The problem is that our New Tools are winning the battle of attention. We’ve gotten to the point where the tools use us as much as we use them. This new reality means we need to re-examine our relationship with our New Tools.

~ Shane Parrish from, https://fs.blog/2016/08/dont-let-technology-tools-use-you/

Also see, Jaron Lanier‘s comments about the Internet in general and social networks in particular. I consider myself fully innoculated against information overload and against my tools using me.

And yet, my mind wanders. I sit down to try to write out a blog post or three, and I find myself doing other things. The majority of my disruptions these days are simply ducking into my various projects and messaging platforms. The problem is that when I do, there’s always something to do. It’s not some inifite scroll that catches my eye, but rather a new message—from one of dozens of ongoing conversations—or something I spot which can be improved.

It’s not enough to simply do only productive things. No rather, I actually do far too many different productive things. A minute here replying to this person, two minutes there improving this little feature, 5 minutes writing a bug report, 10 minutes responding to a product vendor, … where was I? Right, trying to write this blog post.

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