My wife has often accused me of being able to lose myself so completely in a single task that I become oblivious to what is happening around me.
Actually I don't deny it. I can use my bandwidth on one thing, then focus on another without missing a beat. As you get older, it's harder to have that laser like focus, but since I still get complaints that I'm not listening, I assume that I haven't lost the skill.
Sometimes when I'm lost in numbers, writing or website development, I tend to ignore conversations going on around me. Occasionally a television show will rise to the level of irritating, but mostly I can put up walls of the mind to protect myself.
According to an article in the Toronto Star, "Society's death by multi-task," we're sacrificing quality time we need in an effort to stay connected.
" leisurely morning moments with coffee and newspaper are a thing of the past as the day begins with a headache-inducing scan of emails, headlines, TV news, text messages and traffic bulletins.
Other research indicates that multi-tasking is bad for us. Some early Blackberry users seem to have an electronic tether well beyond that of a cell phone. Email communications are no longer considered an instant form of communications. At one time I considered email a form of priority mail, which was due an instant response because for the most part there wasn't much time that I was away from my in box. Today an email can sit a while in my inbox before I notice it and often until I have time to think about the answer I want to give.
My routine includes coffee and a newspaper after I have checked a few things on the computer. I rarely pick up my cell phone until after breakfast unless it rings which it rarely does. I would far sooner look at a newspaper for a few minutes than mess with my smartphone. Yet I find that my twenty something kids have all but given up reading a real newspaper. The only one who even drinks morning coffee listens to morning television news.
The Toronto Star article quotes Edward Hallowell, an American psychiatrist, who has a sobering view of the impact of what he calls ""attention deficit trait."
He believes that it decreases creativity and leads to the inability to connect "actions with consequences" which has a disastrous impact in the political arena.
I know that I get my best results when I focus on one project at a time. I have managed to avoid the annoying computer notifications that tell me when I have a new email or someone has commented on a Facebook post. Those things will wait until I have time to focus on them.
Our society has gotten far more error prone since we have decided that we can do more than one thing at a time. You no longer have to look very far in a newspaper to find a typo. When I worked at Apple it was expected that your email was always on and that you would respond to something sent in the evening before morning. Apple also had an annoying propensity to create weekend work. It is a bad way to work.
True focus requires intensity but also requires stepping back sometimes and getting away from what you are doing. I often write late at night, but I almost always come back and review what I have written in the morning so that I can see it with clear eyes and a fresh mind. The focus that I can give an article early in the morning before I've even had breakfast helps me be successful.
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