Please Unplug
whattofix.com
whattofix.com
Here's a simple test if you have this condition: Consider news/tweets/blog items you read this morning. How many many different topics they covered? How long did you focus on one particular topic (eg. programming, software industry trends, social psychology). Now think if you REALLY paid sufficient attention to each subject to produce a meaningful and lasting effect (eg. form new opinion about a technology trend, make a technical decision affecting your work, etc.). If the answer isn't clear then you too are in this 'partial attention' state.
The point is, it isn't how people use the technology or tools. It is about how many things people pay attention to and how long they keep that attention.
The fix isn't to unplug, but to reduce time spent in 'continuous partial attention'.
May I suggest you now go unfollow a few people from your Twitter account :)
We are both 20-something high-tech entrepreneurial free spirits trapped in 40-something bodies in cubicles where we do not belong.
This is a not a bad thing! In fact, it can be pretty good as long as we always remember:
- We were born at a time to now have the best of multiple worlds: modern technology, good work experience, and some domain-specific knowledge.
- No matter what the sitution, the ability to drill down > 1 level is a great personal differentiator. I love being a hacker.
- In large institutions, illogical is the new logical.
- It's OK to be a fish out of water, as long as you realize that you're a fish out of water.
- Always find the "takeaway" from a bad situation.
- There are a whole bunch of things we probably can't change (Ex: everybody being plugged in). The trick is determining what to do with that data.
- Positive mental attitude trumps all. When things don't make sense, always think, "What can I do about that?" When not sure, write some code. That ususally seems to solve some problem somewhere.
But outside of business settings, it really a problem? I don't know that we can really say that in social settings it's necessarily better to be unplugged. Teenagers nowadays feel comfortable enough with their peers behaving the way this guy describes. Eventually it'll become the norm, unless somehow that same group collectively decides to behave differently.
Not sure why so many people are crying foul. Unless it's because they're used to having your full attention, and now they're frustrated with having to compete with the friends you're texting/tweeting/facebooking. That's sort of narcissistic, isn't it? Do you deserve their full attention?
If I don't deserve someone's full attention, why are we having lunch together?
Why are you having lunch together? To kill time? To work on a deal? To coordinate the secret drop location? Do you honestly need their full attention during lunch? What does the pause (while the other guys replies to a text/tweet) detract from lunch? Maybe context matters more than it used to.
Do you know why it annoys you? Is it because you find it's a lack of respect? Is it just because you yourself have nothing better to do while your conversation partner engages with something remote?
My first instinct when this happens is to say, "Pay attention to me, I'm right here." which feels narcissistic. That feeling caused me to think again about why I get annoyed. Do I really deserve their attention?
The counter to the narcissism argument is that I feel like I ought to be preferred because I was there first. Sort of like how you feel when you've been waiting in line at a checkout only to have the cashier turn and answer the phone when you reach the counter. Also, I feel like physical proximity seems like it should count higher in the 'urgency' scheme.
Contrary to the comment below, the narcissistic person is the one who is texting, not the one who is waiting - because the person who is texting is almost certainly overrating the importance of him sending an immediate reply to his correspondents.
Have you ever tried to get someone's attention when they are electronically engaged? Because the electronic interaction is passive, the engaged party mistakenly believes that they can divide their attention between you and the device. They often can't. Since it's difficult to gauge how fully engaged they are, you are often left wondering whether they are actually listening to you.
Trying to interact with an electronically engaged person is extremely frustrating, and I feel sorry for my wife who has tried to have many a conversation with me while I stared at a computer screen.
It's fine to be together and do independent activities side-by-side, as long as that's the agreement. My wife often watches TV in the same room where I am using my laptop just for the proximity, but we never consider it quality time. In fact, I'd say those sessions often leave us feeling more urgent about spending time together.
A by-product of physical proximity is evaluation of interaction. If I meet a friend for a meal or a drink, I want to interact, not gather up the leftover crumbs of attention.
And, to head off an argument I've heard before, I'll say that it's not the same as if a third party dropped by during our visit. That at least has the possibility of a conversation among the three of us. I might think it rude if my friend did not introduce me, and I would certainly think it rude if my friend spent most of our time together talking to this third person without introducing me.
On the Internet, you can find an affinity group of people like yourself. You can find interesting people who may be much more knowledgable about the things you like than anyone you know locally. If you encounter someone who is annoying, you can unsubscribe or block them and find someone else more to your liking. You might even prefer the culture of another part of the world more than the one where you happen to be born.
This is an old human tendancy. In the old days, if you wanted something different, you could escape with a book, but to have a dialog with different people you had to travel or immigrate, which was expensive. Even then you still had to deal with a group of neighbors and work associates that you couldn't hand pick.
With the Internet, though, it is so easy and tempting to hang out with the cool people in cyberspace and avoid the difficulties of local life that it is easy to become unbalanced. The Internet is wonderful for connecting us with different cultures, the experts in any field, and distant friends and family, but I think it is important to build relationships with the people close by. They will be the ones that will help you when the power goes out.
The kinds of social interactions we're all becoming addicted to online aren't as "real" as offline ones to be sure. I'd rather solve that problem by further improving the technology.
To give you a concrete example, all of my family and many of my friends are in the UK, while I'm in California. We keep in touch a lot using Facebook and Skype. Those are great, as far as they go, but what I really want is something that lets me and my best friend grab a "virtual beer" together in a way that's as good as the "real" thing. Ever the optimist, I think we'll get there soon enough.
I agree with the solution but not for all of the situations the author mentions...
Status meetings in particular seem like inefficient token ring events
Collaborative problem solving and design reviews on the other hand could be more engaging to require an "unplugged" atmosphere.
Interfaces designed for Collaborative interfaces with computers are being researched. It could be as simple as a big rear projection screen with Johnny Lee's Wiimote hack for an inexpensive multi-touch interface.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/johnny_lee_demos_wii_remo...
EDIT: I think this is one of the things that bugs me about Pair Programming. I don't think we have the right setup for it.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/images/FT_xmen_1.jp...
In that sense, maybe you'd be better off using a chat program in DOS, in order to prevent multitasking.
Radio was always on. Wherever people were working, radio was on, no matter whether it was a construction site or an office full of programmers. Weird.
Back then there was too little communication. Now we're communicating with too many people at the same time. That's how I feel it.
A lot of people visited to have CONVERSATION. I remember that frequently from those days.
Five hundred years ago, one family went on a trip. The rule was: no printed books. Just scrolls.
In other words: He has functional reasons, and wasn't just being a Luddite.
Yes you can read a book and ignore your surroundings, but you can't talk to someone and dip into a book for a few seconds every couple of minutes like you can with a phone or email. You have to give attention to a book, it can't clamour for it or ring.
Hey, maybe that's a good idea... books you like and want to read but keep not getting round to - make them ring and text you to call you back to them.
I pointed out 3 functional differences in the grandparent post. The cutoff line is not arbitrary -- it's at interactivity, which is about as fundamental as you can get. As a cutoff, it's continental-shelf sized.
Five hundred years ago, one family went on a trip. The rule was: no printed books. Just scrolls.
No functional difference for the reader between writing on papyrus and printing on paper. Where's the cleverness? (Yeah, you hold it differently -- that's pretty silly, though.)
I think we have all experienced presenters, and ideas from those presenters, that engage us enough that we don't wander back to our "distractions".
(grin) It's nothing to do my presenting. I'm talking about trying to get people to listen to each other. I'm just trying to get people to have normal high-functioning interactions with each other. But they're too distracted by, well, themselves.
They ask us how successful teams operate, so we tell them they all work together -- co-located. So everybody shows up in same room and spends all of their time electronically engaged somewhere else.
I have an instrument rating for flying airplanes. It's one of the most difficult pieces of technology to manage for a single pilot flying alone in hard IMC. And it's life or death. Pilots have to learn this attention span management skill to a much higher level than most people.
What I'm seeing is that technology is becoming more and more distracting, while the human brain 1.0 is still wired for face-to-face caveman communities.
But I'll work on my presentations too. : ) I'm afraid you're stuck with my loquaciousness.
Perhaps you should mention this to the Colgan training co-ordinator. I don't think the CO 3407 crash had anything to distract the pilots other than their own conversation.
All those tweets, blogs, emails and headlines just keeps you loaded, keeps you away from actual tasks or problems, like a popular radio and then TV shows did.
Of course it is much easy and even pleasant to read tens or even hundreds of short, primitive, mostly meaningless posts and comments than to do something useful.
In this illusion it seems like you're getting new facts, accumulating knowledge in various areas and it raises your self-esteem, but actually you're just switching channels from one advertisement to another.