Creative Reaction

A recent NYT Shifting Careers blog post (Subscription required) is guest-written by Maggie Jackson, the author of a new book ominously titled, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age.

The reason for the implied and impending doom can be found in the publisher’s description of the book; “our near-religious allegiance to a constant state of motion and addiction to multitasking are eroding our capacity for deep, sustained, perceptive attention—the building block of intimacy, wisdom and cultural progress and stunting society’s ability to comprehend what’s relevant and permanent” and clearly, we are surround by examples of this. (CR readers have read about this issue here and here and here.)

Moving away from the gloom and doom, how do we combat distraction in our own lives and encourage our staffs to do likewise?

The issue is largely a cultural one. Jackson says, “What’s needed is a renaissance of attention — a revaluing and cultivating of the art of attention, to help us achieve depth of thought and relations in this complex, high-tech time”. According to the research she’s read, attention is “a trio of skills: focus, awareness and so-called executive attention”, which she explains this way: “You can be aware that you’re in a beautiful garden and then you can focus on an individual flower… executive attention is the ability to plan and make decisions.” For this last state to occur, we must consciously disconnect from the distractions; phone & cell phone ringers off, IM off, E-Mail Off, and if necessary, some sort of “do not disturb” sign.

Jackson continues, “to combat overload, we also need to look to our environments. That’s why a few pioneering companies are creating places or times for uninterrupted, focused creative thought. IBM employees practice “Think Fridays” worldwide, avoiding or cutting back on e-mail, meetings and interruptions. Other firms are setting aside unwired, quiet rooms.”

She ends with a quote that is bound to become another favorite of mine, “‘Wisdom is the art of knowing what to overlook,’ wrote William James, the father of American psychology research. Long ago, he identified the foremost challenge of our time: how to allocate our attention. And now, we’re beginning to discover what he foretold: that living distracted just isn’t smart.”

There’s plenty to contemplate here. Do we have work environments that enable focus and creativity? If not, what can we do differently?

Ars Technica lead me to this The New Atlantis article entitled The Myth of Multitasking. As an amateur “mutitasking” myth-buster (mentioning the myth here and alluding to it here) of course I took notice. I had no idea what a gold mine it would turn out to be! The article is quite simply the most comprehensive I’ve read on the subject. (And Creative Reaction readers may notice several of the article’s references have been mentioned on our pages.)

The article starts with what I think will become one of my all-time favorite quotes, “There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.”

The article continues with a short history of multitasking, from its appearance on resumes as a “skill” and its subsequent exposure as a fraudulent ideal, quoting numerous studies, and pointing out that our very culture may be at stake. This is an article worthy of printing/reading/tagging/digging/forwarding to colleagues!

“Some of the biggest technology firms, including Microsoft, Intel, Google and I.B.M., are banding together to fight information overload. Last week they formed a nonprofit group to study the problem, publicize it and devise ways to help workers — theirs and others — cope with the digital deluge.”

Kudos to Techdirt for seeing an analogy here between The Simpsons and the above quote from an NYT article (Subscription required, don’t bother; as the article is not very coherent, let me save you some time by regurgitating it.)

We all know the dangers that cell phones, IM, and e-Mail pose to our productivity - primarily that of the constant interruptions. Of course, we already know better than the “typical information worker who sits at a computer all day (and) turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times” (if not, see here and here and here and here) though seeing an actual dollar amount, $650b (billion) in lost productivity, in the United States alone, drives the point home.

So what new technology are we getting? I hope it’s better than this “E-Mail Addict feature” in Gmail, “an experimental feature for the company’s e-mail service that lets people cut themselves off from their in-boxes for 15 minutes”. “Clicking the ‘Take a break’ link turns the screen gray, and a message reads: ‘Take a walk, get some real work done, or have a snack. We’ll be back in 15 minutes!’”. “Those who find they are truly addicted can cheat by hitting the escape key”. Ugh.

Michael Davidson, the engineer who created the feature, admits this is for people who say, “I don’t have self-control”. Is quitting your e-Mail and IM, and shutting your cell phone ringer off for an hour or so at a time really that difficult?!

This leads me to think (perhaps being overly cynical?) that the aforementioned nonprofit study group may not lead to much. All things being equal, the simplest solution is best. This is a problem most easily solved by equipping and training our employees with basic productivity skills and making sure we as managers are leading by example.

Parents can go around their homes, inserting plastic safety caps into every power outlet in sight, or they can simply train their toddlers not to stick their fingers in the outlets. I’d rather train. Besides, it’s simply a matter of a few hours or days when the toddlers figure out how to remove the caps!

I’ve considered this blog incomplete without addressing Time Management. A time management primer is here on Businessweek online. It touches on the myth of multi-tasking, managing e-mail, good communication and the value of being organized, and while none of the material is ground-breaking, it’s a good place to start (or review).