Twitterpated - the short attention span of the internet

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to the podcast MacBreak Weekly with Leo Laporte (of Tech TV fame) and he talked about switching from Twitter.com to a similar service.

I checked out Leo's blog, Twitter, and the other site in question (sorry can't remember the name) to see what the big deal was. The idea is simple: the site asks the question "What are you doing?" and gives you the space for a very short answer. Anyone interested in the answer can subscribe to the RSS feed.

What Twitter does and my opinion of it are not important here. What is important in this discussion is the reaction in Leo's blog in reaction to his announcement he was switching. One commenter made the comment that he hadn't tried Twitter yet. He was immediately flamed for "Not keeping up." After all, Twitter had been up and running for a whole four weeks at the time the comment was posted. It's old news. Time to move onto something newer and cooler.

Is that really our culture's attention span? Four weeks until something cool and new and revolutionary becomes "old news"?

Four weeks - a little less than a month. No wonder everyone is being pulled into so many things like RSS feeds, email, blogs and news sites. Constantly checking to see if there is anything new. People are so afraid of missing the next Twitter they are just consuming all this junk information from the Internet firehouse of information instead of reading or doing something useful.

I've heard the average millionaire focuses on planning 2 - 5 years or longer. Apparently the average person focuses 4 weeks or less. Most likely the average person focuses on the upcoming weekend. No wonder most people aren't happy with the way their life turned out. They are living on accident, floating from one thing to the next.

your daily log as procrastination repellent

There's something I used to do, and I've started getting back into the habit. I kept a daily log file. This can be on paper, plain text file or whatever but I've been using EverNote at work (stuck on a Windows PC) and Journler at home on my Mac.

At the beginning of every month, I start a new log file. Every morning, I start with the date and what time I started and then I'll write a brief sentence about everything I get done. And then of course at the end of the day, I'll put what time I'm leaving work.

This serves multiple purposes: I know how long I worked, what I've accomplished and spent my time on, and being a programmer this doubles as a sort of change log of what I've changed. The change log aspect has saved me HOURS tracking down issues already.

I've also started adding timestamps to all my entries. This has helped me pay attention to when I'm spending too much time on one task and also provides very clear indicators of when I've procrastinated.

Here's a sample entry:

April 2007
Monday 2
-Arrived 8:55 am
-checked email
-completed task #1
-talked to someone about upcoming projects.
-12:10 lunch
-12:55 - back from lunch
...
-5:56 - heading home.

Tuesday 3
TODO: updated webpage template

I've installed the Texter program from Lifehacker.com and set it up to put in the current time when I type "time" and hit tab. This is a very nice setup. The only kinks I have to work out:

• Texter sometimes doesn't work the first time. I have to delete "time" and type it again followed by tab.


• I still need to find a good free Mac program like Texter that works with Journler


• Both these solutions tie my info to one computer. I'd like to find a way to sync it up online, say with Google Notebook or Google Docs.

Get organized!

I've got two blogs on here right now. One on organizing my time(this one) and one on organizing my money at http://geekmoney.blogspot.com/ but after spending a little more time on diyplanner.com it is apparent that for this to be complete, I really need a blog about organizing everything else. Ideas, information, contacts, etc. So here it is! My Organized Geek blog.

Notebooks and time tracking

I made a comment to a coworker this morning. "I'm pretty easy going about most things but there are two things I'm VERY picky about: my checkbook and my calendar." Those two things have to be just right, or I tweak them until I have a system for tracking my time and my money I am happy with. And why not? These are the two most important things in life. How you spend them defines who you are and how your life turns out.

Today I got frustrated that the composition books I got when I ordered office supplies through my employer wouldn't stay open when laid flat on my desk. You'd have to hold them open with both hands, and then how would you write unless you evolved a third hand?

I started looking up on 43folders.com and diyplanner.com for suggestions on good notebooks. I found this one that looks extremely promising: Rollabinder notebooks. Instead of spiral bound or composition books, you have these circular disks and the pages have T-shaped holes punched in the sides and slide onto the disks - kind of like how Rolodex works. I plan on using this to track my notes and todo list for a month and if it feels like a good fit, I'll buy a full planner to use.