

cliffski

How productive would you be if you didn’t have

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • RSS readers
  • Instant messengers
  • *Insert name of timewasting website here*

I reckon VERY productive. I get increasingly distracted by this stuff myself. So I propose a solution. Let’s make a pledge, readers of this humble blog. let us declare next thursday (21st April) as NO INTERNET DAY. On the day before, you will unplug your router/modem, and it will not be touched for the whole of NO INTERNET DAY, and can be re-connected on the friday morning.

Whether you are a software developer like me, or a student, or anyone who doesn’t 100% rely on day to day usage of teh web for your work, you are likely to get more done on NO INTERNET DAY than a typical working day. What have we got to lose? If you are going to join me in this experiment, reply, and say what you do for a living that you hope to be more productive at. or maybe you will be doing it to spend mroe time with pets/children/significant others. Then on the friday we can all see how we did, and how long it took before you gave up :D

Spread the word, lets see how many people can go cold turky webwise on April 21st…

21 thoughts on No Internet Day

  2. I’m totally down. I can normally will myself to stay away from distracting sites/email/twitter etc for an hour or so at a time, but that it’s there is still distracting in itself. be nice to see what effect removing the possibility will have.

  3. Would this include devices too (iphones, ipads, etc)? I’m sure that would make it even more difficult for some people – not me. I do this about once a week anyways, so count me in. I’m a sysadmin.

  5. This will be no problem for me whatsover, but it won’t improve my productivity a jot.

    (I’ll be in a forest in France)

  6. Ok, sounds like it might be worth giving this a try, if only to prove to myself that I can do it! It’s the day before a big deadline of mine, so the timing is excellent.

  7. I’m down I would have to just check work email but my personal & gamer emails can wait a day. Let’s see how much I can get done.

  8. Problem is: I need the internet to do my work (as a developer of browser-based games). As such, the only thing I can commit to is keeping all IM/mail/RSS tools switched off. But how realistic is that? ;-)

  11. One day away from my cat would get me more productive than no internet.

    So the week after we try no cat day? I’m afraid that is going to be too hard :3

  13. I work two different jobs via telecommute, so not likely for me ;)

    But I did notice a marked increase in my productivity when I switched from “making the rounds” manually between this site, RPS, etc to Google Reader reading the rss feeds.

  15. I’m a web developer working on a vertical search engine… I’m not sure how I would be more productive… ;)

  16. I’m a teacher for the lower grade in progress :D

    Dunno if I would be more productive.
    I will be untill I need to search for some guidelines that are not written in my manuals, then I need the internet but oh noeeesss its no internet day.

    Houston we got some probs : p

    I’ll give it a try tho

  17. If I switch of my box, I’ll loose internet+tv+phone, so I won’t as I’m not the only memeber of the household :)

    Anyway, just switching off the internet for a day is kind of useless. You better off trying for example to switch it off every morning or whatever time range you want, but you switch it off like everyday. That would be usefull.

  19. Cliff,

    I agree that we’d be more productive if we did take more time to do real things rather than sit at our computers for hours at a time when it’s not necessary. Obviously there are things such as entertainment on the internet but all of those “time wasters” that you mentioned aren’t a form of entertainment (no matter what anyone wants to say or believe. Reading is a form of entertainment, but reading the latest gossip columns (for over an hour) is not entertainment, it’s an obsession.

    So not having the internet for a whole day certainly wouldn’t hurt any of us, however I propose something more drastic. Rather than cut off the whole internet, just cut off those specific “time-wasters” in particular the so-called “Social Networking” aspect of the internet. However, to do this you probably would have to cut yourself off from internet access completely because the people who use these “services” obsessively don’t really realize they’re obsessed or that they’ve become addicted.

    … Come to think of it, a day (or a few) without internet access would do the world good. ;-) I can already see people calling in sick due to postpartum depression.

    Sad and humorous at the same time, but definitely sad.

  20. I need the Internet to function, I’m a software developer working on a web crawler. If someone were to flip the switch of the Internet, I would lose my job.

    I am also a platform software developer, and using various libraries, I sometimes need to ask for help or read online documentation. I guess I could download the documentation for offline use, but stackoverflow is a necessity.

    I think the problem to be solved here is blocking unnecessary distractions, and not the entire Internet. What we need is to block everything that is not related to work during work hours, and then unblock it outside of work hours. Not just for a day, but every single day. I also believe the Internet should be cut off entirely every day during planned sleeping hours, to prevent going to bed at 4 AM when we have to get up at 6 AM.

    This no Internet day is making me productive, and it isn’t even there yet.

  21. That’s my girlfriend’s birthday, and we’re moving house, so it’s pretty likely I won’t use the internet much that day :-)

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