Regaining control of your attention
backchannel.com
Regaining control of your attention
1–10 of 133 posts
Re: Regaining control of your attention
#2I genuinely expected this article to contain a single sentence that read, "stop reading hacker news at work".
Re: Regaining control of your attention
#3Regaining control of your attention doesn't mean not using your phone. It means being self-aware. The author is relying on a crutch. Not using the phone is just removing a single source of distraction, it does nothing to actually help attention regulation. It's like saying, I fixed my impulse issues by never walking in to gas stations, so now I don't have to worry about buying lottery tickets! You didn't fix your impulse issues, they're still 100% there.
Re: Regaining control of your attention
#4Regaining control of your attention doesn't mean not using your phone. It means being self-aware. The author is relying on a crutch. Not using the phone is just removing a single source of distraction, it does nothing to actually help attention regulation. It's like saying, I fixed my impulse issues by never walking in to gas stations, so now I don't have to worry about buying lottery tickets! You didn't fix your imp…
I mean reducing the negative impacts of being out of control is great, but the technology didn't make the author out of control. The author was out of control before the technology got there, and the technology merely empowered him in a way that aggravated his pre-existing condition.
The solution is to develop awareness.
Re: Regaining control of your attention
#5OT: What are these sub brands from Medium like Backchannel and Hackernoon? Are there more sub brands/communities and why did Medium create them?
Re: Regaining control of your attention
#6Is there an App that gets rid of all technology? :)
Re: Regaining control of your attention
#7Regaining control of your attention doesn't mean not using your phone. It means being self-aware. The author is relying on a crutch. Not using the phone is just removing a single source of distraction, it does nothing to actually help attention regulation. It's like saying, I fixed my impulse issues by never walking in to gas stations, so now I don't have to worry about buying lottery tickets! You didn't fix your imp…
The "impulse issues" are reinforced by the phone. I've very often noticed when I've set aside my phone for a few hours (the rest of the evening until bed or whatever) that I have to literally set it aside at some distance from myself because otherwise it ends up in my hand without my even consciously deciding to check it. It's like a reflex. And then once it's safely at a distance, I repeatedly experience the urge to check it whenever I don't happen to be very focused on something else. The frequency of that urge diminishes over the course of a few hours and is accompanied by an increase in my ability to focus on something else for stretches of time. Sometimes I've even taken a weekend offline completely, and the effects are even more pronounced, and they last beyond the offline time. This is what the author means by "attention is a muscle". It's not that there's some baseline impulse issue and the device is merely an outlet. The device is causing the issue, or at least exacerbating it.
Re: Regaining control of your attention
#8Admittedly off-topic, but why add unnecessarily ignorant asides (in the first sentence to boot):
"...I lived on the grounds of an old estate down in central Virginia, next to a town called — terrifyingly — Lynchburg..."
...when a 10-second Google search reveals the less-than-terrifying reality:
First settled in 1757, Lynchburg was named for its founder, John Lynch, who at the age of 17 started a ferry service at a ford across the James River to carry traffic to and from New London.
Re: Regaining control of your attention
#9Admittedly off-topic, but why add unnecessarily ignorant asides (in the first sentence to boot): "...I lived on the grounds of an old estate down in central Virginia, next to a town called — terrifyingly — Lynchburg..." ...when a 10-second Google search reveals the less-than-terrifying reality: First settled in 1757, Lynchburg was named for its founder, John Lynch, who at the age of 17 started a ferry service at a fo…
Knowledge has never been a prerequisite to prejudice.
Re: Regaining control of your attention
#10I genuinely expected this article to contain a single sentence that read, "stop reading hacker news at work".
Don't tell me how to live!