Two years ago, I bought myself a laptop with a discrete graphics card–a dedicated graphics chip which enabled me to play the games I wanted to on my computer. It was my first experiment with real PC gaming. I’ve always been an Xbox person.

It works great, and I love the convenience and flexibility of playing games on my laptop. Unfortunately, it works so well that I rarely want to use my laptop for anything else, which I view as a waste of its power and capabilities. All my plans for productivity seem to disappear when I open Steam and pick out something to play.

But I’ve wanted to get back into blogging for some time now. I also want to be super-productive at work this year. So here’s what I just did:

In my office is the computer I’m currently using: A cheap Sony laptop that’s now more than seven years old. It can’t play games, it weighs a ton, the battery only lasts an hour, the hard drive is slow, the processor is weak, and it has half the memory. Dusting off my old college skills, I installed Linux on a chunk of the hard drive. I’m pretty much all Windows, all day, but I know enough about Linux to be very dangerous. All I have installed on it is a browser and an office suite.

It all came about when someone mentioned The Paradox of Choice, a great book which I’m overdue to reread. The bottom line is that, sometimes, having lots of choices causes a paralyzing overload. Sometimes, less is more.

So I’m here on my “sabotaged” laptop which will pretty much only do this right now, and I have to say, it feels pretty good! I’m looking forward to hopefully making this a continuous part of my growth plan for this year.

Now, I think I’ve earned some Xbox time.