Media Fast

I check my email maybe 1000 times a day.  It is an absent, constant checking. I don't get a thousand emails a day, I just check so that I will know when I do get one or three.  I also browse the internet constantly, checking boingboing for weird news, checking to see if there are any new blogs up on tribe, or if someone has commented on mine. I wander aimlessly around myspace or facebook, finding nothing new. It just doesn't work. 

I am into this book right now, The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. 

It's incredible, all of you should read it.  One of it's assertions  is that much of the information we consume is not essential to survival, and is more akin to gorging ourselves on junk food than getting useful data. He suggests a 5 day media fast.  Basically, no TV,  radio,  news, web, nonessential email, podcasts, audiobooks,  or nonfiction reading.  He allows 1 hour of TV per night for pleasure, and an hour of reading fiction for pleasure. But no more of the constant search for information.  I have been all about giving up my vices this year, so this immediately frightened and appealed to me.  I am stating now. 

As part of this, I am also implementing checking email just twice a day, at noon and at 4pm.  Tim suggests that email, and the tiny little distractions it provides is the #1 time waster in our modern age. and suggests getting it all clumped together at one time. I am curious to see what will come of this one.  I may be setting up a simple auto response telling people this, or it just might not be necessary. I probably think that getting ahold of me via email is more important than it is. 

I still will be blogging this week, and linking to tribe and facebook, but I will not be obsessively eyeballing my comments. I also will be spending this week working out my blogger interface and website. I am looking forward to having full interconnectedness between all of my internet places. I just got a youtube, a del.ici.ous, and flickr account, and I don't know how to use them (experts in these sites, please tutor me!).  I want to place some sort of connection to my cartoon projects that is secure. I want it to look fantastic. So yeah, I have a lot of work to do. 

Most importantly, this week I will not be checking tribe, or evites or anything like that. If something is going on, please call me! Connect with me in a personal way, you have my permission. If something important happens for our community or in the world, please don't hesitate to tell me.  

Spaceman signing off.