Have you noticed any changes in your ability to concentrate? Pay attention? Filter out unwanted (or not urgent) stuff in your consciousness so that you can attend to it later when you have more time? And then forgot about it?
Well, I have. I’ve always considered myself to have a pretty normal attention span (whatever that is), but with the onslaught of all the information, entertainment, music, news, videos, photos, social media, phone calls, visitors, actual work that needs to be done…I don’t know how much busier my brain can be.
Attention spans are changing. Our brains are being rewired. And I’m not just talking about kids. You have to jump from task to task and base to base while filtering out a lot of information every single minute of every waking moment.
I know it’s affecting my brain and attention span, and to tell you the truth, it’s pretty freaky. I find it harder and harder to concentrate and finish a book. I tend to read more than one book at a time, and now I seem to skip around from book back to book a lot more than I used to.
Multi-tasking is something that’s now become an everyday, every-hour thing.
How much can the human brain take?
One of the books I’m in the process of reading is A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention. The story is about a young man who caused a tragic accident that killed two men while he was phone-texting in his car. Back then Only in 2006!) the dangers of driving and being on the phone—and especially texting—had not yet been acknowledged or studied. Now texting on mobile phones is outlawed in many states (including Louisiana). There’s a lot of interesting science in this book about the study of attention spans. I’ve always believed that the internet, social media and smartphones were going to have a profound impact on humans. It’s just so obvious that the way we think, pay attention and use our “filters” is changing, and changing rapidly.
Personally, I think it’s a book that everyone needs to read. Our brains are not omnipotent and they can literally handle only so much input before something else suffers. What will that “something” be: your ability to drive a car carefully? Your ability to listen to music or read a book without having some other source of input to keep you stimulated?
While it satisfies a curious mind to be able to acquire a lot of rapidly firing input from all the outlets we have today, it certainly makes you wonder about how we’ll all be able to process and pick what it is that we’d like to study and learn more about without being distracted by some new “data.”
My advice: turn off the TV, get off Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for a day (if you can), read a book. Do some yoga. Sit quietly with no distractions. Can you do it?
