Chapter 5
Firewall Your Attention
Your attention is your most endangered resource. The technical props of modern work life — email, instant messaging, cell phones, and constant Internet connectivity — make limitless amounts of information always available at the press of a button. Every minute of every day, advertisements, software notifications, ringing phones, dinging text messages, Facebook notifications, and tweets vie for your attention. But you have a finite number of minutes, hours, and days in your life.
Modern gadgets and software are designed to help you multitask: that’s why you can have a dozen windows open on your screen simultaneously, each doing a different job. The problem is that modern computing devices have outpaced humans’ capabilities to multitask.
Further, email, cell phones, and instant messenger applications make you reachable and interruptible at any moment in your day. You live in a culture of constant connectivity, and it’s easy to get in the habit of responding to those interruptions in kind. But this type of interruption-driven existence can have a devastating effect on your mental focus and your ability to perform. It makes for workers who are distracted, irritated, overwhelmed, and run ragged.
Psychiatrist Edward Hallowell calls the condition Attention Deficit Trait (ADT), a workplace-induced attention deficiency caused by the constant distraction of high-tech devices. He says, “It’s sort of like the normal version of attention deficit disorder. ...
