The Simplicity Habit

Gin, TV and Productivity

Posted by Jered | Filed under Choice

I have never been to a “cool” tech conference, like SXSW or Web 2.0 Expo. After watching Clay Shirky’s presentation (transcript) today, it really makes me wish that I could go.

Clay gave a great talk about how we, as a society, manage to drink or lull ourselves into a group stupor, gin, during / after the Industrial Revolution, television now. Using some “back of the envelope calculations”, Clay says that the collective brain time we waste in watching the ads on any given weekend could create a new Wikipedia every weekend.

This collective brain power is quite an amazing thing to think about. With the launch of collaborative and social tools, we can now connect and combine our collective knowledge.

The same can be said for becoming productive.

When you start working with a personal productivity system, the same stupor can fill your spare time. Finding a way to fill the newly reclaimed time can be difficult. You can’t be productive 100% of the time. As much as we want to continually produce, downtime is needed in every system.

Finding a hobby or activity to fill your time can then create another project that can be worked on, and while it may not take the same kind of push to complete that cranking widgets or a normal day’s work does, it will allow you to continue your productivity practices when you are not working on “work”.

David Allen said in a Tech Talk he gave at Google, that there is really no distinction between Work (with a capital W) and work, the rest of the tasks that need to be done your life. They are all things that need to be done, whether they are changing light bulbs at home or completing a quarterly report for the boss.

During this week, think about how you want to reclaim those extra brain cycles by disconnecting from the TV and work, and find something to “work” on this upcoming weekend.