Attention and Distraction

The idea of whether the Internet is making us more intelligent or less intelligent, more vulnerable to distraction or more capable of skillful multi-tasking, seems to have obsessed the majority of print and online media journalists lately. No doubt these journalists are concerned with the fate of their jobs, as print media dwindles and people become increasingly less likely to pay for reporting that often costs thousands of dollars to accomplish. Out of this so-called “crisis of attention” has emerged a new genre of writing, a kind of meta-reporting in which journalists, distracted by the swarm of new media overtaking print, are focusing their attention on new neurological research and technological advancements to try and figure out where the future of their own profession, and indeed the entire globalized world, is headed.

One of the more notable recent articles to address this topic was Sam Anderson’s New York magazine piece called “In Defense of Distraction.”[1] Basically Anderson says that the amount of distracting media content available these days (through iPods, iPhones, 24/7 cable news, multiple email accounts, YouTube, etc) may, over time, enable human beings to be better at “paying attention.”

He begins the article by citing a number of scary statistics about the toll the Internet and streaming media has reeked on human beings: Young adults in South Korea have perished from exhaustion after marathon “gaming” sessions; distraction is a “full-blown epidemic” akin to smoking years ago, when people didn’t understand how unhealthy smoking really was; Einstein, were he alive today, would have been too distracted to come up with the theory of relativity. But Anderson soon comes around to say that attention is actually a kind of concentrated form of distraction. Focusing on a pen on your desk, for instance, is a way of harnessing your distractions around a single point. You start to think interesting thoughts about the desk, the pen, ink, the act of writing, etc. You become distracted, in other words, by concentrating on the pen.

We’re always distracted. It’s our natural condition. But too much concentration, Anderson says, can actually be a bad thing. Adderall, for example, often causes people to think mechanically, as if with blinders on, limiting one’s ability to be distracted and thus think creatively. In a recent article in Slate,[2] Joshua Foer spent an experimental week taking Adderall, and found that he was much less likely to be distracted by email, but also less likely to think outside the box. To experience the random associations or sensations that can often trigger a cool new angle on an idea, he needed to be a bit more distractable. Anderson uses the example of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, Proust’s giant seven-volume masterpiece of reminiscence that was initially triggered by a random sense memory—the taste of a cookie dipped in tea that transported him back to his youth. Had Proust been taking Adderall, Anderson writes, he might’ve been so caught up in whatever conversation he was having or book he was reading that the memory of eating his “madeleine,” as the cookie was called, may not have registered at all.

Nicholas Carr, a former IT consultant who writes periodically for The Atlantic, made some darker prophecies on the subject of attention and distraction last year in an article titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” [3] Taking the opposite track from Anderson, Carr starts by addressing the benefits of the Internet. People may be reading more than they used to in the seventies and eighties, thanks to the web and other text providers. And deep research is gloriously simpler thanks to Google. Whereas before you might have to spend a day in the library stacks to find a relevant quote, you can now search for it in Google and shazaam, there it is. Three seconds versus 5 hours. But Carr is infinitely skeptical of the toll this ease-of-access may be taking on the biological network of our brains. Technology may not only be influencing what we think, but how we think:

[W]hat the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

Carr foresees a time not unlike that portrayed in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 Space Odyssey, in which the most ostensibly “human” character turns out to be a machine. The essence of Kubrick’s prophecy, Carr writes, is that “as we come to rely on computers to mediate our understanding of the world, it is our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence.”

In my own life, I’ve noticed a decreased ability to pay attention to books and magazines the way that I used to, before the Internet became such a big part of everyone’s life. There’s always something else to do, to look up, to watch. Spending an hour reading a novel or a long article in the New Yorker is becoming less and less feasible. I find myself getting antsy, losing my place, drifting off, especially if I happen to be reading in the same room as my computer—that portal to the land of universal knowledge and, of course, distraction. Granted, there are a lot of great things on the Internet, things that have certainly changed the way I think about the world in a positive and beneficial way. Never have human beings been able to connect with one another so easily, and connect to ideas so easily, which hopefully increases our wisdom and ability to empathize with the rest of the species.

And yet, it’s hard not to feel like a kind of lab rat, punching the feeder bar for more and more input, more content, more blips of temporary pleasure from videos of cats in funny costumes. And the sad truth, as Carr makes clear, is that companies like Google have an economic interest in making us more and more distracted, so that they can learn more about our interests and personal habits and then advertise accordingly. They don’t want concentrated thinking; they want you to continue hyperlinking and surfing wildly and constantly, instead of spending thirty minutes contemplating an author’s intentions. That gets them nowhere. They, too, are thirsty for input.

For the moment, the solution for many ambitious Americans seems to be neuro-enhancers, drugs that increase out ability to pay attention and perform complex tasks more efficiently. But again, what part of ourselves are we losing by taking these drugs? The long-term consequences of Adderall addiction can be just as devastating as an addiction to speed—the gradual burning-out of important neural circuitry. Perhaps the best solution is to take up meditating, or make sure you get some weekly exercise, or just continue to think about stuff and have face-to-face conversations about non-technological subjects. Unless some apocalyptic event wipes out the whole mainframe Internet circuit board, we’re going to be living with frighteningly advanced technology for millennia to come. We better start learning how to ignore it from time to time.

[1] http://nymag.com/news/features/56793

[2] http://www.slate.com/id/2118315

[3] http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

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The Urgency of Importance

In Stephen Covey’s book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” he talks about the difference between Important and Urgent matters, and how dividing our time in a balanced way between those two types of activities can make us more or less effective.

It’s amazing how something that urgently demands our attention almost always seems to appear important. But is it? Understanding how to recognize the two as separate has really been an eye-opener for me and has helped me prioritize how I spend my time.

Urgent matters require our immediate attention; we react to urgent needs. It could be something as simple as putting down a book we are studying to answer a question shouted from the next room.

Every one of us probably knows someone who’s permanently in crisis mode, constantly putting out fires, busy, busy, busy. But, have you noticed, that type of person is frequently stuck somewhere shy of their goals because they never seem to have the time to get to the things they say are important to them?

I am not saying that urgent matters are always not important. A true crisis must be tended to. But a problem—something like figuring out how to clear the cache on your computer so it runs smoother—must take a number and wait behind matters that actually are important.

Important activities are those that help you get closer to the goals you have set for yourself. Important tasks frequently are things we must do on our own initiative, without some outside circumstance creating a sense of urgency. Important things come in all sizes, but usually require planning and effort, sometimes simply to prevent situations from becoming urgent. For example, taking care of your own body now is important because it may help you to avoid a future consumed by illness and urgent visits to the doctor. (I have barely missed the gym since I had this epiphany!)

We ignore important tasks early in the day or early in life, they have a way of escalating into urgent situations.

It’s probably becoming apparent that one thing that’s extremely important is to separate important tasks from urgent ones and assign them time appropriately. Once you’ve clarified that something is important, it’s your responsibility to assign a sense of urgency and get it done. If you’re an entrepreneur, think about the aspects of your business that are urgent as opposed to important. Consider delegating urgent tasks by getting an assistant. Your effectiveness will dramatically increase if you start spending by far the greatest percentage of your time attending to the important things. If you take care of the important tasks you’ll keep them from becoming urgent and reduce the amount of time devoted to crisis management in your life.

As I said, time for mortals is finite. In fact, we never really know when we’ll run out of it. To make matters more complicated, there turns out to be truth in the old saying that you never have enough time to do everything you’d like to do. So you really do need to decide what is important, and take care of business!

What We Believe

If you are not working for yourself, you are working for someone else. The difference between the two, in terms of potential for success and self-fulfillment, is vast. In a world that is reeling from lost opportunity, corporate irresponsibility, and mismanagement, we believe that it is possible for anyone who has the desire and the will, equipped with the proper education, to become a successful Internet-based entrepreneur.