Make the coffee, check the RSS, groom the avatar, freshen the blog, make nice with the Twitter, now it's time to ... do the same thing again. Meanwhile your job/project/spouse/story sits there, staring at you with big cow eyes and wonders if you will ever leave the grid and do something real, something productive, something that will yield cash money and not just more followers on Twitter.... [read more]

Make the coffee, check the RSS, groom the avatar, freshen the blog, make nice with the Twitter, now it's time to ... do the same thing again. Meanwhile your job/project/spouse/story sits there, staring at you with big cow eyes and wonders if you will ever leave the grid and do something real, something productive, something that will yield cash money and not just more followers on Twitter. Most of us work alone in a room, armed with a desktop that is more powerful -- and distracting -- than entire offices a decade ago, and yet the actual throughput of an average day can be negligible. Let's talk to some people who have actually done things -- written books, built businesses, created technology -- about their process. Do they have a clear, bright line between consuming media and producing it? Is it best to have multiple streams on one screen or toggle between to stay on task? Do they have a day part when they are off the grid? And why do great ideas come in the shower? Let's figure out whether the Web is the greatest productivity tool ever invented or a destroyer of initiative and long thoughts.