After three years of experiments, TierneyLab is shutting down. I’ll still be testing ideas in my Findings columns and in other articles for The Times, and you can keep up with them by following me on Twitter. You can also keep trying the weekly math puzzle at its new home starting next Monday at The Times Wordplay blog.
I’ll miss our debates here — well, most of them, anyway — but I like to think we can have even better ones now that I’ll be concentrating on my columns and on longer articles (and there will be plenty of opportunity for you to dispute them). As much as I enjoyed doing the blog, I found myself wanting the opportunity to delve more deeply into subjects. Contrarianism tends to be time-consuming.
When I was working on a column last year about the science of concentration, I got some advice from Winifred Gallagher, the author of “Rapt”: At the start of your workday, ignore all short-term distractions (e-mail, blogs, etc) and devote 90 solid minutes to your most important project. It seemed like an excellent rule, but I kept violating it because my day always began with a blog in need of filling. I realized other writers managed to balance blogs with longer articles, but I finally decided that sort of multitasking was beyond me....
My feelings exactly. After a few weeks of near-silence around here (a few silent weeks on the blog were chaotic at home, ending with my entire family of six getting a series of rabies shots...), I plan to follow Tierney's lead and focus on fewer, but more substantial pieces. Like Tierney, I'm just not much of a multitasker. I find few things more enjoyable than being able to spend 90 solid minutes immersed in a project. High-throughput blogging just isn't for me, and I hope to write better by writing less.
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