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Launching an 'attention movement' in a distracted society

Grassroots efforts to take back focus and stop the erosion of attention pick up steam

		IMAGE: "Distracted: the Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age " is published by Prometheus Books. Click here for more information.

What can happen when we lose our ability to sustain focus, an essential cornerstone of building, nurturing and sustaining relationships? In DISTRACTED: THE EROSION OF ATTENTION AND THE COMING DARK AGE (Prometheus Books, $18) Maggie Jackson ponders our increasingly cyber-centric world and fears we're entering a dark age of interruption that will render us unable to think critically, work creatively or cultivate meaningful relationships. Societal ADD will adversely affect parenting, marriages, personal safety, education and even democracy.

In DISTRACTED—now in paperback—Jackson offers insight on how we can manage distraction and cultivate a more meaningful life. Her work and that of others have sparked a national conversation. Grassroots efforts are happening across the country—Americans are taking action to "take back focus." Parents, teachers, business leaders, students and scientists are being inspired to recover their powers of attention and create an environment conducive to deep connection and thought. For example:

• Research is mounting that multitasking is efficient—and may be "rewiring" our brains in negative ways. An important Stanford University research study founds that heavy multitaskers aren't doing their juggling all that well because they can't focus on what's relevant or important.

• State legislatures are scrambling to ban text-messaging and cell-phoning while driving, in the wake of research showing these lethal driver behaviors are on the rise. As of this month, eighteen states plus DC banned text-messaging while driving.

• Some college professors are banning laptops in the classroom. One 2006 study shows that higher laptop use was linked to lower performance in a class because the computer is distracting and leads to robotic—not thoughtful—note-taking. Seattle University professor Mara Adelman recently held a faculty workshop on how distraction is affecting campus life.

• Broadway stars are taking audiences to task for interruptive gadgets. The latest? A YouTube video shows Hugh Jackman berating the audience after a ringing cell phone interrupts his current show, A Steady Rain.

		IMAGE: Maggie Jackson (New York, N.Y.) is an award-winning author and journalist who writes the popular "Balancing Acts " column in the Boston Globe. Her work also has appeared in The New... Click here for more information.

Months ago, FastCompany.com blogger Cali Williams Yost had a wish. She hoped that DISTRACTED would start an attention movement similar to the new environmentalism sparked by Rachel Carson's SILENT SPRING.

"There's a new national effort to understand and cultivate attention, to restore our technologies to tools, not panacea, and to provide a less-frenzied and split-focused culture for our children," says Jackson, a contributing columnist at the Boston Globe. "The time is right to work toward a 'renaissance of attention.'"

To move forward, Jackson suggests the following:

• Don't blame the Blackberry. Our culture of distraction didn't come in with the iPod or PDA. The roots of our culture of distraction go way back—to 19th-century inventions that radically changed human experience of time and space. Industrial age inventions such as the cinema or telegraph triggered the first global mobility, virtual relations and split-focused work. That's why we now live in a world of 24/7 living, bountiful multitasking and portable relations and thought.

• Set the stage for focus. Whether at home or at work, attention can't occur without the right environment. That's why leading companies are experimenting with notions of "white space" —a time or physical space devoted to unwired, uninterrupted thought. IBM's grassroots practice of 'ThinkFridays' has succeeded worldwide, mostly because this leading tech company realizes that workers sometimes have to step back from connectivity. Some ad firms have created rooms where brainstorming can occur.

• Push back on fragmented, distracted work styles. Workers now switch tasks every three minutes, half the time interrupting themselves, according to researcher Gloria Mark of UC/Irvine. Why? We think it's more efficient to multitask, although it isn't. As well, U.K. researcher David Nicholas has found that we spend our time online "power-bouncing" from info-snippet to data-point. "This propensity to rely on point-and-click, first-up-on-Google answers, keeps us stuck on the surface of the "information" age," says Jackson.

• Teach attention. The exploding science of attention now tells us that attention can be trained—so let's start teaching these skills in classrooms, offices and at home. "If we can control and hone our powers of attention, then the future is ours," says Jackson. Already, dozens of U.S. school systems are incorporating "mindful awareness" in classrooms, teaching children to pause, reflect and focus. Scientists are using attention training to help boost focus and perception in children with and without attention deficiencies.

"Surfing or multitasking may have even more of a place in 21st-century society as strategies of learning," says Jackson. "But going forward, we need to do much more than hopscotch across the web, split-focused and pulled this way and that by choice distractions. We cannot mistake fragmented, diffused attention as avenues of higher thought—or deeper relationships."

"Instead, we need to do better at cultivating deep focus, keen awareness and meta-cognitive "executive" attention—the package of skills that is crucial to moving forward in a complex, high-tech age," says Jackson. "If we can 'green' the earth, we can clean up our noisy, interrupt-driven environment, and set the stage for a renaissance of attention for all."

Maggie Jackson (New York, NY) is an award-winning author and journalist who writes the popular "Balancing Acts" column in the BOSTON GLOBE. Her work also has appeared in THE NEW YORK TIMES and on National Public Radio, among other national publications. Her acclaimed first book, WHAT'S HAPPENING TO HOME? BALANCING WORK, LIFE, AND REFUGE IN THE INFORMATION AGE, examined the loss of home as a refuge.

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