An article on the BBC website recently gave readers a chance to comment on why they didn’t have a mobile phone (about 14% of British people don’t have them). Some of the mobile “refuseniks” highlight a well-known issue: attention and multitasking…
“Mobiles are like needy children, always wanting attention. I wanted to cut out the stress.”
The issue, dubbed “continuous partial attention” by Linda Stone, has been discussed for many years now. Linda points out that continuously staying on alert for new information from a range of sources simultaneously is actually bad for your health – mental and physical. She anticipates a new trend where we will select technologies that protect us from too much “noise” and allow us to focus on quality experiences, relationships and information.
A very entertaining article on TheAtlantic.com predicts a dramatic change in the way use out attention: a multitasking crash, followed by an attention deficit recession. The author, Walter Kern, discusses recent psychological research…
“Researchers asked a group of 20-somethings to sort index cards in two trials, once in silence and once while simultaneously listening for specific tones in a series of randomly presented sounds. The subjects’ brains coped with the additional task by shifting responsibility from the hippocampus—which stores and recalls information—to the striatum, which takes care of rote, repetitive activities. Thanks to this switch, the subjects managed to sort the cards just as well with the musical distraction—but they had a much harder time remembering what, exactly, they’d been sorting once the experiment was over.
Even worse, certain studies find that multitasking boosts the level of stress-related hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline and wears down our systems through biochemical friction, prematurely aging us. In the short term, the confusion, fatigue, and chaos merely hamper our ability to focus and analyze, but in the long term, they may cause it to atrophy.”
Social tools consultant and writer Stowe Boyd disagrees. He suggests that human consciousness can handle multiple attention demands simultaneously, and get a lot of joy and satisfaction out of it. He points out that we’ve been doing for as long as we’ve been humans…
“One Eye on the flint we are knapping, and one eye scanning the savannah for predators, chatting the whole time.”
Pay attention to you
I can only conclude that everyone’s capacity for and attitude to continuous partial attention is different. Some people are very social, and enjoy flitting between conversations at the virtual cocktail party. Others prefer deep, zen-like focus on a single task. And some of us will mix and match depending on what the day brings.
But whatever your natural ability, it’s important to make sure that you use your attention the way your want to – don’t let the technology control you.
Watch yourself for the next week. Are you spreading your attention so thinly that you end up stressed and exhausted? Are you actually getting anything done? If not try this:
- Reduce the number of communication channels you use. Do you really need twitter and facebook and a blog and e-mail Skype and MSN Messenger and text messages…? Really? Choose a few channels and let people know that those are your preferred ones.
- Set chunks of time when you disconnect from some or all of your channels. For example…
- Use technologies to help you filter the noise and free your attention. Servcies like Digg or Amatomu will select the best things for you.
“[…] in recent weeks prominent bloggers have been choosing to disconnect. Ken Camp turned off Twitter for a week, and didn’t miss it. Robert Scoble announced last week that his blogging would be slowing down, because he was going to work on getting back into shape. Mark Evans has chosen to not check BlackBerry mail after 6 PM.” (Saunderslog)
Now stop reading this, go find a good book, get comfy and read that for a while instead.
(Thanks to Martin Storey and Simon Johnson for the pointers.)