What? My phone has an off button!
I’m not a huge multi-tasker, but my skills for doing one thing at a time are slipping fast.
Though I don’t tend to talk on the phone, chat online, listen to the radio, etc. at one time — mostly because I’m just not very good at it — I find my attention span shortening. I read for shorter spells. I check emails or facebook when I might be writing. I tend to value responding to an email quickly more than working hard while my inbox fills.
I am not alone. The solution, many are saying, it to get an iPad. Their clean interface and lack of ability to do more than one thing at once forces users to focus on one task. Just read. Just email. Just tweet rather than doing all at once.
I find the iPad solution wishful thinking, wishful both because, sure, I’d love an iPad and because of the certainty that the technology will allow multitasking in the future.
As I ponder this trend, I recall students who claim they “studied for four hours straight” but whose studying was constantly interrupted by text messages and phone calls. In truth, they studied maybe 3 hours total, and never more than 15 minutes consecutively.
This is all quite problematic, because every technology that interrupts my tasks has an easy way to be turned off. I can leave Twitter alone. I can close my email program. I can silence my phone and leave it in another room. The world would go on, I’m sure. And I, likely, would be more productive.
But it’s very hard to turn off. Extremely difficult. I’m of two minds about the reason for that. Either, I can’t turn off because of the alluring (even sinful) human tendency to be led away from what’s best for ourselves and the world. Call it pride, sin, stupidity, lack-of-focus, whatever but it certainly could be that simple: I should turn off and its just a poor decision, a moral misjudgment when I don’t. Or, perhaps I can’t turn off because of what those peeps and tweets and emails mean: human connection. Maybe what’s keeping me away from the “quit” button is that I don’t want to quit people and the connections made through technology.
Quit Facebook Day was supposed to occur recently. If you didn’t hear about it don’t feel bad. You didn’t miss much. It was a flop. Perhaps that’s because in a world where we long for human connections, quitting facebook would feel like dumping one’s friends, family, and community. People didn’t quit because ultimately they love what facebook does for them: connect them one to another.
Sure, it’s not as easy as that. Virtual connections are a bit different than others. Fine. But, at the end of the day, I think virtual communities are a net positive and that’s part of the reason they are so hard to turn off, even for an hour.
What do you think? How do you turn off your technological connections for a time? Surely I am not alone.
image by Jakub Krechowicz
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Great observations on the part of longing for human connection.
I had to leave the country for two weeks to walk away from technology, and even then, I sporadically checked in.
After a few days of the jitters, I discovered that I could still live just fine, and actually enjoy the day, without knowing what was in my inbox or who had posted something on my facebook wall.
Since I’ve been home, I’ve been intentionally leaving the laptop closed and packed up. And I’ve been doing okay.
But it is something that requires constant vigilance, or I know I’ll be sucked back in…
The end result of all this multi-tasking is that people have trouble concentrating for very long on a single subject. Pray for an hour? Listen to a 30 minute sermon? These tasks have become nearly impossible – because of all the interruptions (whether external or internal interruptions).
It seems to me that this is definitely a TV generation. When the commercials come on, it’s time to run around and take care of a couple items. About the only way some folks are going to actually listen to the sermon is to include some 60 second commercials (perhaps a funny joke, or reminder of something that isn’t really part of the sermon) every 5 – 7 minutes.
Companies call it “job enlargement” or “cross training” to teach a person multiple skills/responsibilities – so they don’t get bored of a single type of activity. It helps keep turnover lower in most places. But even this is feeding the system.
I think the ability to truly listen is being lessened. There are people to whom I send an email with three big questions, and they will shoot back an answer to the first question but completely miss the other two questions/concerns.
How do I turn off? I guess I really don’t – and I wish I could do better at this. When I am working on something or visiting with someone I don’t even check to see who is calling (I’ll check within 30 minutes – the majority of the time). The congregation here are mostly early morning folks, and I am a night owl – so late evenings is a quiet time to work on sermons and the like. This really helps me.
Hi Adam,
As we long for human connection we seem to disconnect from what’s right in front of us. Somehow I think we’re missing the mark. I recently read a wonderful satire called “The Year of Living Biblically” and started exploring the idea of sabbath. The practice of a day of rest with no electronics at all seems harsh and in opposition to how most people prefer to live. But I took one step and turn off the data on my blackberry and did not even open up my computer all of Memorial Day weekend. I called it my “email sabbath” and let me tell you it was refreshing! I encourage you to try the same when you can because human connection is more powerful face to face than tweet to tweet.
@Grace. Thanks for the tech sabbath sharing. That does sound intriguing, though I’m not sure in my case it would lead to more human connections. I’m in a rather rural spot these days with many friends living far away, so I might just sit at home and read books–which would be fine too.
@DennisS, yeah, I do wonder about attention spans. Professors these days do note that they must teach differently to this generation. It’s probably not ideal, but not the end of the world either. What it means for preaching, though, is a good question.
@Marci, I forgot until you mentioned it my experience 5 years ago when I traveled Europe without a cell phone. Even 4 weeks into the trip I was still trying to make sure my non existent phone was on vibrate when I went into a quiet place. Crazy.
I disconnected my wireless router in my house this past winter. We were having storms and losing power and it was causing some problems in my internet connectivity, so I just disconnected it with the full intent of setting it back up after the worst of winter was past.
I haven’t set it back up yet, and I’m enjoying that if I want to be on the internet, I have to go sit in my home office and do so. It’s not completely turning it off, but it’s made a difference in how I spend my time at home at night.