So distracted
The sheer number of distractions that I see on a daily basis–Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, etc.–tend to drag a portion of my brain in the wrong direction. Even when I sit down with the best of intentions, my mind just wanders off and suddenly it is 3 hours later, and I have forgotten why I sat down at the computer in the first place.
Why even bother sitting at the computer when writing? I actually can type faster than I can write, and chances are I will be able to read the text on the screen far more accurately than what I just wrote with my Pilot G2 on some notebook paper.
I have a couple of tips to help someone get over their attachment to the social networks and “punch the monkey” flash ads. I am dubbing this system “SHAW” for SHut up And Write.
The Concept
When writing blog posts, it is not very far fetched to think that a writer could easily be distracted when doing research. In fact, it has already happened three times so far in this post alone.
One of the biggest issues with working on the internet is…working on the internet.
There have been numerous ideas floating around the web for the knowledge workers and writers around us to more easily avoid distractions while working on the internet. These ideas range from blocking certain websites during times of work, writing offline to keep yourself away from the online distractions, and even just sitting down far from a computer in order to get your work done.
The best extension of these ideas is to sit down sans technology, and get to writing by hand. This method presents several problems for me:
- Speed – I tend to type much faster than I can write by hand.
- Legibility – My handwriting is not nearly as clear as simple text on the screen.
- Durability – There is no way to count the number of scraps of paper and notebooks that were used once or twice, and simply forgotten about. I simply have not found a good organizational system for dealing with this.
- Portability – Writing things down manually is all well and good, but being a blogger, the text has to make it to the screen somehow, and it is much easier to copy and paste text from an editor than to go back through and deal with my own illegible handwriting and type everything into the computer.
Hey, somebody's got to do it.
I need to keep myself from an all-day stint on Wikipedia, as well as away from Facebook long enough to actually get some work done. The system has to allow me to type my work and save it in a fashion that is easily converted to another medium.
Simply turning off my network adapter could solve this problem, but there are still too many temptations, such as opening up Fallout 3
The Solution
When I take into consideration each of these specific needs, the first thing that comes to mind is the Linux command line interface.
Without a graphical web browser and any access to the outside world without hassle, the CLI seems like the natural solution to this problem.
I have been using the CLI for a while now, and am comfortable with the tools available to me, but using it for writing, rather than something originally intended–such as bash scripting–presents yet more problems:
- What text editor to use? – The traditional editors, such as vi, emacs or nano have some significant flaws when attempting to use them for a writing workflow. The former two editors have a learning curve involved in using the commands needed to navigate the environment. And all three suffer from lack of “soft” text wrapping.
- Ubiquity of storage – Luckily, tools such as Dropbox make this easy enough. I use Windows 7 fulltime right now, due to needing Adobe CS4 to get design work done, so I have to be able to switch between environments without hassle. Dropbox easily keeps track of files, and even spreads them out to the vast number of PCs I use on a regular basis.
Home.
In order to get around the text wrapping issue, I have simply been writing inside Notepad++ on Windows (or Smultron on OS X, or gedit on Linux). This doesn’t really solve the overall problem, as Web access is still there, and the temptation to look something up while writing still exists.
So, what I am actually looking for is a simple text editor for the command line that will do soft word wrapping. It does not have to have spell checking, or any kind of context highlighting. This seems to be easier said than done.
Ideally, I would boot into a LiveCD CLI environment which would automatically log into my Dropbox account. Then, I would use the text editor to write, leaving notes for myself along the way to do research and insert links/images after I was finished. Then and only then would I put the finishing touches (such as spell checking) on the writing, rather than spending time worrying about it as I wrote.
The Reality
So far (unless I want to learn how to use vim or joe commands), this whole setup is not an option.
What am I doing now?
Right now, the simplest way to achieve a similar distraction-free environment is to open up a simple text editor and start going at it. I add in any HTML formatting that I need throughout, complete with anchor tags that have no URLs, but rather a description of what URL should be placed inside.
The time it takes to write a blog post using these simple procedures is drastically less than if I were attempting to do so with an open internet connection, adding links and images as I go. Quitting my web browser, putting my phone on silent, and muting the PC does wonders for my concentration.
I do not have new emails poking me in the face, text messages coming in constantly, or any kind of music playing to distract me. Such a simple idea goes a long way for someone as easily distracted as I am.
Let Me Know
Do you know of a simple text editor that works in the Linux CLI with soft word wrap capabilities? Please, leave me a message so I can attempt to move forward with the SHAW concept, and possibly put a LiveCD out there with only the tools necessary to get the job done.
What kind of a distraction-free environment do you rely upon when writing? Or are you one of those people who enjoy the noise of social interaction around you while you work?
