- by Ken Dow
I’ve just settled into a table at the Frog Pond cafe when I hear it: the familiar warble of a text arriving. Is it me? I check my phone, as do several others nearby, but it turns out to be a bearded guy two tables over. Welcome to the age of Continuous Partial Attention, a phrase coined by consultant Linda Sloan to describe the way we’re kinda-sorta paying attention to many things at once.
We use the phrase paying attention for good reason. Our attention is a resource, limited and valuable in the “for everything else there’s Mastercard” way. On top of that, we can only give our full attention to one thing at a time. Now you might be thinking: not me, I can multitask like a champion! You’re not alone in that belief, but unfortunately you’re also wrong. The science is clear: what we call multitasking is actually jumping quickly from one task to another. This isn’t just a curious feature of our minds, though—it’s a habit that comes with a price tag.
No one can deny that our phones give us superpowers: worldwide video calling, voice-activated personal assistants, and magical navigation abilities, to name a few. These devices also come with free mind training, which would be brilliant except that they’re training us to be more distracted and less intelligent. Here’s Clifford Nass, the author of The Man Who Lied to His Laptop (he uses “multitask” to refer to rapid switching):
People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy. They can’t manage a working memory. They’re chronically distracted.
Nass also observes:
There’s evidence that…high multitaskers have difficulty with managing their emotions.
I do not remember seeing “agrees to become a mental and emotional wreck” in any of my software terms & conditions.
Here’s a Guardian article with another bit of research on email and phone use, this one carried out before the iPhone was introduced:
Those distracted by emails and phone calls saw a 10-point fall in their IQ, twice that found in studies on the impact of smoking marijuana.
10 IQ points? I’m all for superpowers (who wants to give those up?) but not if it means trading in my intelligence.
We’re swimming in a sea of digital demands, each one fighting for a scrap of our scarce attention. Our phones, always on and always on us, tug at our awareness: Post another Instagram! Reread that last text! Whip through those new email! Agitate over the political tweetstorm-of-the-moment! How do we gain those superpowers without losing our minds?
Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, closed out 2018 with this clarion call: “2019 is the year to…take charge of our relationship with technology…[because] we’re being controlled by something we should be controlling.”
I think Huffington is right. The key to using our phones is to make them work for us, not on us. With that in mind, here are four steps you can take to get your mobile device under control:
Set your phone for as few notifications as possible. For example, yes to texts from your brother, no to TripAdviser alerts for “nearby noodle shops”. See these iOS and Android guides for details.
Use dedicated apps to limit when, how, and how much, you use your phone. The latest version of iOS also has built-in features like Downtime for this.
Strengthen your mental muscles of concentration and attention. For example, try the “Five More” rule when working on an activity. When you feel like quitting, do five more – five more minutes of bookkeeping, five more blocks of walking, five more pages of reading (See the Guardian article for this and other exercises.)
Learn about meditation and practicing mindfulness to improve mental clarity, increase self-awareness, and build focus.
Every new technology brings unexpected hurdles along with fresh opportunities. Each one reinforces certain ways of being and discourages others. Our challenge is to see technology clearly and use it wisely.
Ken Dow is a co-founder of Community Meditation, a network of meditation groups with a weekly gathering in Owen Sound. He’ll be presenting a one-day workshop on this topic on February 2nd. Visit Community Meditation to learn more and register.
