The distracted modern world

Sunday, January 8, 2006

I've found a few articles reflecting similar thoughts to those I was trying to express in ' Living on the cusp of epiphany'.

Linda Stone talks about ' Continuous Partial Attention' in a podcast. 

We don't pay full attention anymore. Between IM and a cell phone and glancing around to make sure we aren't missing anything on the many available social networks, we hardly notice the meeting we are supposed to be involved in.

–Distributing the Future 8: "Attention Span"

Alex Russelltalks about his internal tension

That’s the basic tension playing out in my head. On the one hand, I know I need to spend time discovering new things, but in doing so I consciously allocate time away from things with measureable payoff.

–Alex Russell: What’s Possible

And elsewhere on his site he points to this excellent essay by Paul Graham called ' Good and Bad Procrastication'  

There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That last type, I'd argue, is good procrastination. 

–Good and Bad Procrastication

In which he makes the challenge,

Unless you're working on the biggest things you could be working on, you're type-B procrastinating, no matter how much you're getting done.

–Good and Bad Procrastication

And finally ' The Myth of the Great Idea' by Ramit Sethi

The myth of The Great Idea is a dangerous one. It makes you constantly search and search for something that you'll probably never find...

...Success almost never comes from a mind-blowing idea, so sitting around trying to find one is a waste of time. Success comes from a basic idea executed amazingly well. Ideas are rarely found by thinking. They're found by doing.

–The Myth of the Great Idea

The web is a procrastinator's paradise! I often feel overwhelmed by the need to keep up with all the content. But recently I've been thinking it's not that important. That I should just start building something rather than spending time reading about other people building things.

Random outings from a chaotic mind