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The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world

theguardian.com

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Re: The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world

#41

Post by watwut »

fogetti wrote: post #18

It's hard to take these articles seriously. Do these psychologists think that the average person's issue is they get distracted 60 times a day on their weekends? Who cares about that??? My problem is that I get interrupted 160 times a day in my workplace!!! How do these suggestions help me in my workplace? Shall I tell my boss that I can't reply his email right now because I am counting back in sevens from 1000 or wh…

Yes you should tell that. If you cant, then it really sounds like horribly ineffective and toxic workplace.

Re: The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world

#42

Post by mario0b1 »

I often felt that I was getting distracted way too much, but I couldn't stop it. About a year ago when my depression got back on track I just shut myself off of every service I had. I quit facebook, deleted all unnecessary apps from my phone, muted it completly and turned off the thing that the display lights up if you get a new message. I even let my phone at home when I was not expecting any major call. If people called me I just called them back when I was at home and had time for it. All of this went out way better than I ever would've thought. I feel super relieved and relaxed nowadays. Because I started a new job I carry my phone with me now most of the day, but it is still muted most of the time. It is even fun to see if there is something new on the internet without getting notified about it instantly. Now I decide when I want to take a break and what I want to look for, not my Smartphone or something else.

Re: The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world

#43

Post by InclinedPlane »

jsemrau wrote: post #37
InclinedPlane wrote: post #9

People have short attention spans. It was not so very long ago (and indeed it is still quite common today) when the standard way that one "lived" their life was to spend 8 hours a day at work and then most of the remainder watching television. Yes, compared to the ideal, having your nose in your phone to the detriment of all other activities is undesirable, but compared to the actuality of what came before it might b…

I would counter argument that in the past TV was a shared experience while staring at one's phone is a single experience.

I would counter-counter argue that using a smartphone is much more of a social experience than TV, and can be less interruptive as well.

Much of the time when people are using their phones they are socializing asynchronously or synchronously with their friends and family. They are following what's happening in their lives through twitter, facebook, instagram, etc. They are keeping in touch through instant messaging (on facebook, through google hangouts, texting, what-have-you). They are keeping up with current news and events. They are keeping themselves informed, etc.

And in terms of the presence of media in the physical space sometimes watching TV with others can be a social experience, but it can also be an anti-social experience by draining attention away from conversations and by having something of interest going on that can't easily be interrupted or paused to do something else. Whereas smartphone use can more often be interrupted or paused.

My own anecdotal experience is that television is much worse of an attention hog than smartphones, on average.

Re: The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world

#44

Post by gaius »

borroka wrote: post #25
leggomylibro wrote: post #4

It seems like nowadays, we wring our hands about the effects of constant access to the internet on a near-daily basis. And isn't it kind of odd that the people working on these products in an 'individual contributor' capacity are often the same ones encouraging others to stay away from their platforms? Maybe that should tell us something. Anecdotally, most of the things that this article recommends are things that I…

I interviewed at Facebook and when I realized that the whole interview was about finding ways to make people spend as much time possible on Facebook and Instagram (which I use in moderation, I love to share a good pic of myself), I ran for dear life. Then, when they asked me how I would convince Mark that a certain experiment is needed, I ran faster. Bad vibes overall, Blade Runner was more cheerful.

interviewed at Facebook and when I realized that the whole interview was about finding ways to make people spend as much time possible on Facebook

In the future people will look at Facebook and Google as the people of today look at Phillip Morris and BAT.

Re: The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world

#45

Post by akavel »

borroka wrote: post #25
leggomylibro wrote: post #4

It seems like nowadays, we wring our hands about the effects of constant access to the internet on a near-daily basis. And isn't it kind of odd that the people working on these products in an 'individual contributor' capacity are often the same ones encouraging others to stay away from their platforms? Maybe that should tell us something. Anecdotally, most of the things that this article recommends are things that I…

I interviewed at Facebook and when I realized that the whole interview was about finding ways to make people spend as much time possible on Facebook and Instagram (which I use in moderation, I love to share a good pic of myself), I ran for dear life. Then, when they asked me how I would convince Mark that a certain experiment is needed, I ran faster. Bad vibes overall, Blade Runner was more cheerful.

Thank you so much, for having integrity, keeping it, and telling about it here now. It's so reassuring for me and strenghtening to learn that there are more people in the industry who try to look deeper and keep some moral spine.

I personally had an interview with Google once, and had doubts about it. I was rejected, and I am glad of this, as I am not sure if I'd have enough strength to refuse the offer. With Facebook and Oracle, at least I am sure I would not choose to work there (unless in more dire life situation, as far as I can say now...)

Re: The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world

#46

Post by samzer »

After using facebook for 8 years, I had reached a point where I stopped posting content but couldn't stop consuming the content posted by others and also logging into facebook without even thinking. I tried multiple times to deactivate the account but it always resulted in reactivating it. The two main reasons for it was the herd mentality and the FOMO.

I needed a new approach, I started by unfollowing people and pages that made me react. I realized the most important part of facebook for me was keeping in touch with people and not the posts that they share so decided to unfollow everyone which includes pages and groups too. The annoying part is that it is not easy to unfollow everyone and you have to do it one by one. I found a post with some js code that helped in achieving this and it worked, don't know if it will work now - https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-unfollow-everyone-on-Facebook...

After about 8 months of using facebook this way,I checked how many conversations I had using the messenger which turned out to be in the lower end of the single digit. Finally, I decided to go ahead with the deletion of facebook after backing up all my data. Once you hit delete, it gives 14 days of thinking time in case you decide to change your mind. After deleting the account, it took me almost 2 months to stop my reflex action of going to facebook login page.

Its been more than 6 months I've deleted facebook, I'm not missing it, I hardly think about it and quite happy that I'm out of it.

Re: The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world

#47

Post by novaRom »

et-al wrote: post #20
leggomylibro wrote: post #4

It seems like nowadays, we wring our hands about the effects of constant access to the internet on a near-daily basis. And isn't it kind of odd that the people working on these products in an 'individual contributor' capacity are often the same ones encouraging others to stay away from their platforms? Maybe that should tell us something. Anecdotally, most of the things that this article recommends are things that I…

A large part of this is how one choses to use their smartphone. By default, it's a device that's receives a million notifications, but I've turned off most of them, so it's back to being a tiny computer that's helpful to look stuff up with. I only get notifications on four things: 1) phone calls - it's still a phone 2) "texts" (SMS/WhatsApp/iMessage/Line) - I disable Slack because it's too noisy aside from one "emerg…

> which is set to only notify when something drops more than 5%

for what purpose? If you go long, you don't have to worry about any disturbance on the market. 5% per day or 5% per hour? Is there any difference if your stock will drop today 5% wrt yesterday or if it drops 5% this month relative to last month?

I don't look at such swings, it's meaningless.

Re: The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world

#48

Post by salawat »

leggomylibro wrote: post #4

It seems like nowadays, we wring our hands about the effects of constant access to the internet on a near-daily basis. And isn't it kind of odd that the people working on these products in an 'individual contributor' capacity are often the same ones encouraging others to stay away from their platforms? Maybe that should tell us something. Anecdotally, most of the things that this article recommends are things that I…

Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig.

You seem like you're trying to get back in touch with the idea of 'Quality' as it applies to life, and he does a good job at walking a reader through it. I won't bother going into what I got out of it, as most philosophy is best experienced without preconceived expectations

Nowadays, you have to slow down. Most tech businesses thrive on shallow thinking to drive engagement, and try to tweak every little heuristic to "get a click" to justify their own existence.

By all means, take a break, but understand as well that as a practitioner you are part of the problem every time you refuse to say no to some dark pattern B.S.

I've started measuring every software pitch against my first set of Encyclopedia of the Natural World CD's from back in the 90's.

No phoning home. No ads. No engagement metrics No dark patterns.

Just an encyclopedia of 0's and 1's.

It is amazing when you look at most software nowadays, and realize that a large proportion of it (especially on mobile) is trying to convert user->value instead of providing value->user.

Re: The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world

#49

Post by octygen »

Three things helped me:

1) Mindfulness training so I could see myself in the moment NOT concentrating and stop myself. Still not at 100% with this but have been getting a lot better since I first took https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/mindfulness-wellbeing-pe... a couple of years ago.

2) Thinking of my mobile in the way marketers think of it. As a cache for mobile minutes. Each marketing dept is like a little gnome each trying to get at my treasure. So I cut them off. I deleted all apps with ads and made an effort to block all ads or suggestions for new content across the digital things I use via everything from Greasemonkey to plug-ins to switching providers of services. So now distraction from my digital browsing is significantly diminished.

3) Re-reading this Michener essay about once a year: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~xs3d-bull/michener.html. It reminds me that it takes long periods of time and discipline to create great things. Else they are easily achievable and don't IMHO qualify as great. This includes everything from putting tons of time in for Ironman training (quite the physical achievement) to writing a book (look at Michener's books and how crazy-well-researched and expansive they are) to having a good relationship with your mate to writing quality code for your most recent idea. The more the gnomes pick at your little time treasure, the less time you have to achieve great things.

Re: The lost art of concentration: being distracted in a digital world

#50

Post by montenegrohugo »

et-al wrote: post #20
leggomylibro wrote: post #4

It seems like nowadays, we wring our hands about the effects of constant access to the internet on a near-daily basis. And isn't it kind of odd that the people working on these products in an 'individual contributor' capacity are often the same ones encouraging others to stay away from their platforms? Maybe that should tell us something. Anecdotally, most of the things that this article recommends are things that I…

A large part of this is how one choses to use their smartphone. By default, it's a device that's receives a million notifications, but I've turned off most of them, so it's back to being a tiny computer that's helpful to look stuff up with. I only get notifications on four things: 1) phone calls - it's still a phone 2) "texts" (SMS/WhatsApp/iMessage/Line) - I disable Slack because it's too noisy aside from one "emerg…

Why have the financial ticker? If you own stocks, do you plan on reacting to this notification? Do you see yourself as a professional day trader?

Imo the amount of noise is extreme in stock news and there is no value in listening to it. It is wasted attention and wasted emotion. Much better is to pick a few stocks/ETF's and invest on a longer horizon.

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