The past ~7 days…

RescueTime
RescueTime offers three views of increasing granularity. For me, Email is king, followed by my vices of Reference and News, which can be somewhat interchangeable, then my social networking vices which are later broken out into Facebook and Reddit and Twitter. After accounting for videos (YouTube mostly) and games (I’m a sucker for a good puzzle plat former like Continuity), you get actual work: Writing and Evernote, random Business tasks. Shopping shows up here only because I was buying books for classes and research on Amazon and I badly need a new pair of sneakers.

Erhardt's General Categories Graph (RescueTime)

Erhardt's Detailed Categories Graph (RescueTime)

Erhardt's Specific Activities Graph (RescueTime)

Snapshot of Browser Activity
Using a Firefox add-on Voyage which allows you to explore your browser history as a wall of media, I was able to dig a little into my behavior in 30 minutes blocks and uncover some of the true freneticism of web browsing and the wormhole like time-suck that comes from portals like Google News, Wikipedia, and Reddit. So here is a snapshot from yesterday morning: 9:00am-9:30am (read it from right to left). I started off by reading a New York Magazine piece on Aaron Swartz. Then I checked Facebook and Google News, the latter led me to read about the proposal to drop wrestling from the Olympics. Modern pentathlon was on the list to be axed as well so I did a Google search for that in order to quickly get to the Wikipedia page where I read about its history. Then came Reddit: most of the bubbles without favicons were images submitted to a thread about whether or not eye color makes people significantly more attractive. Then I was back to Facebook, in which I apparently visit 46 pages while I looking into the relationship of a friend of mine with his fiancee, whom he had just proposed to according to the site.

Erhardt's Browsing History Snapshot from Feb. 12, 2013 (Voyage)

Offline Media Summary

• Books: All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren, read an average of 8 pages before sleep during 3 of the past 6 nights; Readings for this class, 2 hours; Readings for my Intro to Networks class, 1 hour
• Newspapers/Magazines: Weekly print Economist subscription, read an average of 5 articles a day, mostly on the T to and from the Media Lab; The Tech picked up from stand in the Media Lab, read cover to cover last week’s issue between classes
• Television: Downton Abbey, Sunday ritual with my fiancee, watched 2 hours; Jeopardy, watched 3 episodes in past week after making dinner; The Taste, cooking competition show, watched between Jeopardy and The State of the Union last night, 1 hour; The State of the Union and Republican Response, watched approximately 2 hours
• Podcasts: Listen to an average of 1 hour per day when I exercise at home in the morning, 7 episodes of The Moth, 2 episodes of This American Life, 1 episode of On the Media
• Music: 95 songs from 10 albums played while working or browsing the web, captured using last.fm scrobbler (see below)

Erhardt's Music by Album Graph (last.fm)

Reflections on Media Diarying
1) Measurement bias is a bitch
2) It’s not what it looks like, but it kind of is, maybe
3) Holy crap, email

When I embarked on this assignment my first step was to search for any kind of tool similar to RescueTime that would automate the collection of my media consumption behavior. This was important to me not only because I thought it would help me quantify my behavior but also because I wanted something so lightweight that it wouldn’t disrupt my actual consumption. Putting on my sociologist hat, I’m familiar with the range of biases that are introduced by various quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. Two common ones are the observer effect and the social desirability effect. The observer effect results in subjects changing their behavior due to the fact that they are being watched. The social desirability effect is a specific example of the observer effect when a subject adjusts their behavior to come across how they think they should come across in terms of societal norms and values. In terms of keeping a media diary, this means that I might change my media consumption because I want to appear like I’m a very productive person who has perfect self-control and does not indulge in frivolous media. OR, this means that I might simply avoid consuming media at times where its inconvenient to me to record that media since I’m also the observer and I’m feeling a bit lazy (happened a few times with non-digital media). So in this week, I strove to do exactly when I would normally do and hope that I could record as much of that as possible automatically and just not think about it too much. This is imperfect and certainly an underestimate of my media consumption in a number of ways. One example is that I used a Firefox add-on called Reddit Enhancement Suite which allows me to visit the media linked to by Reddit right on the page as I scroll through: this means the number of cute cat pictures and AdviceAnimal memes that I actually consumed is completely lost in the measly 28 pages I scrolled through on Reddit which were actually recorded.

Many of the tools for automatically quantifying media consumption also reduce the media to sources: i.e. YouTube (84 videos), Facebook (132 pages), GoogleDocs (31 pages), etc. So when I’m watching a YouTube video that’s relevant to my research, which involves studying media, it gets counted the same as that Harlem Shake video that was linked from Reddit. Furthermore, while that Harlem Shake parody was very distracting at the time in the context of the work I was or should have been doing when I watched it, the sum total of Harlem Shake videos I have consumed inform my understanding of a cultural phenomenon which is relevant to my research as a media scholar AND my cultural capital in the Bourdieuian sense: something that I personally value and can be exchanged for social and economic capital when others value my knowledge of it. This cuts against the prevailing notion of “Garbage In, Garbage Out.” That said, I have a certain occupation and social milieu that values the consumption of YouTube videos, which may not be true of others. And certainly the primary education movement in the 1990s of any reading is good reading has been shown to have been flawed. My more formal literacy may help me digest and appreciate a broader swath of media in ways that are particularly productive. OR I’m part of a doomed generation that justifies its frivolous media consumption through complicated rationalities. Relativism + cultural capital is my saving grace here; I should also plug deep qualitative research like ethnography and content analysis as a better way to open a window into the INTENTION behind the consumption of a piece of media, like what I did with the snapshot from Voyage. (Intention is very interesting and relevant to the research we are trying to do at the Center for Civic Media because we want to get past the concept of slacktivism when it comes to purposeful consuming and sharing of media.)

Erhardt's Productivity Graph (RescueTime) -- Blue is good, Red is bad

Finally, there is the realm of pseudo-productivity in the opposite direction: email. RescueTime tells me that I spend the majority of my screen-staring time on my email client, 7.5 hours in the past week! Email is simultaneously how everything and nothing gets done in the knowledge society and workplace. Studies have shown that email produces shots of chemicals in the brain that either excite you or terrify you depending on your disposition; either way they keep you coming back for more. Plus, sending off emails are quick wins in terms of check offs on to-do lists: hit send and you’ve done something! In the past week, I have sent out at least 50 email messages. I have received many more than that. There are numerous recommendations floating out there about managing email deluge: scheduled email checks with specific time limits once or twice a day, converting inboxes to priority order rather than chronological, and simply unsubscribing from anything that seems to hurt more than it helps. I’ve tried all of these at various times to no avail. There is also the oft-cited law that states–the more email you send, the more email you receive–which seems inescapable.

Something that I’m really curious about the future is how media consumption will change in terms of behavioral patterns and its meaning socially, culturally, and in terms of productivity when wearable technology is our main digital media source and is ubiquitous. Think of Google Glass as the closest approximation: I’m interested in what our media landscape will look like when we consume it through the lens of augmented reality. Will it break down the silos of media: away from YouTube, email, news websites, etc.? Can I have exchanges that perform the function of email but not in this way that takes us out of our productive spaces? And then will we develop cognitive mode-switching techniques will fill in to help us distinguish one mode (email) from another mode (video watching). How will this change the patterns and diversity of media we consume: will it look like push or pull or some new yet-to-be-experienced form?

https://twitter.com/mediabender

I was already worried about my productivity before I did this exercise, but numbers make that feeling even worse: 35%!! First of all, it was not easy to categorize the activities. Twitter is very distracting, but at the same time it’s really useful in terms of finding readings about the topics I’m interested in. Communication can be very distracting (gtalk, for example), but it’s at the same time very important to build relations. I could go on and on, trying to explain how distraction and productivty overlap… but while I was writing this simple paragraph I’ve had two conversations in my gtalk. Interesting, but distracting at the same time.

During this year, all my media activity is around my computer, so this rescuetime exercise can be very accurate about my communications habits: no TV, no radio, no print newspapers or magazines. Serendipity, procrastination or multitasking are part of my personality, but one of this year’s purposes was to find a better balance with focusing and get the jobs done one after another. I still have five months to stop running and slow down.

Here goes some Data:

• 38% of productivity (great, it just went three points up while I was doing this!)
• I’m an average person (I spend around two hours on productive time per day)
• 4 hours and 11 minutes in my laptop per day. Doesn’t seem much
• My most productive day was Sunday. Shouldn’t it be just the opposite?
• My e-mail nearly doubles the next activity, social networks (Twitter)
• News and opinion goes third. In my real life it would have clearly been number one

And here some links about this topics:

• Procrastination: Positive procrastination, not an oxymoron
• Serendipity: In search of serendipity
• Multitasking: Why multitasking doesn’t work

Just to give a taste why procrastinating is not so terrible, I just want to share the best thing I discovered this week: Peter Sarstedt, 1969, singing ‘Where Do You Go To My Lovely’ Where Do You Go To My Lovely

The first words I entered into my “media diary” this week were: “We%, %ay one”.
Why this cryptic message? Because the ‘ d ‘ on my roommate’s 10-year old laptop keyboard wasn’t working. And why was I using such a thing, you may ask? Well, my laptop broke down, which during the first few days of this assignment, led me to take on habits that aren’t representative of my usual media diet. But that turned out to be a really good thing. “Good” in the sense that I experienced and ‘consumed’ media that I’m not usually confronted with. Instead of falling deep into Internet holes, or writing blog entries for hours, my 2-hour daily time limit at the Cambridge public library (which according to library protocol, have to be broken into 30-min segments to give other patrons a chance to use the computer) forced me to rethink my typical diet. When I set out to do my media diet assignment, I intended to count all “input”, be it a lecture, conversations, videos, etc. as ‘media’. But I couldn’t watch online lectures or complete the assignments for the MOOC I’m taking. No time for long stretches of learning, news reading, or random browsing. Instead, I struck up conversations with people on an entirely different end of the MIT/Berkman “tech savviness” spectrum. Issues of access suddenly became very personal.

And you thought your computer was slow? Try waiting 10 minutes and then repeatedly seeing this fella.

First, everything took longer. Not only because the Cambridge library computers are kinda slow,  but because I had to stand in line to use them for 30 minutes at a time. Within my 2-hour time limit, I spent the first 30 minutes scouring course pages for the semester. Then, since no other patrons were waiting, I got to register for another 30 minutes at the sign-up station. At the second computer I was assigned to, I sat next to an older man who gave off a strong odor and was nervously tapping his keyboard while clicking on pictures of (barely clothed) women in his Facebook news feed. It was hard to concentrate because he was repeatedly cursing loudly to himself. And there were so many other interruptions. Another man came up to me to ask whether I could help him check his emails. A third teenager played heavy metal so loud that I was sure his headphones (or ear drums) would, at any moment, pop out. So I opted for tasks that don’t require really hard, sustained thinking.

Yup, stiiilll looadddiinnnggg

My next computer round took me to computer C1. As soon as I sat down, the librarian asked me if I want to move because next to me, one patron was receiving a tutorial from a student. I migrated again, this time to A3. But alas, I was kicked off the Internet. The system thought I had been on the computer longer than I had. Once again, I went to the sign-up desk, where the librarian she told me that because she had observed me helping an elderly lady navigate her browser and find the refresh button, she would extend my time. Those extra 15 minutes allowed me to get one email written, before the pop-up message “Please save your work now. Your session will end in 0:01:00 min” appeared.

At this point, you’re probably thinking that this is a story about frustration with my unintended media diet. Or about the inefficiencies and shortcomings of library computer stations. And it is. But that’s only a small part. Because before leaving, I decided to talk to the librarian (I’ll refer to her under the pseudonym ‘Mary’) at length about her work. And out of all the media I consumed this week (including that which I consumed with a repaired laptop), my conversations with Mary were my favorite bit of media “consumption”. She told me that she’s learned more about people, about her community, and about public spaces than she’s learned at any other job. Patrons come up to her asking her help to find housing on Craigslist (Imagine how hard it would be to get housing in Cambridge without a laptop to quickly respond to emails!), to draft resumes, to make calls. She told me how the library is a space where a lot of homeless and mentally ill people come, because it’s one of the few public indoor spaces available to them. Especially in the winter, when it’s cold outside and they might not have anywhere to go. Then she told me this story about how the other day, she observed an MIT student standing next to a 80 something year old woman trying to make copies of old photographs to send to her family. And when the student helped the woman who didn’t know how to operate the copy machine, both entered a conversation that challenged them to understand a completely different view of and comfort with technology. (At this point, our conversation was interrupted when the same woman whom I had shown where to find the ‘refresh’ button asked Mary whether she could help her make a call to her bank, which she did).

Cambridge Public Library Computer Room

Issues of access and the “digital divide” are concepts many of us are familiar with. I study these issues, but still use my speedy laptop and tech skills to do so. But this week, I was again reminded of the strange contrast of the world’s tech savviest people living next to other residents who can’t find their browser’s refresh button. And what a difference in media consumption that makes. In addition, the experience got me thinking about the severe limitations of MOOCs in so much of the world, where students watch lectures and complete assignments from internet cafes and other public spaces where noise interruptions, slow internet connections or time caps are at least as big of a problem as in the Cambridge public library. How are you supposed to excel in a MOOC when you’re constantly watching your computer time (or at Internet Cafes, might have to pay for it), or interrupted by noises, other patrons, etc. But the experience also got me to appreciate Cambridge for its amazing librarians. After I got my laptop back, I used RescueTime and paper notes to track my regular media habits much more systematically. You can take a look here, if you’re interested in some thoughts about radio consumption. But this week, the first story about my “diet” left me with a longer lasting bite to chew on (please forgive me for the pun).

I decided to track my media intake by logging the number of articles or videos I view throughout the day. Breaking up my intake into four major categories, I kept a tally for each day and translated it to the graph above. I wanted to track the volume of my intake as well as the changing proportions of where my media came from.

The overall shape marks how many articles I finished while each vertical line is a day that had a varying breakdown of where I found my media. For example, February 7th was a busy day with not much reading — it roughly broke down to 3 flipboard articles, 1 paper article, 1.5 email articles and 1.5 facebook articles.

I am not incredibly surprised at this breakdown considering I have been building up a Flipboard addiction. However, I know this graph would’ve looked very different a handful of weeks ago — I am slowly weaning myself off of Reddit, which used to be my major source for all things cats or design.

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Average and Overview

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