By now, the idea that the Internet offers as many opportunities for education as it does for mindless distraction is well-known.
I’ve never yet tried apps like Freedom to block my access to the Internet. But I do find I need to remind myself from time to time not to get sucked down the rabbit hole of email/social media/news updates/randomness… that hoary old metaphor of “surfing” the Internet with no particular destination in mind.
I like to think of this as “intentional Interneting” — making sure I have a clear purpose in browsing and am not simply hunting for cheap distractions or straying too far off the path (though I’ve come to believe a certain amount of the latter is inevitable). It reminds me of the early days of Google, when it was a wonder just to have this nice, clean portal into different topics, and you still put some thought into what you were searching for.
How do you deal with digital distractions?
