I’m prone to distraction. Part of this stems from many years working in newsrooms, mostly as an editor who thrived on the dual high of daily deadlines and the unexpected. Loving all things web-based hasn’t helped either.
Now comes Maggie Jackson’s book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, which examines the effects of our increasingly fragmented ability to focus.
In a Q & A titled “Digital Overload is Frying Our Brains,” she recently told Wired magazine:
This degree of interruption is correlated with stress and frustration and lowered creativity. That makes sense. When you’re scattered and diffuse, you’re less creative. When your times of reflection are always punctured, it’s hard to go deeply into problem-solving, into relating, into thinking.
Reading about Jackson’s work reminded me of my good friend Charlie. I’m confident he knows how to focus with admirable rigor. Charlie doesn’t respond to email when he’s traveling — he’s got enough on his mind, piloting commercial jets.
After reading my blog post extolling the use of Twitter, Charlie commented that maybe I “should step away from the keyboard.” Even when we were kids, he saw things clearly.
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I couldn’t agree more. I’m stepping away from Twitter for awhile, as well as just time on the computer in general. I feel like I’m discovering my life all over again. Weird timing on this post of yours!
Good luck, Lelo. My keyboard has apparently hypnotized me. Maybe reading the book will serve as an intervention to free me from the spell.
MIke,
I just got home from a long trip and am catching the 5:45 flt in the am from Boston to Punta Cana, DR. I was catching up on some e-mail and visited “Cracked Window” as well. I loved the pic of Atticus and was drawn to the “Step Away from the Keyboard” story. As I progressed to read more I realized why I way drawn to the title. Our daughter, Eliza, is skiing up in Quebec with another family and Melissa and I are headed to the DR for 6 days of fun and sun. Needless to say, I will not be taking my laptop!
Hope all is well and we can connect here in NE when it warms up. Enjoy your little boy; he’s so cute.