I’ve told you what I won’t be doing on my Internet Vacation. So what will I be doing?
- Not stressing about All Things Internet. No worrying about checking email, Twitter, Facebook, blog comments, stats, etc.
- Staying away from the news.
- Spending more time with the family
- Writing as much as I can.
- Reading, mostly books I’ll be reviewing for InterGalactic Medicine Show in September.
- Also reading books on baseball theory and sabermetrics.
- Taking a Mathematica class.
- Getting used to my standing desk at the day job.
- Preparing for an interview I will doing at Worldcon–one that will eventually appear in the November 2012 issue of InterGalactic Medicine Show.
- Basking in distraction-free days
I have a pretty good idea of how much time I spend writing, reading, exercising (walking), etc. each week. I’m hoping that by looking how much more I get done next week without the Internet to distract me, I’ll have a pretty good estimate for how much time I spend on the Internet. Kind of like how a chemist knows how much oxygen a compound contains by weighing it before and after the oxygen is removed.
But how will I avoid the distractions of the Internet?
- I’ve disabled all notifications on my iPhone and iPad. This includes badges, sounds and popups. Look at my phone or iPad, I will have no idea how much email, Facebook messages, Tweet replies, etc.
- I’m not opening a web browser unless it is for something directly related to my day job.
- I’ve downloaded a ton of articles and research on baseball theory so that I don’t have to go online for it.
- I’ve put up an auto-responder on my email so that folks know that they should not expect a response from me until at least August 19.
- I’ve scheduled 14 blog posts–2 a day for each day of my Internet Vacation–so that regular readers of the blog don’t have to worry about no content–and I don’t stress that people are missing out.
I think it will work out just fine. I’ve got plenty to keep me busy. And that is kind of the idea, after all.