Multitasking drains the brain
Richard Cytowic: “The high energy cost of cortical activity is why selective attention — focusing on one thing at a time — exists in the first place and why multitasking is an unaffordable fool’s errand.”
Survey says sloppy
Noisy macOS, noisy iOS
Did you know that you can get distraction-covering noise from macOS (Ventura and above) and iOS (15 and above)?
Third Birds
In The New Yorker, Nathan Heller writes about attention and the Order of the Third Bird.
Attention education
In The New York Times, three members of the Strother School of Radical Attention make a case for a new way of thinking about education.
Noisy colors
The Washington Post listens to different colors of noise.
“But first”
“But first, here are three new stories from The Atlantic.” “But first, here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic.”
“5 MIN READ”
For a while I never noticed the new reading-time estimates that accompany Times headlines. Now I can’t help noticing them, and I’m aghast. Seeing an estimate attached to a review of two books about attention and technology makes my ironymeter go haywire.
Thích Nhất Hạnh (1926–2022)
Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934–2021)
I heartily recommend Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990).
Staying in one place
A (pre-pandemic) observation from Philip Reed, a professional model maker: “I do not see that just having to stay in one place is a restriction on life. It’s more having to stay in one place in your head that’s a restriction on life.”
All the news that’s print
“Get news. Not too quickly. Avoid social.”
Churchill on looking at nature
“Once you begin to study it, all Nature is equally interesting and equally charged with beauty.”
Bill McKibben in Alaska
Such condescension, such privilege.
“You must go offline to view this page”
You really do. Go to it and turn off your network connection.
Eleanor Roosevelt on attention
No multitasker, she.
Sunday TV
From Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly .
The Pale King : note-taking
Keen attention, sharp pencils.
Recently updated
Sherry Turkle’s essay, out from behind the paywall.
Teaching and texting
How is it possible to teach a class of twenty students (a seminar, no less) and not realize that many of those students are texting?
Sherry Turkle on our phones and our selves
“In conversation, things go best if you pay close attention and learn how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. This is easier to do without your phone in hand.”
Some more words to live by
“L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité.”
Alex Katz, focusing
He knows how to.
Sentences and economics
From Richard Lanham, Revising Prose.
New directions in multitasking
Smoking, texting, skateboarding.
Studying alone, really alone
“A phone is hardly the only obstacle to attention: the mind provides distractions enough of its own. There’s no need to supplement them.”
Seconds and hours and art
How much time should art take?
Fighting distraction
Diana Senechal: “To fight distraction is to defend something that matters, something that requires devotion of the mind. This is part of the meaning of study: to honor things through thought and longing.”
“A little out of date”
Diana Senechal on the danger of trying to stay up to date.
“Life is denied by lack of attention”
At Contrapuntalism, a great statement from Nadia Boulanger.