Over the past year or two I’ve become increasingly convinced that one of the keys to personal productivity is to spend as little time as possible connected to the Internet. For some–for example, those who need to be constantly available via an instant messenging client for collaboration with remotely located coworkers–that may not be practical. Others may be so disciplined that they don’t suffer from the temptation to succumb to the manifold distractions presented by Web browing and emailing. But for those of us who do not fall into one or both of these categories, offline living–connecting to the Internet only for say, an hour a day, or two hours a day two or three days a week, depending on your circumstances–can be a major productivity booster.

In a guest post for the Getting Things Done-oriented personal productivity blog 43 Folders¹, Paul Ford describes some of the symptoms of Internet-induced productivity loss:

My work requires me to patiently work through things and come up with fresh ideas. And I can honestly say that since broadband Internet came to my home a year and a half ago my stock of new, fresh, fun ideas has grown very thin. It’s just too much. My mind can’t wander, because, with anything that interests me, I can look it up on Wikipedia to gain some context. Before I know it I’ve got thirty tabs open at once in Firefox. Then new email comes in.

Ford admits to being a "weak-willed" and prone to "disasters, like reading Slashdot threads, or meandering through Google News, or ‘researching’ something on Wikipedia and following a chain of fifty links."

These descriptions resonated with me pretty deeply, and my guess is that for most people they have a more than familiar ring.

Recognizing that the Internet is an indispensible tool for virtually anyone living in a modern society, "knowledge worker" or otherwise, how does one practically go about leading an offline life?

In my case, it means no Internet access at home. I have a Wifi-enabled notebook computer which I use to connect to a wireless network at the university where I study, or at a nearby coffee shop. I usually connect about three times a week for around 2 hours at a time, browsing the Web for news, researching projects for my graduate study, sending email, administering Web site projects, etc. (Admittedly, my current life as a graduate student with minimal formal work responsibilities makes offline living less challenging for me than it might otherwise be, but I hope to be able to apply the principles of offline living whatever the circumstances I might find myself in in the future.)

Now, the key thing to recognize here is that I do not restrict time at the computer to these online sessions. I spend many more hours with my computer offline reading downloaded articles, programming, reading and composing emails, etc. The benefit of being offline is that it short-circuits such time-wasting propensities as the link-clicking excursions Ford describes and the temptation to check your email every 15 minutes. If I find that I need access to an item I failed to download for offline browsing, I make a note to look for it the next time I’m online.

The following is a list of a few tools that facilitate offline living.

Firefox Web browser with Scrapbook Firefox extension

This is the number one necessity for anyone who aspires to successful offline living. Scrapbook is a tool that allows you to create and maintain a library of downloaded articles (or entire sites, for that matter) for offline browsing in a very agile manner. The ability to categorize and search that library is a secondary benefit.

Desktop email client (E.g., Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook (Express))

You can’t aspire to offline living if you only do email using Hotmail or Yahoo! Web mail. You’ll need to be able to read and compose emails offline, and send them when you connect again.

RSS feed reader

Subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite sites. Some will provide the full text of the article, and you’ll be able to read them offline through the reader itself. For those that don’t, you may want to use the reader’s article flagging feature to remind yourself to download the article the next time you’re online.

Note taking/task management program

You’ll need a program that allows you to create a list of reminders for tasks (whether an article to read or some other online activity) that can only be accomplished online. Which program you use will depend on your taste. Scrapbook has a notes feature you may find useful. I currently use gJots for Linux, a free-form hierarchical notetaking tool.

Darcs revision control system (for programmers)

More mainstream revision control systems like CVS or its successor Subversion require frequent online access to the central repository. Darcs (and similarly distributed systems like Arch) is different. From the Darcs Wiki: "You can commit changes even if you’re on the road with no access to the server. That’s because your own working directory is a repository in its own right. When you get home, you do a ‘darcs push’ to commit to the public server."

An objection to all this might be that the very concept of "offline" could very well be obsolete some five or ten years into the future when the airwaves are bathed with ubiquitous free Wifi. (Indeed an undisciplined person aspiring to apply the principles of offline living at home might discover that his or her neighbor has an open Wifi connection.) Despite the perceived benefits of such a state of affairs, it would be unfortunate for a number of reasons. At the very least, offline living would become more challenging, especially for the weak-willed and undisciplined. For now, though, and for those whose work conditions allow for it, it’s a practical and effective solution for enhancing personal productivity.