Another article on partial attention…and my response

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Originally published on 10 April 2006.

I came across another article on partial attention. This one is an interview with Dr. Edward Hallowell, a psychiatrist who’s studied attention deficit disorder. The upshot is he has identified a trait called attention deficit trait - which basically mimics ADD but can go away under relaxed circumstances. His thoughts on the cause? Modern technology and the workplaces that constantly throw information at us.

My personal philosophy doesn’t have a place for coincidence, and if two similar items are presented to me from disparate sources within a short period of time, I believe that it contains a message I need to hear.

So I will embark on an experiment here.

I am going to create an Online context, and anything that needs to be done only will be done there. I will also only make a conscious decision to move to that context. The reason for this last part is that I have a tendency to stray to that context without being fully aware of it. For example, last night I was working on reclassifying my MP3 collection and I checked email 3 or 4 times. Hmmm…checking email had nothing to do with the task at hand, and ended up sidetracking me on the project.

I will report back in 30 days to say how this is going.

Update May 2007

I never did report back on how it was going. The online context did not survive. However, I have found ways to not get sidetracked. I don’t run my email program all the time. I check it once a night, and clear the inboxes then. (At work I check email at 10 and 1).

I am currently reading Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management (aff) and there is a lot of hints in there about getting focused. I have also embarked on a media fast, and we’ll see where that leads.