Disconnecting Distraction

Note: The strategy described at the end of this essay didn't work.

注意：本文末尾描述的策略不起作用。

It would work for a while, and then I'd gradually find myself using the Internet on my work computer.

它会工作一段时间，然后我会逐渐发现自己在工作计算机上使用互联网。

I'm trying other strategies now, but I think this time I'll wait till I'm sure they work before writing about them.

我现在正在尝试其他策略，但我想这一次我会等到确定它们有效后再写它们。

May 2008 Procrastination feeds on distractions.

2008 年 5 月 拖延源于分心。

Most people find it uncomfortable just to sit and do nothing; you avoid work by doing

大多数人觉得只是坐着什么也不做是很不舒服的。你通过做事来逃避工作

something else.

其他的东西。

So one way to beat procrastination is to starve it of distractions.

因此，战胜拖延症的方法之一就是杜绝任何干扰。

But that's not as straightforward as it sounds, because there are people working hard to distract you.

但这并不像听起来那么简单，因为有人努力分散你的注意力。

Distraction is not a static obstacle that you avoid like you might avoid a rock in the road.

分心并不是一个你需要避开的静态障碍，就像你避开路上的一块石头一样。

Distraction seeks you out.

分心会来找你。

Chesterfield described dirt as matter out of place.

切斯特菲尔德将污垢描述为不适当的物质。

Distracting is, similarly, desirable at the wrong time.

同样，在错误的时间分散注意力也是可取的。

And technology is

而技术就是

continually being refined to produce more and more desirable things.

不断地精炼以生产出越来越多令人想要的东西。

Which means that as we learn to avoid one class of distractions, new ones constantly appear, like drug-resistant bacteria.

这意味着，当我们学会避免一类干扰时，新的干扰就会不断出现，比如耐药细菌。

Television, for example, has after 50 years of refinement reached the point where it's like visual crack.

例如，电视经过 50 年的改进，已经达到了视觉裂缝的程度。

I realized when I was 13 that TV was addictive, so I stopped watching it.

当我 13 岁时，我意识到电视会让人上瘾，所以我不再看它。

But I read recently that the average American watches

但我最近读到，美国人平均手表

4 hours of TV a day.

每天看4小时电视。

A quarter of their life.

他们生命的四分之一。

TV is in decline now, but only because people have found even more addictive ways of wasting time.

现在电视正在衰落，但这只是因为人们找到了更令人上瘾的消磨时间的方式。

And what's especially dangerous is that many happen at your computer.

尤其危险的是，许多事情都发生在您的计算机上。

This is no accident.

这并非偶然。

An ever larger percentage of office workers sit in front of computers connected to the Internet, and distractions always evolve toward the procrastinators.

越来越多的办公室工作人员坐在联网的电脑前，而分心的事物总是会转移给拖延者。

I remember when computers were, for me at least, exclusively for

我记得那时计算机，至少对我来说，是专门用于

work.

工作。

I might occasionally dial up a server to get mail or ftp files, but most of the time I was offline.

我偶尔会拨打服务器来获取邮件或 ftp 文件，但大多数时候我都处于离线状态。

All I could do was write and program.

我所能做的就是写作和编程。

Now I feel as if someone snuck a television onto my desk.

现在我感觉好像有人把一台电视偷偷放到了我的桌子上。

Terribly addictive things are just a click away.

只需点击一下即可获得令人上瘾的东西。

Run into an obstacle in what you're working on?

您正在做的事情遇到障碍了吗？

Hmm, I wonder what's new online.

嗯，我想知道网上有什么新消息。

Better check.

最好检查一下。

After years of carefully avoiding classic time sinks like TV, games,

经过多年小心翼翼地避免电视、游戏等经典的时间沉没之后，

and Usenet, I still managed to fall prey to distraction, because I didn't realize that it evolves.

和 Usenet，我仍然设法分心，因为我没有意识到它的演变。

Something that used to be safe, using the Internet, gradually became more and more dangerous.

曾经安全的事情，使用互联网，逐渐变得越来越危险。

Some days I'd wake up, get a cup of tea and check the news, then check email, then check the news again, then answer a few emails, then suddenly notice it was almost lunchtime and I hadn't gotten any real work done.

有时我醒来，喝杯茶，查看新闻，然后查看电子邮件，然后再次查看新闻，然后回复几封电子邮件，然后突然发现已经快到午餐时间了，而我还没有完成任何实际工作。

And this started to happen more and more often.

这种情况开始越来越频繁地发生。

It took me surprisingly long to realize how distracting the Internet had become, because the problem was intermittent.

我花了很长时间才意识到互联网已经变得多么令人分心，因为这个问题是间歇性的。

I ignored it the way you let yourself ignore a bug that only appears intermittently.

我忽略了它，就像你让自己忽略一个间歇性出现的错误一样。

When I was in the middle of a project, distractions weren't really a problem.

当我正在进行一个项目时，分心并不是真正的问题。

It was when I'd finished one project and was deciding what to do next that they always bit me.

当我完成一个项目并决定下一步该做什么时，他们总是咬我。

Another reason it was hard to notice the danger of this new type

另一个很难注意到这种新型危险的原因

of distraction was that social customs hadn't yet caught up with it.

分心的一个原因是社会习俗还没有跟上它。

If I'd spent a whole morning sitting on a sofa watching TV, I'd have noticed very quickly.

如果我整个早上坐在沙发上看电视，我很快就会注意到。

That's a known danger sign, like drinking alone.

这是一个已知的危险信号，就像独自喝酒一样。

But using the Internet still looked and felt a lot like work.

但使用互联网看起来和感觉上仍然很像工作。

Eventually, though, it became clear that the Internet had become so much more distracting that I had to start treating it differently.

但最终，我发现互联网已经变得越来越让人分心，我不得不开始以不同的方式对待它。

Basically, I had to add a new application to my list of known time sinks: Firefox.

基本上，我必须将一个新应用程序添加到我的已知时间接收器列表中：Firefox。

* * * The problem is a hard one to solve because most people still need the Internet for some things.

* * * 这个问题很难解决，因为大多数人仍然需要互联网来完成某些事情。

If you drink too much, you can solve that problem by stopping entirely.

如果你喝得太多，你可以通过完全戒酒来解决这个问题。

But you can't solve the problem of overeating by stopping eating.

但你不能通过停止进食来解决暴饮暴食的问题。

I couldn't simply avoid the Internet entirely, as I'd done with previous time sinks.

我不能像以前那样完全避开互联网。

At first I tried rules.

起初我尝试了规则。

For example, I'd tell myself I was only going to use the Internet twice a day.

例如，我会告诉自己我每天只会使用互联网两次。

But these schemes never worked for long.

但这些计划从未长期奏效。

Eventually something would come up that required me to use it more than that.

最终会出现一些需要我更多地使用它的事情。

And then I'd gradually slip back into my old ways.

然后我会逐渐回到原来的方式。

Addictive things have to be treated as if they were sentient adversaries—as if there were a little man in your head always cooking up the most plausible arguments for doing whatever you're

必须将令人上瘾的事物视为有知觉的对手，就好像你脑子里有一个小人，总是为你做的任何事情编造出最合理的论据。

trying to stop doing.

试图停止做事。

If you leave a path to it, he'll find it.

如果你给它留一条路，他就会找到它。

The key seems to be visibility.

关键似乎是可见性。

The biggest ingredient in most bad habits is denial.

大多数坏习惯的最大组成部分是否认。

So you have to make it so that you can't merely slip into doing the thing you're trying to avoid.

所以你必须做到这一点，这样你才不会陷入做你试图避免的事情。

It has to set off alarms.

它必须发出警报。

Maybe in the long term the right answer for dealing with Internet distractions will be software that watches and controls them.

也许从长远来看，处理互联网干扰的正确答案将是监视和控制它们的软件。

But

但是

in the meantime I've found a more drastic solution that definitely works: to set up a separate computer for using the Internet.

与此同时，我找到了一个更彻底、绝对有效的解决方案：设置一台单独的计算机来使用互联网。

I now leave wifi turned off on my main computer except when I need to transfer a file or edit a web page, and I have a separate laptop on the other side of the room that I use to check mail or browse the web.

现在，除非我需要传输文件或编辑网页，否则我的主计算机上的 WiFi 都是关闭的，并且我在房间的另一边有一台单独的笔记本电脑，我用它来检查邮件或浏览网页。

(Irony of ironies, it's the computer Steve Huffman wrote Reddit on.

（讽刺中的讽刺，史蒂夫·霍夫曼就是在这台电脑上写下 Reddit 的。

When

当

Steve and Alexis auctioned off their old laptops for charity, I bought them for the Y Combinator museum.) My rule is that I can spend as much time online as I want, as long as I do it on that computer.

史蒂夫和亚历克西斯为了慈善事业拍卖了他们的旧笔记本电脑，我为 Y Combinator 博物馆买了它们。）我的规则是，只要我在那台电脑上上网，我就可以花尽可能多的时间上网。

And this turns out to be enough.

事实证明这已经足够了。

When I have to sit on the other side of the room to check email or browse the web, I become much more aware of it.

当我必须坐在房间的另一边检查电子邮件或浏览网页时，我会更加意识到这一点。

Sufficiently aware, in my case at least, that it's hard to spend more than about an hour

充分意识到，至少就我而言，很难花费超过一个小时

a day online.

一天在线。

And my main computer is now freed for work.

我的主计算机现在可以自由工作了。

If you try this trick, you'll probably be struck by how different it feels when your computer is disconnected from the Internet.

如果您尝试这个技巧，您可能会惊讶于计算机与互联网断开连接时的感觉有多么不同。

It was alarming to me how foreign it felt to sit in front of a computer that could only be used for work, because that showed how much time I must have been wasting.

令我震惊的是，坐在一台只能用于工作的电脑前感觉是多么陌生，因为这表明我一定浪费了多少时间。

Wow.

哇。

All I can do at this computer is work.

我在这台电脑上能做的就是工作。

Ok, I better work

好吧，我最好工作了

then.

那么。

That's the good part.

这是好的部分。

Your old bad habits now help you to work.

你以前的坏习惯现在可以帮助你工作。

You're used to sitting in front of that computer for hours at a time.

您习惯于一次坐在电脑前几个小时。

But you can't browse the web or check email now.

但您现在无法浏览网页或查看电子邮件。

What are you going to do?

你会怎样做？

You can't just sit there.

你不能只是坐在那里。

So you start working.

所以你开始工作。