Quiet Time

Two grad students in our department bought white lab coats over Christmas. When they wear them, it means that they’re “doing science”, and are not to be interrupted. I’d buy one too, except almost all my interruptions are auto-generated: no matter how hard I try, I just… can’t… stop myself from checking email, reading blogs, et cetera.

Which is what makes the Web 2.0 Suicide app so interesting. You give it your credentials for Facebook, Twitter, and what-not, and it erases all the content you’ve created, unfriends/unfollows everyone, then sets your password to something random so that you can’t even log in again. Sure, you could create another account, but will you? Or will you, I dunno, go read a book or see a movie or talk to someone instead?

I’m not ready to go that far (translation: I’m too weak), but what if it wasn’t quite so drastic? What if instead of wiping everything out, it just re-set your password and didn’t send you the new one for some specified period of time? If I could block myself for a few hours at a stretch, or maybe even a day or two, I’d get a lot more done. Or start juggling again, one or the other…