the corner office

When Ronwen & I moved into our previous flat in Robindale, in 2001, we were stuck without a phone line for the first few months. (Telkom was over capacity in our street, and it was only through knowing someone who could do some serious pulling of strings that I was able to get a line at all, but I digress. The purpose of this entry is not to grumble about Telkom, as much fun as that is).

As I battled to get into the studying groove this evening, I got to thinking about those few months. At the time, having no home Internet connectivity felt awful. Looking back though, it was actually rather good for me. I couldn't spend my evenings mindlessly trawling the Net. If I needed to see certain websites, I had to do it from work, and so I tended to keep things focused. All my personal email was kept at work, and reading/replying was also kept to a minimum.

If I worked from home, I had no distractions or email tugging me this way and that, and I was able to really focus on what I was doing. Not that I worked from home much - I couldn't afford to stay away from the office for extended bouts like I do now. Since I was forced into more of a 9-5/6/7 existence, when I came home it was far less likely that I'd have brought work home with me.

If I think about how much time I've spent on various web sites today, exacerbated by not wanting to work on my assignment, I have to seriously question whether this is a good thing. I'm not saying the Net is evil or anything, since I know it's my own self-discipline that's lacking, but I can't help but think that ditching the ADSL line would do wonders for my personal productivity.

Ditch the ADSL line... if you hear reports of Ronwen having strangled me in my sleep, you'll know why :-)