VOIP Phones – The Bane of Productivity

I should never have installed Skype on my PC. Thanks to the advent of VOIP phones, people who previously would never have bothered calling me due to the cost involved of making a phone call and would’ve sent a text or an email instead are now talking to me all the time.

On the one hand, it’s great; I’m in touch with my friends much better than I was previously, I talk to people that I don’t see very often rather than just texting or forwarding funny emails, and generally I feel like it’s enhanced my relationships with my friends and family. On the other hand, everyone having VOIP phones has seriously hampered my productivity.

At home, I’m working on a bunch of projects – a book, a couple of comics, regular arty-farty Photoshop pieces, a short film and a website. Basically, I’m flipping busy and sometimes, I just want to have a night where I can blitz one of these projects, be it a bit of a play in Dreamweaver for the website or blasting out a couple of thousand words on the book or one of the comics, there’s a lot of stuff I want to do and every single time I make a start on it, my VOIP phone rings and I end up chatting for ages and then I’m not in the mood to work on whatever project I’m on.

It’s my own fault really. It’s not because my friends and family are inconsiderate, it’s just that if I really want to work on something, I should disconnect my VOIP phone and turn off my mobile.