Rebuilding public history
I’ve rebuild my public internet history from this:
to this.
I updated it for two reasons:
- I finally noticed it was a different style than the rest of my site.
- After five years I was finally using it in a way that helped me.
How it’s been helping
I’ve been tracking my ‘total web window’ for each day. There are lots of days in the history where I am looking things up from 6am and still ‘checking’ things at 10pm. Checking things is never the way to a happy life and I’d like to stop that. So I’ve been trying to get as much work as possible done before opening a web browser in the morning and also trying to make sure that once I’ve picked up the kids from school I’m present and that my focus is on them rather than on the news.
My results from the first week look like this:
| Date | Start Time | End Time | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-05-28 | 07:25:37 | 19:03:22 | 11:37:45 |
| 2024-05-29 | 05:59:31 | 21:49:25 | 15:49:54 |
| 2024-05-30 | 06:21:09 | 21:12:53 | 14:51:44 |
| 2024-05-31 | 06:16:10 | 23:32:42 | 17:16:32 |
| 2024-06-01 | 07:20:26 | 21:39:30 | 14:19:04 |
| 2024-06-02 | 06:25:52 | 21:04:00 | 14:38:08 |
| 2024-06-03 | 06:08:43 | 22:08:41 | 15:59:58 |
| 2024-06-04 | 09:12:39 | 17:32:31 | 08:19:52 |
| 2024-06-05 | 09:13:58 | 16:08:15 | 06:54:17 |
| 2024-06-06 | 11:32:40 | 16:23:04 | 04:50:24 |
| 2024-06-07 | 08:56:04 | 16:09:13 | 07:13:09 |
| 2024-06-09 | 08:23:47 | 13:03:34 | 04:39:47 |
| 2024-06-10 | 07:23:48 | 15:51:36 | 08:27:48 |
| 2024-06-11 | 08:37:52 | 18:49:40 | 10:11:48 |
| 2024-06-12 | 09:23:14 | 16:13:51 | 06:50:37 |
| 2024-06-13 | 09:30:04 | 15:49:55 | 06:19:51 |
…and you can see the point were I started minimising web use clearly.
Some notes:
- This isn’t ‘internet use’ it’s ‘web use’ - I’m watching TV with family and doing various command line ‘stuff’ that uses the internet (also my phone receives various dms).
- I’m not ‘just using apps’ - I access most things through a mobile browser precisely so that I can keep track of my usage like this.
- I got a lot more important work done in the mornings (It turns out that most of my ‘I’ll just check this’ was pure procrastination)
- I’m much more relaxed. I don’t know why I’m more relaxed but I’m happy with it.