Sooooo, I probably shouldn’t have been replying to email and writing this comment while listening, eh? ;)

Excellent idea about the media diet. I certainly need one, does anyone else watch T.V. while doing Sudoku at the same time? (hey, was that the nerdiest thing I could say?) We could do a paper-media diet as well. I buy tons of books, magazines + subscriptions + print outs of webpages that might be interesting for later. If I decide to have only one kind of paper media for a week, you get more time and less clutter!

Something I run into when I try to find a new book, listen to an album in iTunes, or watch that John Doe backlog, is that my organization gremlin commandeers my head. So, on this media date,

Don’t fix the media while you consume it.

Don’t sort that bookshelf by author “really quick.” Don’t add genres to that playlist “just for a minute.” Don’t prune those .avi files. Let it go. You will organize later, during a “cleanup date,” or, possibly never. It’s not fair to the part of your brain that wants to read the New Yorker article on Sara Silverman to split time with the part that wants to cut the article out and put it in a folder. You’ll end up like a wacky sitcom episode, dashing from one part of the restaurant to another, and we all know that only ends in tears.

great idea….however, I listened to the cast while working, with the radio on….I think I kind of missed the point. :-)

I don’t think we have to act like monks all the time—I just like the idea of not always being led around by the inputs in my life. I listen to NPR while I write, surf the web while I watch TV, and as I say, I almost always walk around while I’m talking on the phone.

Like any good diet, this one helps you shed a little weight and learn to make better decisions; it’s not designed to change years-old patterns of your life in an hour or two. :)

Great tip for a media diet - read transcripts of podcasts. (Hint! Hint!)

Audio is a quite rich media, but that also means it takes a lot extra bandwidth. Text can be slurped in easily. (I really don’t get why everybody is podcasting these days. More production time, more consumption time. Granted, if I had a long commute, it might make sense…)

Can I get a link to the Greasemonkey script you plugged? I can’t seem to find it.

Can I get a link to the Greasemonkey script you plugged? I can’t seem to find it.

Here ya go: Want to keep surfing? Pay the Webolodeon

The interrupt driven lifestyle

Definition of the problem You are most likely familiar with those annoying interrupts. Remember when you are concentrating on a project and your phone starts ringing. Or when you are reading something important and an instant message window pops up….

One of the best things I did recently was to turn off the new-item-dock-indicator in NetNewsWire. It’s still running, still up to date, but it just removes the Pavlovian ding-ding telling me that the brain-candy jar has just been refilled.

And you know what? I often forget to check it.