{"id":620,"date":"2017-12-08T12:41:44","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T12:41:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.giacomomiceli.com\/blog\/?p=620"},"modified":"2018-04-22T19:10:59","modified_gmt":"2018-04-22T19:10:59","slug":"and-deep-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/2017\/12\/08\/and-deep-work\/","title":{"rendered":"…and deep work"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the previous post<\/a> I described my personal history of regular increments of RAM in my working computers with the notable exceptions of the transitions Desktop->Laptop and Laptop->Handheld and how\u00a0those transitions allowed me to appreciate a\u00a0brand new type of productivity. But what does it mean to use a very low memory device on a daily basis in 2017?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I find multi-tab browsing the worst thing that\u00a0happened to my productivity\u00a0since the\u00a0turn of the century. The deception is marvelous. The\u00a0view is that by opening multiple tabs you are parallelizing and\u00a0exploring more effectively the space of ideas you are researching at a given time. The problem is that, while our minds\u00a0are capable of some degree of multitasking, for most of us suckers the overhead\u00a0in changing context is very large. It takes time to focus on each new task, so much so that many<\/a> books have<\/a> been written<\/a> on the nefarious long-term effects of an information diet based on skimming superficially over very different kinds of content.<\/p>\n

While I knew the Theory, it was only when I switched to\u00a0working on a tablet<\/a> that I realized in Practice that I had fallen into a very bad habit. Not only in my pre-handheld life was I starving for opening new tabs (which I\u00a0can’t now, lest I send the system to a grinding halt), but also treating tabs as notes.<\/p>\n

Tabs are not notes. It is pretty absurd that I would\u00a0leave on the left-most part of my tabs pages that I had opened and was supposed to take action on over a year ago. I\u00a0knew about Structured Procrastination<\/a> and found it a\u00a0fantastic method. If my forgotten tabs would have bubbled up to my attention automatically after a while, it may have been a less horrible way to deal with the flow of my ideas. But instead, I was creating a psychological blind\u00a0spot in the portion of the screen where the old tabs were.<\/p>\n

So jumping from\u00a0a high memory device to a low memory one was like opening the third eye.\u00a0With my present setup I can only do one thing and one thing only at any given moment. I cannot keep Gmail and Slack open and at the same time while I scroll through my Twitter timeline. The result is fewer interruptions and deeper concentration on whichever task is at hand. I rely solely on my long-term goals and my own memory for day-to-day priorities.<\/p>\n

It’s true that the same effect of\u00a0using low-RAM devices to\u00a0limit counter-productive behavior can be achieved with programs that help you\u00a0throttling\u00a0how much bandwidth or how many\u00a0tabs you are using. But sometimes getting physically rid of the source of the problem works better for us “naked apes”. After all, we don’t\u00a0expect an ex-smoker to go around with a packet of cigarettes in her purse. The temptation is hard to fight and sometimes it’s just easier to get rid of the dangerous object of desire, at least until we feel stronger about our own control.<\/p>\n

Back to my present setup, the only\u00a0issue is that sometimes “double thinking” sets in: while I am absorbed in a task I avoid starting a new action that could potentially make me save some time, like looking up something on Google, just because I’m afraid it could\u00a0make the system unstable. So my hope is that this phase will be like a scaffolding for the mind and that soon I will be able to hop to something with more memory\u00a0while feeling more confident about my own self-restraint.<\/p>\n

One way to wrap this up\u00a0with an aphorism could be the over-used<\/p>\n

Less is more<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But really, the problem here is not\u00a0that we want to achieve a quantitative optimum. It’s about quality! So here comes Pliny the Younger to the rescue with<\/p>\n

Multum, non multa<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

literally “much, not many” emphasizing the importance of depth, not breadth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the previous post I described my personal history of regular increments of RAM in my working computers with the notable exceptions of the transitions Desktop->Laptop and Laptop->Handheld and how\u00a0those transitions allowed me to appreciate a\u00a0brand new type of productivity. But what does it mean to use a very low memory device on a daily …<\/p>\n

Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":637,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[78,28,21,27],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":660,"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions\/660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamez.it\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}