Two stories that I know I should be learning from:

• Paul Graham on overcoming distractions. By creating an Internet-Only computer.
  Quote:

  I now leave wifi turned off on my main computer except when I need to transfer a file or edit a web page, and I have a separate laptop on the other side of the room that I use to check mail or browse the web. (Irony of ironies, it's the computer Steve Huffman wrote Reddit on. When Steve and Alexis auctioned off their old laptops for charity, I bought them for the Y Combinator museum.)

  My rule is that I can spend as much time online as I want, as long as I do it on that computer. And this turns out to be enough.

  
  
• NY Times on overcoming clutter. By giving everything away.
  Quote:

  Chasing a utopian vision of a self-sustaining life on the land as partisans of a movement some call voluntary simplicity, they are donating virtually all their possessions to charity and hitting the road at the end of May.

  “It’s amazing the amount of things a family can acquire,” said Mrs. Harris, 28, attributing their good life to “the ridiculous amount of money” her husband earned as a computer network engineer in this early Wi-Fi mecca.

  The Harrises now hope to end up as organic homesteaders in Vermont.

I can't quite see myself going as far as homesteading... but I always get that uncanny feeling when I read stories like these that it really IS that simple to make a change.