{"id":4281,"date":"2011-02-26T12:40:29","date_gmt":"2011-02-26T20:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=4281"},"modified":"2011-02-26T12:40:29","modified_gmt":"2011-02-26T20:40:29","slug":"putting-blame-on-the-shelf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2011\/02\/26\/putting-blame-on-the-shelf\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting blame on the shelf"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While I used my iPod Touch to check email yesterday &#8211; and briefly look in on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/\">Twitter<\/a> for news (and <a href=\"http:\/\/metrocascade.com\/\">MetroCascade<\/a> for local Victoria BC news) &#8211; my laptop stayed on the shelf all day. And all night. I had no particular agenda in mind, it just happened that way &#8211; but I did consume much less online media as a result.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/picasaweb.google.com\/lh\/photo\/KF17WYNSgKkSjG7ufF4ACQ?feat=directlink\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"border: 6px solid white\" src=\"https:\/\/lh4.googleusercontent.com\/_Rg-tSGYurlI\/TUoeDhbvsBI\/AAAAAAAABq4\/kIxn_X5ocBI\/IMG_0147.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"307\" height=\"230\" \/><\/a>People make fun of &#8220;digital diets.&#8221; I know I certainly do, for being connected is, for me, the point of using digital media. But I&#8217;m keenly aware of how much I get distracted, too. It&#8217;s possible to blame distraction on all kinds of things. Heck, I could blame my family, I could blame my pet, I could blame my house, or a job or volunteer commitments &#8211; or my commitment to being healthy and fit (going to the gym). I could blame the web, and if I had television, I could blame TV. Hey, I could blame myself (yippee!).<\/p>\n<p>All useless. Blame is\u00a0 just another big distraction. The real problem is a lack of focus.<\/p>\n<p>Every distraction is another way to lose focus, every attempt to focus forces you to ignore distractions.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes there&#8217;s no choice (or not much of one), &#8230;and sometimes there is.<\/p>\n<p>Knowing how to discriminate between the two is incredibly important.<\/p>\n<p>That is all. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While I used my iPod Touch to check email yesterday &#8211; and briefly look in on Twitter for news (and MetroCascade for local Victoria BC news) &#8211; my laptop stayed on the shelf all day. And all night. I had no particular agenda in mind, it just happened that way &#8211; but I did consume [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1242],"tags":[31142,31143,11719],"class_list":["post-4281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just_so","tag-digital_diets","tag-distractability","tag-focus"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4281"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4286,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4281\/revisions\/4286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}