Man, I love Google.
It’s fabulous to live in an era where just about any silly question I
want to ask can be answered in moments.
- Who was that amazing, skinny-waisted, tap-dancing sister who
played opposite Rosemary Clooney in White
Christmas?
- How do HTML table styles work, again?
- What could I make for lunch with kale and tahini?
- Are there any new virus removal programs?
- Who wrote Le
Grande Maunes?
- What good shielded outdoor lights are available?
Of course, there’s a downside. If you’ve got the discipline to find your
answer and then get off the web and move on, you’re good. I don’t seem to have it. So many of my Google searches turn up all sorts of
interesting things that I want to explore.
Often they spawn more Google searches (I’d love to blame this all on a
nefarious plot by Google). Articles have
links to other articles.
I mostly ignore videos on the grounds that they take too
long (unless I’m trying to learn something and so far the written answers aren’t
helping). But that's probably a false economy. I can get lost for big
chunks of time reading stuff that, eventually, is not even related to my
original question. Is it fun? Sure. Does it help me get my work done? Well…
In this age of infinite information, it’s very easy to get
lost in it, especially if you enjoy reading and the process of learning like I
do. How do you decide when you’ve had
enough? For me, it depends – on how
black-and-white the question is, how comfortable I am that I know what I’m
doing right now and don’t need much input from an expert. And how much I’m enjoying the task at
hand. If I’d really rather not be doing
what I’m doing, it’s easy to rationalize that a differently-worded search might
come up with better info, or that these 4 related articles might be useful
before I get back to work. All in the
name of …research, of course.
I already set a timer for Facebook because aside from
keeping in touch with friends, the thing’s a time sink. Maybe I should do that before I type
something into that search box, too.
What do you do to keep from endlessly wandering around in
all that delicious information out there?
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