'Weird and Daunting': 7k Readers Told Us How It Felt to Focus
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
This is interesting but the whole experiment is completely undermined by the fact that one cannot choose the painting, or at least choose from a list of paintings. Personally I clicked through to see what it was, then left after 10s because I didn't like what I found. I do like impressionism but not the out of focus and "about to go blind" cataract kind, which actually gives me a headache. For me at least, a blank wall would be preferable to a fogged up scene, assuming a 10 minute timer and a computer screen.
Cult leader: "Will you repeat the word 'Love' 10,000 times out loud?"
Why?
Leader: "Asking 'Why' means you've failed and shall be liquidated."
It's a way of forcing people to commit to you while simultaneously demolishing their critical capacity.
> Our exercise is based on an assignment that Jennifer Roberts, an art history professor at Harvard, gives to her students. She asks them to go to a museum, pick one work of art, and look at only that for three full hours.
Since what they have described as the "shape of attention" is more measuring how willing I am to endure a headache for no good reason, I would say it's a poorly designed experiment.
The goal for the journalists here is to show something about the "fried attention span" of the twitter generation I'm sure, whereas the goal for the original educator was to get people to deeply engage with art that already spoke to them somewhat. Attention can and should be directed, but in general not by others, so this just doesn't measure what it claims to.
And for what it's worth, I say this as someone who is more interested in art than the average person. I've not only looked at a piece of art for 10+ minutes before, but the last time was less than a week ago.
Edit to add: What really is the difference between something you don't like & didn't choose vs say an advertisement? Does leaving the room during ads imply anything good or bad about the attention span of the public?
The art equivalent of semantic satiation. You can look long enough that the meaning is fully diminished.
I can sit down for 30 minutes outside on my porch with my phone inside and just look at the trees. It's calming and not difficult at all.
Personally since the moment I learned that people stare at screens to avoid processing emotions, it's become much easier for me to just stare at the sky.
In such moments I feel a lot like an ape released after years of captivity.
It also reminded me of "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar" which is one of four Roald Dahl stories that Wes Anderson made into short films for Netflix.
https://www.amazon.com/Distracted-Mind-Ancient-Brains-High-T...
It's the first time I read someone properly explain all the parts and tasks involved in attentional control in the service of achieving goals.
I recently left tech to go back to school, but the program that I got into is very different than what I had envisioned.
As I reflected on this recent negative event, my perception changed in those ten minutes, reframing the challenge as an opportunity.
How many people would have simply set a timer for 10 minutes, then wait for a bit and return to the page to see if they had won a prize?
That said, as far as I can tell they aren't actually using it, although it is pretty hard to tell - I don't find any mention of it (as the string "visibilitychange", or "hidden" as an object prop, in the minified code) in the page or the linked sources. The timer did disappear after I had had the tab backgrounded for a little while, but clicking "I Quit" only pops a premium upsell sheet, so who knows.
In entire fairness, though, I don't think they're really treating it as a particularly rigorous experiment in the first place. Assuming good faith on participants' part in the general case seems reasonable, especially given that it is paywalled and thus not too susceptible to widespread gaming of the 4chan stripe. And they are using Sentry and DD RUM on the experiment page, so if it really meant that much to them, they probably could filter out at least some confounders.
(edit: On reflection, they'd have done well to support the fullscreen API here, which in its modern iteration I believe can be used with any block-scoped element, or maybe just any element. But it looks like the UI for this had to be put together in a hurry and maybe mostly outside the confines of their CMS, so I don't suppose I can really blame whoever wrote it for the omission.)
1) Ironically, medication might have made this harder than it otherwise would have been.
2) The worst part of the experience was trying to ignore the guiding prompts that only stopped by about a minute in. It felt like my manager checking in on Slack for an update on something I'm totally locked in on, and that alone made me want to quit, but thankfully they did stop. I'd also compare it to hearing some chew food with their mouth open while I'm trying to program or read. Have some fucking manners NYT