Chris Miller

Maybe if you think of your thesis as a *very* long blog post it won't feel quite as bad - Lars Juhl Jensen

I predict you'll succumb to withdrawl symptoms within 72 hours and take a peek :) - Jean-Claude Bradley

You should reward a week of thesis writing with 1 hour of on-ness! - Shirley Wu

Back in the day it used to be Quake II or Starcraft :) - Deepak

so people that liked this message actually don't like you, is that correct? :-) - Paulo Nuin

good luck :) - Pedro Beltrao

Good luck! We'll keep an eye out for you when you surface again! - Cameron Neylon

Good luck! See you on the other side. - Matt Wood

is there another side? - Paulo Nuin

Good luck with that, I should do the same. It's not like this stuff is not searchable once you finish the Ph.D. - Cornelius Toole

RIP - Jean-Claude Bradley

Michael, I recommend *against* this (except Twitter)! Strongly! Instead of shutting down those services, you should use these services to your advantage: Every two full A4 sheets you write a day (text only, graphics don't count here), allows you an hour (scale to your schedule) of FF + GR at the end of the day... when you are tired and unfocused anyway... about the time Google starts worrying about sending weird email. Then, reading a bit is refreshing, gets your mind of your work, allowing good nite sleep. - Egon Willighagen

Yeah, twitter is the one that I would lose :) I don't know that complete disconnection is helpful. As Egon says, it can be used as a reward, a break and what about all those ideas you will miss. The real key is discipline, in both writing and networking. If you write all day, surely you deserve an hour of web activity each night. - Neil Saunders

+1 for Egon - using the social aspects for 'wind down' but also actually using these tools to help what you're doing and make it more efficient (and to get help) might actually be positive - you know how we keep saying this enables more efficient science? Well if you feel the need to completely switch off maybe we are kidding ourselves... - Cameron Neylon

I do switch-off for a week or so on a regular basis, but six months? Sounds like you're going to write absolutely brilliant PhD thesis :). - Pawel Szczesny

I agree with the few last comments - if you use your networks to get info and feedback on your thesis work it makes sense to use them - yes get rid of Twitter and maybe trim down your FF subscriptions - Jean-Claude Bradley

If I had any sense, I'd do this for the next two years to finish mine. :) - Chris Miller