Trying Something New

I read a fantastic article today on Lifehacker on how a guy unplugged completely for 10 days. The moral to his story and my true takeaway was how he gained focus. This is not the first story I’ve read about someone unplugging from the internet, but it was the one that turned the lights on to an issue I’ve been struggling with lately. My loss of clarity and focus. I wear many hats. Father, web developer, SEO, designer and husband. I tend to do multiple things at one time. While I’m designing a website I’m checking inbound links for SEO or reading an article about something tech related. Or while I’m with my kids at soccer I’m checking out soccer techniques on Youtube or the weather on my phone. I find it hard to do a single thing at a time because I have an infinite amount of data available at my finger tips at all times of the day. I’ve found it hard lately, to read a book without checking Google+ or my email.

The main reason for me even writing this is because I’ve hit a wall on what to learn next. I tend to learn a new programming language just for the heck of it, but I find myself doing more hello worlds than real world applications. The root to this problem is because I’m having a hard time sticking with one framework or programming language because I want to learn them all at the same time. Which may seem like a good thing to some but the truth of the matter is that I won’t progress to the next level if I don’t focus.

So, I’m going take a break from the internet. Since I work on the Internet all day long; weekdays are out so I’m going to give it a try this Saturday. For 24 hours I’m going to completely unplug from the Internet. No cellphone, No laptop, No tablet or even Netflix. I’m not going to take the easy way out and watch T.V. I’m going to do something productive. What… I don’t know yet but I’ll figure it out. Let’s see how this turns out. This is Bryan Siegel signing out.

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Geek Personal reflection Web Development