I’m in the midst of a bandwidth crisis these days. As I wrote before, my current Internet connection has a quota of 1,000 MB per month. Up till now I’ve used 880 MB with still one week to go. Needless to say, such situation puts me in unintentional Internet diet.

Despite the incovenience, I can see the positive side of it. There are at least two benefits for me:

1. I use my online time to do only the important
   The unimportant stuff is automatically eliminated; there is no bandwidth for it. This is the direct effect of Parkinson’s law, though the limited resource in this case is bandwidth instead of time.
2. I reduce noise in my life
   Internet diet automatically means that less information is entering my life and thus less noise.

Of course, there are still other benefits which I wrote in 5 Reasons Why Less Internet is Good for Me (and You), but these two  currently resonate the most with me. I especially feel the benefit of reduced noise. Reduced noise means higher clarity, and I love it. Combining ”doing only the important” and “higher clarity” means increased effectiveness for me.

Now, just in case you are interested to start your own Internet diet, here are two ways to do it:

1. Limit your online time
   You can allocate certain amount of time to go online, after which you should end your Internet session and go offline. One tool that can help you is Cool Timer. Set a duration in Cool Timer and let it counts the time down for you.
2. Limit your bandwidth usage
   Alternatively, you can limit your bandwidth usage. One tool that can help you is NetMeter. Go to its Options menu, open the Graph tab, and check Show UL/DL totals. Your total bandwidth usage will be shown all time. You can reset it daily if you want to.

Choose the one that works for you. In my case, the first option might not work well since I often need to do web research which takes time. It is the second option which I currently use (though unintentionally).