Paul Ford, in Followup/Distraction, says there “at least” two kinds of distractions, wide and narrow. My abstracted definitions follow (though you’ll want to read the short essay):
- Wide = time wasted you will never get back.
- Narrow = time wisely spent chasing a thread whose unraveling may tie up a loose end.
Can you tell the difference at first? Probably, if you give the “look at the shiny new thing” impulse a half-second pause to consider the choice. As Ford says:
I’m smarter, then, with my computer on, but not much deeper.
Deep, to me, is the capability to focus on the goals, not the competition. Dick is talking about business, but competition rarely feels limited to the workplace. I don’t think blogging makes me deeper, but it is less shallow than simply consuming, which I do often enough. [Via 43 Folders]