Beauty. Almost a piece of art.<p>I was on a plane yesterday (literally on airplane mode) and I finished a book I've been working on for a month, and prepped/wrote half of a presentation. Quite often I produce much of my writing on a plane.<p>I find myself very productive on a plane. Especially on cheap flights that don't have in-flight entertainment. Literally no distractions for a preset amount of time. You're not only offline, you're also physically stuck. Best way to make the time fly by is by being productive.
For those interested in managing online time and getting ourselves offline regularly, the book <i>Deep Work</i>, by Cal Newport, has some very useful ideas. One that I plan to start experimenting with is the idea of scheduled internet access - allow yourself to get online only at certain times of day. This isn't just for work. Even if you're, say, standing in line at the grocery store, you don't get to pull your phone out and check your email.<p>As the author points out, we've forgotten how to be bored. We need to learn to engage that part of our brain again.<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/dp/1455586692/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1503497788&sr=8-1&keywords=deep+work" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/...</a>
> your ability to Google something<p>In my opinion, this actually <i>is</i> something that makes me valuable. It doesn't matter how well you can synthesize information if you can't find it in the first place.<p>Having the ability to take a problem, figure out what you don't know, reprocess those parts into a format that Googles™ well, filter out the noise from the results, and only then synthesize the information gathered is actually not as common as you might think.
The funny thing is, smartphones are all but useless for many tasks the minute you go into airplane mode. There are exceptions, but you're basically holding a client to a distributed operating system which has appropriated many of the promises of wearable personal computing for corporate profit.<p>So yes, if you've already ceded your right to not be inturupted by running apps like Twitter and Facebook in the background, then I can see the appeal of cord cutting.<p>Of course there also exists the possibility of at least trying to use these devices without ceding this autonomy in the first place, but that requires admitting just how little today's social media offerings will have to do with this approach.<p>And no, a smartphone is not the right place to do research anyway. In fact, neither is the WWW using off-the-shelf browsers, but it's the version of Hypertext we're stuck with for now.
While I sympathize, that would be forgetting all that the net and online-ness has done for me. I would be a fundamentally different (and, in my current estimation, worse) person if I didn't have the net. It's been an engine of personal growth much more than one of distraction.<p>It might not be the same for everyone, of course. But I still think going offline is giving up too much.<p>The pendulum doesn't have to swing all the way to the other direction. Couldn't we just focus on being more responsible in our net consumption and promoting the good benefecial stuff instead?
I got stuck into a bad habit of browsing the internet idly anytime when I'm at home and then having to rush to get to work so I've created rules on my router to disable web access in the mornings before work and late at night before bed.<p>It is quite effective and I suddenly do other things but I do worry that it's a psychological crutch which is just going to make self-control even harder in the long term.
Super nice idea. I remember when I was very young and the Internet was also young, maybe just two, three years, I experienced something strange. In this time we still used US-Robotics 56k modems to connect to the Internet. When I was offline my computer felt dead. Worthless. Useless. Only when I was online my computer felt right and I felt good.<p>You have to imagine that I loved my self-built PCs even before the Internet came. I spent so much time with them, upgrading them, spent night and day installing and trying new software, stuff like Sierra and Lucasfilm Adventures, Clipper/dBase, Turbo Pascal, QuarkXPress, Corel Draw, saving for hardware such as PostScript laser printers, AdLib later Soundblaster soundcarfd, SyQuest harddrives, flatbed scanners, all the typical stuff. And once the Internet came an offline computer felt like a dead computer.
Well done, I had the urge to google the second most commonly spoken language while reading the article.<p>I turned my phone in some kind of a "dumb phone":<p>- Deleted all games, news apps, basically all the apps I don't regulary need<p>- Turned off email. It's still configured, I turn it on if I need to read an email<p>- No push notifications at all<p>Next step: Turn off mobile data for browser and only activate it if I need to read something. I'm just not ready yet!
I love this line:<p>"Do your research online, but create offline."<p>A lot of times, I'm working on something and in the zone and then all of a sudden I see an iMessage notification and forget my thoughts almost instantly.
How is this page implemented for Chrome? It looks like it is using service workers. Is there a tutorial?<p>EDIT: Tutorial for Chrome here: <a href="https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/getting-started/codelabs/offline/" rel="nofollow">https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/getting-start...</a>
Somewhat brilliant in that by forcing me offline I was distraction free in reading the piece. Basically it fostered an environment in which I was more likely to read to the end of the article
y'all have been very kind. the productivity tips are very helpful. here's my system:<p>- sit down at my desk with laptop and phone<p>- disable wifi on my laptop<p>- turn my phone face-down on the desk, muted, with wifi/data still on<p>This lets me check if I have any new messages via my phone, but it is a polling system vs an interrupt system. I have to opt in to check. And I am very aware that using my phone looks and feels less productive, so I try to avoid using it too long.<p>I've been able to be pretty productive (as an software engineer) with this system. I find that I have to reconnect on my laptop about every 30 minutes to do something or another. Of course, every day varies.
I am probably one of the few techies in the world that does not own/use a smartphone. Since 2011 I have used a cheap Verizon flip phone for exactly this reason; I want more control over my life. NOTHING is that important that I need to be plugged in 24/7. My wife has a smart phone which is great for when we travel (maps, Yelp, Fandango, Uber, etc.) Don't get me wrong, I was standing in a long line outside the Apple store the day the first iPhone came out. However, over the years I came to realize that in order to have the amount/type of work/life balance I desired, technology would have to take a back seat to my relationships and interests outside of my career.<p>I haven't looked back.
On old Nokia phones you could create profiles, like "work" and "weekend" and configure it's possible functions and also distractions.<p>I figure there's something like that for android but on iOS you can only put on: do not disturb. It works though.
Using a WP7 device has really forced me to come to terms with all the online cruft and clutter I look at all day. When I only have email, calls and text, I really do seem to see a lot more in life.
This article seems to discuss similar stuff to The Shallows
<a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shallows-internet-changing-think-remember/dp/1848872275" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shallows-internet-changing-think-re...</a>
Doesn't work on FreeBSD/firefox? First I put interface down, so no network access, second try I physically pulled cable out. Nothing happens.
to me, using cron to disconnect my internet every half an hour just to remind me to break the loop has been immensely helpful. And annoying. But mostly helpful.<p>My brain switched to offline mode has about three times better focus.<p>Similarly to this, I'm using my browser in full-screen mode most of the time to eliminate distractions. It was very surprising to me, how big an effect it has, to not see the tabs.
The point about chasing links in articles is interesting to me. One of my favorite activities is loading articles up in Pocket for all-but-offline reading and Pocket's Listen feature, which uses Android's text-to-speech (?), to listen to articles.<p>The point about articles being written differently according to whether the author expects that the article will be read offline or not interests me, though, especially if a decent amount of background/context provision is outsourced via providing a link to documents that cover such material.
I use an iOS app called Freedom to disconnect. I can block the entire Internet (excluding iMessage and FaceTime) or a list of sites (social media, news, etc) for a period of time. This way I can still contact people, but cannot browse idly.<p>Is it a crutch? Sure, but crutches work. If you were dealing with alcoholism, the best thing you could do would be to remove your ability to easily access alcohol.
My phone bricked a week and a half ago and I've been using a phone I walked into a lake on accident two years ago that still completely works except for cell service, so it only updates when I'm connected to Wifi now. I also have google voice number, so my texting works from that phone as well, but again only where there's Wifi.<p>I'm going to make a claim, pay a deductible, and get a new proper phone at some point, but I've been a bit lazy and delaying it a bit because it hasn't been too bad going without.<p>Although I did have one bad experience since it happened (almost immediately after). My car's battery died and it required me walking for almost an hour next to a dangerous street to get to some place that had Wifi and sort out getting my car towed and being able to open Uber to have someone pick me up.
It really does require a lot of discipline to stay focused nowadays. In my personal life I'm terrible at it. I wish I read more, like I did before the Internet are my life.<p>But at work, I HAVE to be disciplined. I start my day with 1 hour of communications catch-up, including stand-ups and slack. Then I turn off slack, and get to work. My phone is set to do not disturb automatically starting at 10am. I check messages when I'm on a break, going to the bathroom, on lunch, etc... But the messages are never allowed to interrupt me.<p>Works for me, at least.
I just created a new location on my MacBook's network settings, called it 'getitdoneland', and removed all the network services from it. Now my laptop has an 'airplane mode'. Thankfully, it takes just enough seconds for connectivity to return when I switch back to my regular location that I think I'll be dissuaded from distraction. Friction is good sometimes.
Back to work...
For those that don't want to, and 'miss the point'. View source and go to the .JS file<p>The text of the off-line site is about a third of the way down.
Totally agree. Unfortunately, 90% of my work is development in a SaaS platform, so getting anything done will require my device to remain online.<p>Does anyone know of a Chrome Plugin/hack that might block all but a few web pages? Then I can enjoy the silence of working without distractions while still plugging into the application that I'm working with.
I would love to work offline. But my work involves constant use of a commercial software that won't run without a license check connection to its central license server.<p>edit: just occurred to me. I should try to script my connectivity, so the connection is established just before the software is used, and terminated soon after. Looking into it.
Personally just knowing that wasn't of much help, so I made a simple application to help me stay disconnected <a href="https://github.com/mistnim/coin-op-web" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mistnim/coin-op-web</a>
With Firefox reader view do event listeners still work?<p>If so it'd be nice to have an extension or option that goes into offline mode when reader view is triggered.