Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Electronics-Induced Inattentiveness?
An anonymous reader writes: I am a graduate student in his twenties who used to be able to read dozens and dozens of lengthy books in his childhood. Over the years, I have noticed that my attention span and ability to concentrate has decreased noticeably, seemingly in synchronization with society's increased connectedness with the Internet and constant stimulation from computers and mobile devices alike. I have noticed that myself and others seem to have a difficult time really sitting down to read anything or focus on anything relatively boring for even more than ten seconds (the "TL;DR Generation," as I sometimes call it).
I see it when socializing with others or even during a professor's lecture. I have tried leaving my mobile phone at home and limiting myself to fewer browser tabs in an effort to regain concentration that I believe has been lost in recent years. Nonetheless, this is an issue that has begun to adversely affect my academic studies and may only get worse in time. What advice do fellow Slashdot users have with regard to reclaiming what has been lost? Should such behaviors simply be accepted as a sign of the times?
I see it when socializing with others or even during a professor's lecture. I have tried leaving my mobile phone at home and limiting myself to fewer browser tabs in an effort to regain concentration that I believe has been lost in recent years. Nonetheless, this is an issue that has begun to adversely affect my academic studies and may only get worse in time. What advice do fellow Slashdot users have with regard to reclaiming what has been lost? Should such behaviors simply be accepted as a sign of the times?
This.
Meditation is the art of concentration.
Christmas Humphrey's "Concentration and Meditation" is excellent: http://www.amazon.com/Concentr...
As with anything worthwhile in life this requires willpower. I'm surprised it took you all the way to grad school to have trouble plowing through boring text books. The truth of the matter is no matter how far we've advanced we aren't really any better at shoving knowledge into your brain. The real change that has happened in the Google universe is that the philosophy of "Why memorize it when I can Google it?" has taken over. Unless you have some form of ADHD (honestly severely over-diagnosed but does exist) then the ability to sit down and read something long that is not interesting falls to pure willpower. I didn't want to do homework either but if I didn't my grades suffered. "Consequences" All of these distractions that are more "interesting" to you can wait. Don't blame technology for giving you more distractions to choose from.
If you don't actually concentrate on doing things for extended periods of time, you're going to lose your ability to do it.
So when you have some spare time instead of flipping through slashdot or reddit why not try actually doing something for an extended period of time? Read a book, do a hobby, go for a walk, take a bike ride for fun, go to a coffee shop and casually read a big newspaper, do the crossword puzzle. I read a lot of novels and do some woodworking on the side. A quiet evening in the shop with hand tools and the radio in the background is a great way to decompress.
Smartphone apps are intentionally designed to grab your attention. The human brain actually triggers the reward center each time you get a new text, or email, or social media message. The more you do those things the more your brain is trained to react instantly to a new event, thus breaking your concentration on whatever you were doing.
If you want to really focus on something, it's probably best to disable your notifications so that only emergency events get through. (Or even turn the thing off completely if you can.)
I stumbled upon a solution while taking an online course... watching the lecture at 2x speed helped me focus.
It turns out that watching a lecture in real time allows me to get bored and I end up doing a context switch. Perhaps distraction isn't the problem, but in this age, we've learned to process information more quickly.
My guess is that it stands for But I Repeat Myself, implying that viewing 4chan and masturbating are basically the same thing.
Or, it could stand for Bridge Inspector's Reference Manual.