Hilarious image by Asher Sarlin, via LifeHacker.com
From Information is Beautiful
Sept.8, 2009
The Hierarchy of Digital Distractions
I notice these days that I can spend hours at my computer, in a cloud. A swampy blur of digital activity, smeared across various activities and media and software.
Emailing, writing, tweeting, designing, browsing, taking calls, Skyping, Facebooking, RSS Feeding – all blurred into a single technological trance.
I seem to switch randomly from one to the other. But actually is there a subtle hierarchy in this cloud? Do I prefer some distractions over others? I think so.
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Facebook and Titter are my main time suck entities. Those and http://www.icanhaspizza.com, as well as GraphJam.
RSS feeds. Way too many to keep up with. And customer reviews of everything. I can’t buy toothpaste anymore without reading customer reviews. It’s a terrible time-sink that leaves me feeling like I’ve just eaten a box of twinkies. Help!
Facebook is definitely a large, unnecessary ‘black hole of time’, but also videos on the internet-sometimes of stuff that I wouldn’t say is a waste of time at all, but do tend to flex the type of mind muscles that don’t get reported on your SATs or your college transcripts. For example right now I’m watching this wonderful little music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgqOSCgc8xc&feature=channel…and don’t regret it at all, but yeah internet definitely = distraction.