Put the Laptop Away
April 20, 2020

Every morning when I sit down to write, I reach down to my left and pull my
laptop out from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. About the time I think
about what to make for dinner, I unplug my laptop--mouse, backup drive, power
cord--and put it back into the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. In fact,
whenever I'm not actively using it, I try to keep it off my desk.

My first laptop--and in fact the first computer I ever owned--was purchased in
1995, I think. I don't even remember what brand it was but it finally died
around 2001. I bought another, which lasted until 2008. Then a third, which
lasted until I went to grad school in 2016 and needed something capable of
online classes. (Number three still works and is in the closet, reformatted as
an emergency backup to the one on which I'm typing this.) Of those four laptops,
only the two in the middle had places/desks where they sat all the time.

I started out thinking that laptops should be put away when not in use, then
moved away from that idea, and then came back to it. Part of that had to do with
me returning to longhand writing--I needed the space on my desk. Part of it came
from the realization that when my computer was always in front of me, I had a
habit of using it even when I didn't really need to. With a dictionary in reach,
I'd instead type a word and then spell-check it. A quote might get a quick
internet search, rather than paging through my Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
Run to the exocortex rather than looking within or on the bookshelf. I came to
feel that I was relying more on the laptop-as-conduit-to-the-internet than on my
own brain.

So now I put my laptop away when I'm not using it and at the end of each day.
I'm not able to tell you to what degree it may have changed the way I think and
write, but I can tell you that it's had an effect. Though sometimes I still hear
the laptop's siren song, I'm better able to resist the urge to hop online for
"just a second."

Even if you don't decide to take up longhand writing (which I've written about
here[1] and here[2], consider putting away your laptop (or throwing a sheet
or dust-cover over your desktop) when you're not using it and see what, if any, 
changes it makes in your writing (and life) habits.

[1] https://www.andrewgudgel.com/blog/the-notebook-habit.txt
[2] https://www.andrewgudgel.com/blog/what-we-leave-behind-ii.txt

(c) 2020 by Andrew Gudgel 
email: contact [at] andrewgudgel.com