The other day a fell into a curiosity rabbit hole.
I received an email from my website host that my website service may be limited for a short time in two weeks due to an upgrade to PHP 8.0 (PHP is the server-side computer language that powers most websites). They recommended that I check that I have the most current version of PHP to ensure this transition runs smoothly. They assured me that this will enhance website performance, including speed.
This led me to spend some time looking at my website dashboard and my server-side, trying to determine if indeed I did have the latest PHP software (it is). I also spend some time on my backup software to ensure my website is continuing to be backup up daily.
This led to me checking the load speed of my website (despite having a lean simple WordPress structure, is a little slow).
This led to some reading about sources of problems leading to slow websites, which particularly emphasized caches.
This led me to research and subsequently upload the most popular cache software on WordPress, then play with its complex settings (and then subsequently deleting it, as I thought it was too complicated to dive into just before a PHP upgrade!).
So what does all this have to do with my writing?
Not very much. All this website stuff, which I did enjoy playing around with (after all, I was an engineer before becoming a doctor, before becoming a writer) used up about three hours on a late Sunday Morning—some of my prime writing time. And, although I did learn a fair amount, and I likely now do have the tools to speed up my website after my PHP upgrade, what I did was get distracted from my core purpose: writing.
(Of note: during all of this, the first thing I did was to send an email to my website theme developer asking if my theme is PHP 8.0 compatible, and they immediately responded yes, so I could have stopped at that moment, but instead curiosity got the better of me.)
My website rules are not to work on it until evenings, not to work on it for more than one hour a day, and not to work on it until my daily writing is done. I broke all three.
Curiosity for writers is a good thing, but it is a tool, and any tool used in the wrong place and wrong time can become problematic.