spend less time on the internet

I’ve been using MeeTimer to unobtrusively track my Internet time over the past few weeks. And yes, I am absolutely sure that the knowledge that I’m being tracked has helped.

The time I’m spending on sites in my “limited use” category (=social networking, newsreader, general websurfing, and other non-work non-email stuff) is slowly going down. Right now, it’s trending down from 2 hours/day toward 1.5. 1.5 would be awesome, 1 would be better still, and I think the theoretical lower bound is probably 30-45 minutes. Here’s hoping.

I just joined Facebook. I finally decided that the social/professional rewards outweighed the time suckage, and couldn’t help but notice that the people I like in grad school tend to be better represented on Facebook than the people I don’t. Which would seem to indicate that it’s a good site for me.

I know I am going to have to be very, very careful about it, and I haven’t done well so far. Hopefully when the initial flurry of friend-adding-and-confirming subsides, I can be disciplined and have a brief daily routine.

The Clean Sweep Assessment has one item worded, “I have no habits which are unacceptable to me.”

To which I’ve always responded, “HAHAHAHAHA,” and left that check-box blank.

But it occurred to me that most of my habit problems are really habits I wish I had, rather than habits I have and am trying to break. So I’m kinda closing in on this one. Except for my little addiction to bright screens. I have a couple other goals trying to attack this problem a couple of different ways. But wow, it is really the lone habit that is “unacceptable to me.”