Years ago my computer addiction included playing cards (I think it was called Solitaire), browsing websites (news during the day, porn at night), later also Facebook and some other social apps. Now I found myself addicted to R. However stupid it may sound, it seems to be true. By addiction I mean: it is not easy to stop when you need to do something really important. All those things before (cards, news, porn, Facebook) are understandable, and I bet I am not the only one who fights with that. But R? Come on. I thought that I had a perfect therapy last year after the semester of teaching R three hours per week (and countless hours preparing the class and checking assignments). Right, I was sick of seeing R for a while, but not for long. It was around that time I also found Shiny, an interactive option how to play R, and coded my first Shiny app. It’s nice – you click, something changes, click again, changes again, keep clicking, improving, adding new ideas, making new apps… and addiction is cooked, no escape.

Some time ago I came with an idea to introduce “No Computer Day.” A day, when you should not touch the computer, at all. Obviously, it cannot be during the working day (unless I go to the field), so the weekend is a hot candidate. It would be cheating to set the No Computer Day on the day you go out of the house – so as so you would not touch it. No, just set up the ordinary Sunday, when you have a plan to relax, but ordinarily, you would still end up sitting in front of the computer (I may do something useful today) and keep clicking (doing nothing useful at all). It’s similar to “a week without alcohol” (all bottles in the house need to be locked somewhere since the late evening feeling of “just one beer” is surprisingly strong). Just leave your computer switched off (not just sleeping – you may touch the mouse, and it will wake up, with blinking screen luring your attention). You will see how difficult is it to resist (ok, I will just check emails, what if something important is there!), but how rewarding it could get (clean the house, read the book, fix what should have been fixed long time ago, go for a walk, sleep – add your own “no-computer” items).

Sometimes I wonder: how did the life of scientist (let’s say a teacher at university doing also research, or simply a full-time scientist in academia) looked like before the computers were standing on her/his desk? Come to office, make a coffee, check the mails, do paperwork (ok, this sounds almost the same as now). And then? Take a pencil, read a paper and write a notes, take a typewriter, write a short piece of manuscript, put it away, take a pencil again, make a phone call, take a typewriter, go for lunch, meet a colleague for coffee, pencil, paper, typewriter, … Anyway, the most important currency of scientists are the ideas, and those are not born in the computer, but in the head, often while doing things entirely not related to work or when the brain is simply idle. What if sitting the whole day in front of blinking computer makes the time for these idle moments rare, and thus the productivity goes down? Ok, by productivity I don’t mean the number of published papers (although I should, since that’s precisely how my productivity is measured by school/grant agency/colleague). By productivity I mean coming up with some interesting idea. What if switching off the computer (or even temporarily moving the computer somewhere out of the sight) in fact increases this kind of productivity?

Ok, but I still need to boil these ideas down to a paper…