"Want to get something done? Turn off Twitter. Turn off Facebook. Turn off blog comments. Turn off FriendFeed. Turn off Flickr. Turn off YouTube. Turn off Dave Winer’s blog and Huffington Post. Turn off TechMeme.After reading the above from Scobleizer's productivity post, I of course looked up all the references I didn't know and lo and behold I was signing up for another Web2.0 application. Classic.Turn off the distractions."
--Robert Scoble
Yet this also gave me insight into my own assimilation within the grab-and-go, click-through culture that's been rapidly developing over the last decade. Procrastination-induced internet escapism is an easy habit, and at the sake of projects and work. Reading may broaden one's perspective, but it doesn't lend to daily, efficient production. What Csíkszentmihályi describes as flow.
Mastering information, i.e. diligently taking notes to be referenced later and forever committed to our personal knowledge bank, is infrequent in today's look-up-on-wikipedia, web-bite world. Rather, we take snapshots. Into fields, philosophies, lives, ideas, hobbies and even vocations. We don't really know these things, but we feel like we do. Vicarious information gathered and stored in bookmarks on del.icio.us or google notebook make up our reference libraries now. Learning doesn't happen through osmosis though. And the doing must be done (channeling some Yogi Berra here!). Keeping pace with our reading/browsing through personal accomplishments, whatever they may be, is important so that when we look back we see our own contributions among the multitude.