With all of the social networks out there to keep up with, RSS feeds to follow, and multiple email inboxes that seem to never stay clean, keeping up with things online can make your thought patterns quite chaotic — especially if you’re focused on maintaining an online presence such as a blog or Twitter.

During the course of my increased interests in various social networks and personal online projects, I’ve noticed my mind has become increasingly used to skipping from article to article, and conversation to conversation. This sort of disorganized mental behavior on a consistent basis seemed to make it increasingly difficult for me to maintain focus on single tasks. So I became a serious multitasker…

However, extreme multitasking may seem like you’re accomplishing more in the same amount of time because you “feel” busy. But as your attention is drawn across multiple tasks and thoughts, work quality and efficiency can diminish a formidable amount. I needed to do something to snap my mind out of its current state of contemplative pandemonium.

I had a short vacation that I had planned coming up and just before I left, I decided I would completely unplug myself from the digital world. I didn’t bring my laptop and I kept my iPhone on “airplane mode” the entire time.

Upon returning, I noticed that my four days of solitude away from the web gave my mind a tremendous boost in clarity — I was able to focus more. I figured that what I had experienced was just like someone who has gained weight from eating too much junk food: my mind had suffered from the negative drawbacks of consuming too much short form content.

To expand on the idea of taking a digital diet, next time you find yourself with a lack of focus and clarity at home or in the office try this: turn off your laptop, put an out of office reply on your email, switch your phone off with a customized voicemail saying that you’ll “be back in a few days”. Try it this weekend.

It’s amazing what going purely analog can do for your psyche and productivity levels.

—

EDIT (January 13, 2009 7:17 AM): ZenHabits recently posted a wonderful list of ways that being unbalanced can make you more productive and coming in at number 6 is “disconnecting”.