Seems familiar?

The solution of course is SuperFocus.

Comments

[sindikat]

I think that the question of 'focused/unfocused' enters philosophical grounds in XXI century. Look: on the one hand we got plenty of technologies and techniques, which, when used properly, can greatly increase the quality of our life; on the other hand the same technologies (and variety of them) distracts us, because every program, technique, programming language require learning it.

I'm a wannabe computer-geek, so this becomes hell for me often.
We got plenty social networking sites with different purposes: YouTube, microblogs, Reddit and so on - we need to manage our accounts easily - wise people created OpenID to make our life easier - at the same time OpenID is another level of abstraction, another way to further make our life hard, because it is not always implemented on some site, or is but improperly etc.
We are tired of manually browsing news sites - wise people created RSS - we feed aggregators with many RSS feeds - now we are overwhelmed with news from Slashdot, social news, Wikinews, scientific journals, linux blogs and so on.
We need to do math homeworks on computer - wise people created LaTeX - but again you need to study it, before doing math homeworks...
More technologies - more hours spent on learning them. The more complex technologies become - the tougher learning curve becomes.

And i'm sure this is true for other fields of our life, not only computers.

This dilemma is so complex both in general and in particular examples, so it must be dealt collaboratively by time-management experts, technologies experts, psychologists/sociologists, philosophers, scientists - i don't know.

I think, there is plenty of things to solve and decide.

[Mark Forster]

sindikat:

For what it's worth my take on modern technology is:

If it helps, use it. If it gets in the way, don't.

That's why I use a Kindle to read books, but refuse to use electronic means for time management!

[Alan Baljeu]

Sindikat, the time spent learning to do things better can cancel the time available to do things better. Of the reading of books there is no end, and much study wearies the soul. All this technology is great for publishers. For consumers to get overwhelmed by it all, honestly I think are attempting to drink the ocean. Less is more.

[wairererose]

I find that when I start to get overwhelmed, unsubscribing from a few things makes all the difference. I rarely miss what I have let go, and can focus better on what is left, so it's win-win. And the spare time I gain I can use for other things. Eventually new things will creep back in and fill the void, but sooner or later I hit 'critical mass' again, and the 'unsubscribe' button gets another beating. I have found that it takes longer and longer between uses now, because I'm fussier what I will join in the first place. RSS was mentioned, and for a while I had a selection of columns from the local National paper. It only took one or two days for me to realise I couldn't keep up with all those columns and I cut back to just local and international news (science, weather, a few others were cut - some were repeated in the main sections anyway), then international news got cut, and finally I ended up just browsing the paper online if I caught a headline on the 'real' paper at work that I wanted to follow up on. My RSS feeds now have one link only, and that is only updated about every 2 months - hardly worth keeping the page on my bookmarks, but it does remind me that I don't want to add much more, because the bookmarks line is almost full.

[Daouda]

Unless it is vital for you in your profession to keep closely up to date about a particular topic , I dont think anybody should subscribe to daily newsletters or setup RSS feeds about anything, even if its something you have a great interest for. For these things you will eventually be looking for information anyway...Getting to information in an adhoc manner is much healthier than setting up information to overwhelm you in an automated way. Like Alan said, it's attempting to drink the ocean, and less most definitely IS more!

[Will]

Think about the balance between writing and reading.

Writing here stands for any creative endeavour, of course.

So long as you have time to write, you are probably OK.

When I am doing nothing but read, I know it's time to rebalance. Like now, for instance.

[Daouda]

Will :

VERY inspiring idea/tip! Thanks!

[Daouda]

I think i am gonna expand Will's idea of "reading/writing balance" to something like :

"absorbing information (passive) / putting it to use by doing something (active)" balance,
where "doing something" encompass creative actions inspired by the absorbed info (such as "writing") as well as non-creative, practical, mundane application of the said info.

This could prove VERY useful for an ADDer/ENxP like me.

And it reminds me that Ive been reading about time management tactics to dig myself out of my current hole without taking any action for FAR too long! Time to ACT - NOW!

[Mark Forster]

A good rule to follow is "If you can't do anything about it, don't subscribe"!

[Smarky]

Increased output (awesomeness) requires decreased input (laziness)