{"id":1149,"date":"2009-05-05T19:13:00","date_gmt":"2009-05-05T19:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1149"},"modified":"2009-05-05T19:13:00","modified_gmt":"2009-05-05T19:13:00","slug":"concentration-and-its-enemies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1149","title":{"rendered":"Concentration and Its Enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I compare working at home now to the last time I did it (1990-1992), I can see the difference in three letters: DSL.<\/p>\n<p>When email meant dial-up and Compuserve charging me by the minute, I monitored my online time carefully.<\/p>\n<p>Now concentration comes harder. Sometimes I work in the guest cabin, because it has no telephone &#8212; not even a cell-phone signal &#8212; and of course no Web access.<\/p>\n<p>Furthermore, says Winifred Gallagher, author of <a style=\"font-style: italic;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/1594202109?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=chascli-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1594202109\">Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life<\/a><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=1594202109\" alt=\"\" style=\"border: medium none  ! important; margin: 0px ! important; display: none;\" border=\"0\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" \/>, &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/05\/05\/science\/05tier.html\">multitasking is a myth<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cYou cannot do two things at once. The mechanism of attention is selection: it\u2019s either this or it\u2019s that.\u201d She points to calculations that the typical person\u2019s brain can process 173 billion bits of information over the course of a lifetime.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPeople don\u2019t understand that attention is a finite resource, like money,\u201d she said. \u201cDo you want to invest your cognitive cash on endless Twittering or Net surfing or couch potatoing? You\u2019re constantly making choices, and your choices determine your experience, just as <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/William_James\">William James<\/a> said.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I compare working at home now to the last time I did it (1990-1992), I can see the difference in three letters: DSL. When email meant dial-up and Compuserve charging me by the minute, I monitored my online time carefully. Now concentration comes harder. Sometimes I work in the guest cabin, because it has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-1149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-ix","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1153,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1153","url_meta":{"origin":1149,"position":0},"title":"Concentration and Its Enemies &#8212; II","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I blogged recently on concentrating on one's work in an online world ... wait, I have to check some blogs ... OK, I'm back.At John Tierney's blog the discussion continues. All sorts of perspectives:Fortunately, I am able to focus, but one of the reasons is because I have schizophrenia, although\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":647,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=647","url_meta":{"origin":1149,"position":1},"title":"Gallimaufry: Tab Clearing","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Having been knocked down by a head cold the past week, I am just cleaning out some old links. \u2022 Should you use digital cameras for ghost-hunting? I notice that a lot of the ghost-hunting articles in Fate magazine count \"orbs\" as evidence of spirits. But are they just artifacts\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}