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106 reviews for:
Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity
Gloria Mark
3.51 AVERAGE
106 reviews for:
Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity
Gloria Mark
3.51 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
This book assumes everyone works at a desk—a job these business writers think everyone has, because apparently they never shop, or eat or drink out, or rent cars, or have any construction or repair done.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism
Membaca buku ini rasanya seperti membaca artikel di Google. I feel bored, but I still keep going until the end. Tidak banyak poin yang bisa di-highlight. Ada beberapa studi kasus dari pengalaman penulis serta cara-cara mengatasi attention span.
Penulis mengungkapkan bahwa multitasking adalah mitos. Jadi biasakan untuk menyelesaikan tugas dalam satu waktu. Lalu kurangi gangguang digital dengan mematikan notifikasi, suara, e-mail yang bisa mengganggu kegiatan. Atur pola waktu untuk menggunakan smartphone. Latih dengan nonton series. Tidak menggunakan smartphone satu jam sebelum tidur (agak susah ya ini haha) dan saat sedang makan untuk meningkatkan kefokusan dalam satu kegiatan.
Penulis mengungkapkan bahwa multitasking adalah mitos. Jadi biasakan untuk menyelesaikan tugas dalam satu waktu. Lalu kurangi gangguang digital dengan mematikan notifikasi, suara, e-mail yang bisa mengganggu kegiatan. Atur pola waktu untuk menggunakan smartphone. Latih dengan nonton series. Tidak menggunakan smartphone satu jam sebelum tidur (agak susah ya ini haha) dan saat sedang makan untuk meningkatkan kefokusan dalam satu kegiatan.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
interesting and I want to read it but I need something not real right now is
informative
reflective
slow-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I heard Gloria Mark speak about the book on the Ezra Klein podcast. The book treats attention as a resource that depletes with use and can be replenished through rote activities, exercise, and the like. Mark identified several myths about attention: that focused activity is the end goal of our attention, that "flow" is how this is best understood, that rote activities are wastes of time/resources/energy, and being prone to distraction is a personal failing.
On the contrary, Mark argues that the end goal should be a balanced life, focused on overall wellbeing with focused, productive work as a component of overall wellbeing. But focused, productive work is unlikely to arrive at a state of "flow" for the contemporary intellectual (read as white-collar) workforce, with the possible exception of computer programmers. Rather, it will be a series of starts and stops, interruptions, and feeling drained from the cognitive load of switching tasks and focusing intermittently.
In this kind of environment, activities that restore one tank of attention, Mark argues, are essential to overall wellbeing. Those activities include "mindless" (i.e., activities that you can do with little cognitive attention) repetitive activities on devices or physical activities ranging from exercise to routine household tasks (cooking, cleaning, etc.). Yet the challenge with these activities is that they are fruitful in moderation, but advertisers, email clients, and phone app programmers are extremely effective at getting people to spend excessive time on these "mindless" activities. That is to say, it is not a personal failing to behave in ways that are predictable and expected given the aims of these structures/media sources.
Mark's answer for retaining balance with overall wellbeing is to develop agency, and she is following Banduras, a social psychologist here. Banduras, according to Mark, identifies four characteristics that are constitutive of being an agent able to make changes. Those marks are: intention, forethought, self-regulation, and self-reflection.
Intention is identifying your goals. Presumably these could be longer term goals and values, but they could also be daily goals.
Forethought is a practice of visualizing what the results will be if you do or do not accomplish those goals, identifying and thinking about how it will affect you in the future.
Self-regulation is setting up structures to support yourself as you operationalize your goals via forethought.
Self-reflection is an opportunity to reflect on how well you did and to make course corrections, adjusting your intentions, practices and forethought, and self-regulation.
I found this structure to be helpful, and tweaked some of my practices. One change I made was to move my morning focused work time earlier in the day. I think the period of time right after the kids go to school is one of my most productive times of the day. So, I'm trying to maximize that time with focused work. I've set up structures to support that, which include exiting my email client on my computer and turning off notifications on my phone. Another period of time is shortly after lunch. This time, however, needs to be broken up with activities to restore my attention with short walks when I feel my focus diminishing.
Then to incorporate the intention and self-reflection steps, I added a period of time before my focused work time to identify for that day my primary intention (overall in life), my primary work goal(s), and my primary emotional goal(s). Then at the end of the work day, I reflect on how well I accomplished those goals, I evaluate what was conducive to accomplishing them (or what prevented me from accomplishing them), and I determine whether I need to make a change moving forward.
Today was Day 1 for this practice, and it felt splendid. I accomplished my two major work goals, and even has some in the tank to work on a couple of other repetitive tasks or small steps in larger projects. And I met my primary intention and emotional goal for the day.
So, it is important to have hooks and structures in place to support getting out of those activities.
On the contrary, Mark argues that the end goal should be a balanced life, focused on overall wellbeing with focused, productive work as a component of overall wellbeing. But focused, productive work is unlikely to arrive at a state of "flow" for the contemporary intellectual (read as white-collar) workforce, with the possible exception of computer programmers. Rather, it will be a series of starts and stops, interruptions, and feeling drained from the cognitive load of switching tasks and focusing intermittently.
In this kind of environment, activities that restore one tank of attention, Mark argues, are essential to overall wellbeing. Those activities include "mindless" (i.e., activities that you can do with little cognitive attention) repetitive activities on devices or physical activities ranging from exercise to routine household tasks (cooking, cleaning, etc.). Yet the challenge with these activities is that they are fruitful in moderation, but advertisers, email clients, and phone app programmers are extremely effective at getting people to spend excessive time on these "mindless" activities. That is to say, it is not a personal failing to behave in ways that are predictable and expected given the aims of these structures/media sources.
Mark's answer for retaining balance with overall wellbeing is to develop agency, and she is following Banduras, a social psychologist here. Banduras, according to Mark, identifies four characteristics that are constitutive of being an agent able to make changes. Those marks are: intention, forethought, self-regulation, and self-reflection.
Intention is identifying your goals. Presumably these could be longer term goals and values, but they could also be daily goals.
Forethought is a practice of visualizing what the results will be if you do or do not accomplish those goals, identifying and thinking about how it will affect you in the future.
Self-regulation is setting up structures to support yourself as you operationalize your goals via forethought.
Self-reflection is an opportunity to reflect on how well you did and to make course corrections, adjusting your intentions, practices and forethought, and self-regulation.
I found this structure to be helpful, and tweaked some of my practices. One change I made was to move my morning focused work time earlier in the day. I think the period of time right after the kids go to school is one of my most productive times of the day. So, I'm trying to maximize that time with focused work. I've set up structures to support that, which include exiting my email client on my computer and turning off notifications on my phone. Another period of time is shortly after lunch. This time, however, needs to be broken up with activities to restore my attention with short walks when I feel my focus diminishing.
Then to incorporate the intention and self-reflection steps, I added a period of time before my focused work time to identify for that day my primary intention (overall in life), my primary work goal(s), and my primary emotional goal(s). Then at the end of the work day, I reflect on how well I accomplished those goals, I evaluate what was conducive to accomplishing them (or what prevented me from accomplishing them), and I determine whether I need to make a change moving forward.
Today was Day 1 for this practice, and it felt splendid. I accomplished my two major work goals, and even has some in the tank to work on a couple of other repetitive tasks or small steps in larger projects. And I met my primary intention and emotional goal for the day.
So, it is important to have hooks and structures in place to support getting out of those activities.