I’ve been sitting here working on final projects that require being connected to the internet, which makes procrastination WAY too easy. I was of course on AIM and facebook periodically, and finally chatted to my friend Sam, “I CANNOT GET ANYTHING DONE!” and he said, “I have your solution. where are you sitting?”
He came to my spot in the library and introduced me to the solution to (half) my problems. The program to download is called “self control.” It is a program that allows you to assign websites to be disabled on your computer. So I typed in www.facebook.com. Then you get to choose how long you want to be blocked for. I chose 30 minutes. Click START, and a timer pops up as a widget on your desktop. You can x out of the widget, close the program, and even delete the download…. your disabled websites will still not work until the time period is up. It’s fantastic!! It’s also really pathetic that I want this to confirm the will power to not go online.
But I’m certainly not the only one who is benefiting from computer-induced self control… walking up and down the aisles of carrels in the library, I think more people have a timer widget on their computer, than not. It’s bad that we’re so addicted to these websites like Facebook. Or maybe it’s not that we’re addicted to the website, but that we’re addicted to procrastinating, and sites like Facebook are the easiest way to access procrastination while sitting at a desk. Lucky for us, we now have synthetic self control available just as easily as procrastination.
synthetic, digital self control. weird.