attention archives
“High multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy.”From research reported in The Mediocre Multitasker, in the NY Times, via Facebook friend, Susan Dray.
Researchers said, “We kept looking for multitaskers’ advantages in this study. But we kept finding only disadvantages. We thought multitaskers were very much in control of information. It turns out, they were just getting it all confused.”
I find this 100% true in my own life. I do my best work when I can shut out everything else but the task at hand. Now… what was I doing?
“A person who works six hours a day but with total focus has an enormous advantage over a 12-hour-per-day workaholic who’s ‘multi-tasking’ all day, answering every phone call, constantly checking Facebook and Twitter, and indulging every interruption.Mike Elgan, in Work Ethic 2.0: Attention Control
It’s time we upgraded our work ethic for the age we’re living in, not our grandparents’ age. Hard work is still a virtue, but now takes a distant second place to the new determinant of success or failure in the age of Internet distractions: Control of attention.”