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Think about your last moment of downtime – the last time you took a deep breath and realized there’s nothing that immediately requires your attention. How did you react?
Did you call someone? Did you turn to Facebook, or your favorite news app? Did you curse yourself for leaving your phone in the other room? It all seems trivial in the moment. But it’s possible to reach into your pocket for your cell phone so many times that your knuckles turn red and dry out.
We turn to our phone to see what our friends are doing in real time. We look at the news to see what we missed in the overnight hours. Most of the time, we scan headlines versus going deep. All this diverts our attention, which in turn requires time. There is more information (and more content) out there than ever before, but we all still have the same number of hours in the day.
With our phones, technology is never too far away. Those moments with no projects, no people and no outside tug are fleeting. Newsfeeds. Podcasts. Email. Those little red dots with the number of notifications. We’re meant to feel obligated to keep up.
The byproduct of more content is a shorter attention span.
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The byproduct of more content is a shorter attention span. It’s subtle and it’s slow, but it becomes harder to give something our complete attention for more than a few minutes without wondering the score of the baseball game or what else our president said. Our brains are being conditioned for 30-second breaks that turn into 20-minute diversions, if we let them.
There is nowhere in history to reference for a quick lesson on how to deal with these technological diversions and a tsunami of content. The phenomenon is too new. Like anything else, it’s a personal balancing act. It’s every individual against an army of engineers employed with the sheer goal of increasing time on site. Former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris has spoken out about this.
I want to be at the forefront of technology, and I want to instill a curiosity for technology in my toddler-aged son. It has already redefined our lives in many amazing ways. There’s more to this mentality than bite-size content, however. There are books and movies. There are museums and artwork. There are sunny summer afternoons outside.
It’s the only way to fight back at the attention deficit.
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