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The Epidemic of Digital Distraction
asto21 writes "Almost no one does just one thing anymore. The screens won't let us. And in an incredible burst of human evolution, our minds have grown accustomed to monitoring multiple inputs at once. Yeah, you're reading this post. But we're nearly three paragraphs in. So if you're anything like me, it's about that time to check Twitter, count the additions to your Google Plus circles, read a handful of new incoming email messages, and chime in on a couple of ongoing instant message conversations. But are we paying less attention to important details?"
I think the author was trying to show us that we could follow multiple storylines, ie multiple inputs, but I got confused very quickly. I guess I'm just not fully "evolved" yet to process multiple inputs.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
The screens won't let us?
Yes they will. Seriously! Just close all the windows you have open to things that distract you. The screens won't open them back up! I promise!
Read my blog.
Quick, someone make a reply claiming they don't suffer from this type of thing, but then pretending to get distracted by something else part way through typing it! It will be hilarious, and not at all obvious!
(I wonder how long until someone replies point out that my post is also a rather unoriginal thing to say...)
We used to call this condition, having our attention hopping from one thing to another to another in quick succession, "running around like a chicken with it's head cut off". You deal with a lot of things, but you don't have time to really pay attention to any one of them because your attention needs to hop to the next. You waste time shifting mental gears, and more time picking up your train of thought for this item. In computer science we call it "thrashing", and it's something to be avoided because the overhead of context-switching eats up cycles that could be used for actual work. In extreme cases it gets so bad the system's doing nothing but thrash, no actual work gets done because all the cycles are eaten up by swapping and context switching. Humans are vulnerable to the same thing.
That's why geeks value being "in the zone" so much. It's nothing mysterious, it's just the condition of being able to focus on one specific thing without interruption, and it makes you so much more productive (hence why geeks seek it out).
"People can't multitask very well, and when people say they can, they're deluding themselves," said neuroscientist Earl Miller. And, he said, "The brain is very good at deluding itself."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95256794
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'So if you're anything like me, ...'
Thank Vishnu I'm not.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
I have three friends who are accomplished novelists. Two of them have cut off all Internet access to their homes. The other leaves his devices behind and sits in an unconnected cafe with a pen and a stack of paper for several hours a day. They know that even their impressive abilities to concentrate can't compete with a connected computer.
This guy comes up with a preposterous thesis and declares anyone who doesn't fit in with his world view is a loser. "If you're not trying to do 5 different digital things at a time, it's because you've given up, not because you actually want to concentrate on a single task."
He also ignores all the evidence that we aren't as good at multitasking as we thing we are.
I prefer ADHD
But we're nearly three paragraphs in.
I'm not sure which is funnier -- that the sentence was left in the /. summary, or that it appears in the fourth paragraph of TFA.
This guy's the limit!
This one deserves "-1, self-delusional" if anything does.
People haven't evolved to efficiently handle multiple inputs at once. The linked story certainly makes that statement, but provides absolutely no supporting evidence. If anything, it demonstrates the opposite with lines such as this: "It's getting harder to concentrate on anything, even the stuff that's clearly the most important." The poorly-written anecdotes don't show the author or his friends dealing well with all these inputs - they demonstrate the difficulty all parties are having coping. Another example is the part about his novelist friends who've removed all internet access from their homes because otherwise they can't concentrate on their work.
Frankly, most of the article reads like - at best - a Readers' Digest submission. But it is Gizmodo, so there you go.
#DeleteChrome
When I need to do something important, I focus. No distractions, just pay attention.
Now, when goofing off, it's OK to multitask, but not when it's important to get it right.
It may just be a young people's problem. Us old farts know that if you want to do something right, you need to pay attention.
I have three friends who are accomplished novelists. Two of them have cut off all Internet access to their homes. The other leaves his devices behind and sits in an unconnected cafe with a pen and a stack of paper for several hours a day.
Years ago, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle had taken an advance on a book, and were getting very close to deadline with not much written. So they went off to an isolated cabin to write. They each wrote for half the day, taking turns; one sleeping during the day. The resulting book was reasonably good, and finished on time.
tl;dr
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
We don't! We may have 3 IMs, 4 new emails, 12 tweets, and a Facebook message to read, but the reality is, we don't read them all at once. It may be shortsighted, but I've always considering multitasking to be an illusion. We may be rapidly shifting focus, but we're never really focused on more than one thing at any given time.
I've learned over the years that prioritizing, and putting items/tasks/people on "the back burner" (even if for a few minutes) has resulted in an increase in quality of work, and overall sanity. Focus on a task. Only shift gears if absolutely necessary (priorities will always do this), or when there is a lull of activity (waiting on approvals, server builds, etc.).
Don't lie to me! You know when you're answering 2 IM conversations with a phone in your ear, you're cutting corners, missing information, and just trying to shut someone the hell up, so you can slow down and take a breath.... so politely put them off.
Yeah, right. "evolved" - in less than one generation. Someone here desperately needs to go back to evolution 101 and figure out what the term means.
So you really mean "adapt", yes? Maybe you should do less Twitter checking while you're writing blog postings. Because so far, all the studies that I have read or read about strongly indicate that so-called multitasking is highly detrimental to all the covered tasks. Flow and concentration remain as powerful tools as they are, because - surprise, surprise - the human brain really hasn't changed all that much in the last 1000 or so years. It is, however, much more adaptable than we thought for a long time, and if you give it the same tasks over and over, it will learn to cope with them. Somehow. That doesn't necessarily mean good.
Oh, and then there are all these little psychological facts that we've uncovered over the past century or so, that all indicate that one of the strongest and most reliable powers of the brain is the ability to delude itself. It is more than fascinating what people believe inside their heads and how little that sometimes has to do with outside reality. Book hint "Mistakes were made (but not by me)".
So you may think that your brain has evolved to cope with the demands of modern multi-channel communication. Now be scientific and make the test whether
a) anything critical really is different in your brain compared to someone who doesn't do this kind of attention-hopping
b) what you believe about yourself and your ability to handle multiple inputs simultaneously or in rapid succession is at all true
check your assumptions first. Then, and only then, write something that requires them to be true in order to make any sense at all.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
We dealt with multitasking here before, and how badly people do it. Empirically, those who rate themselves good at multitasking are usually worse at it than those who rate themselves poorly.
It's not called "distracting" without reason.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I know this is completely off topic, but pretentious assholes like this writer are the reason people hate you Apple Fanboi idiots.
When I woke up this morning, I was just a writer and tech investor, tucked behind the warm glow of my 27-inch Apple monitor.
Did you really need to specify it was a 27" APPLE monitor? Did it add anything to that sentence, other than to underscore you're a prick? No, it didn't. The author could just as easily have said "the warm glow of my monitor." and had the same effect. But instead he had to underscore it was an APPLE monitor... like it was something SPECIAL and UNIQUE! Like he was COOL for having an Apple.
On a recent morning, my wife was busy with several work related tasks on her Macbook Air when our two year-old daughter
And the author does it again... couldn't just say "Laptop" or "Computer," but had to say Macbook Air! Again, like it was unique or special. News flash! Lots of people have those things and they can be acquired by anyone wishing to do so by traveling to your nearest web browser, Apple Store, Best Buy or other purveyor of overpriced shiny shit.
So just a note, it's exactly this kind of shit that makes people who haven't fallen under the spell of bullshit that Jobs has convinced hipster idiots that Apple products are so cool that they need to be identified separately from everything else. You are unique for using Apple Products, just like the other ten million (or however many) people who use the exact same product.
Evolution does not move that fast, nor does it work that way. The basic currency of evolution is offspring and mutation. I am willing to admit that it is possible that there have been one or more mutations in genes that are "for" multitasking in humans. However, do the individuals with those genes have more offspring than the ones who do not? Have there been enough generations since the advent of computers for those genes to increase in frequency in the gene pool to equate to "an incredible burst of human evolution?" No. No way, Jose.
If there was some sort of environmental pressure such as a predator that kills and eats people who can't multitask when they are children, then that would put selective pressure on humans and possibly drive evolution.
Essentially multitasking doesn't get you laid more than not being able to do it, so you're not going to tip the gene pool.