Day Two: Stuff to do!

In 1990 Ben Elton (remember him? he used to be a topical stand up and wrote the good Blackadders before he went all musical and novelist) did a standup gig where he talked about:

'Stuff to do. Stuff to do. No matter what happens, there's always stuff to do. Why didn't Napoleon win? It's because he hadn't done the washing up that's why?'

Which is where I am now.



You ever get that feeling when you have a 'To Do' list of things that you really should be thinking about doing... and then you have many distractions that will stop you doing them.

Ever gone onto Youtube or Wikipedia and only looked at ONE thing?
It's impossible.
Take me for example...

I write for a wrestling website www.wrestlingaudio.com and I do a thing called Dangerous Dave's Daily Perversions. I'm not proud of it... oh hell who am I kidding, it gives me a valid excuse to look at boobies while I upload...

Anyway... today I uploaded a WWE Diva by the name of Alicia Fox, who if I'm honest I had no clue who she was or even which WWE TV show she appeared on... which lead me to Wikipedia to find this out. Now this should take ten seconds, right? It should be the following easy steps:

1.) Go to Wikipedia
2.) Type in Alicia Fox
3.) Read blurb until it says 'Raw brand'
4.) Close and return to reality.

But it didn't. Infact this is how far I went. From her post I went to

5.) OVW Women's Championship
which led me to
6.) ODB
which led me to
7.) Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling
which led me to
8.) Vince Russo
which led me to
9.) Hulh Hogan
which led me to
10.) Gremlins 2: The New Batch
which led me to
11.) Joe Dante
which led me to
12.) James Cameron

Which has led to me spending almost two hours wasting my time looking at stuff that I really didn't need to. Time when I could have been...oh I don't know, writing??? Doing anything productive! Instead I spent a good portion of my time reading about the reception Gremlins 2 got and what films Joe Dante, Hulk Hogan and James Cameron made!?

Why?

You know what it is? The internet. As wonderful as it is... it's almost the ultimate distraction. I remember as a kid, I was always told that TV or Computer Games were the ultimate distraction. But compared to the Internet, they were just chicken feed.
TV? Sure you can watch it for a while and with 100s of channels it's doubtful you can ever really say 'There's nothing on'. But you got to be in the mood for a CSI or an episode of Family Guy or you need to have seen a few episodes to really understand what's going on in Damages to actually take it all in.
Computer games? You play them until you finish. I mean it's as simple as that. Sure some games have other modes that increase the longevity, but even the best games lose their lustre after a while.

The internet? Not a chance. I want to read a book... I can find one... if I want to find a song... I can find that too... Youtube is such a vast beast that you can type in the name of almost any TV show from...well, EVER and you will bound to find something from it. And then you'll find the tribute to it... or the trailer...or the remix that someone has done.

The internet is one of the biggest problems for someone to overcome if they want to get something done. Even now I want to go check if the email I sent three minutes ago has been answered yet. Of course it hasn't. But I'm still going to check.

Best piece of advice. Not just for writers, for anyone who actually wants to do anything.

Turn off the internet. Just for an hour. Don't worry, it will still be there when you come back. It won't have vanished. Then and only then can you be free of the distraction... unless you then turn the TV on... or find a DVD... or get a call...actually your screwed no matter what... so you may aswell keep clicking...

Back to Wikipedia it is then!