Doctor, I Think I Fractured My Attention Span!

It took me over four hours to complete the Linda Stone video. That's right four hours. Now you may be asking yourself how it is that it took an otherwise intelligent person more than four hours to complete a video that is exactly twenty-one minutes and fifty-two seconds long? Well, I'm kinda guilty of Stone's thesis. I think I have Continuous Partial Attention.  Although when one says it like that it sort of sounds like a diagnosis of a life threatening illness. What I mean to say is that it took me four hours to complete a twenty-two minute video because I paused it a gazillion times. Well maybe not an actual gazillion but several times anyway. Several times.

Now one may be wondering why it might be necessary to pause a twenty-two minute video more than once? An excellent question indeed. Well while watching the video I find myself surfing the web for interesting blog post ideas, monitoring CNN for nationwide election results, jotting notes for said blog posts, tweeting interesting and funny anecdotes from my day, checking my email for client inquiries, and generally fretting about my final class project. That's rather a lot to do, huh? I think Stone is certainly on to something in her analysis of the contemporary definition of multi-tasking as compared with the traditional definition.  All of the tasks that I described above require cognition. None of them are automated. Hence at some point it becomes necessary to pause one or two just to have the necessary brain capacity to focus, still partially, on the others. Hence four hours after I started the video I finally finished it.

I've seen several studies recently that conclude that those who hyper multi-task actually decrease their efficiency at completing the tasks they undertake successfully.  This NPR article details a French study that concluded that the human brain is ultimately set up to do no more than two tasks at a time. That's right, our frontal lobes max out at two. When the participants in the study were given a third task to complete researchers found that their accuracy suffered greatly over their initial performance when only two tasks had been assigned. So what does this mean for time starved, harried, multi-taskers like me. Well if I had time to write by hand it would be on the wall - slow down and focus.  As Stone so eloquently illustrates in her examination of our social evolution from a data economy to a wisdom economy society has sort of come full circle.  The information overload which currently faces today's workers and individuals begs for at least a partial return to simpler times.  Value added today means time added, as in how will this particular good or service make my life easier and give me more time?  Ok so maybe instead of hitting pause on the DVR I should force myself to hit the power button. Lesson learned. In fact I will no longer allow myself to hit any pause buttons anywhere any more for any reason. Hmm, I think that one may be a little harder. I'll keep working on it, anyway. Well, that's all for now, I must rush off as I have a million other things I need to get...

Just kidding! I am actually done with this particular post.