Attention, Multitasking, and Focus
July 1st, 2008 by Benjamin KuoI was driving around today and was pleased to see the number of drivers who were actually (surprise!) using both hands while driving, now that California has made driving while holding a cell phone while driving illegal. Now, it’s the first day of the law, so it’s likely with the publicity and attention to the subject only the very stupid would be driving around with their cell phone, but in any case, it’s a dramatic change from seeing about 8 out of 10 cars on the freeway with someone jabbering away on their mobile phones, gesturing with both hands (off the steering wheel), or otherwise not driving.
However it seems like “calling while driving” is just another symptom of today’s information overloaded world, where there are so many competing demands for our attention, we have begun to evolve into hyper-multitasking-short-attention-span creatures. There are so many competing demands on our attention nowadays — from email, to RSS feeds, social networking services like MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn; to SMS, twitter, and other instant messaging services — that I sometimes wonder how anyone can focus and pay serious attention to the task at hand.
Back when I was managing a software development group, we used to talk about how the best developers seemed to be able to shut out the world — cut out the “noise” from day to day life, email, and interruptions from other developers — in order to really focus and deliver on their code. We even set up “isolation rooms” for teams, where they could basically be locked up without interruption — by managers or others not on the team — so they could figure out the “really hard” problems involved in their projects. The ability to really focus, and I mean 100%-of-your-brain-on-the-problem really made a huge difference to the productivity, and success, of the teams. Given that prior experience, I wonder how much the instant-communications, always-on environment is truly affecting the quality and work of companies today?
