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The attention economy

aeon.co

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Re: The attention economy

#21

Post by exolymph »

advertising wrote: post #19

I got into work mode the past couple years of my life and spent most time either working or speaking with people, then browsing my phone in the downtimes / before bed / first thing in the morning. I hadn't read a book in a couple of years and it was scary the first time I tried again. Literally could not read more than 1 - 1.5 pages without my mind wandering or feeling the pang to check the feed on my phone. Kind of…

> Personally, reading again was a great way to rebuild my attention span and just rewiring my brain in general. I had no idea how bad I had become.

I've gone through this same process. It was definitely frightening to realize how far I'd fallen from my grade-school bookworm days. I have to consciously fight against bad information-intake habits now. I actually wrote an ebook about it: https://www.amazon.com/How-Start-Reading-Again-Internet-eboo...

Re: The attention economy

#22

Post by bpchaps »

bmer wrote: post #6
colmvp wrote: post #2

Does anyone have tips for re-gaining focused attention? Willing to try anything at this point.

0) Pick something you want to focus on. It could be your breath, a picture, an article you want to read, the sounds in your environment... 1) Set a timer for the period you want to focus on it for. In the beginning, I'd pick short times, like 2 minutes, or 5 minutes. 2) Try to remain focused on whatever you picked. You will inevitably fail. 3) Do not get angry at yourself! Your mind is like a puppy. It will want to w…

Curious, do you have any research links on this sort of thing?

#3 is something I've been working on for handling "failure" in general. I think that acknowledging a lack of success as a system whose outputs only include much more than fail/succeed is how something can lead towards, well, failure.

Re: The attention economy

#23

Post by bmer »

bpchaps wrote: post #22
bmer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0) Pick something you want to focus on. It could be your breath, a picture, an article you want to read, the sounds in your environment... 1) Set a timer for the period you want to focus on it for. In the beginning, I'd pick short times, like 2 minutes, or 5 minutes. 2) Try to remain focused on whatever you picked. You will inevitably fail. 3) Do not get angry at yourself! Your mind is like a puppy. It will want to w…

Curious, do you have any research links on this sort of thing? #3 is something I've been working on for handling "failure" in general. I think that acknowledging a lack of success as a system whose outputs only include much more than fail/succeed is how something can lead towards, well, failure.

I got introduced to mindfulness through "dialectical behaviour therapy"[0], in a hospital setting. The researcher who developed DBT initially was Marsha Linehan[1], who has many publications you can dig into.

Similarly, mindfulness was introduced into popular medical use for stress reduction, trauma, depression, pain relief, etc. by Jon Kabat-Zinn[2], who also has published articles.

I am sure the mindfulness article on Wikipedia also has useful links, and you could use sci-hub/google scholar/etc. to look up more research articles with the keyword "mindfulness".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_behavior_therapy#M... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsha_M._Linehan [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Kabat-Zinn

Re: The attention economy

#25

Post by msb »

"An overabundance of rabbits leads to a shortage of lettuce."..."a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."

Herbert Simon talked about this when we were still sending men to the moon [1].

This should be the charge of HCI practitioners, but the needs of consumers have largely been ignored. AI might provide some relief (my phone is getting better at learning when not to disrupt me...but it has a long way to go), but mostly I think it is up to us to close, ignore or turn away. What I fear the most is that by choosing to do so leaves us appearing lazy and/or disengaged in important professional and personal situations.

[1] http://zeus.zeit.de/2007/39/simon.pdf

Re: The attention economy

#27

Post by zzleeper »

brad0 wrote: post #8
colmvp wrote: post #2

Does anyone have tips for re-gaining focused attention? Willing to try anything at this point.

Read Deep Work. It's not a long book.

Link for the lazy: http://www.amazon.com/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted/d...

It's really useful in fighting against all these distractions (I should probably re-read it every few months though :(

Re: The attention economy

#28

Post by studentrob »

> What kind of attention do we deserve from those around us, or owe to them in return?

The world is more interconnected now by things like trade, textual and verbal communication than it has been before.

If attention is meant to be paid to this form of information, rather than, say, the earth or the air, which also connects us, then yeah, I'm sure it feels like our attention spans are short.

Every day there's more text out there. So if you think books and text are what should be given attention, which I don't necessarily disagree with, then you need to work really hard to identify the stuff that is interesting to you.

Another option, when you feel this tension, is to sit back and relax, breath some air, and try to push out all the words that have flooded your brain

I do this in the morning before I look at my phone or computer. It's invigorating.

Re: The attention economy

#29

Post by henrik_w »

colmvp wrote: post #2

Does anyone have tips for re-gaining focused attention? Willing to try anything at this point.

I just finished reading "Deep Work" by Cal Newport, and I thought it was very good. He's main points are that focus is in short supply these days, but if you can focus well it can really set you apart. Then he goes on to discussing strategies, like quitting social media. It's a very quick read, and very applicable to programmers (like me).

Re: The attention economy

#30

Post by throwaway13337 »

advertising wrote: post #19

I got into work mode the past couple years of my life and spent most time either working or speaking with people, then browsing my phone in the downtimes / before bed / first thing in the morning. I hadn't read a book in a couple of years and it was scary the first time I tried again. Literally could not read more than 1 - 1.5 pages without my mind wandering or feeling the pang to check the feed on my phone. Kind of…

Even movies are too slow now for me and some others I'm around. Rarely am I engaged the whole time. It doesn't matter the genre.

They take too long - just like books - to get a point across.

It's definitely a symptom of the proliferation of smartphones.

I'm not sure it's an entirely bad thing - just a shift in the way we consume media. Short burst rather than long-form.

Long stretches of passive consumption could be argued as harmful just as not being able to concentrate on one long-form piece.

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