My computer is a swiss-army knife. The guy in the shop where I bought it was right, I can do anything on it! Send and receive email, design and illustrate, manage social media, edit video, listen to a podcast, browse the internet, and stay up to date with the latest news. It’s one device to rule them all, except, there’s just one thing it’s not very good at, and that’s helping me focus.
The computer, the device I do almost all of my work on, is one massive distraction machine. And distraction fuels procrastination. So, being just a keyboard shortcut away from anything else when it’s time to do difficult, deep, thoughtful work, is really unhelpful.
I find that the times that I feel most productive are when I’m not using a computer. When I’m ‘in my studio’: in front of a piece of paper, using pencils and brushes to make things. There’s no ‘ding’, no ‘alerts’, no keyboard shortcuts, no undo. It’s me, physics, and time and it’s the shortest path to deep, fulfilling spells of focussed work. I slip into a flow state very easily when I’m away from the computer.
But computers aren’t going anywhere, and I don’t think designers of computers or social media are working on ways to help me focus. In fact, the opposite is true. So I guess it’s up to me.
Write and wrong
Writing on a computer is difficult. When I write on the computer, I’m all over the place in the way that I think. I skip from one subject to another, from paragraph to paragraph. It’s as if even though my brain is in one mode/app, it’s still works as though I’m opening all the applications in my brain.
So, how to protect myself against the temptation of all the other things I could be doing, like being sucked into YouTube rabbit holes or replying to emails in between paragraphs?
What I’ve learned is that computer writing is not the same activity as writing physically, even though, on the surface, they look the same – composing sentences and paragraphs with words. I’ve learned that if I write the first draft on a laptop, I’ll need to redraft and edit it many more times than if I start with a physical process. So, I’ve developed a compromise – outline in physical, then execute in digital. It’s like when a TV chef has all their portions chopped neatly and arranged in front of them so they can just get on with the cooking when the camera’s rolling. Writing the outline in a notebook, with a good ol’ fashioned pen, means I can hit a computer keyboard with a lot more structure and focus. I can work in incremental chunks toward the right goal. Once I get through the first 20mins or so of temptation to do anything else but write, I’ve found a flow state. When I’m there, the swiss-army knife doesn’t exist. It’s just me and the writing.