A Week of Input Deprivation

By way of introduction, I direct you to this article at The Art of Manliness:  10 Overlooked Truths About Taking Action.  As with most of the articles at The Art of Manliness, it is well thought and and provides a series of action steps to be taken (if you are not a reader of The Art of Manliness, you should be).

In reading the article, one of the items listed by the author Kyle Eschenroeder as an action step really leaped out at me.  I reproduce here in its entirety:

II. Input Deprivation Week

Go an entire week with zero information consumption.

I first tried this last year and it was wildly successful. I got more done in one week than I had in the month prior. I also ate the best I had all year and solidified my meditation practice. It was so effective I offered it up to the readers of my blog, StartupBros.

Most of the people mocked me or called me naive. A few actually tried it, though. And many of them are still practicing it to this day. It’s the most effective way I’ve found to boost output.

It’s also the most painful.

You are going to, for an entire week, live without information input.

Stay with me on this.

For one week:

• No reading books.
• No reading blogs.
• No reading newspapers.
• No going on Facebook (even just to post).
• No watching TV (shows, sports, news, anything).
• No watching movies.
• No listening to talk radio.
• No going on Reddit.
• No going on Twitter.
• No information input – only output!

You must force yourself to spend an entire week with yourself and the people immediately surrounding you.

This will, first and foremost, force you into action by stripping away every activity you run to in order to avoid actually doing the work you know you should be doing.

Besides that, it will increase mindfulness, increase the respect you have for your own ideas, you’ll have more ideas, unsolvable life problems may begin to make sense, you’ll have an increased appreciation for the news that actually matters, you’ll become more social, you’ll gain perspective, and you’ll become more original.

It sounds too good to be true but it’s not. It’s what happens. The only way for you to appreciate this is to do it.

Pretty radical stuff, especially since I am an information fiend and glut.

Which got me to thinking about the whole thing.

I consume information in two ways.  The first way - the correct way - is when I take it in to fill a need or question - like, for example, learning about the Period of the Successor states following Alexander the Great's death last night in Dividing the Spoils by Robin Waterfield or how to raise quail or make cheese or simply do something.  The purpose of this consumption is to fill a need, the sort of analogy one might find to eating when one is hungry.

The second kind of consumption - the one I have just become consciously aware of - is the sort of thing that is the equivalent of mindless eating, the consumption of information because I am bored. This is the kind of thing that works itself out in Facebook or Twitter or scanning sites breathlessly to find out what is going on in the world.  It is not information designed to meet a need or better me; it is information designed to distract me or to fill my ennui or simple dislike of the situation I find myself in.

It is not healthy and it does not move me one step closer to anywhere I want to be.  In fact, it seems to prove on of the comments of the author directly:  "This will, first and foremost, force you into action by stripping away every activity you run to in order to avoid actually doing the work you know you should be doing."

So this week will be a modified version of the Input Deprivation Week.

Books, I cannot give up.  It is my hobby and my relaxation and frankly (with my current schedule) does not consume a lot of time.

All else, for a week, is off limits.

I have a bit of work to do to prepare for this - gather my quotes for the week so that I can immediately post them and not have to look, perhaps prepare some of the others things I must do for writing - but other than that, I am retreating to a form of Solitude (or as much as I can manage in my life).  For a week.  Just to see.

To see what, left alone with my thoughts, I can accomplish.