Funny thing happened to me the last couple of day : I got a lot more work done . It ’s not that I ’m commonly a slacker . But I notice that I ’ve been terminate each solar day with a few more items crossed off my to - do list than common . And I wondered why .
Then I glanced down at my Dock and figured it out : The icon forNetNewsWireindicated that I had about 2,000 unread newsfeeds .
My common procedure , going back age , is to attempt to plough through my east - ring armour first matter in the morning , then the day ’s tidings . A couple of years ago , the latter meant provoke up Firefox and run through my list of News bookmarks . Nowadays , of course , I use RSS instead of bookmark , making my tidings - scanning much more effective .
Or so I thought . In fact , in a classic app ofParkinson ’s Law , because RSS makes it easier to keep up on the word , the amount of news I record had expanded to fill the time I made to read it .
Which mean I ’m believably a scrap easily informed than I used to be . But it also means I have n’t been stimulate as much genuine workplace done as I could .
Then , over the past week , I get mysterious in the weeds with Leopard — judge the raw iCal , heading to Cupertino for a briefing at Apple HQ , trying to visualise out how to configure the new Leopard Server — to the excommunication of pretty much anything else , including scan the news . I got out of the wont , for a few days at least , of firing up NetNewsWire every 24-hour interval . I figured the domain would n’t end — and I would n’t lose my job — if I countenance the news sit down for a minute .
And , lo and behold , I got a lot more done .
Which makes me wonder : How much do I really need to stay to the full inform all day long ? Sure , it ’s my line of work to bide up - to - appointment . But doing so can run through an ever - increase portion of the workday , to the exclusion of other tasks . It ’s something I recall a lot of us have been wrestle with since the dawn of the Net : How to balance the need to stay put connected with the indigence to do everything else . In my instance , I think the equilibrium may have gotten a little out of rap . How bout you ?
