DISQUS

I think you're right. I tend to take only a few photos of the areas I pass through, sort of mementos to remind me what it was like, in broad brush strokes. Sometimes a couple extra shots if I see something funny. Then I try to put the camera away and enjoy what I'm doing.

Good luck. More hints:

You don't need to reply to most things, and shouldn't. The virtuous thing to do is to let most threads die. Propagate only what really needs it.

You don't need to monitor most things. Reading news is a compulsive behavior that just begets more of itself, along with confusion and paralysis. News is a drug in business attire.

You don't need to attend every meeting (unless you scheduled yourself to attend). De-schedule yourself from as many as possible. Most meetings have nothing worthwhile happen at them, they just pad out time with the illusion of activity. Better to go for a walk.

Destroying information is good. The world produces information on its own, as noise. Your job is to extract (and compress) the important parts and destroy the unimportant parts. Zero it out. Destroying information is hard work, but it's actually part of the job.

I know I'm the last person you'd have thought to ask, but I have it here too.

Yeah, I often wonder how well the panic over peak-oil scenarios has incorporated the discretionary nature of so much of our energy use. I guess we'll see, in time.

I guess. It looks to me more like it's forced on them by their positions, and that they sacrifice all unstructured time for a few highly focused personal activities. I think I prefer having a position in life that lets me be a bit unfocused and random, meander around trying new things which might not be ideal, but which I can afford the time to try anyways.

I agree that in order to get anything done these days, you have to cut off the vast majority of things you can read and listen to. Both signal and noise; our brains are small and weak, easily swamped by mailing lists and blogs and whatnot.

Yikes! If that's "greatness" or "accomplishment", they can keep it. It's pretty fucked up that business culture can convince someone that working 12 hour days, reading 600 emails or listening to 200 voicemails a day, attending a dozen meetings a day or living the hell of air transit every few days and never doing anything for pleasure or off the clock is a rewarding existence. What about their families or friends outside of work? What about fun, calm, beauty, spontaneity or solitude? What about wandering around, eating tasty meals, sleeping in, sitting and doing nothing, hanging out chatting?

yeah, this past couple years has been all about this issue for me. recently I'm trying to go even further and do explicit mindfulness exercize: pay detailed attention to the full sensations of all physical objects when I'm away from the computer, no matter how mundane; don't let my mind wander or my attention drift back to something think-y.

often in arts (rather than business), you are focusing on improving your craft (rather than your product), so bad tools make you a better artist.